Benjamin, cofounder of code pink. Lovely to get the chance to interview you on a book i found fantastic. I read voraciously i think in one long sitting and found it absolutely fascinating. My first question to you is how in the world were you able to write this so quickly because you reference things that just happen in april and may and the book just came out. Thank you so much. Its great to speak with you and im glad that you enjoyed the book. It was a bit of a frenzy writing this book. I usually take about five years to write a book. That has been my average. By publishing a book about every seven years i give myself a little break up a fight for years. This book, i just wanted to get it out as quickly as possible. There are a couple of chapters in the book that are focused on what we should expect if there is a crisis in the United States, if there is an economic crisis were a major security crisis. And i felt so passionately that there needed to be some political Disaster Preparedness among the progressives that i just frankly have never written before, and i also worked with a publisher that was committed to getting it out really quickly because you know the Publishing Industry can be quite slow. Usually you finish the book and it creeps along the production process in the use of stages for another four months. And in this case everyone worked to get it out in recordbreaking time so i am lucky to have worked with a publisher who is as committed to this political moment as i am. I think it is a great contribution to the millions of people who are looking at the political situation thinking what do i do. And obviously from the title of the book, you give it a way that naway butno its not enough thao see in the book and amazing coming together of your work. This changes everything and it seems like you are the quintessential antitrump and embodies everything that is the opposite of what trump stands for so maybe we should start the beginning of the book which is looking at trump as a quintessential branding. Yes and the truth as you know so many of us have been on this journey. But behind as the companies upped the ante in the marketing end of thand design, theyve did from the world of work and sold off their factories and started outsourcing to a web of contractors and subcontractors and giving it to whoever was willing to produce the product cheaper. Weve been on the journey a long time because of coarse your work up a Global Exchange in the 90s was part of this process of exposing these conditions under which some of the most valuable brands in the world, nike and disney were making their products. So i look at it as this hollow brand. One of the companies that adopted the paradigm. We are not in the product business. This was the shift i was tracking in the logo. It used to be up until the 80s there is an iconic brand in the american marketplace was manufacturers first then they Branded Products with logos and marketed them but in the 90s, ththe orders but left and you sd to see companies announcing that they were marketers first, they were in the ideas business and projected their big idea onto as many extensions in their brand as possible and started building the sort of self enclosed cocoons. Disney in this period opened up a town celebration for us or you could live inside your favorite brand. And trump did this in real estate. He started off as a traditional Real Estate Developer but quickly went into this stratosphere of the superbrands and the apprentice was an enormous breakthrough for him where it became less about building buildings and more about building his brand and then selling his name and his brand for very high prices to other developers who wanted to have that name on the side of their condo tower or the sight of their resort. Like the other brands i mentioned earlier, this can often at the expense of workers. Weve heard many stories of terrible conditions for workers in these properties and also making branded clothing around the world. Host so here you have a guy that can make millions of dollars in one building just by allowing them to put his name on it and then he becomes president. And as you say in the book it is impossible to separate out trump and his family and including of course the clothing line and the president now. I dont think they can separate it. I dont think trump knows where his personal identity in us and his commercial brand and. Host i love the line in the book you cant disentangle trump, the man from the brand. The two entities, you say, merged a long time ago. When he sets foot in one of the properties, golf club, hotel, beach club, White House Press corps sees increasing his overall brand value which allows his company to sell more memberships, rent more rooms and increased fees. So yes, how can you possibly separate this man from the brand. Guest and you know, the particular challenge of trump, he enters politics not playing by the traditional rules of the game of playing by the traditional rules of branding and that is stay true to your brand. So, in the 1990s, many activists exposed Companies Like nike and disney betraying the promise that there were and which maybe was empowerment for girls or, you know, familyfriendly and kid friendly ethos because the products were being made under conditions that were abusive to young people in the factories and so they were vulnerable on that front and had to be responsive but it is a different kind of brand because the big idea that he always sold was the idea of absolute power through wealth. This was the promise of the brand since the 80s since he published his first brand extension which would be the art of the deal. He was selling the promise that he was the word killer he doesnword killer hedoesnt meat just somebody that is out for themselves willing to step on anyone. When he describes the art of the deal it is essentially about screwing over other people and ending up on top, not coming to any kind of a mutually beneficial agreement. And so, he is the guy that gets away with it and he has a Consumer Base that wants to be him. He has an aspirational identity that feels that they lost power on many different funds and trump represents the attainment of the kind of power they want and thats a problem when it comes to holding him accountable to his brand promise. If you catch him lying or cheating or being nasty, things that might hurt a traditional politician or even a brand whose brand identity have more sort of ethical aspirational components, trump isnt hurt by any of this because of all confirmed his identity as the guy that gets away with with anything because he is so rich. So this is a challenge. The only way you can hurt the brand is by proving he is not as powerful as he seems to be. He gets bothered when people talk about the strings being pulled by putin. That hurts his brand identity because it is all about being the boss. Host into the word all humans which i dont think most americans have heard of before but its now being bandied around. Guest is a moisturizer. Host but now there are lawsuits in court trying to say donald trump is making money illegally from the presidency by i dont know if its just for an entities like governments in saudi arabia and others taking up rooms and renting his hotels as part of an illgotten gain. Do you think theres anything to that end is that illegal . Guest it may well be. Its been interesting timing with the release of the book because just as the book came out from actually the book tv through the day the book came out, the news came that they launched this lawsuit alleging a violation of the constitution on those grounds and then 190 lawmakers in Congress Filed a lawsuit of their own and that one is significant because what it says is the president cannot do this without the permission of congress. There already was a lawsuit had been filed by a dc restaurant and group of restaurant workers making this allegation but the significance of Congress People flailing their own lawsuit is they are the ones who should have been consulted. They had the most legitimacy as the party it would seem to make this challenge and we may discover trump is not as immune as he thinks he is and has been behaving as if he is and one thing i would add is that a lot of the examples that weve heard for how hes receiving gifts or benefits focus on peace hotel rooms, and i think there is a case to be made up of foreign governments or deciding to stay at the trump hotel and have expensive events and hopefully get into his good graces but there are other things to look at as well including the fact that the Chinese Government has been granting a wave of trademarks. Find the most disturbed by that hasnt gotten enough Media Attention is that they have detained labor monitors who were investigating conditions in one of the factories. That would seem to me to be a tangible benefit. Its not that they are being directed to do this, its that they see that he has not divested and believe that they are favored that they can get themselves into the good graces of a president that is clearly very concerned about his personal and family wealth. You dont need to prove that shes on the phone saying arrest those people. That is not the allegation. The allegation would be that it would be a helpful thing to do to get rid of those pesky whistleblowers. One of the points you make in the book is that this isnt anything new they had been using the foundation as a place to create favor with them so i wonder if you can tell us how the stage was set for trump. Was trying to challenge this narrative because he is so unlike any kind of president before and there is this idea that he is kind of impeached everything would be fine. Im not saying one way or another on impeachment obviously if hes committed offenses he should be impeached but that would get us where we were before trump, and that was the ground that created trump, it was not a safe place and it does nothing to prevent somebody else that combines an even more dangerous mix of these qualities from taking power once again and i see this very much as a bipartisan process. It isnt just about politics is that the media and the news coverage. All he needed to do was show up because we were already treating them like reality tv shows. We already had a media landscape that was much more interested in the inter personal drama between the candidates. We already have democrats using the tools of corporate branding themselves. President obama was a fantastic brand. He used cuttingedge marketing techniques that a lot of us felt that there was not enough change and that helped set the table. Something else that set the table was this liberal idea that they were so central to how billionaires could use to grade 12 they amassed in the period of privatization to fix problems that we traditionally looked to the government to solve, so if you look at the Clinton Global Initiative and i think even more significant is this whole model of having a big announcement that he was going to solve Climate Change with the profit from his airlines and this was the biggest gift in the history of the foundation as it turns out he didnt make good on the promise of the money or solve Climate Change but theres no accountability because unlike the government, it is all voluntary and so i think thats model, bill gates has tremendous power over the u. S. Education system and tremendous power over africas healthcare system. He plays a role that is similar. He does lots of good things in the world but this idea with the billionaire savings complex helped create a context for him to stand before the American People and say. They have tremendous power because of their wealth and so how do you get that from the pitch to the voters sure i dont have any qualifications or experience in the government but im so rich that you can trust me to fix america. You also talk about setting the stage in terms of going back to Ronald Reagan for example the government being part of the problem and solution and then you talk about the deregulation of the banks and then the failure of president obama to do anything to hold the bankers accountable and how this also set the stage for an Economic System that has allowed transfer of wealth to be so enormously skewed in the society and now youve been talking about the people who enter into government and may be you could talk about how theyve taken it to an extreme when they eliminated the middleman that you dont have to wine and dine the people in office anymore. Hes taking it into New Territory and to a point they had ties with Corporate America. This isnt a new process that cheney very significantly the biggest difference, halliburton is a company most people havent heard of before. Its a hugely Important Company but its not a highly branded company, so appointing the ceo of exxon as one of the most controversial and world under investigation by three states attorneys general over allegations that they misled their shareholders about how much they knew about Climate Change because exxon scientists have been researching the reality back in the 70s and 80s independent funded Climate Change denial in the 1990s. Exxon was under a lot of pressure when trump appointed the ceo who then theyre his entire working life and never worked anywhere else so it is a continuation of all of that from dulles to cheney to rex to worsen and of course trump himself because at least tellers and divested before becoming secretary of state. The trump just merged the organization it seems with the white house. Accept as you talk about so eloquently in the book, this is now the ultimate giveaway to Corporate America. So maybe we should talk about how the initial we are not even six months into this administration and what have they been doing to go through the top wish list of the fossil fuel companies and the bankers, the militaryindustrial complex. What are the items we already see that have pleased Corporate America . I do think we should be getting a lot more attention because theres a lot more focus on exposing what some people believe is a conspiracy between the Trump Administration and surely that should be investigated but theres also a conspiracy in plain sight. Theres a systematic and orderly transfer of wealth from the lower and middle income to the 1 of the 1 . Its the connected tissue of everything that the Trump Administration is doing on the economic front. This is a massive gift to all of Corporate America getting rid of the estate tax. They get through because so much attention is focused on a. It sold out everywhere and that is when he turned his extramarital affairs. Of course much of it is being foisted on him. It is what is happening on the economic front if we look at what he is doing on climate, it is a huge giveaway to the oil, gas and coal industry. Something like one of the first things he did was roll back obamas initiative for the fuel efficiency standards and another one of his very early decisions was to go after the new requirements introduced at the end of Obama Administration. A better document of methane leaks in the gas industry because we actually dont know the extent to which the gas industry in particular is leading to a major spike because its reall really not a trafficy well so there is a new measure companies would have to abide by and this is one of the first things that they moved to eliminate very profitable and also means we will not have Accurate Information about how much emissions are going up so those are a few examples. The whole Healthcare Plan that was celebrated in the rose garden is a huge giveaway of the backdoor tax giveaway is the redistribution of wealth and i think it is unfortunate that we havent focused on this enough. If the budget for tax on Social Security and health care because this goes against what he promised on the campaign trail, and i do think that hes vulnerable. He is vulnerable. His brand is vulnerable. Perhaps not the trump brand to make America Great again grand had a very particular promise on bringing back jobs. Another broken promise and giveaway i think is what we are going to see with trade. He promised to renegotiate nafta and other trade deals so they would be better for the workers. Meanwhile the commerce secretary is reassuring business audiences that they are going to renegotiate nafta to make it more like the Transpacific Partnership which is the deal trump torn up or withdrew the United States from on one of his first days in office. So this is where i think that he is more vulnerable and unfortunately its getting a fraction of the attention that it deserves because it never stops and its always sold out. One of the statistics i love in your book is the trump met with 190 different executives of corporations in the first three months in office and then when there were news reports about thats what they decided to do is not fake public the list of people that visit the white house anymore. Guest so much of this guest i was going to say the focus on russia is taking our eyes off so many things on the militaryindustrial complex fund, the fact that the already bloated pentagon budget is now according to trump not big enough and he wants to increase it with another 54 billion in when he announced that, the stocks of weapons and is tree just shot up. But theres no attention being paid to that. But its more than that. Trump is basically a traveling weapon salesman. This seems to be the sum total of the policy. He goes to saudi arabia and praises them because they just purchased a whole bunch of usled and he sends a message to the world this is how you get to americas good graces you buy a lot of in a. So now theyve done the same thing. They Just Announced huge new weapons increase and this is how they are trying to cool down tension with saudi arabia. He lectures the members on not pulling their weight. I am the dual canadian american citizen and the canadian feminist or went home and announced a massive increase in military spending. 70 increase. So this is how the world is responding to trump seeing the way you get in the good graces of the administration is by buying the hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons so it isnt just the military increase in the United States, its global. Host but lets also do what you do so beautifully in the book when setting the stage, recognize that it was under the Obama Administration that countries like saudi arabia became the number one weapons purchaser under obama who bragged on the white house website that they sold 110 billion to this repressive extremist intolerant misogynist regime. So there again we see the stage set by the democrats that preceded trump. So here you set the stage and talk about people getting prepared for the shocks to come, the you also talk about what people are doing to resist trump now and the whole premise of the book know is not enough does look at what has been done in the first several months of the Trump Administration with people rising up so maybe we should spend more time on that and then move to buy if it is not enough. Guest we have seen this incredible wave of resistance, and weve seen that it can win. The travel ban most notably and that amazing surge of people going to airports across the country and just saying no and rejecting this and i think that emboldening local officials and Congress People to also go to the airport, lawyers and maybe even giving courage to judges to stand up to trump. Thats one example. Everybody that i know of is involved in political organizing says theyve ever seen the level of interest, more people showing up to the rallies and the womens march from day one is recordbreaking numbers that people want to get involved and want to understand that the demy better. They are educating themselves. A lot of people trying to do internal work to understand their own internal racism showing up more for Racial Justice and this is inspiring and i think theres a sort of collective memory of september 11 and a lot of people describe being in shock that this could happen trying to respond in ways that make us more shock resistant and this is important because if there is, heaven forbid a manchester like attacking the United States, we already know how trump would respond because when the attacks happened, he immediately blamed immigrants and citizens about immigrants flooding across our borders even though the bomber in that case had been born in the united kingdom. After the London Bridge attacks he said this is why we need the travel ban. So theres a lot of things that are still on the trump agenda of some of which have been stopped and some of which they havent even tried to do. The education agenda is extremely radical. She doesnt believe in Public Education. And so, i am concerned about a security shock like manchester and also about an economic crisis because of course they are deregulating the banks, they are making it more likely that there would be another 2008 crisis and that would become the pretext to privatize Social Security and to further attack the Public Education system and thats why i think it is so important for progressives to, yes we have to say no but i think we have to develop a common agenda that we will advance when these hate and even if they dont need to be advancing a Progressive Agenda that one of the things i found from covering societies in the midst of a major crisis for over two decades is that saying no might be able to slow it down a little bit, but it really is not enough. I think about being in greece after the 2008 financial crisis and the way in which they came together very courageously to reject what they saw as being forced to pay for the crisis of the bankers with this last wages and austerity and people occupy the plaza and elected another government and the polls were in the streets but there wasnt really enough of the bold vision for what kind of an economy they wanted instead so i make the case in the book for us to do the work to come up with peoples platforms, for a forwardlooking vision for the economic, racial and Environmental Justice that is bold and can inspire people because i think that is our best defense against demagogues who are tapping into the real pain and mixing it with very insidious ideas is to hold back the promise of a better life and we saw with the campaign in the uk thats when he issued his manifesto that is a very bold document thats about fully funded Public Health care and about getting rid of tuition fees and about a bold transition to Renewable Energy and creating huge numbers of green jobs that is what inspired people particularly young people to turn out in record numbers. Host i think also the fact that he took on the foreignpolicy issues, and after there were those attacks in england, rather than just saying the platitudes, he said we have to look at the policies overseas and the intervention in libya and how this creates resentment and blowback back at home, which unfortunately there are not major politicians in the United States who have been willing to say that. Pal Jeremy Corbin talked about that and the underlining causes, he was savaged in the British Press and his comments were described as monstrous but it didnt hurt him if they have helped him because there is a later stage for getting at those root causes. Some of those ideas have become more acceptable from Bernie Sanders campaign. Guest this is the moment we are in and its an exciting moment from a progressive perspective does for me, i grew up as a neoliberal era. My childhood was in the 80s, the heir era of reagan and thatcher and there is no alternative. If that project was about advancing a set of radical socalled freemarket ideas, regulation taxes paid for with spending up company by huge expansion of the Security State but that was sold based on the idea that there is no alternative to this and it was really a project that in so many ways was about constraining the collective imagination. Neoliberalism, that set of policies has been a profound crisis since the 2008 financial meltdown for many reasons not the least of which is that the elite had to break their own rule right out in the open and everybody thought it was possible to intervene in the market to save the banks. Suddenly they could find trillions of dollars after we had all been told there was no money for school and no money for daycare, no money for hospitals. The spell was broken and we are in his period now where the progressive imagination is being unleashed. The first stage was saying no to the economic crisis but now the utopian imagination on the left is being rekindled. You see it in documents which comes out of the movement for black lives. Its an exciting full policy document that it is about getting behind the causes of Police Violence in changing society with Racial Justice at the center. Ive been involved in a project and people can read a bit about it at the leep. Org which is a similar approach but just that progressive ideas are surging in popularity and staying the unstable and candidacies like bernie or Jeremy Corbyn are doing better then the entire class predicted. Its also the case that the far right ideas and white supremacist ideas are also more popular than they have been at any point in my lifetime. I see this is a race against time because there is this vacuum where the elite can sense this and as it collapses a lot of things are shifting. Host another contradiction i see is that the Progressive Movement is way ahead of the Democratic Party for example. You see a fight in baltimore where the people are pushing the city council for a right to a 15dollar an hour minimum wage and the democratic mayor of baltimore then vetoing that so i wonder what you think about how to move the Democratic Party that is supposed to be more progressive than doesnt seem to have caught up to the popular sentiments and a lot of these issues. Guest the energy is huge out there with more and more progressives committed to taking power and seeing that it is possible. I think with Bernies Campaign 13 million bus carrying 22 states, there is really the belief out there that i did not have at any point in my lifetime until now a winning Progressive Coalition is squarely within reach. Its possible and we know that bernie had weaknesses that many women of mine and your generation didnt feel comfortable that he really got how precarious many womens rights are. Many people involved in Racial Justice issues dont feel that hes fully integrated Racial Injustice agenda and his campaign but it got better as the campaign went on but it didnt really capture he had been able to capture 50 of the black vote in the two states he would have been able to win so it isnt that the Democratic Base is too rightwing. Its that you there were certain sectors who was unable to reach a next time that Winning Coalition is out there and people know it. I think if the Democratic Party keeps trying to fight off the history then people will leave the party. This is what im hearing and if we look at what happened in the uk Jeremy Corbyn was fought by his own party at every single turn. He won the leadership and he was sabotage. He faced an internal coup where they tried to unseat him as leader and then he held on and now after the Election Results which were so surprising, where he won i believe 32 when he was supposed to have been wiped out. People admits that this is the way to win elections and we will see whether the Democratic Party learns from that or not. I think the Corbyn Campaign is going to be a fight and there are some who say its not even worth fighting within the Democratic Party. We will see. This goes a tough one because there are so many other samples in europe where it hasnt been transformation within traditional parties. Its actually the new parties that have cropped up that have captured the public imagination and one tremendous victories whether its the example in greece or the progressive parties in france or portugal. Who knows how well go . The hard thing in the United States as we have this winnertakeall system that makes it so difficult. Guest thats the really hard part. If there was a different electoral system that allowed for Coalition Government it would e. A bit of a nobrainer in terms of how much resistance there is. Host naomi you brought up the issue of race and you talked about it quite a bit in the book you talked about the movements with black lives and you also talked about the Indigenous Community and in canada you have is a strong Indigenous Community on the forefront of a lot of the environment till struggles and you have a very compelling chapter in the book about your experience at Standing Rock. Your view about how we move to a Different Society is one where people of color in the wisdom and the vision of communities has to be in the lead. How did you come to that conclusion . Guest well, im a journalist first and foremost and the book comes from talking to a whole lot of people in movements or organizing and this is the wisdom of our movement at this point. This is where the energy of organizing is. In canada every single key empire mental battle has always been led by Indigenous People. This is true to a large extent of the United States as well. On Standing Rock, it was so moving to be there when i was there which was when the Obama Administration finally denied the easement but he had already won the elections of people understood the victory, trump would probably reverse it. The reason i wanted to include the experience of the book is the kind of leadership that i saw in Standing Rock and the people that i spoke to, the Standing Rock city councilmember , the analysis was deeply holistic and intersectional. This was a Racial Justice battle that the pipeline had an originally rooted through bismarck and overwhelmingly white city and had and rejected because of the Water Quality so it was moved to underneath the single Drinking Water source of the Standing Rock sioux which is a classic example of environmental racism. There was one piece of it and it was also very much about Climate Change and understanding that we cannot keep expanding and have any hope of protecting a livable planet for our kids. It was also profoundly about standing up to corporate power, standing up to the militarized police. Standing rock were up against police force to look like an army, tanks and although privatize equipment and tricks. I quote wynonna in the book about you can talk about intersectionality which is a wonderful phrase from an africanamerican legal scholar and a feminist who has given us this term that so many of us are using but Standing Rock it was just life and i think its helpful sometimes not talk about something in theory but talk about it as a lived experience and how its playing out. Host which you also bring up in the Standing Rock chapter in which i found myself having traveled there is that it was about winning the rights to the land to do what they want with their property but it was also showing a different way of living together and how this is an experience that profoundly changed the people who came to see what it was like to be in a struggle under the leadership of the Indigenous People and how different that is than many other struggles have been, the profound sense of connection to the land, even the language of water protectors, not protesters and do you think that this will carry on or have an impact on people who are part of this movement . I think everyone one who was there was changed by it and Standing Rock embodies the title of the book, no is not enough because as soon as the victory was won to stop the pipeline, it was a temporary victory as we know but its not over. They have also won an important legal victory and what chop is done in pushing through this pipeline is illegal so they havent stopped fighting but as soon as that ruling came down from the army corps of engineers immediately everybody who i talked to wanted to say okay now the real work starts. Now we can turn this reservation into a shining example of the justices based transition off of fossil fuels. We want to Start Building an economy that would never need a new oil pipeline and so was like the know was necessary to be able to get to yes and this is where we are. We have to leave the know and the guests together and that was inspiring. In terms of how this plays out we dont know. Ive been involved in socialism for long enough to never believe a movement obituary. They are always declared over whether its the socalled antiglobalization movement but those of us who have been involved in a struggles no that the infrastructure and the ideas the teaching and the people that were part of earlier movements resurfaced and reemerged so i dont think movements die. They go into a period of gestation and reemerged and turn into something else. Occupy wall street turned into occupy sandy referring to the Hurricane Sandy and many people from occupy one on two form the backbone of Bernie Sanders campaign and are continuing to learn new lessons, share information and get involved. We just dont know where those teachings go. Host well i want to also emphasize that in your book while you are not naive about how dangerous the Trump Administration is, i loved the analogy you used to being in automatic tennis match where youre hit the ball constantly and you are taking a swing and you might get one or two but you feel like your eyes getting battered. On the other hand to talk about the trump agenda is not all controlling and the trump space is not all controlling. I want to read from this part where you say they dont control with cities and states do. They dont even control what congress does a lot of the time. They certainly dont control universities, faith institutions, unions. They dont control what the courts do. They dont control what other sovereign nations do and they do not control what we do as individuals in groups around the world. For me this is very inspiring, this section of the book because you do lay out for us that we have a lot of spaces in which we do not have to just say no, no, no but we are building up these alternatives whether its on a very small level or whether its on the global level of how we can reignite some of the global alliances that we have had in the past after trump said no to the paris agenda and how the World Community came together. You say we are moving ahead anyway so talk a little about the spaces that trump does not control. Guest ride in specifically because what trump and his administration are doing is so dangerous with what they control and what they control a significant, the onus on us to do more and all of these spaces is all the greater. I started thinking of this when i was speaking at harvard, giving a lecture. Early on a need administration there has been an absolutely ferocious bite at harvard over fossil fuels. Harvard has one of the strongest fossil fuel movements in the country. The administration has been intransigent with them and its really important in this movement because of course harvard is so iconic and if harvard were to make a decision would help other institutions to also make a similar decision. Talking to some of the activists there i realized that the arguments during the obama years that the school needs to make it as you know well we dont think divestment is the most effect way to fight Climate Change. We think its more effective to have policies and it was a credible possibility that the Obama Administration would introduce policy that would be quite strong. Of course its being undone by trump and because there is no credible prospects at this moment of federal legislation on Climate Change the real climate pact for instance, that movement is on anywhere we do have power we have to use it. During the dnc when Michelle Obama said when they go low, we go high, that was probably the best line of the convention. She was talking about tom and not wanting to join trump and his gang in the gutter of attacks. I think we should adopt that similar approach as it relates to policy and as it relates to action. As the Trump Administration lowers the bar we have to raise the bar wherever we have power. After trump announced the paris withdrawal he said he was elected by the people of pittsburgh and not paris. Next day you have them standing up and say actually pittsburgh voted for hillary and i will get the city to Renewable Energy by 2025. It still may city that has adopted a target databases so thats an example of what i mean , people using the power that they do have two advance a powerful progressive vision. Think we are seeing something similar with health care in california. The California Senate moving one step closer to singlepayer precisely because of what congress and trump are doing in health care that is so dangerous. We may well be in a position to Say Something similar when it comes to free trade. When they are seriously negotiate nafta thats going to be an opening for workers movements, for environmental is, for everybody concerned about our economy to come forward and say this is how you write a fair trade agreement. This is what it would look like and say what you think it would look like. People were fighting these deals back in the day, we were pretty good at saying no but we werent as good as saying yes. Host as we are winding down mail me i want to as an activist thank you for saying now the lines are blurred and we all have to be activists and giving us this beautiful way of looking at the trump agenda not as something that is so enormous that we dont want to get out of bed in the morning because we dont even want to think about it but as a challenge to us that we have to take extremely seriously but that gives us a lot of not only space within which to work but whole new communities to work with and i think as you go forward on your book tour getting more and more people excited about being part of these solutions and showing the enormous potential that these solutions have we as a community, as a nation and as a Global Community will be much better at articulating the yes that we want to live in, so thank you so much for the work, the book. It again no is not enough resisting trumps shock politics and winning the world we need. Thank you so much, naomi. Guest thank you so much. Members of congress are back home working during the august congressional recess. Some members and their staffs weeding out otis of events they attend. Heres a tweet from near khobar summoned Carolyn Maloney honored to have girl scouts in your city and burst my bill to build a Womens History Museum on the national mall. Lets tell her story. One more this one from republican senator Lisa Murkowski of alaska a new Health Care Clinic on st. Lawrence island. A harvard law professor looks at how social media affects their political views. The book is. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]
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