Transcripts For CSPAN Keith Ellison And Ro Khanna Address Netroots Nation Conference 20170811

Progressive caucus has always wee, for a number of years, have the annual progressive caucus budget that we put forth that is full of those big ideas trying to move the ball forward. Only giving us policy solutions that people are asking for but how we can help elect electorally. I will let each person kind of say whatever they want. We will have five minutes to make some initial comments. We will ask a couple questions by the panel. So first, i will go in order here that we have. I will start this way. We have the president of democracy and color. Next to her, from the 17th district in california. Joshua, a polling firm that works a lot with aggressive democrats. And next to me is the Vice President for research and policy. It helps a lot of us in the progressive caucus, Democratic Party, and candidates come up with great policy ideas. We will do this in the last panel. Start here. Down the row and then open up the conversations. Amy is the president of democracy and color. Amy good afternoon, everyone. Where oursation about party goes has to be grounded deeply in an understanding about arewe lost in 2016 and who the most loyal central democrats that are most reliable. It is a conversation, a hard conversation about how weve been focusing resources. The messages we have been giving campaigns and what leaders we are elevating area the fight is on for swing voters. Shouldsome dynamics that inform our move Going Forward. The partys 47 people of color. The conversation about refining and economic message must be an openith acknowledgment about the role of Racial Injustice in limiting Economic Opportunities for nearly half of the base of the party. This is critical because there has not been a full conversation about the role of race. Continue to use race as a magnet for white voters and a wedge. The democrats have to be able to. Ully address race not only in a platform but in conversations about policy. At the dynamic with 2016, the one thing democracy and color was able to was that it wasnt swing voters that were the key. Democrats or people who went to third or fourth party and in some cases, that number was greater than the win number for trump. If we want to bring back people from third parties who want to hear a more progressive and stronger message, who want to hear a party that directly addresses race and Racial Justice, both leaders and the message needs to reflect that. I am really glad to just start the conversation by challenging as members of the party to do things differently. Assume the to chasing of white swing voters when actually we have capped out and focus on the new american majority which is multiracial progressive and reliable. That is our challenge for 2018, 2020, and beyond. And invest resources on bringing those voters out, talking to them early and often. Much. Nk you very thank you, mark, for leading this in congress. Part of that fed caucus. With Racial Justice, as an issue of morality. Im sure mark could speak to it more in more detail. Secretary clinton lost by 30,000 votes. They were able to come to the polls. There were numerous reports of in largely africanamerican areas not being given the correct information on how they could get a voter id the story told not enough. It has had and while the demographics a very favorable longterm for the Progressive Movement, they will not be as. Avorable the investment and in my view, historically black communities and colleges have not had the ,ame opportunities for business minority businesses, educational opportunities. It will be a more just country. I dont think the democratic cany or our generation never compromise on those basic values. In addition, i think we should be afraid to articulate a bold, Economic Vision that will appeal to everyone in america. Messageuld say trumps some of it certainly racial overtones. But there was also a part of his going tohat said, im bring back the steelworkers and im going to bring back the coal mines, and i will bring back these communities to america that they knew. And we as democrats have to offer in Economic Vision for everyone. What is their future for their kids. How is it going to be better in the 21st century . How will they have the same opportunities they once did . False,ll have this economic security. And there we have a progressive peoples budget where we talked about investing in infrastructure and investing in new industries. Creating apprenticeship programs, making sure someone who is 55 or 60 has basic health care and retirement. Folks, youry to life is not the same. Were not going to lie to you. Were not going to tell a 55yearold steelworker things are great. Here is what we will do. We can make sure you have health retirement,y and and we can make sure your kids have the same shot. It does cut aground across racial and ethnic and gender lines. I am a partner of a democratic and progressive Public Opinion research firm. The research has been coming out lately. Candidates they are working for. Youll give you an economic reason to vote for us. Because they think we are liberal, they dislike us because they think we are weak. We dont fight hard enough for the groups we say we are going to fight for. We banned to easily too often. Nature in is our negotiate. They dont believe we are going to fight. Make isthird point i that people support our Progressive Agenda. Youve seen survey after survey that says we support medicare for all, tough environmental standards, hold corporations accountable, raise taxes on the 1 . E see all this survey work it why dont they vote for our people . Together we put this to win campaigns . One note and we will go to findings. I am reminded of the end of this , and what he said was, won, if clinton had because of the margins, she would not of had a Democratic Senate or congress to work with. We still would not have gotten done what we want to get done because were not bringing notgh people along, were bringing enough voters along to get real change. Think there are lots of individual pieces here. We need a fundamental overhaul. Lets put two of these over here in two of these over here to make them work. A fundamental overhaul of why people dont believe us is core to our challenge. I think part of our challenge is often, we have to the conversation down. We have very elite conversations about the economy and how it reaches people. Whether it is college theydability, something want to do. We have these elite kind of conversations with each other that dont reach voters. Voters often think we are the elites. We defend government. We want the government to work. We want to reform. And what i think is exactly right is we dont have conversations with where people are. We talk about a Strong Economy instead of strong families. We talk about the jobs instead of about what good jobs mean for families and people. We are talking about things at the level that they dont they have not been brought in to these conversations. Some say we are too abstract in terms of how we talk about the economy are people. Its just too abstract. More abouto talk their family and not just what is happening with them at work, but what that means is happening in your family. And what people are undergoing in their daily lives. We have 10 point agenda is to fix the economy. Those 10 points, we have four sub points. I would love to hear what those 40 points are. We cannot boil this down enough for them. That is my biggest issue. Principles we believe that they believe in them and were having too much of an elite conversation. Thank you, josh. Speaking of elite , im going to try to not be too elitist. Im very optimistic right now. What we have seen is the conservative story about how the economy works that has really guided policymaking for the last 30 to 35 years. Not just on the right, but within the Democratic Party. It is fraying. People dont believe it. Many of us have never believed it. The intervention of any sort kurtzer growth, her to jobs, hurts average americans. Protection is legal in order to compete with a market fairly. Absolutely laughable to most americans at this point. They may have been laughable to many people, particularly people of color and women. Thats how we got to where we are. So i think progressives have a huge opportunity to tell a coherent story about how the economy actually works. That markets are structured by power. That institutions and ideas shape outcomes. It is not as though we all show up in the marketplace on equal footing. The outcomesthough are inevitably going to be just and fair. The day, the way weve been operating is really bad for growth. We have the economist on our , whichw, some economists may or may not be a benefit. But i think that this antitrust which was part of the better deal agenda promoted by the dems recently is a really useful entry point. To the idea that corporations have too much power and corporations have been able to rigged the rules on their own behalf. There is a long story to tell there. I think the average american gets it. Talking about antitrust is a way to sort of signal that you also get that. I do think that theres a lot more that needs to be in that agenda. There is a need for us. We think about this a lot, how do you connect these kinds of things around tax rates, monetary policy, antitrust, around peoples lived experience . Whether it is the job of the steelworker or the justice agenda. There are two aspects of it. I do believe things like antitrust rn intersectional issue. When you have monopoly power on top of the society that also has deep structural inequalities, those get worse. But i also think we need to be clear that while antitrust and Corporate Power is necessary to do what we want to do in the society we want, it is also not sufficient. Broadbandk that infrastructure is a really great example. If we had a more competitive telecoms world, we would all pay a lot less for a lot better service. There is no question there. We would perhaps feel that corporations had less power over our lives. But that would not be sufficient to close the digital divide. We would need Massive Public investment to target the communities that have, for historical and continued structural reasons, not been able to get access to the goods and services that are critical to participate in the economy. Lot. S a i also just want to say that im at a loss. We have not done imperfectly perfectly, combining these agendas. The Corporate Power agenda, the Racial Justice agenda, the womens agenda. Continuing to have conversations like this, we can find ways to make these connections that speak to the lived experience of all americans. We will start a discussion. With ant to start off i think you said it. We can do both. Make sure that we are covering all the issues. About half of them are democrat constituencies. If they had an unexpected 500 expense, they would be in trouble. 60 say that job still dont pay enough to live on. We see this strong economic message out there across a multitude of our constituencies. I think you brought up the entry point. Antitrust, anyone that has watched what happened with United Airlines pulling the person off the plane. When you have consolidation of industries, you no longer have to consider your customers. You can do it you want to. How do we make this work that we have a message that accomplished both . The progressives in the Democratic Party have to start thinking intersectional he. Intersectionally. Which is to connect all the ways that our identity influences our politics. For me as a woman, a person of color, my class. Me those things that make me , our politics have to accommodate. Part of this is looking at the party. Those are the best articulate and intersectional politics. You brought up the peoples budget. I thought it was really interesting, our resolution. Herof the top articulate intersectional policy. Articulating a suite of congressional bills. Should we win in 2018 to address a whole host of issues. We have to start time together and its a lot of women of color playing this role. In the party and in the broader movement, both in the resistance and those addressing Immigration Reform and criminal Justice Reform and education. We have to be able to bring articulate the economy in the context of these movements. Those are best articulated by elevating voices that do it best already right now. Scramblehave the around and wonder what the magic phrase will be. About,want us to think really challenge ourselves about who we are trying to convince to vote for us. I love the example of the state were sitting in georgia. Hillary clinton by 213,000 votes. Lost by 213,000 votes. And every statewide democrat from jason carter to michelle nine, they lose. They get about 23 of the white vote. In a state like georgia, having an economic message is aimed at white voters without looking at other movements, articulating intersectional. We kind of hit the ceiling there in a state like georgia and in a. Lace like wisconsin and in a place like michigan. Look at the 200 million that when Progressive Movements were deciding how to spend that money. In september and october, zero dollars were spent on black voter engagement. It assumption about who we need to win over lead into the way that Building Communities were invested in. We do not lift up the right leaders. I want to challenge is to think about who it is that should be articulating. The spokespeople, reaching out and bringing in all of these messages. Economic and injustice messages so we can motivate our voters to come back to the polls, he even the 7 drop. It proved to be the critical swing vote for Hillary Clintons loss. Lets have an open conversation about that. We will keep talking about race. If youre not willing to talk in a conversation about democrats knowing people of color are the swing vote, then we wont have a conversation about how to move us forward and to strengthen our Progressive Movement. Raising the issue of making sure we talk about who the messengers are. There is no magic phrase. We just run David Copperfield for president . Its not that simple. The economic points, right, josh . Comments . I think its fantastic. Is that thereus is this tension. Real tension, it is often the we want to talk about its a progressive base. There is this tension around the kinds of conversations we have when, at base, they want good jobs that pay them enough to afford the things they need to afford. Things we think about, Holding Corporations accountable, making them pay more, etc. Counterpunch ourselves within this conversation. In the issue is, its very important to name the backups whether it is big pharma or corporations. The key for us is really we lose when we dont do the right kinds of things. It will be taken away. This is why the health care side was more successful. We are going to lose coverage, something taken away that we have. A conversation about what is taken away and what we lose is pretty important to hone in on the risk when it is progressive versus some other kind of agenda. I appreciated amys point ality. Intersection its great to see that its made it into i think we should start by what is our vision for america. I actually think whatever you think of politics that barack obama, one of the things that was so powerful about his candidacy, put it inside his ideology, is he started in 2004 by saying this is the america i believe in. First reptonage patriotism. His vision of america was very different than Donald Trumps vision of america. His vision of america said, look, what most of us believe, that every person should have a shot, that the greatness of the country is not with the elite people and wall street or elite industries. Its with ordinary individuals of varying backgrounds. Frameworkrt with that that our vision is about having everyone in this country a shot, they come from economic disadvantage or they have had Racial Injustice or religious discrimination, the point is, we believe in their potential. Then i think you start to have a frame for all of our policies. I think its important to frame is our vision of the country. One thing that drives me crazy is when donald trump says his policies will lead to 3 economic growth. Then we say no, they are not, they will lead to 1. 8 percent. Then he says you dont believe in america. Is 4 uld say our policy gross a let us tell you how we can do it. We will make sure every person has a real education or vocational education. We will make sure we get rid of the health care costs. We will make sure we give people who have never had new industries and jobs and opportunity and we will invest in real people, real communities, not in the elite and get 4 growth and will make america truly great. Aspirational,e an patriotic message that appeals andeoples got and i gut i think obama did that. Thats how he was president in some sense and whatever the policies, that aspiration is very important. Struggle he power it was terrific in terms of president obamas vision for the country. Wasink president obama great for the country in terms of what we were facing. It was not great for progressive or democrats. The fact that he said we will do and then whats happened, are we better off . We did not have eight years of much realn but how progressive change have we seen in many ways . We progress by omission, the fights we dont choose to have an part of it is by commission. We do it, we pass the laws and we had control of congress or two years. That went away two years a later. We are often too big to fail. We prosecuted these corrupt sons of guns in new york. They are prepared to do it again. Its how we delivered at what kind of mistakes we made by omission or commission and how do we stick to those things. Its great to have a vision but the American People are wondering eight years later whats the just . Whats the just. Gist. I want to address something you said about the growth argument and attacking corporations and potentially undermining, people feel like we may be attacking their job. I dont know if this is a winning message. I think there is this deepseated belief that any intervention will hurt growth. And that it will ultimately be bad for me and my job. We tend to make an argument around fairness which i absolutely think we should keep on making but we have new tools at our disposal which is that actually there is a growth argument to be made around a lot of progressive, economic agenda items as well. Can talk about upcoming tax thets and we can talk about fairness argument about raising taxes on the richest americans because they are not paying their fair share. We can also talk about it as a growth issue, the taxes, the structure, the kind of economic choices businesses and individuals make. They are investing and really unproductive activities that keep the economy in cities where have a very expensive real estate and pricey art but dont actually build the kind of economy that creates shared prosperity and raising taxes on the rich, not lowering Corporate Taxes will create the kind of share pressed area that does create jobs shared prosperity that does create jobs. Often tell that story and choose not to. We choose to make a moral argument which i subscribe to. I dont know why more people dont. However, when you feel your livelihood is threatened, perhaps a growth argument can serve you better. We will open it up to questions after this question. We will open it up but let me ask a provocative question. We brought up wisconsin a couple of times. We had a 200,000 democratic voter drop off and donald trump one by 22,000 votes so we lost a lot of court voters in many areas across the state. I was a journalism major and i will always been told to write an eighth grade level. We talked about our problem and we heard this before that people view this as the party of the lead in the last election. Far folks have brought up the word intersection analogy intersectionality. Im putting out there for a reason. Intersectionality and talk to the voter that we lost without falling back into the traps of being the economic, the elite in general . If we try to play trumps game we lose, its all the same. Lets not play that game. Lets clap for that. Goa little farther. What i mean by that is we are not going to be meaner. We will not be more hateful. We will not denigrate other people. We will not do that more because ourepresents the worst of democratic, and undemocratic reality that we are dealing with. A Progressive Movement, we are inclusive and multiracial. We hold a vision. We should not in our message or our approach both try to emulate or try to play on his field. What i believe is very powerful, is to figure out, to go back to our core values and who we are and recognize that much of what we did wrong in 2016 which is not recognize who the core voters of the party are and to invest in leadership messaging and on the ground engagement that talks to those voters and brought them to the polls. In some states, fewer people voted for Hillary Clinton that voted for john kerry. I think part of the reason is that we have not fully committed to engaging voters of color, in particular black voters and black women who came out for Hillary Clinton in 1994. They came out and fewer numbers this time. When i say dont play Donald Trumps game, im saying we need to get it right as a movement about who actually comprises progressives and who are reliably most progressive. The new american majority is the electoral majority that elected and reelected president obama. They are waiting for the kind of message that is inclusive and multicultural but they are also waiting for the right leaders and the right intersectional message and the right investment from the top progressive organizations and the parties so that we talked early and often and engage people. I just want to i almost want to say to progressives who feel like we lost and we are losing we cannot win without getting right about being inclusive and bringing everyone to the table that 1. 8 billion that was raised and spent on that election last year without a sizable chunk dedicated to voters of color engagement and on the ground we have to admit that it was not just a message on a piece of paper or on a website. It is the structure of how we are organized that keeps us losing. When i say dont play the game, its not that donald trump one. Evolve as a have to movement to be multicultural and bring in all these different issues in order for us to powerfully move forward with the voters that we can rely on to be with us. [applause] i have been reading john quincy adamsbiography. There is the chapter where john adams, says its not sufficient for him to read aristotle and plato in english. He has to go learn the classics. What has happened to american politics . It was thinkers who really sounded founded this country. Their level. They were so proud of their education. They were so proud to have been well read and thoughtful. Obama and is over respect pollsters but if our consultants have gotten their hands on this 2004 Democratic Convention speech, it it would not have been a great speech. Part of what made extraordinary is he actually had intelligent things to say. I think we dont have to shy away from thoughtful conversation or complicated sentences. I think thats different than showing respect. It cannot be one of not showing up or condescension or some sense of im better than you. I think we have to do a better job of showing up and then being authentic. I think there is a large number to aople who will respond thoughtful message. Kennedysk at john f. Speeches or obamas speeches, many of their best speeches were very complex. This to josh because we just did a poll in wisconsin the governors race. One of the interesting things that came out of it and its becoming more of a national white, moreat educated men were starting to vote democratic and women with less education were starting to vote more republican. There is only a sixpoint gap. We are starting to see a gap based on education. How does that relate to the conversation we are having . That kind of trend is exactly right. I see it in lots of different places and very different places across the country. The more educated have become more democratic and progressive. Part of it is being more worldly and part of it is a fear of what trump means and can do. White workingclass women our problem is not just white workingclass, its workingclass across the board. Theres a reason black women to not turn out in the same numbers they did four years ago because we are not talking about economic concerns. We did not have a message for any of those folks and enough of a message for those folks. The other part of it is that we anda very complex movement we welcome diversity and conversation but we cannot talk progressives as just progressives. They are very different. Men of color, moving closer to the middle. They nor longer can be counted on as part of our base. They are more persuadable because were not talking to them. Men and women are very different in terms of their economic priorities. Lot of women. They are our base and voters. All women we have not done a good enough job talking to traditionally progressive men and they are moving back to the middle. I am probably not the right person to talk about a better way of saying intersectionality so it intersects. Reminded of a meeting we had a couple of years ago where we had a bunch of economists and a bunch of activists and the economist unveiled a Powerpoint Presentation that said we discovered that power matters in economics. And all the activists were like, yeah. This is what we have been doing every day for our whole lives. I think in some ways, we tend to overcompensate things. I do, too. I get paid to overcome but it things. Understand that there is something really wrong with the economy. That they dont have autonomy over their own lives. I mean allpeople, people. Our polling shows that a message about Corporate Power or the rich getting richer or the economy resonates with republicans, with white men, with more with young people of color, young women, young millennials. Young millennial is redundant. The message that Hillary Clinton ran on was around breaking down barriers. That was not economic. It was inclusive and she may not have been the best messenger for that. We need to know that inclusion is not just about a civil rights agenda which is critical but that it has to be about an Economic Justice agenda as well. I have been reading a lot from Jesse Jacksons campaign and going back to the populist in the 1800 which built multicultural coalitions, multiracial coalitions, and they did it by talking about what real freedom and autonomy means, to control your life. Thats about not being controlled by a corporation, not by racialrolled categories, not being controlled by history but having the freedom to determine your own destiny. I think there are messages around that that are already resonate with people and its our job to go and pick them up and lift them up. Lets open it up. If you dont mind, keep your question to one minute or less, the most concise you can do and say your name and where you are from. I am a philosopher teaching down the road at the university of georgia. I want to put before you to gain changing for totals proposals Game Changing proposals that are astounding and disgraceful that none of you are advancing and virtually no one at this conference is advancing them. These two proposals will be anchors of the new social bill of rights that i will be advancing when i run for congress in georgias 10th district. The first is guaranteed employment at a fared no minimum fullof 20 per hour with inflation and productivity gains in justmans. This is the basis of economic security. Also a providing the tight job market under which any possibility of raising incomes becomes possible. That certainlyng was geared toward franklin and eleanor roosevelt. It has fallen into complete oblivion since then. I think it is a complete game changer to put at the front of our agenda. Our measures for Employee Empowerment and this has two sides to it on the one hand, we have to give employees a fair share of management in business by mandating that all boards of directors of private and public corporations have a 50 of their seats filled bite nonmanagerial employees who are elected by their peers. And on the other hand, we have something by law, that is not being achieved thelrb the efforts n of or the efforts of union themselves. We have to make it a matter of law that every corporation and play multiple employees, fulltime and parttime and freelancers. They need mandatory collective bargaining. Lets open that up to the panel, thank you very much. Anyone want to address im a big fan of a job guarantee. Speak right into the microphone for all the panelists. Thank you, im a big fan of a job guarantee. We did not get into specific policies on this so i would imagine many of my colleagues on the panel would also have interesting things to say but im not sure its the most politically viable thing in the near future. I think its worth talking about politics ofg on the ones Congressional District and thats certainly worth running on. Any other comments . I think its terrific that we have more philosophers running for congress. One of the dumbest thing marco rubio said is we need more welders and less philosophers as if thinking was about thing in our country. On the jobs guarantee, am all for policies that will lead to full employment and i think the peoples budget has trillions of dollars of Infrastructure Spending and other things that would do that. I will caution this, there are a lot of folks who had jobs in steel factories or were minors or other jobs in the private sector and if you talk to them, they want to have opportunity also in the private sector. They want to be Small Business owners. They want jobs. Everyone in my district is to go work at google, facebook and aspires to mcmillion of dollars and everyone else has federal jobs. As now they want. They wanted chance to participate in the private sector jobs as well for them and their kids. I think we have to be careful in framing this in a way that has access to the private sector jobs as well and not just a government job as much as i respect government jobs. All right, next question. Give us your name. I am John Anderson from chattanooga, tennessee. Mostly work with the organ trail generation and millennials telecom is a real and powerful thing. All the stuff thats going on with telecom is something that is engaging for that generation. You also mentioned we have an idea that we have to push [indiscernible] chattanooga, we have whats a municipalhich is owned, owned by the Power Company in the city and a provides internet to any person who gets electricity. They have 90,000 customers now. Cablere the largest isp company in chattanooga. They have been voted by Consumer Reports as the best Internet Company in the country. There owned by the city. Ldnt that be something indeed, it even lists all of the votes because when people see the City Government working as well as it did in chattanooga in this regard, they are more apt to support other government initiatives that may be have been traditionally private sector. Do you think of using this as a hate study or an example may have a better affect been looking at things saying this is what can happen when we let government work . I think the chattanooga model is a great model. We are doing a case study on it. I think this issue is really interesting in terms of actual issues. Chattanooga, you have Amazing Service for everyone but they are actually not allowed to sell the internet. Thats Marshall Blackburn who was the reason. Brentwoods republican representative basically did everything in her power to preventepb from going outside the service area. What i was saying is there is no preoption, they are not allowed to give it to low income people. You are right, they are limited. Where as new york actually has undertaken a model where they are using private thats to providevate isps public housing. Then they hope to expand from there. Chattanoogaion of has chosen a universal model that they hope can be targeted toward the people most in need whereas new york has started with the people most of it need and are choosing to go universal. I think this raises larger Public Policy questions. I think broadband for all, people should run on that. Its in the better deal agenda. Accessing the of economy. There is no question. This is not a luxury product. It speaks to the things that america has already done quite , i amike electrification a netgear fan obviously, the national highway system. I think thats a great thing to run on. Others . All right, thank you very much. My second congressional is very rural and if you look at a map of highspeed broadband connectivity, you have it in madison and then the northwest corner of a county county, in reedsburg; called the most socialistic republican town the country, they own the water distribution like most areas, company, cable, broadband and they spend everything in metal part of the. Ounty they are happy to be there. Unfortunately scott walker does not allow that anymore because he is a republican governor. The district is extremely rural. Its also an issue that unites across interesting alliances, rural, communities, low income communities. There are proposals to groups like microsoft that are looking at some other models were they can deliver both really inexpensively in inner cities and accommodate real areas with outside models that are not the current ones. California. I want to bring up a point i have not heard and that is that hillary was seen as representing the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. Where as was representing the people. I want to hear you address that. That is the key here. Thats one of the keys here. I have not heard you talk about that so i would like to hear all of you talk about that. I willts all right, open it up to that or if you it beo go broader whether from the more corporate wing of the Democratic Party whether its the corporate wing or from representing people. Yes, thank you. My opening remarks were about the Progressive Movement needs to figure out those people who went and voted for thirdparty candidates. Asy johnson and jill stein alternatives to Hillary Clinton. If you look at your home state that you represent, interestingly enough, both johnson and stein together got 110,000 more votes than the candidates who were in their who ran the previous election. Where those votes come from . Wisconsin, you have a situation you said it was a 200,000 votes. Assumptionssome about how the party needs to articulate better and draw in people who are looking for an alternative to moderate or corporate centered democrats. Done aty broadly has pretty poor job. There is a piece in the hill which is about a better deal. It was the updated Democratic Program that the democrats had released a few weeks ago and we will finally have an economic agenda which i said is better what for whom . My criticism was not only did it not recognize and address issues of Racial Injustice in the country and how that influences economics, it also doesnt fully embrace an agenda that takes us it addressed trust issues but it does not go as far as it needs to communicate and make a commitment to people who looked at Hillary Clinton and set i dont want to vote for her but i want to vote for someone else who is not as tied up in the corporate world. It does not go far enough to whovate and bring in people were disappointed that they did not have better alternatives in the Democratic Party. Its a serious and very fundamental conversation that we have to have in our movement and our party in order to win. Otherwise, our weaknesses and our inability to fully embrace a full Progressive Agenda that goes far enough brings people who did not vote or went to third parties last year bring back underring some the fold under a powerful banner of economic change. I thank you for your question and comments. Came from theey corporations in bernies money came from the people. About the rising electri electorate. As progressive voters. This is true for bulimia, does not mean they are democrats. And means they are progressive and they are looking for outlets which couldressive be voting for democrats. It could community or something else. Were not capturing the vote. They are not republicans, we know that and they are not republicans and they invoke race a lot. They are not democrats. The generation we could lock in givewe can continue to back, because they are looking at an outlet, but not finding in the kind of candidates that are speaking to them. Representative pocan all right. Next question. I am from california. Of 10point tired plans, bullets, and all that. Someim looking for is clear, cogent stance for what we are against. Have a half annot we could have, Something Like fourth forced busing or a tax . Clear goals, we are against this. What is that . Can we be negative, too . Representative pocan who wants to go negative on the panel . Progressives love governing. I love that. I will say part of that challenge is our progressive race right now which is being for something or against something, it is a generational break. Who arer folks progressive right now are stand up and stop and prevent. That is the language they use. Lets stop the damage. The millennials, the end of people, are not that negative, but they are not using stand up, stop. They still want to make good things. Our older progressives want to stop the bad things. The other progressives say i want to make these things happen. We have to have room for both. And we talk to young people, it is things like more years ofing, two junior college, or whatever. It is more program oriented, more doing good. And given options for it, right now our older folks are stop, prevent, stop this guy, and it is separated from some of the others. Also the millennial generation is less likely to be identified by a party affiliation. That is right. Thank you. A love spaces in the humidity College World in california. You came and visited my classroom in 2014. I want to say two things, briefly. One is i think if we are not asking the question every day, how do we build relationships where we can have those deeper conversations . Then we are failing. We need to be asking the question, win, lose, or draw, who are we bringing with us . To, mark, your thought about, how do you come up with a catchier way of talking about intersection or . Just look at the three musketeers. As our 1, 1 for all, friend Paul Wellstone used to say. We are all better when we all do better. That is not an obstruction. I will give you know example. In the world of education, we have programs that are specifically designed for the people who we think are struggling the most around learning. We had the ada. We have programs that target particular ethnic minority groups. What i find in my classrooms is to the extent i have made my classrooms or accessible for ,eople who are deaf or blind all of those accommodations actually improve the learning opportunities for the entire classroom. Maybe somebody do not raise their hand and say, i cannot how or i did not understand he said that, but if we can create opportunities for everybody, and we think, who are the people who are most excluded . If we can demonstrate and i think it is easy to demonstrate this in a bright away in a variety of ways, that when we make the world work for people are struggling most, the world works better for everybody. In very concrete ways. I think that is an argument they can made quite easily in a lot of different settings, but it requires a little bit more time sometimes. And that is where i think having those relationships. The right wing has been a lot of time destroying our infrastructure. They understand why because it is that social infrastructure, that is the social space where we are able to have a deeper, more meaningful relationships, but them ultimately, either way, bring people to the polls and cut ties of the corporate world, because you as elected are more accountable and grounded in us than in them. Anyway, i have said about five things and i will stop. To into your questions about how you build relationships, and you said my absolute favorite statement in politics, which was Paul Wellstones, we all do better when we all do better. What is wrong with saying we all do better when we all do better . Why dont we say it . You about a tell preconference session on wednesday convened by the a foundation. This is about three or four years in with the foundation that has been secondwave feminism, largely white, is now convening conversations about what our womens issues and what our womens roles in movements . What i found is they explicitly had a representative who was disabled, a woman, a trans, africanamerican woman, immigrant woman. Y had women coming from who represent and are active in all kinds of movements talking from their perspective. And they are women and, that was a very beautiful, poignant example of how an organization can evolve to be explicitly intersectional. So the basis of our conversation started with everyone is there, everyone is included, so then we all do better and we all do better. Who has been aon progressive activist in the Antiwar Movement and other movements for, gosh, i do not to say it, a long time, i want to see that all of us in this room go back to the movements. If you look around and everyone is not at the table, then you are doing something wrong. Americas who runs progressive organizations, a love them, and i know that progressive organizations are trying to be relevant. And we want to win. Were tired of losing. We want to win. But not everyone is at the table, they are not at the decisionmaking, they are not creating messages, they are not part of the thinking and strategy, and you are in the position of saying, we still need to diversify. You are doing something wrong. And i believe very deeply that the potential and the possibility of where we can go from here, not just in our party, but movement in general is for people to accept and , that meanske room step away, and bring in new generations, millennials and people with all kinds of other movements, so in the case of the mist foundation, it is not a Womens Movement anymore. It is a movement of women. It is not any one thing for us. We have to be a movement of movement. And i want to encourage us to think that that broadly, that boldly, and that sibley is what our possibilities are for our political future. Representative pocan others . All right. Thanks. Mining is matt. I work for and relation called climatetruth. Org. I just moved to wisconsin. Live in madison where my wife tends medical school. Hello. Thank you so much for being here and being on the panel. I feel this conversation happening now needs to keep happening, and i wanted more of these conversations all year, and i do not think they are happening enough. Thank you. Getting to the millennial question, so what has been said andady has been great resonates with me as millennial, is me and a lot of my peers are very progressive, but do not necessarily identify with the Democratic Party as an entity. Peers,re than my other but it is sometimes a challenge, and part of that is a trust deficit. Theres a lack of trust there. A lot of difference reason different reasons. One of the things my organization were some is where is the money coming from, a no fossil fuel money pledge, all candidates to deny fossil fuels. I would be curious to hear from you to what the gentleman said earlier around that Corporate Tax of the democrats. How do you see that divide playing out Going Forward . Im sure this will continue to be this kind of tension. Yet a question i wanted to pose is something ive been thinking is the needtrump, to get back to local and state politics. And the representative has a lot of experience of that at the state level. And how do you see that playing out as well, where should we be sending our energy, or if we need to go back to this eight legislatures, City Councils and be building our base their . Representative pocan great question. Anyoneonto address want to address both . Yes. Last one go to the first and then jump into the corporate one because it will not go away. For all sorts of reasons. Good and bad. The local state politics thing is a fundamental angle, and if you think about the wave act, the conservatives do not give up anything anywhere. There fighting for everything all the time, library board, school board, etc. They are engaging in all these fights. I think the state legislative races this year we are winning the special registrations special races, but i think the whiskey. But is part of it think part of it is key. You cannot often win these races. You can win them in progressive ways, are not the way that people in this table would want to in terms of corporations. You can forget the con pain. The campaign. It is key as the local record races because they are not as expensive. We have enough people to work. They can make real change. Broadband, the gentleman in the green shirt, what was the issue you have raised . Maybe it was broadband. Local examples are quite key to that it grows. It is hard for me in phoenix to talk about what works in tennessee. What easier to talk about happens in tennessee, one community to the other, and growing those linkages. Andl is a good opportunity, we can start making the message to them. I wanted to get your point about this divide between progressives and moderate democrats. This to someone who supported Bernie Sanders in the primary. I think it is so important we not get into a point where we are divided in and just firing at each other. I supported sanders, but some of vitriol directed against Hillary Clinton in my view is unjustified. Here was someone who stood up and said womens rights are human rights, someone who was for universal health care. And by the end, thanks in part to Bernie Sanders, ran on probably the most Progressive Democratic agenda that we have had in recent memory. And also for a lot of people would have broken a glass ceiling, and that is not to be underestimated. And what she represented in terms of dedicating her life to womens rights, childrens rights, and breaking that class ceiling. And if we are not able to respect people say, she is a corporate democrat, and i think it is just dismissing so many people who voted for her in our party. I believe more in sanders we ought to do is figure out how we go forward on having a aggressive platform. But we ought to show respect for those who voted for her and respect while disagreeing on issues for her as a public service. And i disagree with a number of things openly. Onisagreed with her vote iraq or libya, but that does not mean we cannot have a sense of respect for a person and where they are coming from. I think the party needs to respect both sides and find some common ground. A final point on millennials. I love millennials. I won my race because of millennials. I had a person at a town hall stand up and say, what do i tell my 18yearold son that now that donald trump is elected that thinks politics is not worth it and does not want to get involved . I told him the same thing that i tell millennials who want to go make a Million Dollars and exit after five years of graduating. Politics is hard work. My grandfather spent 35 years in jail, or four years in jail, 35 years fighting for indias independence. People have dedicated their lives for change, and we have to have an aspiration, but we have to realize that takes years and decades of hard work. And the party is one of the ways to build, to create that change. So that would be my hope that millennials will keep their idealism, push us to have a great vision, it realized it is not going to happen overnight. We had a hard we have a hard stop at 2 15. Dd one last comment. Were seeing some of the in aessive activism somewhat otherwise darker era nationally. We have to move to flip the house and effect that change, but i think we can do all that, and thank you for your question. They skim everyone, for coming out, we appreciate it, and think the panel. Again, thank you, all, for being here. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] discussionsing revving up on the net Roots Conference in atlanta, and coverage continues when they return from this break. We expect them back in 15 minutes or so, 2 30 eastern time. We were hearing we will hear , who will ellison lead a discussion how progressives can win back political power. He plans to win at the state level where democrats have lost a thousand elections over the last nine years. Punishment allison ran for Democratic National committee chair, but we will be hearing from congressman ellison at 2 30. At 4 00, a look at social media and how it is changing democratic principles. Here we will take a look back at one of the sessions from earlier today. This one on strategies for lobbying congress. Seeingreat so many so many Smiling Faces at 9 00 a. M. We appreciate you coming out. We will endeavor to make it worth your while. Our goal is to provide some best congress. For lobbying we had three amazing organizers here who lead excellent organizations who focus on effectively lobbying congress, and we have two tank champions from the congressional caucus who have committed there can years to inside, outside organizing, and are the best ,eople to tell you what works what does not, and how we basically take this moment of incredible trump energy and turn it into effective longterm progressive organizing that great victories on capitol hill. So Everybody Knows how this is going to work. I would do a brief introduction, and that each of the panelists and provide a brief introduction and some introductory comments about how they see this moment of trouble organizing Trump Organization organizing. Were in this incredible moment where there is unprecedented activism where americans of different political stripes are looking to find out ways to resist the trump agenda. A surveymonkey poll said that selfdescribed democrats are more than twice as likely to say they have engaged in some form of activism over the past two mores, that extending to likely to have shared opinions on social media, signed editions, donated money, protested and attended local meetings. People are fired up, engaged, and we have to figure out how we can turn that energy into effective lobbying. First i will start zrah as are levine e levine. He is a former congressional hill staffer who lived through [applause] [indiscernible] live throughezra the 2009 tea party wave, and one of a one of the things they have done is taken the Lessons Learned from that scarring process and turned it around so progressive will be using effective tactics and Tea Party Contacts i will say briefly give some background on what indivisible is and we can get into a discussion. We started as a google doc seven months ago. After theing to the election, we were both former congressional staff. I worked for a congressman from austin, and she worked for congressman tom. Peiriello. We were trying to figure out what we were going to do. It was pretty immediate. People were coming to living rooms and trying to figure out, what should we do, in talking to our friends who were newly involved in this activist base. We were in austin for thanksgiving, in a bar meeting with a college friend, and she was part of a new group, a private Facebook Group that was andcated to resistance, they were running up against the same wall we were hanged from other folks, do we sign positions, to make a call . How does any of this connect to resisting the trump administrations agenda . And we have seen what works. The tea party taking away their racism and violence, they were really smart. They were smart on strategy and tactics. They knew that local defensive congressional advocacy worse. It is not rocket science, want to town halls, going to public events, making calls. Networks. It changed what was possible at the national level. We got the formal care act. We got the stimulant. We got doddfrank. There were victories. But it did change what was possible. So we put out the indivisible doc, what isogle the role of the process . We thought maybe six months later somebody buddy would say we used your guide, we asked some questions, and we we psy ched. That is not exactly what happened. Within a couple of hours, i tweeted it out to my dozens of followers [laughter] while waiting to put the Kitchen Table after work one day, and with a couple hours it was crashing. There were too many people trying to get to the document. We put our thoughts on saving american democracy in a google doc online. That is not usually what happens. The response we got was overwhelming. Was infolks saying i despair, but now we are indivisible dont make or auburn, which i bring up all the time. I think we have auburn in the crowd. This in expect unexpected choice. In january at the page, we say we are not professional africas. Advocates. We are not an organization. In january we started an organization. And we didnt explicitly for the groups. We have regressive policy goals for the have electoral goals. We want to elect candidates. That is not why we exist. We exist to support this regressive infrastructure. From that flows everything else. Now we have 6000 groups that have registered. That is in every single Congressional District in the country. 6000. There are an average of 13 in every single Congressional District. This is not just city saturns, not just east coast or west coast. This is an red state, in rural places. Groups, east tennessee and indivisible ozark and indivisible oklahoma at the car and the crowd. What they are doing is or work and organizing effect change. I will stop there. What that organization has developed. Thank you so much. Next we will hear from a congresswoman representing illinoiss ninth district. A progressive ally and advocate. She hers she serves in that , and and credit leadership most importantly vice chair of the congressional progressive caucus and somebody who has been a champion and a leader when it comes to insideoutside organizing. She was one of the leaders who pushed back in situations that is similar to the things were facing today when president bush trying to privatize social security. It was a moment of insightoutside organizing that the congressmen led on, and we want to hear your insights. Happy to be here. Ezra, i want to thank you, all of our panelists. I guess i have to be in category a member of congress. I wondered knowledge my husband, bob, who is here, who is a great organizer, great, great organizer. Lifetimee never in my seen anything as big as this right now. Lived through the civil rights movement, the vietnam war protests, all big, effective, but nothing like this. There are more people engaged than i have ever seen. And other great thing i think is was demonstrated by the womens marches the day after the election that there was this sense of unity despite it was under the banner of women , but there were all these organizations and signs, of course, reproductive rights, Economic Justice, immigration, lgbt, guns, environment, or in peace, science, truth, health care, that everybody felt as if it were one thing. So one of the points i want to make is that unity is so incredibly important. Yes, you can follow your passion and get involved with the aclu or an environmental realization or something more general like indivisible that they focused in your community on some particular thing. But understand that we need to maintain this unity and intensity. Intensity really matters. I was the target of one of those town Hall Meetings by the tea 2009, and i will never forget it. And those were happening all over the country. We are bigger than the tea party was and is right now. So feel your power and know your power. Showing up really matters. The idea ofom ezra, the phone calls, the idea of the town Hall Meetings, the idea of soing from the members officer that will not have town Hall Meetings, the idea of inviting townrs like me to go do a hall meeting in a republican district, and some of us are willing to do that, but we need to be invited. And also we need a sense of victory that builds confidence. Victories beget victories. Everyone in the Progressive Movement should feel the power of winning that fight on health care. Whoo and what a tremendous, tremendous victory that was. And everything was in play. We mentioned the phone calls and the town Hall Meetings and going to offices, but doing press evans and days of action events and days of action, and having tea tv spots run in the district, and massive social media which you can do with your friends. I love that. It is now uncountable millions of people. That when we fight, we win. Moveon know that every rally that i go to, i like to say at the end, when we fight, we when. You try it. When we fight crowd we win. Stokowski how do you feel today . Crowd powerful. Stokowski the health care fight showed that. That does not mean we can relax. They will try to come back. I do want to give a special shout out as an example of what can be done to the Disability Rights Movement and adapt in this fight. The images of people being pulled off of their wheelchairs is not unlike the images quick like welcome is not unlike the images welcome to net roots. We want to make sure you tweet or whatever you have going, this particular session. This is called from demonstration to legislation, how organizing will win back power. My name is keith ellison, and i am really proud to be joined by awesome activists and leaders. Give it up for syria johnson, who is a director of progress. Give it up for any weinberg, electoral director of democracy for america. And give it up for the executive director of wellstone. Here is the reality. We have seen one of the most dramatic and inspiring upticks in progressive action that i can remember. Gate, right out of the you know, on january 21, the womens march kick it off in a line fashion. Literally millions of people organizing, marching all over the country. And how fitting it was for the womens mark march to kick off this moment, given the incalculable sexism and misogyny trump ran on during the campaign. The women that led us than are leading us now. But the movement kept going. We saw the science march. We saw the text a march. Help me out. This is audience participation. Is there anybody i am leaving out . The Public Education march. We saw all kinds of activity. I can tell you that in my old district of minnesota, we have a campus we are running where we are literally knocking hundreds of doors every day. Not every week, every day. We are knocking on literally hundreds of doors, and we are doing it all over the company. We have a thing called resistant summer, with the dnc. Pushing out resources to state parties who are leading canvassing efforts all over the place. All the demonstrating, all the grassroots organizing, all the town halls, as wonderful as they are, will not change the Political Landscape unless we convert this energy into the ballot box. We have been coming close. At the state level, we have been converting some. Inhave seen electoral wins deep red districts in oklahoma, in new hampshire, and in iowa just over the last several weeks. We are seeing it happen. The thing is that if we want to 15 and a union become the law, we are going to have to take power to do it. In the cities where it has happened, it has happened because we had enough votes on the county board or city council to do it. If we want to see medicare for land, be the law of the we have to defend what we have, and we have to get the folks in office who are willing to vote that policy into office. The bottom line is that we are in a brandnew space, and it is fraught with peril in some ways, but it is also full of opportunity. And we have the ability to make and reshape this whole country, if we are willing to seize the moment and go to the grassroots in a whole new way. You that i am really excited to introduce Sarah Johnson to you. Thank you for giving her a nice clapped a moment ago. You can give her another one now. Come on, now. [applause] sarah is the codirector of local progress, a National Group that unites progressive local officials and allied organizations. It is run by the center for popular democracy. Sarah wasoining cpd, the managing director at working families, where she ran an electoral candidate Recruitment Program that doubled the size of new york citys progressive caucus. Let me tell you, they are doing awesome things. I guess our first question to you is, how important is it to win at the local level, and what can come from local Government Action on the big problems we are facing today . Sarah thank you so much, congressman ellison. We are grateful to be here with you today, and for the tremendous partnership of having folks in d. C. Who are really committed to change at the local level, and to supporting our members. I think before i answer the question, we have a little inspirational video. We are going to watch it real quick. I will jump into it. Across the country, people are rising in resistance. To administration bigotry and incompetence. In the streets. At airports. In the halls of congress. Our fight back is working. This is our moment in history, not the moment we wanted, but the moment we are called to. It is time to take this resistance to the next level. 2017, there will be elections across the United States. Cityr offices like council, mayor, school board. These elections matter a lot. I am a member of local progress. I am a member of local progress. [speaking spanish] i speak from personal experience when i say progressive elected officials can change this country and make a difference in peoples lives. Forhese are profound times people to see a different kind of politics. People should run for local politics because change happens locally. We recently enacted a sanctuary city executive order. To let people know that regardless of their status and zip code, their ethnicity, their religion, that they should feel safe in milwaukee. We passed a law creating an Inspector General for the nypd. I fought for every child to have access to a Public Education. Quickly pushed to make sure our trans sisters and brothers had access. I am fighting to raise the minimum wage. I was no political insider. I wanted someone to step up who cared about the community. I thought, which of these guys was going to be the strongest on education and strongest on Public Safety and worker rights, womens rights. I realized the strongest person was going to be me. But i cannot do it alone. And that is where you come in. If we are going to build a more just and equitable country, we need a National Movement of progressives running for local office across the United States. Will you join us . Heard the phrase think globally, act locally. That means if you are outraged by the trump agenda, you should run for local office. You reject that if White Supremacy if you care about protecting workers rights if you want to guarantee health care for all you should help your coworkers, your neighbor, when an election for local office. Warren the local fights today become the national fights tomorrow, and the leaders become the national leaders. Sometimes people think, what skills do i have to offer . Here is what i would say. You are probably more qualified than you think. We have faith in you. And we need you. If you have the passion and want to be a voice for the voiceless, i would say do it. Ask if we want to build a better future, it is time for progressives to start running for office. One city and state at a time. We are making our nation a much better place to live. There is no better place to start them at the local level. There is no better time than now. No better person than you. Join us. Join us. [applause] that is great. Sarah i think you got a little bit of a picture from that. All over the country, people like you sarah all right,. I have a question. In many people saw somebody that video you recognize or have heard of before . That is pretty incredible. I wonder if, at this conference five or six years ago, that would have been the same thing. I have a really awesome job, because every day i get to work with local elected officials. We have members trying to live out strong progressive values of shared economic prosperity, equal justice under the law, and good government, through their offices. Folks i,t of like many people, have suffered many depressive episodes since november, but i have had also more inspiration from our members then i think many others have had, and am super lucky to have that, and want to share some of it with you today. I came about two weeks ago from the local Progress National convening, where elected officials came together to really plot how our city is going to Work Together to not just resist trump, but to continue to make policy progress where we can at the local level, and in partnership with Community Organizations. Here are a few things i feel particularly inspired by for that event. Our members, along with the workers defense, organizing groups doing brave work in texas, brought 100 colleagues from across the country to. Rotest Governor Abbott i think i have never seen Something Like this, of 100 electrical 100 elected officials getting a protest. Usually, they are being protested. I think it is one of the worst and most discriminatory antiimmigrant bills passed at the state level since november. It was all led by Council Members from texas who have gotten the major metropolitan areas of the state to sue the government to try to stop sb 4 from being incremented on september 1. Mayor,ottesville vice west bellamy, stood up and shared something that shows the relationship between resistance and progress. He was able to use momentum from organizing around the removal of confederate statues in charlottesville. Some of you may have been reading about a big and terrifying event happening there tomorrow. A 400 million Reparations Fund for africanamerican families in the city. Making sure that as we are resisting, we are also enacting local policy programs and winning funding, to help folks connect to victories. Our members sharing with everybody the 15 minimum wage in minneapolis, the first city in the midwest. It is happening in other places too. At the same time, getting to meet andrea jenkins, and inspiring transgender activist, guiding adoption of trans policies, running for city council in 2017. Those are a few of our incredible members. It makes a feel fortunate every day to be able to do this work of just trying to figure out how to keep pushing forward at a local level. And maybe i will just say a little bit of what i think is working, kind of drawn from that experience, and my experience in new york city electing very progressive leaders and growing the progressive caucus in the city. Andis that we have more more leaders who are from our movement, who are organizers and campaigners, and who are coming base building organization. I talked about the work organizing against sb 4 in texas. That is primarily being led by a councilmember named grace are named greg. He is in his 20s. He was an organizer for a Defense Project before coming into council, so comes into elected office from organizing lowwage workers, from fighting rights, from doing direct interventions in our communities. When asked before started to advance, atarted to lot of folks were against it, but greg approached it like an organizer. He called neighboring cities in texas and said, what are we going to do about this together . To be not wait for austin completely vilified. He organized Community Organizations and elected officials to fight back together. That makes a big difference, having folks that not just share our values, but share and organizing perspective. Related to that i think is the sort of growth of inside and outside collaboration. It is a catch phrase i have heard a few times, as a way to think about how we are making change. I think this is particularly important at the local level, which is where we can begin to practice the kind of communities and relationships that can advance policy change and grow to the state levels, go to the national level. But you cannot build those kinds of trusting relationships. They have to start grounded in communities and in the issues they are working on. The center for democracy is a National Organization of 43 base Building Community organization , inps, like workers defense states across the country. Ofal progress is founded out changecause we believe requires great elected officials who are values driven and pushing as hard as they possibly can to advance policy, and outside organizing, escalating public demand for the policies we need. I think most importantly that those things have to be connected, that they have to relate to each other, be done strategically together, and that when they are working together, inside or outside, we could have greater policy outcomes and change that we want to see. I am just time checking myself. Rep. Ellison we will be able to get back and forth. But lets hear from it from sarah, everybody. [applause] rep. Ellison let me introduce annie weinberg. Joined democracy for america in 2014 after serving as chief of staff for progressive congress, the foundation for the congressional progressive caucus. She is previously the National Field organizer for move on, and served in a senior role in a variety of congressional races from connecticut to michigan. Aboutwith us a little bit how do we get into this position where we have lost so many seats in the state level and what is the way back . Annie thank you, congressman. Thanks, everybody. We lost a lot in the past eight years. It is true. Over 1000 seats at the state and local level in just recent cycles. That means that right now, as of mr. Week, thanks to justice, 34 republican governors are holding seats. 38 governor seats are up in 2018. That means 34 of these governors and the attorney general are helping to connect violent, white supremacist policies, through this administration. We are going to have to fight. Voter also seeing this in turnout, in terms of folks that are not showing up at the polls, in terms of historic lows in a lot of places for voter turnout, which we know matters. Turnout thatd the matched 2012 in milwaukee and philadelphia and detroit this past cycle, we would have a different president. It is voter turnout. It is true the problem we are facing is really deep. And i think i have a few things in terms of why we got to where we are. One is voter targeting models that are cyclically disenfranchising, where we are constantly the idea of a best practices campaign, for a long time, in Democratic Party politics, and in consultant culture, was to center a very tiny pool of white, mostly , a lotcan swing voters of folks that did not necessarily share values that usivate a lot of us, or make wake up in the morning and want to fight around racial and Economic Justice, focusing on a tiny pool of people and funneling all the Campaign Resources time, energy, campaign ads, consultant wisdom to reaching out to a very tiny pool of people, and ignoring or devasting from the programs that speak to everybody else, that speak to the overwhelming majority of folks in this country who want to see their leaders stand up and fight for a living wage, for racial and Economic Justice, for reproductive rights. Those voter targeting models are a big problem. Is, candidates often were afraid to run on those values. When we run authentically on our values, with courage and conviction, that is how we win. We do not win by parceling out our values and making deep compromises, or pretending to be like republicans. If you want to vote for a republican, you just vote for one. Then i think the other big thing that i just want to name as a challenge is the vestment in organizing. Voter conversations work. That meaningful relationships are born from some of the most transformative campaigns. How many folks have worked on campaigns here that changed their life, and from relationships from those campaigns that changed their life . Organizing works. It is resilient. It works over the long haul. It means we can win victories in the short term, and it means we can win victories over time. Andsting from organizing meaningful conversation with voters has really harmed us. To fix it, we have to reinvest in that. We have to talk people on the phones and in their living rooms about things they care about, and then track those conversations, and do it again and again. This is how we will rebuild. Rep. Ellison thank you. We will be right back to you. One more big hand for edith. [applause] lets make her feel the love. ,he is the executive director and before she served as executive director of impact. She has been with her Organization Since 2007. They helped train progressives who run for local office and win. Prior to working for wellstone, she has more than a decade of experience as an organizer and strategist for youth and reproductive justice. I tell you this i want to ask you this, edith. Was directly and personally inspired by Paul Wellstone, one of the things that i always loved about him is that he ran for office, he did not try to water down what he and and, he won, how did he do that . A show of us just hands. How many people have heard of the idea that if you go and enter office, become a public officeholder, then by virtue of being in office, you will start incrementally selling out . We have all kind of heard that. With paul, that never happened. How did he stay true to the game . How are you training people to make sure that when they get in there, they will be the person they dreamed they would be . Edith thank you for that question, congressman ellison, and thank you for hosting the panel. You are my member of congress. I live in minneapolis. I also want to thank you because you are one of the embodiments of the practice and that approach to politics and organizing, and i want to appreciate you for being unapologetically who you are black, muslim, and an organizer. Thank you. [applause] rep. Ellison thank you. So the last time i was in atlanta, i was here doing a training with my colleague, brittany cooper. We were working with the black womens blueprint project, talking with black women about what it might mean to run for office. At the same time, i was staying in a hotel that the nra was hosting a National Convention in. So this is nice and very different. It is good to be with you all, and in such good company. I really appreciate this question. As you mentioned, congressman ellison, our tradition and wellstone we teach and train organizers, operatives, digital strategists, data practitioners, how to build power and how to win, whether that is in a campaign or organization, or for a run for office and public leadership. We have become a trusted partner and ally to our family of movement organizations. We have done that because we have kept at the core of what we do the wellstone triangle. We believe for change to happen, we have to build a base and organize in our communities. We have to mobilize that base and have that base dictate who our leadership will be that will run for office and governed. We need a vision of policy, a radical, progressive Public Policy, and a vision for change. We do that through the work of Leadership Development. This question is sort of inherently it assumes this dichotomy, that movement organizing is different than political organizing. I actually dont think that is the case. When we talk about political organizing, often we are talking about elections, or running campaigns, about winning those elections. Create a profile and a vision of who those folks are that do that work. Does that make sense . Does that sound right . You get a vision of who those people are that run campaigns well, that when, that meet that deadline and cross that threshold and that goal. When we talk about movement organizing, we are often talking about winning on specifics. The reality is that movement and political organizing are two parts of a whole. We know that Building Movement is essential in order for us to actually win elections, and for elections to mean something to have someone in office that can govern in community and in relationship and partnership with those that are most impacted by those issues. Without democracy work, without the work we are all doing to get free of liberation, and without the work of creating an independent judiciary, elections dont function. They dont matter as much. We have been, as the Progressive Movement, treating these things as very different for a very long time. And we can see the result in the expression of treating those things as different pieces and different approaches. We see that one weaker language like soft skills versus hard when we talk about strategic leadership versus process leadership, or when we say things like identity politics versus women, right . We have inherited, as we just heard from our brilliant panels, from keith, and from Kimberly Crenshaw we have adopted the language of our opposition within our own movement. We have got to cut that shit out. [applause] that link which is gendered and racialized, and it is unfortunately incredibly divisive. Before becoming executive director at wellstone action, i worked on the Movement Building side of things, where i worked with Labor Movement Labor Movements in places where right to work legislation had succeeded, helping workers organize and build power. Before that, i was working with teachers in nevada who knew the importance of building a Political Program was not about winning elections, and just getting anybody in those seats. It was about winning elections to build a base of potential leadership for not the next cycle, but the cycle down the road. And rebuilding leadership of members for the purposes of building the leadership of our sector, right . Office, candidates for but for organizational leadership, and really wanting to build power, so we can govern well with each other. I just want to say i do not want to take up too much time. I know we will get into this discussion. Communities dont in ignore politics and elections because communities are not strategic. They usually ignore elections because they do not see any direct change in their daytoday lives as a result of those elections. And unfortunately, they are not wrong in this moment. When we keep identifying candidates and potential leaders where theyre only requirement jd, wehave a pulse and a are doing it wrong. We have been doing it wrong. When we invite people to run for office was no connection to the communities they are trying to transform, we continue to do it wrong. See a lot oft, we people wanting to run and wanting to leave. The question we want them to consistently be asking themselves is, on whose behalf . Rep. Ellison all right. All right. [applause] rep. Ellison so lets now, we want to engage you in the conversation. Right in thec middle. I want you to do me one little favor. Get straight to the point. You dont have to ask a question. You can make a statement. But could you do it within like a minute . [laughter] rep. Ellison really, 60 seconds. Who is game for that. Clap your hands. [applause] rep. Ellison we want to hear from as many people as we can, here,sider everybody up and get right to your point or to your question. We are thanked. I dont see anybody lining up. Were we really that thorough . The question is, how do we our energy on the ground, our demonstration, our protest energy into electoral success . If you have a story to tell or a question to ask about how to achieve that, we want to hear from you now. It will take two or three from you guys. I will let the panel respond. All three of them have plenty more hi. Rep. Ellison hate. Rep. Ellison my name rep. Ellison hey. Using Citizens United against the right. We are structured as an llc. Its a lot of fun. I just want to encourage everyone i know there is a lot of debate right now, especially at the local or the federal level about litmus tests and all this other stuff, but i think theres a couple issues, whether it is equality, economic equality, whatever it is, that unites progressives. Not good on choice, you probably are not good on other things. Find organizations that work with down the ballot candidates. Down ballot candidates is how we get federal candidates, and that is how we take over d. C. Thank you. Rep. Ellison thank you. Hello. My name is nadia. I have the confidence to take on this very new role in our state and i remember seeing my Community Change when congressman ellison was elected. I saw change and other people around me. I think that confidence is really important in that context because i know the generation above me, whether it be the Muslim Community or other minority communities, are literally scared of getting involved in politics. They feel that getting involved puts themselves in danger as well as their families. How do we talk to them in a way that makes them feel safe hitting involved in politics . Question. On great lets take to get more and i will let our panel respond. Is marissa pyle. I am based in north georgia in a very red district. We are the third reddest in the nation. We have progressive candidates running throughout the ballot this year. One thing we have run into is that we have a lot of candidates who have really good ideas, but the minute we label them Something Like raising the minimum wage or green energy, people shut us down because the terminology is a sioux city with so many negative things that they hear from the right that we cannot have a conversation. A lot of them would agree with what we had to say if they listened. How do we reframe the topics so we can talk about it without immediately getting polarized on the subject of what it is called and how it is labeled . Rep. Ellison good question. Thank you. Lets go one more. Im richard, fighting to protect the residents following natural gas blowout we had a couple years ago. I want to tell you all a story andt how we are fighting what political work we can do. We will be engaged with our political representatives to make sure they are educated on what it is we can do to protect those residents. The candidatesf to come down. The ones that will not help us probably will not show up. Ok, we ofon questions around prochoice, muslims in public office, red districts, and fighting for environment justice. Who wants to start . I can start maybe a little bit, thank you for the great questions. Especially the one about the fear of getting into politics. I definitely had that fear myself. Maybe not as the question was raised. One of the things i think about myself in my lived experience is is a team sport and we think of it differently. We use these terms that are very highly individualized, often very gendered and racial. Some of the successful examples i have seen, the lens where people can most retain their true values and convictions are the ones where they are a team, doing it as a group with other elected officials, outside supporters. They have a strong team to back them up. Question to answer is how to build a Community Around it so you are not the only one, right come a stepping up and taking risks for your community, but doing it as art of a group of other people part because of other people. Rep. Ellison great. Just to speak about safety, one of the things that is resonating for me that i wanted thehare, the partnerships, center for community justice, and what we are doing is providing security, safety, and training to our sanctuary organizations. And the purpose, the sort of reason behind that training, obviously, for all of the reasons coming out of this last election, why we are all here talking about our data and information and the vulnerability of our membership the reality is when we do this kind of training that is really centered in making sure it is a demilitarized training model, a training model that is antiracist, antiimperialist, and really centers the stories in the center of the way that communities of color have been under surveillance for years the reason that that is important, when you are training with an organization about how to keep member data safe, you of thelding the capacity organization to keep us all safe, right . What we are learning and building our muscle to do is to create cultures and practices in our organizations, in our neighborhoods with each other ways that we can all stay safe, right . Yeah. So just an example of one of the ways we are wanting to bolster and strengthen the organizations that are trying to do this. They may change it on a daily basis, to make it safe to join the resistance. Aboutllison talking georgia and how to run in a red district with progressive values, i think i started with the idea people all across the United States, 63 of americans say if they had a 500 bill they would not be able to deal with it. Neighbors all across the country said if they had an unexpended 500 expense, they would not know how to deal with it. That is true across the United States. Georgia is 34th out of 50 in terms of average household income. Of thergia, despite all wealth concentrated in atlanta, is one of the poorest states in the union, as is the whole south. Actually georgia is doing better than 10 years ago. For some weird reason i happen saw over 10gia years a 6,500 drop in average family income. That means you got to be able to talk to folks in georgia about pay. Somebody in georgia is what to is going to want to hear about how we want to increase their pay. Am i wrong . Childcare . What about rent . See your kidst to go to college . This is got to be a conversation we are able to have. Growingsure i am increasingly suspicious of messaging defined as magic word messaging. You know what i am talking about . Abracadabra messaging. If you say this this right way, it is tested here in there. Candidates from the community who can speak to the pain of the community. I could be wrong, but i feel like that is the deal right there. I think its important to build relationships. We get now in terms of candidates, i tell you right now, we get selffunded who are already well known to whatever they come from. They dont need to know how much red costs. They dont know how much the rent is. We need to get candidates like that. They will know how to message to the neighbors. There is a lady working in the lunch lines school. She is smart. She knows how to talk to the lady who works next her. She says im getting ready to run for office. Will you help me . Yeah, girl, i will help you. Some thing has got to change around here. This aint right. That is how we change. We are joined to figure out how to get that lady into a training, right . You try to get her into a training. And the folks at local progress and at dfa, try to get them believe they can run. Im telling you, this country is ripe for somebody he was talking about how unfair this economy is. This country is right for it. I will tell you who is not ripe for it. International elite spirit a lot of times you go with the Democratic Party around this country and the people running it, its not the lady at the lunch line. It is somebody who owns an auto dealership im not criticizing anyone. Dont get me wrong. Economics. I am not one who believes we exclude wealthy people from politics, but we desperately need to have more workingclass people in politics. You get more workingclass you will get more people with disabilities, you will get more veterans. One of the biggest secrets going around you talk about the bread and butter issues, they will tell you a lot about opioids and health care and fair wages and addressing the housing crisis. I can tell you a lot of the conversations in washington when it comes down to recruitment caters to people who have a lot of discretionary income. And that is part of the problem when it comes to candidates. Weve got to tell these people that got to run. I will tell you this. Our shot at doing that is better now than ever. Anybody in the room thinking about running for office . 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 im telling you. This is the right time. If you have a say thats fine. , but carry the message of those who dont. And i will say this also a lot of times, democrats will Say Something and they will leave. They will say he is wrong. And they will leave. No, stand for it, fight for it. This is what we have got to do nowadays. People we areor right for people. As andy is talking, why dont the next folks who want to talk come up . Build on those concepts, its better for voters, is better for the economy, it makes our our democracy better, but its also how we win. Its not just ideologically great. Its also how we will rebuild power in all 50 states. Know i listed some grim statistics before. We are also winning all over the place. November,t democracy for america endorsed candidates. We won 64 races on election night. In some of these leaders were transformative leaders running on bold, powerful cap lungs. Got to work with folks in so they can Fund Public Schools and invest in affordable housing. They are fighting to flip state legislatures all over the country. Washingtons state senate is one to watch. Weve got to go in for our candidate. And earlier this year aboutsforming campaign blacks selfdetermination and andal and Economic Justice he did so with clarity and courage. Candidates are running and winning all over the country. And we talk a lot about what it would mean to have a truly reflective democracy and to hold onto that. , this is what government could do if it reflected experiences and hopes and dreams, the great writ in world itthe represents. To do that, it will take some reckoning. Howill take looking at Structural Racism shows up in our own institutions. It will mean investing in new and bold leadership. But that is what we are going to have to do if we are going to rebuild power from where we are right now. Rep. Ellison great. Thank you, ann. From you. Ove to here i am the director of policy and agassi for the florida immigrant commission, but also the treasurer of the florida Democratic Party. So, last year, i was the youngest black woman running in the state of florida at the age of 30. My question basically is geared toward access. I was probably that traditional girl who got on all of the county boards, commission for women, and kind of built my platform and built my face and my basics of built my face in my base of support. I kind of want to bring my question around the tactics of recruitment. You have progressive organizations im not going to name them, but you have young aggressive organizations building a candidate pipeline, but the pipelines are set up with people who have access, but we are talking about a question of the people from those communities representing those communities. And just trying to understand how are we shifting or getting our people into those different and i can say one of them is in lc, for example. In lc is made up of Young Professionals who are midmanagement. This is the pipeline we are creating. These are the people we think so calling a you question around recruitment, what is the real pipeline we are creating for everyone to have access to run for office . Rep. Ellison thank you. We will take about 4. You spoke about the preference of Party Committees for candidates to have deep pockets. Im wondering what your feeling is about the dccc strategy toward email fundraising and whether that is productive as a Progressive Movement, and what youre doing to change their email strategy, which i find to be selfdefeating and desperate. Thank you. [laughter] rep. Ellison thank you. I am ned, and i work out of argentina, a company that does digital for folks in progressive politics all over the world. I recently had the leisure of working for a male macrons already in france. He did not have a party until eight weeks before the election. They put it out on the internet for people to apply, 15,000 people applied. They selected some 500 candidates and required that half of them be women, that half of them had never held an office, and in a matter of eight weeks, we put up a website and they took 60 of the French National legislature going from no party, no infrastructure to basically having the entire French National assembly. Im wondering, to will, hearing all of this, just seeing the barriers and gateways that people have to getting involved one,litics, im wondering, maybe its a cyclical thing. We see policies that speak to those people to feel inspired to go and run for office, and two, are the structural things that can happen within the party or the local levels actually encouraged to create things where people who are not actually thinking of entering into politics being able to go in stand . We dont just see these same faces time after time but new people who can represent their community . Thanks. Ison sir . I am the head of a tech activist team. My name is gary crane. We are developing an app that solves the biggest problem, we think, in organizing, which is how can we get enough numbers of people willing to do the hard work, whether it is canvassers, actionankers, or direct , or largeaction numbers of people willing to get arrested to get medicare for all. Basically the oneliner is this if you see in interesting candidate youre really excited about, would you be willing to if wend be a canvasser could tell you this, if we could get 10,000 investors and 20,000 filmmakers, we can win . They will put skin in the game and you will put skin in the game. Am demonstrating this throughout the weekend if anyone was to see how it works. Are beta testers this is a nonprofit. We are not joined to make money. We are trying to save the planet. It is a game changer at. Im willing to show anyone here who is trying to figure out how to get more people involved quickly. Thank you. N any thoughts on the questions . I would like to see the one on recruitment. I appreciate the question. And thats one of the pieces, when we think about progressive infrastructure in states, right, thats one of the missing pieces. A part thatr had has been about spending day in and day out thinking how are we identifying the right candidates, what communities are we going to do that in and how does it work . Are trying to work with our partners, go through the leadership on the ground, think about how we actually build something, an entity, a structure, a coalition where people are coming together and of it in a find a broad base of candidates of color, lgbt folks, no americans, all of the camera right question at the challenge right now, like youre saying, the structures that exist today are folks coming into the room, and we do this work around the country. Best equipped to run . Finance. Ho can sell had more women lawyers, right . That is the work of our organizations. This isnt just we are going to get to 2018 and were going to fight hard and 2020. But the work we have to do is this work of transformation. Who have we allowed to lead and who have we kept out of leadership, right . What are the ways in which we continue to create structures that keep people out . We will recruit the same candidate who is centrist, who sells out instantly . Rep. Ellison other points . s chest but sure. I can add to that. Dream job. Had the for two years, it was my dream job to find the best candidate possible. I started two years before the election and that was not early enough. They arec is focusing on new and different folks. This is the long game and we have to get out of the cycle to cycle hysteria and make longterm plans for Leadership Development that allows to get past the place we are. When i started that job, i set down with someone from the Democratic Party and i said, how do we recruit candidates . And they said, we sit down with people and ask how can they raised 250,000 question mark i said, im not going to do that because they will laugh at me unless they are a white lawyer from long island. I had to make up my own methodology, just deep, intense, oneonone work with people over two years. And again, we needed more than two years. These investments tend to be transformational. They basically broke the system for choosing the city council speaker. They elected the cochair of the progressive caucus, a latina progressive, to be the leader of council, and have had tremendous policy victories. But even then we started too late. I think we all need long time longer time to have longterm development. I agree with what everyone has said. Lets talk about money for little bit. You can out fundraiser all of your opponents and still super lose. [laughter] my own fire. You can totally do that. A great progressive he got outspent by both of his opponents. Absolutely. To have to figure out how repair the aggressive the progressive relationship to money. You need to have the money that runs the campaign you want to run. You have to do that. Thats not an easy thing. Its not the same commitment we are asking of everybody when we ask you to run for office. That means there is more positional power. Thats keeping resources away from some of the most transformative pieces. Wayearly money makes a bigger difference down the road and it takes more time to build up the campaigns if youre constantly facing west is about viability or credibility. You need to start earlier and campaign longer and harder. I think some of the advice for whichgn best practices, involve locking the candidate in or she cance so he fund raise and then canvas at the end if i thought that would work for some transformational leaders i know i would encourage them to do it, but it literally will not work. You cannot build and win campaigns like that to elect some of the most amazing leaders. You need to get in early and invest early. That you are removing the barriers to access that are keeping people from being able to lead. Rep. Ellison i just want to point out i like everything you said. I think it is innovative. I appreciate your us. T i will say though is it we get out there to push progressive policies and its not like anyone is pushing against us. Theres a pretty formidable system designed to block access. Just take for example the fact that election day is on a tuesday. [applause] take for example its not a holiday. Take for example there is no problem with if you dont want to vote. If you dont want to vote thats perfectly fine. In australia, they will find you if you dont want to vote. Out, felont shouted disenfranchisement. In vermont, you can do triple ificide and still vote, but you still something of florida you may never get to vote again. Jim crow, segregation. The fact that we dont have 50 different voting systems we have 50 times however many county and parishes you have in your state different voting systems. Russians, they had tempered with at least 21 states. You all saw that story . Saying,y friends are why are we talking about russia . Well, they are hacking your election. So, these barriers are significant. Id like the idea. I want to take it up with you. We have barriers so we will overcome them. There are great things people are doing out there. Give us the ballot. This is a good book. I recommend you get a hold of that book. We will figure out how to make barriers disappear. We authored a constitutional amendment that would guarantee a right to vote. Theres not explicitly laid out right to vote in the constitution. Did you know that . You have a right not to be youriminated based on race. The 19th amendment says you have a right to not be discriminated against on the basis of your sex. You wont be discriminated against the 24th is about the poll tax. It is up to you. Its important to think about these things. We need to fight for the constitutional right to vote. I just wanted to throw that back. In the area of recruitment, talking about the Democratic National committee i am not in that capacity. Indo not give favor primaries. I will not say we never have. Before i got there, there was substantial evidence that there were some favors. We have committed ourselves that neutral. Mpletely that is good. All wewe dont do more, are doing is freezing the status quo. Recruitment and training efforts. People imagining, i cani can run hey, run. I read somewhere they can show statistically women who are very wellqualified are less likely to run than women who are not very wellqualified. [laughter] somebody said you dont need stats to know that, but there are stats to prove that. You can rely on your experience and the statistics. Why not both, right . You have to ask people to vote. You have to literally tell people you have to run because you would be great. Recruiting is key. Its great for working class people also. One last thing before we go back to the panel. All of the country, the publicly campaign the publicly funded Campaign Programs are being undermined. Our programnnesota is inoperable at the moment, and i write about that . Publicly funded campaign mechanism for a while. So, this is another thing we have got to do. How much wartime have we got . 10 minutes . Lets hear from you. By the way, we are gathering all of your great ideas appear here. Please keep them coming. Hello, i am running for the United States house of representatives in the 24th district of new jersey. Right. Lison all i appreciate you saying that need to stand up. I was the guy who refused to sit down and shut up when governor when ie shouted at me was advocating for Hurricane Sandy families. I look at what is going on at the Grassroots Level now, as an organizer and educator, taking my candidate hat off, im sure everyone sees we have a energy at amount of the Grassroots Level. In my two decades of work, i have never seen anything like this in monmouth county, new jersey whether used to be six of us standing with a sign, and now there are 400. One of the challenges, with a lot of new energy, excitement, and we knowideas as seasoned organizers there is a way to do this. So, im wondering if in the work the panel has been doing any best practices within the last two months in taking this new energy and getting people the takeing and skills so we them into great organizers so we have the shortterm wins and 2017 in jersey and virginia and elections around the country, but then building that next wave , having wins 10, 30, 40 years out. Years out . Thank you. Hello. My name is randy. I am with the national union. How do you deal with it seems there seems to be a lot of money in politics. For example, this house election. I heard 25 million is coming in. . O how do you deal with this you have the money for the candidate, and yet there are getgs embedded that they money out of mail. How do we shift out of that and start having conversations, right . Have conversations and engagement at the door. We got tens of thousands of latinos to vote. We had to go and listen to them. No one talked to them. Its pretty symbol. That takes money. Canvassers are going out and having hundreds of conversations. They started passing legislation to ban that in arizona because it was effective. We started having conversation. We need your vote, mr. Gonzalez. Lets get your ballot, help you fill it out. That was observed to be contrary to the system because it is all republican controlled. But that was new for them. Was it going to take nationally to get these millions of dollars not a couple hundred thousand towhat would be a better use get people engaged, get back to them, get their vote, have a conversation . We explain it to them. They are willing. Rep. Ellison thank you. So, i think you might be the last one up, my friend, and then the panel will close it out. Good evening. I want to bring up technology in terms of how that is changing the landscape rum labor to media labor to mediaom messaging. I think weve had huge demonstrations with new technologies that allow us to reach huge audiences. There was one person who got frustrated after election i made a Facebook Page and that was huge. But just a Progressive Movement. Just to see any comments you have out there. Ok, we will have the panel close it out. Ive a question about technology as well and the question of how we are harvesting these folks and putting them on a path of skill building, organizing, and setting up for success. One of the partnerships i want to highlight is moveon. Org. Those folks it is the summer of resistance, not resistant summer. Resistance summer. There are 750 organizers around the country who are mobilizes in their community. And it is a program like june through september. It is three hours of biweekly webinars where we have a team of 40 coaches and folks were fresh off campaigns, people were in as a support mechanism to literally help in organizing in their communities. It is new for us because wellstone has been in the room in front of people, right, and that is where the magic happened. That is critical. If we are going to get at the scale we need to meet the level of interest and involvement and the passion folks are displaying, weve got to figure out new ways. Some of you may be part of that. Some of you may be coaches in this room. Thank you for that. Incredible opportunity. Its just not a webinar where you are checked out and doing 16 other things, right . There is discussion, breakout groups, conversation, engagement. Rep. Ellison great. To build on that, at democracy for america we have a program called night school. We rebooted the latest version where we have these Virtual Training webinars in fundraising, media, and all work how we are going to on these. Announcing these very soon. We also have campaign academies andhe ground with campaigns often movement partners, so working closely both with and for campaigns and local leaders who want to run a training on the ground. And just last week, our amazing ,orthside Chicago Group training sort of the next generation and working on those very exciting stuff. I think more broadly to the showman in the middle asked about, investing in organizing, i cannot not agree more. One of the reasons we need to one of the things we need to do is keep telling that story because it works. We will be sharing the stage with those who have the lowest district in minnesota and turned it into one of the highest. Without investing in organizing congressman ellison fell campaigns were is to mental in , and itg a voter id law was because investing in organizing had farreaching impacts in those races beyond doubledigit margins. Telling that story and showing it can work in those communities is part of what we have to do. Rep. Ellison thank you, annie. Annie took the words out of my mouth on the organizing thing. We need more elected leaders to know from experience that is how stuff works, right . That is the changing culture. I think i will just say really quickly around the new organizing energy, we have been doing a lot of work with our members. Officials do not normally have convening in those communities. You look around and you see everyone on the city council is a democrat, why is nothing good my feeling also after november is we are entering a new world where there is a diversity of tactics and energy, fit intohich will traditional organizing stories and molds i understand. Some of it wont. We will have to be open to new. Nergy and leadership in 2008, we so have the presidency, both houses in congress, a majority in state legislatures, the majority of governors. Today, all of that has changed. We can go from those majorities losses we have suffered over the last several years, we can turn all around. I have no doubt about that. But it is going to take everybody in this room and everybody outside this room to commit themselves to it. I think it starts with focusing on turnout. Focusing on community. At i can tell you, focusing only on the thinkot race i dont is that hot of an idea. Because people know all we want from them is a vote and after they get it, they will walk away. What they need is relationship, community, to be sustainable, enduring. The way to do that is to be at the door and building facetoface connectivity. Somebody asked, why do we put so into the tv and the not the bills your round . It does not pay the consultant ocracy. Far better to put money into Data Analytics modeling and television ads. This is killing us. Its making them rich, but is killing us. That money to demand gets put into the field programs yearround. Until you right now. Im not on the ballot in 2018. As if wecampaigning are. I have young fellow 22 years old who gives me a daily report, and we literally talked to hundreds every day. Every day. What are we doing . We are staying in touch. We want to build a country beyond trump. Skip him. Beyond trump. Build past these elections. Lets use our asset, which is the people. Lets about the idea there is some red district we cannot win in. The shape of this economy and how hard working people have. We can run the risk of getting yelled at or told off. If we persist and dont quit, we are going to win the day, yall. Thank you for being here and part of this important panel. By all means, carry on. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] cspan has been covering the net roots nation event this week. If you missed any of it, its online our video library, cspan. Org, and we will have or live coverage when they return. Coming up, a look is social media and how it affects democratic principles. Willn saturday, netroots hear from massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the speakers participating in this annual hoppers. We will hear from senator warren at 10 30 a. M. Eastern. And former Vice President al gore will wrap up the conference. He will be talking about his new documentary on Climate Change, live at 4 30 p. M. Eastern here on cspan. Coming up next on the ne theys nation conference, will look at social media. They are taking a break. And while they are in the break we will look at one of the sessions from yesterday on elections this year and in 2018. Our first time doing this panel since 2014. We are incredibly thrilled to be back and very grateful to our roots nation, and thank you for Live Streaming this session. We will be taking questions from folks in the room and hopefully online. You can tweet us to our twitter account, and we will try to get your questions as well. A the spirit of the blog spear, this panel has always been about interactivity. Ordont do speeches presentations. We will just give extremely quick introductions of who we are and get right to your questions because we think arming progressives with information about the elections they need to be fighting in is what is going to make us most most effective heading into the 2018 midterm symbiont. My name is david from daily kos. We are responsible to our candidate Endorsement Program which im sure will come upon this panel. Its involved in helping us choose who we will support and who we should ask our community to support. On my panel starting from the left, we have david beard. Since 2016 riding and his specialty is International Elections any as one of the main writers on our Monthly International digest. Left, jeff singer. He is our senior elections rider. Since 2013. With us he is responsible for Election Results for every Congressional District and now we are looking at every legislative district. Anyplace you see somewhere where her clinton one 50 something percent, the reason you know that and we know that is jeff l efforts. Our newest member of the team yes, i think that deserves a round of applause. The dlcc. Once described it as the indie rock band of parties. There is so many thousand legislative races that knowing about them and knowing who to support and which seems to target in chambers to target, thats all difficult information for normal civilians to come by and that is what they are focused on. These legislative races are so important. Gerrymandershose are a big part of the reason why republicans are in power today. And we have a state legislative expert and she writes her own newsletter that covers goingson in the legislature and government throughout the country. Donnerright to my daniel from Portland Oregon portland, oregon and daniel is cancel focus is maps and charts and graphs of all kind and loves to visualize the data we pull together and in particular, dan has been working on a lot of data visualizations about the special elections we have seen since trump was election. That and is going to want to talk about that later today. And finally, david, these structural designer from seattle, was in an and he has been working with the daily postelection team since 2008. Among his many specialties, he loves to take deep guys into the pictures. C big he has been looking at the role the education played in defining the electorate. That is enough from us. We will turn it over to you. It looks like we have a microphone. Theou can get to microphone, that is fine. Speak loudly. Go ahead. I wanted to ask a question about a topic am ashamed to say i do not know a lot about. Omaha. What happened in omaha . Thehe question is about election in omaha. I present youre talking about the omaha mayoral race that happened earlier this year. Situation difficult but we endorsed a candidate, keith mello, a former state legislator, who was running for a race in omaha. Didll be fourth rate, we not do the Due Diligence on heath mello we should have. Out that it turned he at a record on abortion rights we felt was not acceptable for the Progressive Community to ask a Progressive Community like daily kos to support him. I want to be clear. We did not say we thought democrats should not support heath mello, that we should kick him out of the party. For daily kos, we have to pick and choose and be selective. We were not a selective us we should have been. When we learned about his record , we chose to withdraw the endorsement. You know, we did not attack him publicly. We stated are reasons or the withdrawal, and we moved on. Hes mello went up losing to the republican incumbent. Now, there are folks who said lost because of what happened with the endorsement. Some folks were unhappy with his abortion stance. Seemed to be fairly simple. The incumbent mayor some of the republican, and mello were 3 points. By 2 or it looked like a close race. Theres a third candidate running who was also a republican. In the runoff, the third candidate, the other republican endorsed the incumbent, and ultimately, that was the margin that she prevailed by. Im sure it did not help mellos campaign, the controversy, but in the end, it turned out the electorate in omaha in 2017 was to republican to overcome the incumbent mayor. Next question . Have two, so feel free to just answer the first if thats not permissible. Keeping theon primary on the democratic side to stop being the mysterious Robert Kennedy and the second question, the Staten Island district, i thought it was on target list. Are there any more refutable people . Again that is fine, well get to both. We appreciate them to be short and to the point. The question about what is going on in the Alabama Senate special olympic and what is going on with the candidate from the 11th district based on Staten Island. So, any takers . Its alabama, it is a tough race come we dont deny that. We do have a candidate. If lightning strikes and then some, maybe hes in the right place and the right time. Running few people against him, including a guy name to robert f kennedy, jr. He is not related to the kennedy family, his name is just robert f kennedy, jr. There is no loss and you cannot run for office if you are not related to kennedy. [laughter] notif people realize he is jr. , but innnedy, the last few days have seen them or credit luminaries endorse democratic luminaries endorsed doug jones. John lewis. As far as i know, jones isnt airing any tv ads. We will just have to see tuesday how things look. We will have to see how that goes. Democrats are aware this is a problem and we are putting effort into it. New york 11 . Oh, can we also turn off all cell phones . 11th district, part of Staten Island, the only part of new york city that trump won. Obama didom one that pretty well there to one that went back to trump by double digits. Former Staten Island district attorney, he did not indict the Police Officer who killed eric garner, and that was a big controversy, but he won easily. It is a tough district. Staten island for several reasons is prototypical trump territory. We do have a candidate who recently stepped up. He is an army veteran. His name escapes me at the moment, but he is a purple heart veteran. He could have a good profile, but it is a really, really tough district. New york city is the most expensive place to air tv ads in, except for parts of new ads in newh also air york. It is one of those districts where we should compete there, and it is a good time for democratic hopes. Thank you. My name is kathleen allen, and im running for the u. S. House of representatives in georgias seventh district. [applause] im a progressive, and my platform is 4 parts. Prohealth we need to move to singlepayer. I would lose my job and i would be ok with that. And by that i mean respecting the life of the mother as well as the baby in her room. And women and children come from before birth to old age. An career, which is important issue in my district, majority minority. Ress. Inally, proprog we need congress to be braver may toring what moderating what may be the largest panel in netroots history. [laughter] everybody for being here, especially congressman allison for holding down this amazing panel. Lots of folks running for lots of offices. We are a big group, and we are here to talk about running from donald trump and running for our people. We will bring up a couple of different issues because we are a big group on the panel. I will keep the questions short and mostly serve as a timekeeper. If you see me waving, we would like you to stop talking, and in 90 seconds i will run you over to stop talking. We will look at the question of outside of the Democratic Party platforms, policy platforms on Climate Change, andres, on lots of different on race, on lots of different dishes, how those impact the candidates, and voters and citizens working on their campaigns. We hope to get a lot of different perspectives and everyone will get a chance to comment on three particular questions on the role of these platforms, and andres and climate and on race and Climate Change, pulling us together on this panel, he is based out of canada but moving south to the u. S. , many states at a time, use the intersection of race and Climate Change to redefine american politics. We are excited about it. Without further do, i will read an intro i will not read everyones bio word for word because you are a fascinating spend timee would talking about how cool you are. 20 minutes for q a at the end as well. Are thinking something, hang on to those notes and we will have the space for you to ask them. Starting not quite all the way to my right, but anthony rogers, one of the 50 people you will be talking about in 2016. Over the last 10 years and he has worked on policy analysis, Community Organizing, outreach and advocacy, while serving as a policy analyst for various Environmental Consulting firms in california and colorado. He is currently the coordinator leap, cofounded by naomi klein. He earned bachelors degrees from many impressive places, and that is all we are going to say. [laughter] to his right is representative keith ellison, who does not need much interaction. Introduction [applause]. Ellison represents the Fifth District of minnesota. , not just since his election, but partly as a result, the district has become a vibrant and ethnically diverse district in minnesota, with a rich history and traditions. It constitutes the city of minneapolis and surrounding suburbs. Danielle is left, known as the free range mom, because she fought back when Police Detain her children from walking home from a park without accompaniment from an adult. [applause] she is currently running for the democratic primary for county council atlarge seat in my, county, maryland. Montgomery county, maryland. She is a climate scientist [applause] she is the mother of 2 schoolchildren. Moving to my left, currently a candidate for the u. S. Congress in the 2018 midterm elections from new yorks 14th Congressional District. Prior to her candidacy, she worked in Foreign Affairs and immigration in the office of the late u. S. Senator ted kennedy and served as the National Hispanic Institute Social entrepreneur in residence. She has also founded the brook avenue press, a project to develop methods on parentchild literacy and education. [applause] a native of West Virginia with deep roots in the mining community. [applause] today a whole generation of folks is struggling to find reliable, safe jobs to put food on the table. Poweredginias coal has our nation, and how it is time for West Virginia to invest in itself. All, for medicare for sustainable industries, tuition free Public Schools she is challenging blue dog democrat joe manchin for his longheld seat. [applause] and my 2 late arriving friends who had to scribble down the tle bios in handwriting back to my right for a minute. Dante what is your last name . Excuse me. Didnt write it down. 12 years of experience in Community Organizing and leadership of element. He is executive director and cofounder of the Million Hoodies Movement for justice. [applause] tois a frequent contributor msnbc, democracy now, the nation magazine, and the guardian. [applause] end,t all the way at the marcus has 10 years of Community Organizing experience and is the former black outreach director for Bernie Sanders. He is the Deputy Campaign manager and organizer for Melissa Alexander and trayvon martin, a lifetime member of the naacp, a National Political consultant and organizer for political justice. [applause] what is your last name . Lauren wiggins is a recent graduate of Tennessee State university, a delegate with the Climate Change initiative more she spoke about workers rights [applause] she is a current digital organizer for the aclu and former Campaign Director for the get out the vote Hillary Clinton campaign. Impressive folks one and all. Thank you for being here. Briefly to set up our first question, we see that as you may have read in the description of this panel, last years Democratic Party platform was sometimes described as a progressive most progressive Party Platform in history. Despite a lot of energy and heat that went into creating the platform, there has been an explosion of outside organizing platforms. Instead of consolidating inside the party to create a single narrative, there are a number of different outside movements, including the peoples platform that by our revolution and the movement for black life platform , and lots of others as well. So we are here to discuss the intersections of the outside platforms in the Democratic Party, why the Party Platform isnt enough in and of itself, and most fundamentally, what it means to be a democrat and progressive running for office and supported by democratic voters in america. My first question. With representative we will start with representative ellis on and worked on the line. Describe the things that you think are most important and how they are informing you run for office and other candidates. Rep. Ellison first of all come i think that all of these type forms are very good and healthy. We should encourage people to coalesce around common shared values, progressive values. It is key that we do that. When i was a Bernie Sanders supporter and he asked me to serve on the platform drafting committee, i was proud to do so. We got a lot of good things done, but we didnt get everything done. I continued this, that Bill Mckibben i can tell you this, that Bill Mckibben, an excellent leader on climate issues and he walked away thinking there was a lot more we could have done and should have been. If we dont have other groups doing platforms besides just the Democratic National committee, then how is the Democratic National Committee Going to look at how this policy might play out, right . It might inspire and inform us for when we get together and write another platform and say, hey, that was a great idea, lets look at it. Just having a bunch of them out there is a good thing and it is a healthy thing. But theres a lot of things i feel really good about. Let me tell you, nowadays, as we take it as given that most of us are for the 50 federal minimum wage, 15 federal minimum wage, but then it wasnt. Then it was people in the streets demanding it. We got it on the platform. Ending the death penalty. The Democratic Party is on the record for ending the death penalty. [applause] rep. Ellison that is a good thing. The militarizing the police and requiring body cameras. Profiling,g racial extending social security, and enacting the Financial Transactions tax to curb excessive speculative, modernizing glasssteagall and moving our country to 100 clean energy by 2050, and universal health care, which we believe is singlepayer. And also and we have a very and so we had a big fight over the transpacific ownership. Transpacific partnership. Many of you remember the debate. The president was for it, many of us were not. Positionnted to take a 180 degrees against the so weents position, basically put together a number of things that we demanded in a new trade platform and it say theexcept for against tpb. We did everything else, including the stuff about the state resolution process, some of the stuff on the patents, a lot of things we said we were against him there. It is in the platform now. I think it is a good idea for us to keep on doing platforms. I am a part of something called the progressive caucus in congress. We put together the progressive caucus. That is kind of a platform. ,e have gotten out there strong and then the Democratic Party budget, proposed budget, has adopted things that we had in our budget as time went on, like the transactions tax, for example, carbon tax, stuff like that. We have helped move them in a forward direction, and we are proud that we did, and we are proud that they agreed to adopt our ideas. So we think that this is teamwork makes dreamwork, right . So let me just say that we are in a unique moment in history, 2008, wesee that since have seen over 1000 seats get lost to democrats. 950some state legislative seats, a lot of governorships come we have lost all of these seats. And yet simultaneously, america is provably moving to the left. Look at all the minimum wage increases that have been passed, marijuana legalization. You keep going. Marriage equality legalization. We have done all of these things where we are moving to the left, whereas politicians are moving in the other direction. Our politicso get lined up with our value system in this country. And that means that all of us have a lot of work to do in getting strong platforms that buyin is part of it. Thank you. Thank you, representative. I was in orlando for the final vote. You can probably see me on cnn if you go back for a few things that did not make it into the democratic platform. It is especially important that as were focusing on Climate Change, because this nation and some states in particular, black communities very much into to go have a gun to their heads right now, and we are not taking it. Eriously enough, quite frankly we have to be clear, first of all, when you say 100 clean energy, that does not the fracking, first and foremost. That has got to be clear. [applause] anthony i we fought hard to get a platform in orlando that had a national fracking ban, like bernie had in his environmental platform when he ran for president and that didnt work out. U. S. And he annexed signal to the people we have to act you send a mixed signal to the people. We have to act on climate but fracking as a bridge it doesnt work out. Another thing we missed out on if you see me on cnn. After there was a black lives matter unity broken right after that vote and we couldnt even get something passed to say that you have got to chill out with the illegal settlements. Just chill out. Not even stop, just chill out. We couldnt get past. You cannot claim dignity for black lives and not for palestinian lives. Just doesnt add up. That is for the people platforms are doing, and in general, platforms where the people have to be for the people. The words are important, but the process of how we get to the words might even be more important. [applause] danielle thanks for that, anthony. I think we need to step back and talk about what the platforms are for. If it is just literally people in a room arguing, it is just a waste of time. But the platforms really are in my mind it not for candidates to go sign this piece of paper, but for citizens to hold candidates and politicians accountable. [applause] danielle exactly say this is what you said you are going to do, or what we are telling you you need to do, and we will hold your feet to the fire until you do it. For example, it is great that the 15 minimum wage got into the democratic platform. My cap the executive in Montgomery County became the first democrat in history to veto a minimum wage increase to 15. I mean, he is a democrat. If it is not if we dont say this is what it means to be a democrat, and there is a cost when you go against what democrats have agreed on, then those platforms are not going to be meaningful. And that is one of the reasons we need people platforms. Whether it is our revolutions platform, peoples action is a platform when it is a group of citizens of citizens saying this is what we expect from you, then politicians are candidates have to deliver or theres going to be a cost. [applause] dan peace, everyone. How is everyone doing . We cannot be remiss to say that when we talk about movements and we talk about platforms, that just a couple days ago we celebrated the thirdyear anniversary of the death of michael brown. This year we celebrated the not celebrated, but recognized the fifth anniversary of the death of trayvon martin, which was the reason why my organization exists. The reason why we are having a conversation about race and Climate Change and agendas is because black people have been industries nonstop since that day. Since trayvon, mike brown, and subsequently all the other deaths that continue to be impacted by police. I also think that when we talk about agendas, it is not in response to what every action of what is happening in the moment, but also it is about building a whole new world that doesnt exist yet. For black people, a world that we imagine actually has never existed. In order for us to be able to build a real vision that is about lack selfdetermination an independent political power, we need to think along some of those lines of what is not even possible. Whatis not in the realm of is pragmatic right now, but to get us to a place where it can be possible. I also like to do this exercise anthony knows about this exercise that when we talk about possibl what is possible,e to get grounded in what society has told us. If everyone close their eyes for a second and think about what makes them feel safe, where are you . Who are you with . What does it feel like . What does it taste like . What does it sound like . Now raise your hand if police come to your mind. Raise your hand if prisons come to your mind. Raise her hand if Detention Centers come into your mind. Raise your hand if surveillance cameras come into your mind. Right,d this exercise the things that actually came into your mind were probably your family, having health care, having a job, having food. All of those things that actually make us feel safe. Point does the society tell us that all those things, please, prisons come at Detention Centers, or keeping us safe in the country . , a lot of ourle communities, it is about really imagining what is actually going to keep us not surviving, but to a place of thriving. Living in a place of abundance rather than poverty. The vision for black lives platform was produced in the wake of the death of michael mind. With this kind of in how do we build a world that doesnt even exist . How do we actually be able to build a base of people that can really organize towards this vision over the longterm . And so i think that this platform, the vision for black lives, which really sticks out around ending the war on black people, reparations, Economic Justice, community control, and political power, these are fundamental tenets that a lot of organizations across the country are pushing for and has influenced our compositions at the local, state, and the national level. And i think by us having this conversation now just proves that. [applause] i want to thank for the democratic life i think it is very, very important that we hold our democratic incumbents responsible to the platform, or thing will happen like what happened with Bernie Sanders and what happened recently in West Virginia, jim justice, one of the biggest looting coal barons in West Virginia. Our democratic governor was a republican two months prior to him running for office, and then he runs for office as a democrat and he just came out of the trump rally as a republican. And then we have incumbents like joe manchin, who is not a democrat. The West Virginia Democratic Party adopted a platform in june 2016 teslas one of the most Progressive Democratic platforms in an that was one of the most Progressive Democratic conference in the nation, and the incumbents are not standing behind that. That tells me that we need to hold the dnc responsible and the state democratic parties responsible and we needed to make sure that we have officials in those parties that are standing behind of platforms that we were promised. [applause] alexandria i think there are a lot of people the heart of the question on what the Party Platform is is literally the definition of what it means to be a democrat, and i think a lot of us learned last year that not a lot of people know what that is. And what im very proud about when it comes to things like the peoples platform and summer for progress is that it allows me as a progressive to rise above and beyond the standards to a gold standard, which includes a fight for 15, stand up for black lights, medicare for all, Renewable Energy economy, in not , 10 years. There may be a lot of people in the country who are afraid to say those things and draw a line in the sand, but the only reason the countries becoming more progressive is because of the activists and advocates in this room pushing and allowing people and getting people enlightened on these issues. While i applaud the Democratic Party for seeing the light a little bit on some of these issues, i think it is up to our leadership. It is because of our leadership. And these platforms allow us to rise above and beyond and continue to lead, instead of just trying to find what is polling well. It is a really important distinction, and it also allows people like paula jean and myself to also add a second standard, which is that we dont take corporate funds, we dont take dark money, and we dont take pac money. [applause] theve three things first thing is, if you have a platform that does not block lives matter in it, you dont black lives matter in it, you dont have a platform. [applause] brothers and sisters, latino immigrants, listen if you dont have the basics of what it is to be a democrat or a good person, a good human, that is not a platform. Platforms dont come from the top down with all due respect to my congressman over here. Platforms come from the bottom up, right . [applause] marcus so if you are a pc, and your pc committee does not have your own platform to tell the county that they need to adopt this platforms the county can tell your state to adopt the platform, so your state can tell and give back to congress meant lison and others fighting for us from the bottom up if you dont have that, you dont have a platform. [applause] marcus last thing is, what is the use of a platform if you dont tell nobody about it . [laughter] so heres the thing, you can have a beautiful platform, but not necessarily have the means or the wherewithal or the guts to tell everybody about your platform. [applause] marcus so we need our campaigns and we need our political figures, we need our folks who actually push out energy to get our platform to the people. If you live in mississippi, thomasville, georgia, knoxville, tennessee, places in the south, midwest, flyover country, and they dont know what you are talking about, and you dont have the means to do it, and you spent your money on tv instead of spending it on doors so you organizers can talk to folks about your platform, then you still dont have a platform. My question is, do we really have a platform or not . Platforms are an action. Platforms are not about words. [applause] talk more about platforms, i keep on thinking about the fact that im an cus. Ate for hb in my experience going to hbc us, a lot of my friends dont vote, and if we talk about platforms, why arent people reaching out for two minorityserving institutions . Why arent the organizations reaching out and empowering students . The next generation is going to continue to vote, right . Why arent we empowering them to vote for you yeah cap i get frustrated when i think about the fact that outside organizations generally try to stay in the 25 and up range, because they assume these other people who are going to vote. But if you want people to continue to vote and understand the importance of democracy, you have to come down to the schools and talk to the students, because honestly my generation, we are fed up, and right now, since we have this new man in office, we dont vote. With a lot of friends who are just like, i dont think it is i have been with a lot of friends for just like, i dont think it is real, he was going to win anyway. We need to talk to students who feel disempowered, disenfranchised by what is going on in office today. [applause] great, so we have started talking a little bit about race. We are sort of drifting into it, but i will ask a specific question next. We will start with lauren and go the other way. There is that a lot of analysis in the last weeks or months, and one of the consistent trends is where democrats lost in 2016, it was not actually because white workingclass voters defected from barack obama to donald trump. It is because overwhelmingly, communities of color, especially women of color, stay home and didnt vote. We have been talking about it if you, but dig in would, panelists, and think about what would it take for Democratic Candidates to be the party of people of color . Are we still worthy of that mental . Mantle . Are we doing enough . What needs to be changed in party leadership, one needs to change in the platform, and what do you need to see from candidates to be deserving of that . Lauren i will let my fellow panelists speak more on the democratic platform, but i know with my generation, we were just really upset. We felt cheated by what happened with the obama administration. We expected a lot of change, and he received a letter perfect. Everything that he wanted, it took years for it to happen. They aret assumed that not going to put another minority in office, because, one, they cant get anything done, because congress and the senate wont allow it to happen, and two, we felt that this is just a gimmick. Obama was a puppet. They elected him into office to ke us happy and be like, black people can do it and eight years, what do we get out of this, and now we have this man in office. So i think a lot of africanamericans, per se, at this point, because there has been such a lack of engagement, and so far come to democratic campaigns think that october is the time to reach out to black , and all of a sudden magically every single africanamerican is going to the up to the polls mcclay something, we cant even get consultants to do good polls in black areas. How are you going to know where we are, right . And that has been like that since probably clinton left office. If it is like that, and you have not engaged us in years, then black folks have started this thought process of this is just the argument of which white person is going to be in charge. Not like we are engaged, not like we are part of the process. Again, what is the point of a platform if nobody knows about it . You have got three or four different platforms in america. If you talk about the black platform, if there is a black platform, folks are talking about what is going to pay me, how do i get a job, how do i take your my kids, how do i work this one job and pay all of my i take this one piece of health care is health care argument, and how does it affect me . And general progressives have to decide if they have these platforms when they talk about the issues within their own bubbles but not how it relates to the black community. There is no resources going into taking that same 15andour message and putting it in the hood this is how it affects black neighborhoods, this is how universal health care will help your life. No one does that. It is a completely missing conversation. And when the conversation does happen, it is at such a high level where the expectation is, see, i set it to you one time, now time for you to vote. Instead of saying we are doing deep organizing to make sure that the organizer we pay is in the neighborhood so that they know what 15 an hour means, so that susan knows what universal health care means, so that when somebody says medicare for all, date have a good understanding of it. Right now they dont get engaged. And you wonder why you lose races. 15 of the total vote you cannot win the democratic primary without black votes. You cannot win the presidency without africanamericans and latinos. If you are not talking to them and delivering your platform to them, you are completely missing the boaboat. Thank you. [applause] i think that if the Democratic Party wishes to be inclusive, then they need to have the courage to stand up to the communities for the votes that they seek, period. And we know what is going on with the black lives matter movement. Rikers prison is in my district, and the silence is deafening on the fact that we have a living, breathing human rights violation in our land in america. And we are also being told to wait 10 years to close it. We know what is going to be happening in his next 10 years, and we have the capacity to those it earlier. Thinkso, as a latina, i that sometimes we need to have greater imagination on what there is to offer the Latino Community beyond just Immigration Reform. It is not [applause] latinos is not just Immigration Reform, and even then, there have been no Immigration Reform. So is it a surprise that we from see the animus democratic voters latino voters from the Democratic Party . And underto rican, the Democratic Administration come we saw the corporate takeover of 3 million citizens, and all the utilities offered up to the highest wall street bidder. Public utilities going to Capital Investment corporations. We are seeing things like tolls off toto rico sold corporations. If you think that is just isolated to the island, it is the practice run for the next recession and what they will do to detroit, birmingham, what they are going to do in the bronx. It is just batting practice. Toneed to have the courage stand out, not because we want the votes of communities of color, but because this is a country for everybody, and we fight for everybody, and we fight for a living wage we fight for a dignified life for every american. And it is American Values we are fighting for. [applause] paula jean i dont think people of color listed behind the Democratic Party, because democrats have not stood behind them. In this day and age, we have to have a movement called black lives matter, where people with children are getting shot down in the streets and we are not protecting them. How do we expect them to come out of their houses and vote . When flint, michigan, is denied water. When there are people whose children are getting taken because they cannot pay water bills. People in appalachian even i am not of color we have to beg for something so basic as a clean glass of water. Were talking about platforms, but were talking about human beings, human beings still dying in 2017, and people are not treated equally and fairly in this country. And there is a big problem if we are not doing something about it. I am a white woman in appalachia. 90 of appalachia is white. We are treated bad, we are still not treated bad as people of color. Together andnd treat people like human beings, because that is what we are. [applause] i love the agitation that is happening. [laughter] dante im an educator. Agitator. So, so, so if we look at mcdonald,own, laquan flint, michigan, they were all under a democratic and meditation. Black people in the street, st. Louis, the folks major decisions to send tanks, to teargas black folks in st. Louis, was democrats. Quote i think about that im forgetting the name now about what we know about liberalism, right . Really need to see bold action and see democrats have a background in order to fight for black people and other people of color, because we have seen through , like was said, democrats have not been on our side, but not even in the case of not being on our side, but also have impacted us through violent means. We need to be really real about how those impacts isolate a community from actually feeling like our needs are being met. It is actually requiring of us and outsider movements to be able to challenge democrats and the right, but especially democrats, to really hold them accountable to say whether or not you are on our side and are you on the freedom site or are you not. Think for a lot of us, this is a life or death issue, and political parties, politics is a life or death issue, and for us in the last few years, the crisis has gotten higher. In relationship to the movements of agendas and the reality democratic representation of black and brown people, i think folks need to have a backbone, and we need to be able to hold their feet to the fire. [applause] so i think, of course, as we all know, we seek this country and the success of this country still on the backs and the blood and the threat of people of color in this country and colonialism all over the world. I think for a white person to stand out and say they will support black and brown lives really gives us the enormous obligation to do something, not just to say that or have it on a piece of paper. We need to use that privilege to amplify the voices and struggles of other people. And then for me, that means not just saying it, and not just inviting people to the table, but actually showing up for somebody elses struggles. Whyou say, gee, organizations not diverse . Because the organizations started out on the wrong foot, period. We need to show up in amplify those voices and use whatever power we have to help those struggles going on. Also for our campaigns, progressive campaigns are not about electing individuals who are somehow magically going to make change. Our campaigns have to reflect the change we want to see, and that means both in the work we do, the people we hire, making sure we are hiring people of color, making sure we are not kids,ing rich White College kids, to be our interns, but actually paying a living wage to our campaign staff. [applause] danielle so we can start even if those of us up here were running, the day we decided to run come we need to start making that change and being that example. Whether we win or not. And when you hire them, you have to listen to them. [laughter] anthony im going to keep on the context of education with because im pretty agitated with the Democratic Party, to be honest. Africanamericans in particular, africanamerican women in particular, have gotten worse return on investment from the Democratic Party than anyone screwed over by bernie madoff. Years of its steadfast loyalty, and the return on that has not been good. Beforellary lost, but hillary lost, brother bernie lost him at you for many of the same reasons. While there are cameras in his room, i need white progressives can spend of instead of spending so much time trying to convince people of color that bernies not racist, which is something you dont say, just say that he had a poc outreach problem when people of color are telling you something, you need to listen to them. Here are some statistics we need to talk about. This is 2016. 40 states in the Democratic Party in washington participated in a recent survey. Of the staffers from 60 were white. 14. 5 were African Americans from 8. 2 latin, 3. 7 asianamerican, 1 arabamerican, and native americans couldnt even get a full percent 0. 75, my goodness. 21 states reported having zero latin staffers and 20 had no asian staffers whatsoever. When environmental groups have whatever city than your state party, that is a big problem have more diversity than your state party, that is a big problem. [applause] anthony you have to work hard to do that, seriously. Lets be honest. When it comes back to him really reaching out to africanamericans and people of color is we have to break down these silos. That is where it starts. Silos ist into these what prevents outreach to the people you need to win, as brother marcus was just saying. What i would say to that is from moving forward, we have to see the nexus between reproductive justice and Economic Justice, we have to see the nexus between Climate Change and Racial Justice, we have to see the nexus between Racial Justice and everything. And estimate Democratic Party this is an amazing book that everybody should read, brown is the new white, and literally has a chapter with white boys and consultancy. I will buy this book for every single democrat running for office in every party leader. No, sir see, i will no, seriously, i will. This and the people of color when they are talking. They are pretty smart. Listen to people of color when they are talking. They are pretty smart. [applause] rep. Ellison well [laughter] no, it is easy to talk about when you only have one person you have got to deal with. [laughter] well, you know, the Democratic Party did pass the civil rights act, the Voting Rights act, head start. Older americans have medicare, act,aid, informal Care Consumer financial protection bureau, lilly ledbetter, equal pay act. I mean, look, having said all that, having said all human rights. And then they start walking out of the door, and they didnt get all the way out the door until the mid 1970s. And so now, the republicans, by the way, you hear republicans and they say party of lincoln. He wouldnt recognize these guys. The Republican Party today is the party of racism im not saying every republican is a racist, but im saying their d that up. Hol that is sort of the deal. Were not talking about democrat or republican. Were talking about minute. Were talking about two minutes. Vs. Socialrians darwinists. [applause] rep. Ellison and you find different people playing different roles inside of that. If you open up a ballot, you will find independents on them and Green Party Members on them. God bless them. I believe in choices. But 95 of the race is going to be between republican or democrat, and it is the Republican Party in 2017 that ban them them off, out, no transgender in the military. If it is racist, if it is greedy, it is coming from them. And so im going to be with the people who are most likely to win and make policies that are saying, no, we do believe that america is a nation of immigrants, we are against racism and we do believe in civil rights, and we do believe there ought to be a right to organize in a union and address climate. Now, there will be messiness. [applause] there will be messiness. You are not going to have perfection. I can tell you, from the Democratic National committee standpoint, i can say this definitively without any fear of contradiction we have gone period where people could legitimately argue that some people had their favorites in the primary. [laughter] this ison i will say and the dnc chair. Rep. Ellison i will say this every dnc member pledge to themselves and each other that we will be scrupulously neutral. So if you hear that some Democratic Party is helping out some incumbent or not playing it straight and fair with you, i would like to know about it. You know what, but people still what, there isow laws against murder, but people still do it. To enforce it, we need to find out about it. I want to know. We are in adpoint, unique moment in American History, because i am not aware of any moment in American History where you had the chief executive say nobody can investigate me, and if they do, im going to fire them, try to. Ndermine the Supreme Court neil gorsuch is not a legitimate Supreme Court justice. [applause] rep. Ellison and try to intimidate the legislative branch. He is literally threatening Lisa Murkowski with taking away services for alaskans because she did not do what he said. Look, every single check and balance in the u. S. Government he is attacking, including the press, and most of us are sick of them have the time, but they are still were not supposed to intimidate a free press. Aspiring authoritarian dictator, we have got to figure out what we can agree on and then move out on it. Ilet me just say this learned nobody is going to organize you. Ive learned that. Of timehrough a period where i thought, man, how come the Democratic Party doesnt do more for the black community, come, and then i thought, maybe i better organize them myself. This book you were just waiting around, actually, Steve Phillips talked about me in that book. [laughter] rep. Ellison im not making this up anthony backstage, i promise. Rep. Ellison im going to my online copy of the book. Im going to my copy of the book, and finding the page i think it is 130something [laughter] let me see, yeah, i will just put my name in there, maybe i will find it. Ellison. Anyway, he says im doing a good job turning out the vote. I just cant find it fast enough. Congressman keith alison has proved that movement tied to majority demographics cannot only win an election but increase voter turnout even when the internal stat is down across the state and country. In 2014, statewide voter turnout in minnesota was down 3 , but sons team increased turnout in his district by 5 , and they did it by having a plan. [applause] rep. Ellison you may think, son bragging. Im not bragging. I hate driving. And just telling you that the Democratic Party is not one big old think that there is 50 state parties. How many county parties are there . You can change this to get into it and get people that you believe in. [applause] it doesnt have to be how it is i know im going on too long. Im going to wrap it up. Can i say one quick thing . It does not have to be a party that gets busy every four years. It can get busy every day. It can get busy in every race. And i just want to tell you, this summer we embarked on a project known as resistance summer. Resistance summer said we are going to take money and give it to every state if they promise to use it for canvassing. Canvassing. Not tv ads. Canvassing. We did training where we had 140 people from 50 state st 51 of them were women. Said it was the most diverse training ive seen the Democratic Party do. And at this point we have increased direct voter conduct dramatically. This is not one and done. This is the first one. We are trying to convert the party into a grassroots, every race and every day party. It is not going to be easy. I will say this, and i will piss you off now it cannot be done with just cynicism. [applause] rep. Ellison talking about what is up wont change it. But taking things up, and many do, i agree [laughter] rep. Ellison and saying we are going to fix them things will bring a whole new reality. [applause] i have to say come he is right, the cofounder of my organization has a new book out. But i will probably get in a little trouble for this, but we should encourage people to be part of the process, and i think the democrats would do well to check out the thesis and analysis of the democratic socialists of america who are winning elections in this state, because they have got some good stuff going on, and my thing is to tell people to run as a democrat or republican or whatever, i just want to say that this is what happens when young people are in a situation young people are not afraid to use the term democratic socialism anymore, and it is growing. [applause] drew why would you have trouble saying socialist . [laughter] drew everybody be cool. We talked about race and talked about democratic socialism. We will take a breather and talk about something lighthearted, like the end of the world. This time try to keep your answers. You can be like me and be twice as fast more say have as much. Lets get to the next round of answers in 10 minutes. Talk to all these people who have been very nicely applauding you. No more reading from the books. [laughter] drew Climate Change the New York Times had a story recently, a pew survey that said that 62 of americans rank Climate Change as a threat, up with terrorism, and it goes to medically higher when he talked to get dramatically higher when you talk to democrats and communities of color. Climate change is one of the most important base issues to everybody in this room and everybody run for office as a democrat or progressive of any stripe. And yet the new Democratic Program that came out, better deal plan, has nothing about Climate Change in it. The peoples platform, supposedly the more progressive alternative to the Democratic Party platform, headache to be to bened had a determined line on Climate Change until a couple days ago. And i was arrested in front of Chuck Schumers office [applause] drew begging democrats to talk about Climate Change and natural gas issues, and six hours was barely out of jail, Lisa Murkowski approved a bunch of Donald Trumps nominees to the energy department, federal regulatory commission, and not one democrat got out of a chair to say no. This is it a question for my promise. Anthony andt with go to the congressman and work our way down that side what would it take t for democrats to unite people around the issue of Climate Change and the intersection of Racial Justice and Climate Change . It is there any movement for black life platform, a huge part of these communities, and it doesnt seem like our elected leaders are taking it on yet. I will try to be quick on this just before we can unify people, the democrats have to be unified as a party on Climate Change. Dirty energy bill about to be voted on, the energy and Natural Resources at come i think it is called, and there is 20 or 30 democrats that will vote yes on the bill. It is cointroduced by my senator maria cantwell. The democrats have to get unified on how they want to act on climate could we cannot have some people taking fossil fuel money and then calling themselves a climate champ. We cannot have senators from colorado voting for the keystone xl pipeline. We cannot have mailed candidates mayoral candidate in omaha, nebraska, being for the keystone xl pipeline and then say that we are for are the party of funny. Is is note denial just bogeymen like ted cruz and james in half. When democrats vote for fracking, they are climate and eyes as well climate deniers as well to [applause] anthony lets unify the party on Climate Change and then we i have topeople did blame the environmental movement, or lack thereof, for there any outreach to communities of color. Come just saying to lauren we dont see these big green groups going on to hbcu cap assisted i was joking that they were probably on their way to morehouse and spellman and got lost on the way to emory. Democrats as a party need to have not just always the same spokespeople brother bill bill did is my hom mckibben is my homie. But there others as well, these are experts on Climate Change, and they need to be spoken to assaulted and a hell of a lot more ive done a hell of a lot more about Climate Change from when the levees broke than from an inconvenient sequel or an inconvenient truth. Please stop using the pull of your as your logo. Polar bear as your logo. [applause] anthony polar bears may be white, but they dont vote. We have a democrat up here who is serious about addressing Climate Change, and what we really have to do to address Climate Change, which is to stop taking and i am really happy to give a shout out to my brother who does such amazing work. And councils me. And my good friend emilys others emily suthers as well. What does it say . It says i pledge not to take contributions from the coal industry. [applause] that is all i have got. And enthusiastic to sign that pledge. I think that it is part of the many steps to getting to where we need to be witches 100 renewables. Bernie sanders and i years ago introduced a bill called the end of the polluter act where we strip away all of the subsidies that exxon mobil and all of these guys [applause] rep. Ellison these are some of the most Profitable Companies in the world and yet they get money from the american taxpayer. It is shocking when you think about it. Toike the University Drive try to get colleges off of this. When i was in school, we were trying to get our college to come out from endorsing south africa. We should get off of these fossil fuels and try to get the universities to move on. And cities. Cities have a lot of influence here. Any of you guys thinking about running for city council or mayor is there anyone out there . At the county level, there is a lot you can do. Oftentimes, these things get sparked at the local level, the county level and the city level and they moved up to this date and on of the chain. I think we need to canvas on the issue of climate much more. We campus on wages some. We have got to canvas on climate. When we talk climate, we have to talk about health. In my own district, i started a group called the environmental advocate group of minnesota. This dirtying to get spewingnt from pollution in our neighborhood, and that is how it started. It was about respiratory illnesses and asthma. A canvasd to build around that. And i want to endorse the idea of calling on dr. Robert bullard and Beverly Wright and all of these other great champions in the Environmental Justice movement. [applause] when i was thinking about this question, what it takes to unite people around the climate issue i am coming from h pcu. When theking about Football Players in missouri refused to play. That was all over the news. In north carolina, they forged the first senate at a lunch counter. And that was all over the news. Students, historically, have led movements. Right now, what we are missing is the empowerment. We do not have the resources, or the knowledge of the issues. Saying, polaras bears and sumatra tigers are beautiful but they are not relevant to the economic and Environmental Issues of today. Our communities would care more about climate care issues if they were geared more towards the issues we are dealing with in our communities. Oftentimes, people come up to talk about the green movement. They asked me if the community recycles. Why we shouldtand recycle. Help us understand how in our black communities or has been a communities, there is a ton of litter. Why dont we talk about the issues affecting us. In order for the Climate Change issue to be relevant to us, Climate Change organizations need to hire more people of color, number one. But they also need to try to make their message relevant to the communities that they are trying to canvas in. I want to add another piece of that. I was in chicago. Byp100 was running around talking about police violence. One of the kids said to me i see you have a flint tshirt on. Do you know that chicago has some of the highest lead levels in the Elementary Schools . Here we have a natural organizer, already in the streets. Out there passing his message along. And one of his side items that he talked to me about was Environmental Justice. Until we get funded, until we get funded then guess what . It is a nonstarter. There has to be an entity what is it . What is the percentage of the black and latino vote . Somewhere around 45 . We are a part of this process . If you want us to vote on these issues and if you want to win on , a very easy way to do that is to organize in these communities. That is a simple point we are trying to make here. Affectsonmental justice everybody and Climate Change affects everybody. West virginians and people in the appalachians you have heard from several people that coal is over. But it is not over in West Virginia. And if it is over, the people in West Virginia are going to starve. We have dealt with some of the major pollution issues in this country. Rivers still run orange and black in West Virginia. That will be a reversible, a long time until that damage until Mother Nature can take care of that damage. Some of the oldest and most beautiful mountains in the well. I what you to think about this and let this resonate. If another country came in here and blew up our mountains and poisoned our water, we would go to work. West virginia has to deal with fracking. Flint has to deal with dirty water. People all over this issue have to deal with contaminated water. Do you want to know what unites us . Water. There are people that live in this country and conditions comparable to a third world country. Inre are sacrifice zones this country and that is unacceptable. We have to unite for water. That is the one thing that unites us all. We cannot live without clean water and air. We can talk about budgets all day long but we have to create a good economic infrastructure that does not kill everybody. If you want to know about Climate Crisis am a to West Virginia and i will give you a tour. [applause] as drew mentioned a moment ago, my training is as a climate scientist. Before i decided to get into politics. To me, the intersection between climate and Racial Injustice is so clear. Just in the work i have done, and i have worked on black in the arctic and in the andes. It is so clear that Climate Change to me is the infection coming to the surface. The disease is the exploitation of people of land, of resources. The way that we have trashed where we live and treated people and places as disposable. The intersection is so clear because, of course, we know that black people are hit worst and first. We saw that with katrina and sandy. Anytime there is a Natural Disaster in the world. There is a huge intersection there. Sayow for myself, when they scientists do not get involved in activism. For me, my climate work is here and my activism was there until i learned the term Climate Justice. And then it made sense that these come together. Something i learned here last year, especially from the big green groups. They have an idea that they cannot talk about climate to the black and brown communities, that it is a white issue. I learned that 92 of latinos say that Climate Change is a critical issue and 82 of latino republicans. The next largest group, African Americans. And then asianamericans. Eventually, white americans catch on to the fact that Climate Change might be a problem. To me, that is so clear. Not mention we need to get behind the activists and help them spread the message. [applause] i talked a lot about police. [laughter] there is a point. I talked a lot about police the killing of people. Around andfolks energy that we have not seen in a long time. Policing is symptomatic of the issue. It is a symptom of what is wrong. It is not the core of the problem. Anis a way that we can make entry point for people to engage in a deeper way. When i think about climate we tend to silo our issues. And a lot of that is based on capitalism. And not seeing the intersections of our issues and how they are more intertwined. We need to be organizing not in the issue silos but in another type of way to get to the root of this. I say that because when we look at policing and Climate Change. In our new york city chapter did a training around the intersections of Climate Change, Climate Justice and police brutality. We looked at milledge rise. And we saw the response during katrina against black people. And the response towards folks in flint. Ton we look at that response the folks at sandy. There has always been a response of power and domination when it comes to Climate Change is used. Even just thinking about my there is a about why there is a landfill next to someones home. When we look at Climate Justice work, we need to begin to think about it as a framework of understanding the notion of safety. How do we expand the notion of safety in a railway . I did in a real way . Id that exercise earlier what are some of the basic needs in our lives. Water is one of those things but so is devasting from fossil fuel. That is an issue of safety and power. Andrder for us to build agenda around Climate Change, it has to come from a place of safety and redefining what power looks like. Well, i havete, as two words on that intersection Standing Rock. I was there last year. Basic democratic processes, the basic will of a person saying i do not want this in my community. And voting on it and organizing on it and having that overrun by a militarized corporation. That should be concerning to us all. This is a democracy. This is a basic value. A basic framework on which we have built this country. And the will of the people should be the one and only thing that matters in the united dates of america. [applause] in the United States of america [applause] it should not be part of a political platform. You are beautiful. You have gotten yourself organized. Real quick, i have to do this. We will want to demo demonstrate with the Democratic Party is doing. Men in couple of white mind first. I would appreciate if the women of color could come first. Hello. Yakima nation in washington state. It is great that youre having this conversation. Why am i nots represented on that panel . And related to that, it hurts me to hear people say that we are a country of immigrants. We are not a country of immigrants. Eyes, do not roll your sir. To understand that and to know that i know youre coming from a good place, probably, but to hear that rhetoric hurts. It is an eraser of Indigenous People on this land. Please be aware of that. [applause] well said, sister. Respond . One going to rep. Ellison you are absolutely right. There isravesty that not more native representation at this conference. There is not even a session on these american issues at this conference. And i think we should stand together and talk to leadership about that. That i am will say going to get into a little bit of trouble because i was going to ask the congressman about friendsue and what our are fighting for right now. I agree with you that the original sins of this country is genocide. Stealing land, genocide was used for that. I think we should also acknowledge whose territorial land we are on and that is my bad for missing out on that. Without a doubt, there are many issues affecting native American People well before Standing Rock and there are many more issues affecting native American People since Standing Rock. We cannot be a party that talks about violence against women without talking about native american women being the most raped women in the United States. Let us work on that together and let us not be nice about it. You are right. It should not take 10,000 people showing up to stop a pipeline to say ok, native americans are still here after all. We have to do better and we should. Hello. I am from philadelphia. Brady, they know bob leader of the Democratic Party in philadelphia. You asked if anyone was doing anything showing why us. One thing that happens in my and this is especially important in a city the onlyadelphia where party is the Democratic Party. Every single time there is an election, there is an official ballot that the democratic leadership puts out. And it tells all of the people in the community who they should be voting for and they choose whichever primary candidate that they want. The same thing happened in the president ial election. When the president ial ballot was going out to the voter, it had only Hillary Clintons name as if she was the only democratic person running. That happens with every election. Whoever the democratic leadership has decided they will get behind in the primary races, that is whose name goes on the ballot and that he and that is who people are told to vote for. The democratic leadership is taking the role of choosing the officials that we have based on who would work well with them. That is happening in philadelphia. I am telling you since you asked for that. The other thing i wanted to talk of was to the question is the Democratic Party able to be relevant to communities of color and how does that happen . Right after alton sterling and murderedcastile were in cold blood on video for the world to see, i joined with a massive number of people who were hurt, traumatized and we marched in our community. And we confronted Police Officers. When we confronted the Police Officers, most of them were black men. We had a natural confrontation. No one was arrested. I was tossed around a little bit. In the process of looking these people in the eyes and asking them dont you care . Didnt it hurt you . To stand with me as a person and it knowledge that it hurts. Of course, they could not do that because there is that blue line. And that blue line exists within the party as well. It was embodied in a statement when you are look working on a platform there is always this kind of unison in the party. And it really i think we have to have individuals who are putting the people before the party. During this democratic process and this last election process, it really became clear to me, and i begin to feel that the Democratic Party would have rather lost then be transformed and be with the people need needed it to be. And i think what we need as is a party that would rather lose then compromise its integrity. [applause] it cannot just be about winning and making these compromises. I changed. I left the Democratic Party asked year. Im officially registered with the green party. One of the things that we talked about, was that we have to make compromises. And we talked about how we are not winning when we make the compromises. Remember theed to things that people are saying the lives come first. I do not really care about the parties. Just like you said, lincoln would not recognize the Republican Party today. It may or may not be true, the racism thing. Lincoln was not a big black advocate. Is note Democratic Party the same party that it was in the 1960s either. These parties constantly change and one of the reasons they change is because they cannot people only have two places to go to make your point about the winning, that only the two parties can win. They make the individuals have to make their transformations within those two places. They do not have the ability to move into other spaces. The minor parties cannot do that. The major parties are holding the people hostage through that process. You know the phrase if you love it, let it go. You do not have to hold the people here hostage. Stand firm for what is right including opening up the door. And then be the representative that the people want with the ability for them to go wherever they need to go. But because you are standing for what is right in standing with integrity, having those people return to your party rather than Holding People hostage in this twoparty ideology. I think the democrats could move that process forward. Make thehis space to nation a party of the people. [applause] i want to thank you all for ofing our politics dehumanization to a politics of ization. All of these fantastic platforms coming out. And they are all vying for attention. Is no collective bargaining mentioned. And this is very disturbing for a variety of reasons. [applause] i would really like to find out how we could get collectivebargaining included. Yesterday, there was an amazing panel for a campaign that got huge attention in u. S. Today. The people here. 12 people showed up. , ave drivers brother, i really am sorry to cut you off. I really need a question. Wefirst question, how can stand firm on the issue of collective bargaining . On do we stay firm collectivebargaining . 9 11, question after we were a deer in the headlights and we let bush and cheney hijacked the american narrative. This time, we can be ready because donald trump works for putin. There will be a predictable emergency. This fascist will try to use that to send us to war. A narrative that is of we the people. To answer the question number one is organize. You have to organize at all times. Just like congressman ellison said earlier, if you are not organized around the issue that you care about, than collective bargaining will never happen. It is just that basic. You organize or you die. Just real quick about your second question. Youre absolutely right. I agree with you. The use of shock events, disaster capitalism, brother dante talked about katrina and danielle talked about katrina. That was a shock even in the people that benefited the most from it was not the people that lived there. The shocked even is used to create issue silos. But right away, break down the silos. There were an amazing movements that included muslim americans, air of americans, prior to 9 11. And then this shocked even happened and all of a sudden, we are to treating our air it brothers and sisters and muslim brothers and sisters as combatants. I would say right now, let us start doing the organizing of intersectionality and action. And begin the process of making sure that they cannot put up the silos against us. Beautifult turn people like polly jean against me because i am black. Just get the silos out of the way immediately. What are you going to do to break that silo down . What community that you have never been to before are you going to go to and start organizing . We cannot ask the Democratic Party or count on them to do that. They will count on us. Nevertin luther king asked Lyndon Baines johnson what he should be doing. He never did. He never held Political Office or ran for Political Office. It is essential that all of us walk out of the store abandoned the idea that somebody out there is supposed to be organizing me, funding me, and taking care of me. It will not happen. It might even be right and just that it happened but it will not happen. The only thing we can do is to organize yourself. I will tell you something, if you start organizing yourself and you start generating a body of people that are with you, then the parties and the candidates will start looking for you. It just works that way. It is not moral or just but it is reality. Let me just say this you just mentioned 9 11 and deer in the headlights. I dont know if i agree with your analysis but i will say this. North korea is a serious thing. You have this guy making bellicose threats against somebody else who has very little to lose over there. Theth Korean Leader world always thought he was an irresponsible leader but he is asking more responsibly than this guy is. Once you start seeing missile cranking the time for up the antiwar machine is right now. Caughtdo not want to get like a deer in the headlights, start calling for diplomacy in north korea immediately. Someone who really wants the democrats to be a party of the people, truly, and is that oftentimes we have lost while , ihing very popular policies am interested to know if it really is possible to have that kind of a party in a post world . Three of the major gubernatorial candidates in illinois are billionaires who run investment firms. Because we want to self finance. Can we really get there . Is there proof of that that we can have a party that is not made up of rich people . And how do we get there . The only kind of party that postCitizens United world is a united party. And so, the answer is a resounding yes. And in fact, sometimes, you cannot look at a situation in a moment and say that did not work so we are messed up. N we started talking about when Bernie Sanders and i dropped in the 15 minimum wage well, outside of the progressive caucus, and i have to give them credit, they were not on that bill. But sometimes you just have to be persistent. Thing Mitch Mcconnell said about Elizabeth Warren . He persisted. I would say thats the only thing we can do as a peoples party. His run for d c inspired me to get on my Democratic Central Committee because we got to start exactly. In Montgomery County, thats what i got involved in. We have to hold politicians and candidates feet to the fire and make sure they dont take 30 money. The Supreme Court right now it make sure they dont take dirty money. You do,ke the money, if we are going to shine the light on you. Its all Public Knowledge for you get your money from. In Montgomery County we have our first year of public election financing. Assistant, out to my were proud to be taking only dollars, no pacs, no organizations. Pass those laws in your local area so they cannot take a dirty money. Its the most powerful institution in Human History and the only way were going to cut the legs out from under them is to say we dont want your money, were not going to invest in your companys, and that includes our politicians. [applause] wenow have candidates have never seen this at this scale in American History. We have legions of candidates that are running now and in 2018 that have rejected corporate funds. Support them. Support them. [applause] myself, i have rejected all the money and many of us are doing something very controversial. We are daring to actually force the primary in some uncontested Congressional Districts, which people would say is very amounttive and how gary of challenge. If theyre good enough, they will win. Each and every single one of you has a booklet. You check in and you got a book. You toage to bring if you dont support them, you dont get to nextnext year whine year that they dont win. [applause] we are out of time and we have to wrap up here. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks to all of our great panelists. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] every week in the Clinton White house, there was something big. It was a very intense environment. And then you had special prosecutor ken starr, he was like a boogie man. I spent more time that white thoseresponding to requests. I remember going through every document trying to find the thing that ken starr wanted that week. Coming in now, i actually get to do my job. Watch our interview with om manigault tonight on cspan, cspan radio, and www. Cspan. Org. Live coverage of the net roots nation conference. Warren willabeth speak at the conference. Later at 4 30 p. M. , former Vice President al gore and pamela chamba. Join us for live coverage on cspan. Erik prince, the founder of black water usa talks about privatizing the war in afghanistan. Onwas our guest this morning washington journal. We spoke to him for about 45 minutes. We want to welcome to the table eric rentz, the founder of blackwater, usa and now the chairman of front your service group. That friday morning, thanks for being with us. Lets get right to it. Today, youl on usa wrote the following