and we're very lucky to have back with us live in the studios this morning kevin zeese and margaret flowers kevin zeese and margaret flowers are both organizers at popular resistance dot org co directors at it's our economy and co hosts act clearing the fog radio show kevin and margaret were both on the show back in march and thank you both for coming in again early this morning on sunday i'm glad you saved those it's about a week long and it's artful activism camp that teaches of wide variety of skills talking about strategy movement building how to do creative actions in art work as well as this year we were focused on doing some k and you know relation to the shell no campaign they have become an international trend activism yes seattle definitely helped to put on the map as portland so it's good we actually finished last night at verizon is still going today at about ten o'clock last night just just before the ferry and i fifty five actually talking about the state of the movement which is pretty fun discussions and then there's an event happening out of that conference tomorrow so monday morning at eleven am at westlake park we'll be doing an action focused on really on white privilege and racism as the elephant in the room it will be a creative and hopefully moving action to help people of who are white maybe to start to raise awareness of of how white privilege plays out and how racism is is connected to so many of the issues that we care about to face up to white privilege and also that racism is still still a problem and also the face of what we can do as individuals  internally and externally to deal with the situation it kind of comes out of the sanders moment right which you have just over a week ago that's right at that very same park was like are exactly what a coincidence that we didn't plan to pick so that's interesting that there is discussion now focused on that maybe you obviously were you weren't i was like nor was i at that time but it is an issue that's been getting a lot of attention so wonder if you wanted to share any thoughts on that well congratulations the protesters are getting so much attention i mean i guess that there's a lot of criticism of course stepping in front of the the spotlight as somebody else has created but that is a very  honored tactic for activists to step in and stand up in front of the spotlight and i think it was courageous that they would do that in front of a bernie sanders group of people who would be obviously offended that sanders was  interrupted so that was a pretty risky and brave thing to do they did you allow discussion going on and sanders has consistently improved his rhetoric as he's been protested from net roots to the seattle he's gotten better and better on those issues he's made them a higher priority before he went to portland he had big crowds important before that he met with black clothes matter organizers in portland and they closed you know meaning type situation to listen to their views how he can represent their views better  you know he has a long record of civil rights and so he might be a good spokesperson and there's been mixed reaction and i you know i think some of the white supporters of sanders need to step back a little bit and reevaluate their situation their position on it and start to think about why those issues were being raised and why they had to be raised in that kind of moment because and not get the attention they want they can't it's hard when you know when you are a still a pretty much of min perspective not many black men are but minority population people don't we still have enough people who recognize the need to deal with race something that we have a black president over but still are very serious problems of racism in this country and a lot of people don't want to face that so they had to get up there and get their statement out it's a risky approach they took and you know generally when you're doing a protest you know the idea is to build your movement you want to you not while you're sanders is your target you want him to react you also are talking to the public you want the public to you know come to you not be repelled by you so it was a risky tactic they seemed i think there are people who are thinking about their reaction and reconsidering it and so they seem to be having a pretty positive effect i think that you know talking about the risk i mean you so you basically are putting racism right in the face of i'm assuming that it was an oh you know majority white population that was that this event and so that's a difficult thing for people to confront and then you're also criticizing you know there were appeared presidential candidates so i'm sure that this was a hard thing for people some people in the audience to kind of accept and understand and there was a lot of criticism of that as a as a tactic but it was you know a very effective tactic we saw widespread you know national coverage of this event and i remember you said this is a time honored tactic when we were doing a single payor fight back in two thousand and nine two thousand and ten during the health reform process and there was a blackout on the media for this and we were fighting really hard to get attention for it and we frequently had to go to where the cameras were rolling in order to get any coverage or or get our message out at all and so i think about you know when i was thinking about this afterwards as a white mother in this country and someone who's who's also trying to learn about how white privilege plays out in my daily life and how i contribute to it and and you know understand more deeply our rates of racism works in this country i think about the the other mothers mothers of color and the fact that you know we've already had hundreds of black men and women in this country this year be killed by police and i remember back when the iraq war started and we were counting the numbers of soldiers that died and we were holding you know major vigils when the thousands soldier was killed or the two thousand soldier was killed and i'm not seeing that kind of reaction to this own war that's literally happening right in front of our eyes in our own country and and so i can understand kind of the necessity of having to do what you need to do to raise awareness for this real crisis that's happening in front of our eyes so hats off to them for their bravery and i hope it does continue to evolve discussion among people give me one more p senator's supporters i mean i think it's really important to hold presidential candidates accountable on issue and on issues that where they are not as strong as they should be and the sanders was pretty quiet on black clothes matter before he was protested so i can talk we certainly support them sitting up and urging him to speak to their issue this is an issue campaign primary set up by their her party is designed to prevent him from winning it's got several  mechanisms in it to prevent any kind of insurgent from winning and you know the superdelegates are twenty percent the debates had to bates in two thousand and eight there are twenty eight this year there are six and so they are preventing free media attention for the deficit of superdelegates so he's not going to win and so it's an issue campaign and so i think people who are concerned about where he's weak need to push him and i would like to see more protests i like the immigrant groups protesting i mean gratian i'd like to see antiwar groups protesting on on war  like the palestinian rights groups you know pushing them on on israel and zionism he's weak in those areas and if anyone you know i'm sure a lot of democrats who support obama recognize that remaining silent when obama was running and when he was president was a mistake obama did a lot of things that were wrong and if there had been a movement pushing him that would have made him a better candidate and a better president and we're seeing so far sanders getting a better candidate because of black klezmer protests and i think they have to continue that's really deserves the protests that black lives merit for his record because his record is one of wresting tens of thousands of people especially young black people and holding there were no charges he arrested literally sixty thousand young black  people and held them overnight in jail with no charges no reason for the arrest no suspicion not even not even a reason not to my suspicion or probable cause not a reason they're just on the street doing normal you know things you round them up arrest them hold them over night and the next morning they were released without any charges and signing a waiver saying way way my right to sue for false arrest luckily the n w c p and a c l u sued and the city agreed to an eight hundred fifty thousand dollars settlement promising to do it again but the kind of policing the probable cause list policing of the african american community and the harassment of young young black people is what caused the freddy ray death it's that police culture  the source of it and so that he deserves to be protested and i don't think anyone should support o'malley for president if he'll do that with the baltimore police force what we do as commander in chief he can't be trusted and of course republicans are all terrible but they're relevant because blacks don't vote for them so you can protest them but it's not going to make much impact because they'll turn around the candidate will turn around and you know go after black lesmond get support from white to white voters i'm not sure that's an effective tactic there by the democratic side i think hillary jet engine web two you know he was big on the confederate resistance last night about this issue between people commenting on some articles and an african american woman you know said you know i was going to support that is what the reaction of his supporters really turns me off so i think they both rethink their approach but sander so far i think is reacting i worked in the drug war for years and shout out to my friends at him fast by the way i wish i was able to join them i used to speak of that before marijuana is legal used to speak of that event's a great event the volunteers who organize a do a fantastic job it's amazing it's the three day thing go down and join and today i hope people can do that but so he's put out a good plan he's hired african american people including including a spokesperson who comes from the african american rights movement so i think that's he's listening is me having private meetings he's listening he's doing the right thing and i think he deserves credit for that hope that a relationship can build between blacklegs manner centers and he'll be a stronger candidate as is long as his people support start to back up a little bit and recognize he needs some improvement this area yeah you reminded me of the it was very powerful when people were keeping track of those who were being killed in the iraq war and i can remember one of them moving things was actually reading names at events in fact that was such a popular a powerful thing that even like the lehrer news hour incorporated that the end of their show they would list the names of those who had been ill americans who had been killed in the war and yet there's none of that and movement politics you see electoral politics as sucking the energy out of movement politics well that definitely traditionally has sucked the energy out of movement politics because people get onto this kind of every two year cycle and they and they get distracted from the issues that they're working on and start to focus on races as if you know all we need to do is elect the right person and then things will be solved and so traditionally we have actually very put very little time and resources into electoral politics and actually told our activists you know if you have to think about where you're going to put your energy then movement building right now is the most important thing to be doing but at some point we have to start bridging that and and find a way to have the movement's platform and issues inserted into the political sphere into the electoral sphere and so it's really exciting to see the way that seamus i want here in seattle has really been a model of how you bridge movement work and electoral work and really use it to have to as a tool to create effective change and i remember that being a big question for a lot of people who supported her or were considering supporting her whether that focus on  in seattle that stands for a lot of different issues you have good protests on variety of topics thank you shall know protestors that was a great one and then you have an independent political arm that represents and is answerable to the movement and that's what some want is doing she's not part of democratic party she's independent inquiry she's building independent alternative and answers of the movement we don't have that right now in the national level they've done a great job of shutting out third parties the media does absolutely terrible job stein doesn't exist even though if you put out jule styne positions they better than bernie sanders and so people heard about it and saw what she was doing and she's going to she's going to movement events all the time to try to you know show that she's representing the movement listing the movement part of the movement and people so they probably you supporting are much higher level but because the media doesn't cover it you know it doesn't happen so we really have in the united states most levels of government so wants an exception kind of mirage democracy with with rigged elections were forced to vote for two corporate candidates not will be the same this time in the presidential race will have to corporatism insane republican looking at their choices right now they're not very good and then on the democratic side you interests and follow the center's advice and vote for hillary i think there's a really important concept for people to understand and they are a lot of people do understand this and the way that we kind of look at the political situation in the country right now in addition to the fact that it's democracy is you know the underlying problem reason why our government is not functioning for the majority of people is because it's a plea talk or see it's ruled by the wealthy it's controlled by by wealth and by large corporations who are literally writing our laws and so you have these two parties the republican and democratic parties which are both very much corporate parties and the democratic party has moved in that direction now for a number of years to be very much a  true but then this whole new democrats and you know third way democrats and all that that are really just very kind of pro corporate and aligned with wall street and so you can't change the problem within the parties that are part of that problem and so to really start to have that voice of the movement we need to build to build an electoral alternative that political alternative that's independent of them and that is more solid on the issues and that's why i think it's really fundamental that that we support candidates like joel stein like schama so want and it was disappointing that bernie sanders decided to run after having a life long career of running outside of the democratic party choosing to go into that party at this time when his stature his notoriety his credibility would have lent a lot to building that third all political alternative it would have made it more difficult for him to win but he's not going to as kevin said he's for many reasons he won't get through the the primary season if he had run as an independent he would have run all the way till november and could have really pushed for inclusion and debates and built up that strong base of the put behind him so we're sad that he didn't do that but if it were not that we obviously individually don't support him because of that i mean that decision to me  recognize that shows that he failed to recognize the real problem this country the real problem this country has a corporate do all plead creating a poor talk receive and he's in the hansing one of those arms of the corporate the democratic party a wall street funded party big business party involved in many wars supporting israel doing a lot of things wrong and he's supporting that party by running you know he calls for a revolution against the billionaires but he's being fought using the billionaire party and so it's just rhetoric i mean the  right on some of many domestic issues but everybody knows those solutions is not a surprise he's right the public supports those by two thirds but those two there is not going to what they want because we live in a rigged democracy and so by going in the democratic party saying he's go support whoever gets the nomination urged going to urges the followers of support was a democrat democratic nominee shows to me he doesn't get it the fundamental power structure is the problem and he's not challenging it he's keeping people in democratic party when they should be fleeing it you know and that's the that's the fundamental flaw of the standards campaign and why we can't support him so why this point aren't third parties like the green party doing better than they are i mean we've been years ago and nothing has changed it's you know it is it's interesting i mean i'm sure your listeners are aware of all the barriers to third parties in this country and the lack of media attention being excluded from the debates you know difficult to get to get resources running as a third party candidate never really matched the kind of money that democrats and republicans get from their kind of political machine so it's a struggle i think in terms of just campaign just looking at the difference between two thousand and twelve and her run now she is ahead of the game she's she's more organized she's been continuing to build her base throughout the four years between these elections are three years and she's getting more media attention and i see many positive signs that her campaign is growing but i think you know in terms of recent history there was a real fundamental mistake that the progressive movement made in two thousand and four when when and you could probably speak to this better when ralph nader won and i don't know why but when he ran in two thousand and there was the perception that he was the one that threw that election to bush right and you look at the facts and that's not actually true but you know people were so mad at him and you're a spoiler and it's because of you that we got bush and so it showed that he actually had power you know if he did in fact spoil that election then he had power to affect the electoral outcome and that's that instead of embracing that power so many people then ran away from it that choice but then i say you know i spoke with him first when it was illegal to smoke pot so you know i tend to go toward you know where the where the injustice is but you know that was a fundamental flaw if you look at the history the largest slave plant the slave owners plantation owners they were the biggest lawyers and businesspeople they were the oligarchs and they wrote a constitution that focuses on property rights to protect their property i e their slaves and and human rights was secondary and so we have that as our foundation of the country which really is a flawed beginning and i know the constitution is revered and blah blah blah but i think we have to be honest about it it's a property owner slave owner constitution and so it needs a lot of work still and it's been gradually make it work you know they've they created a concert where six percent of the population voted now we have almost universal access for all that we could do a lot better on details like allowing  universal registration as soon as you're eighteen you should be allowed to vote you've got to go through a registration process even so there's lots to improve but throughout that time period movements have made changes and they've done it not by winning presidential elections they've often had presidential candidates will usually last and if you look at women's rights women voting rights women had to create a third party to challenge primarily the democrats that was their target and convince them to support women's rights and they did that intellectual arena with a political party as well as with a movement separate from that you saw it with union rights you saw at the eight hour workday ending child labor the whole new deal comes out of the socialist and progressive political campaigns and continue to make pressure on f d r because there were always the threats of socialist and progressive is running against him as a third party that is a critical power we have we don't have to win to create to win our issue you know to win the election to win our issues i think people misunderstand it going to this horse race mentality of the media puts forward who's winning in the polls blah blah blah it's really what issues are going to vance how we can change things and we can change things by saying what we believe in you're not going to change things by voting for what you don't us voters and a misunderstanding of history the movement now the other side the to do it corporate developers recognize this so they've created a series of barriers when i was nader's spokesperson who we were we were doing ballot access up in the pennsylvania his bet personal bank account trying to get fifty thousand dollars out of him in fines for soaks false false falsely charged you know ballot access fraud which didn't hat which obvious about it because they're going after you know reducing the rights of african americans and elderly to vote with all these registration procedures including registration lists all that stuff but the democrats don't want to change the voting population either they don't want the poor and working class voting they want what they got they want they want the people and they were going to vote for them if you had a wide open election you get a jesse ventura i mean and one reason why jesse ventura one was they had lots of debates during that campaign and they had same day registration you could register the day you voted so as the debates progressed people got excited and got excited they really got interested finally want a miser vote for him they could register that day and vote that's not allowed in most of the countries that we have all sorts of obstacles to voters all sorts of obstacles the candidates and the reason we do that because  people who have the power want to keep it that way they want to plutocracy they don't want the people in charge well one of the movements that is also doing well energy wise there's actually  natural gas is the industry term for propaganda purposes it sounds so good you want some organic coal fight in maryland it's the first fact a gas export terminal to be built on the east coast and in addition to that being a problem because we have the marcellus and utica shale being fact and there's a lot of potential there there's a lot of carbon that they can get out of the ground there this export terminal is different because it's the first time in the world that they've put one literally in a residential community so you have this huge where they're actually building it right now and then things have a tendency to explode right where they're building it is literally across the street from homes and next to the refinery area is where the recreation fields are for this community so within the kind of two mile blast zone of this  it's a it's a little faction plant a power plant to run the liquefaction plant and then export terminal there are more than two thousand homes more than eight thousand people who are living there and it's on a peninsula so about three hundred of the homes would have to drive towards the plant in order to get off the peninsula if there was a catastrophic event and even if there's not a catastrophic event they going to they're going to admit more than twenty tons of pollutants a year including cancer causing chemicals and and  neurochemicals and things like that and they bought emissions offset credits so that allowed them to pollute more in that community so they could do some wind you know power somewhere else on the mountains where nobody lives so pollution equivalent to about four hundred thousand year yeah right in that community so there's a lot of and they lied about the population to get the get the permit right there they they were fraudulent on their permit to the federal energy regulatory commission when that was pointed out to the what's called the firk they denied describe right so basically eight miles south of the plant as is solomon's and they said there's two thousand people living there and then sixteen miles north of the plant is prince frederick and they said there's two thousand living there and they said oh there's only four thousand people in this area and they left out the forty four thousand people living in between you know eight thousand in that kind of immediate blast zone and just three miles away from the plant is a nuclear power plant so you know causing another level you know and it's just happens to be sitting you know on the edge of washington d c near a major naval base so i don't know somebody might want to target that area with the four hundred thousand gallon tank of propane sitting right there you know but so for so many reasons it's wrong that this is happening and there's so much corruption throughout the county as well the way the dominion energy has bought off the county council the sheriff's office the police the fire department so we are we're fighting that and they're behind schedule that's good news for us the prices of gas are falling that's good news and we're looking at every avenue that we have to to fight this but that's a very strong vibrant part of the movement is the is the carbon anti carbon movement you know keep the carbon in the ground movement stop the oil train stop the pipeline stop look at occasion plants stop the export you know arctic drilling you know extraction needs to stop we're part of a group called beyond extreme energy that's focused on the first the federal energy regulatory commission which is a commission approves all the interstate infrastructure for oil and gas and it's interesting an agency in that it receives no tax dollars all of its funding comes from the oil and gas industry and so guess what they tend to rubber stamp every pipeline every export terminal that they can  and but there's public opposition across the country on this it's really aggressive it's a lot of it's very community based people who see their communities being destroyed by oil and gas infrastructure are standing up and saying no and the industries noticing it it's a very they're seeing in the northwest as one of the strongest areas by the way they're not just out here you doing we are going up on popular resistance today that focus on the northwest and how it has stopped a large number of  pipeline infrastructure activities and of course the shell no protests became world wide especially after portland but also in seattle could became worldwide known as a great action so there's awareness and there's activity and i think in the end they're go but it's a big fight you know fighting against you know the biggest energy interest there are and they're also they all recognize the future they're not these people not fools they know that their time is limited and that they have to work fast to get infrastructure in get as much as they can make as much money as they can before they're stopped because they know they're going to be stopped in the end they're going to lose the question is when and how quickly we can do it and so that's what the fight is yeah again  movement that is bringing a lot of people that hadn't previously been involved exactly like that's what's so interesting about it i can cope point you know it's a conservative republican military community they don't do protests and so it's and then when w know and we see then texas and you know rural texas areas we see in pennsylvania and farming republican voting areas people standing up against perec and so yeah it's very interesting and if you know that and we see that it's not just you know you also get a lot of the leadership from the indigenous people the i don't know more movement is doing fantastic work and it's at its peak level compared to any time in any recent history back to the sixty's and you know the peltier i mean so it's been a while for indigenous people indigenous had to be the indigenous way throughout our history because it was an ethnic cleansing you know right from george washington read his orders about how to deal with indian tribes and you call him a war criminal literally i mean he talked about killing seniors killing women and slaving as many as possible destroying their homes destroying their food and he was that's were criminal stuff but you were going to say the state of the movement as you said this is you know that's what's exciting about now and doesn't get the attention it deserves but we talk about the black lives matter we talked about the extreme extraction but there are fifteen fronts of struggle look at the fifteen dollar wage the whole labor issue no other peak activity we're having victories and you see them in seattle as well we're seeing on housing and tenants rights are starting to stand up we're seeing it and the whole banking and big finance battles that are happening we're seeing on the trade agreements largest coalitions ever against corporate trade so movements are growing and getting bigger and more vibrant and they don't cover the media as we have popular resistance that's our jobs to cover if you want to it's going to movement get our daily summary because you'll just every morning wake up and say thank goodness people do it something because there's a vibrant movement out there and even more attention is more people getting involved last time you were in the studios we talked about the c p p and there's been developments with that one of you can touch on the shore so the last time that we were here in april we were really deeply involved in fighting what's called fast track it's legislation that congress passed or at that point was and process of passing to give the president the authority to sign agreements like these international treaties that are being negotiated the t p p and then there's also the transatlantic trade investment partnership and trade and services agreement that are in the works  so we were fighting to stop congress from giving him that ability because it really turns into a process which has been used before for nafta and the world trade organization a rushing these agreements through congress with very little review and no amendments just an up or down  vote so we were able to delay congress from giving the president fast track for really they tried over a number of years and this movement of movements stopped that but as it became really critical that that actually the negotiations around the trans pacific partnership had stalled and tell he was given fast track it was really interesting to watch the whole process of how president obama and the leadership in the house and senate work together to just get exactly the number of votes that they needed in the house and senate to pass this so so that passed and it was a very choreographed corruption yeah definitely you know that you needed sixty votes in the senate your two senators both deserve to be thrown out of office for their votes and they are o was there to make sure that your two senators of the wrong think so that was a really sad and i really do think they should both rove thrown out of office so i hope that people organize a do that you know them a serious challenge both in the primary and in the general election they should be challenged by a third party twisted enough arms to get the exact whereabouts they needed and that was where it ended margaret said that t v peace talks have stalled because of lack of fast track now we're seeing that he has fast track and they're still stalled which is good news which is good news and the reason they're stalled years patent for biologic biologic based pharmaceuticals austria saying the most we can do is five and then once they can do is five because politically they can't get with any more they would do more for the pharmaceutical friends but because that the reality of the politics of us are or they can't so that's a big gap you're seeing that kind of thing with darian cather you're seeing also in every country there are there are issues where their government can't go as far as they need to go to make an agree with the united states and the sad thing by the way there look we have several leaks that show the united states compared the other countries every leak about where the country's stand on issues shows the u s is the most corporate they are pushing the most corporate agenda of the most aggressively corporate up even from countries that have strong corporate power like australia new zealand japan a lot of corp aaron those countries where they don't go anywhere near where the u s wants them to go that's what's really making it very hard for this agreement to come forward is the the greed of the u s corporations is so intense that they will they really want to roll they're not going to go there they don't want to negotiate for less than they can get but just as we saw in the fast track fight it was really interesting how the congress had to maneuver because initially in the house they lost the vote and and it should have been a dead dead issue at the national one right but then what they did was they took the weekend to really you know figure this out for nagel something they came back with invented a whole nother procedure so they could pass it through the house and  finalize it and so just as that happened we're seeing around the trans pacific partnership all this for nagel ing about how they can kind of get around what's going on and figure out how to pass the trans pacific partnership so even though that there's a lot of struggling in the negotiations are a lot of countries who are rising up in those relationships are very fragile and major economies may drop out that would be a wonderful we haven't won this fight yet and we have to continue to organize and so it was really exciting to us after the fast track fight to see the people that we've been working with around the country not at all dejected by it they were very much like well this is what we need to do now is you know really clear we saw escalate that what we were doing wasn't enough and so we've developed an escalation plan we just finalized a our call to action and we're really inviting people who want to get involved come to flush the tepee dot org and you can get information you can join our national calls are national organizing and we're going to step things up and issues around racism in police violence they were able you know put out black labs marries a really key phrase for people to get that there still is racism occupy was able to put on the agenda you know the unfair economy the disparity of wealth an income the corruption economy by big business and wall street and so they reframe the agenda and that's what that's a victory we have an opportunity with the t p fight to focus on two really key issues one issue is democracy versus corporatocracy this is really a corporate power grab and so we can really emphasize that issue create a culture moment on that the other issue is public good versus privatization and commodification that is like the fight that gets those two points or one of those approved points across let us know we were looking for a good marketing idea from the people of seattle the second request is to create a cultural moment like the battle seattle in one thousand nine hundred nine that stopped the w t on its tracks we need to do some like that in d c in the next you know four or five months any thoughts from people involved in the how that was structured how that developed doesn't have to be exactly the you know it was and this is a whole nother generation now sixteen years later so it's not the same model but the goal is a cultural moment like nine hundred ninety nine in seattle like occupy like black lives matter with a t p p has a chance to really face up to this issue of commodification of everything against the public good and so that's a real big issue one of the reasons that we're fighting the trans pacific partnership is that if there's an issue that a person cares about this country like having safe food clean water clean air health care in the future jobs and living wages in the future energy extraction if the trans pacific partnership and these other agreements go through it will really set back our work for decades and make it almost impossible to reverse this privatization that that they're really going to be pushing so this is a fundamental issue for us and and it's something that we can win and we can't create  political culture that makes it impossible for the t p to go through but it just takes us rising up together to do that given you are on the chelsea manning support network and there's been recent developments with chelsea manning situation to talk yeah it's crazy why i'm going to i've been on a steering committee for a chelsea manning for four years or something now and you know her case is basically one of whistleblower telling the truth about that as well and jim now just last recently last couple weeks they've been threatening her with solitary confinement indefinite solitary confinement over publications that she's received you know a magazine with caitlin general on allowed chelsea to go to the law library to appear for that and so she's been cut out of the law library and so they're really taking this nonsense seriously you know maybe just another excuse to harass someone who is a war you know a whistleblower hero against war but they are taking it seriously and makes a difference and people stand up and show the supporter it makes a difference and so i really urge people to go to the chelsea manning support network website popular resistance and  and do what you can to support or from outside the prison walls it's a disgrace the way this country is treating her she should not be in jail she should you know just like so many other whistleblowers ed snowden and others you know they deserve to be actually heroes not threatened with massive long term incarceration or involved in long term incarceration and threatened with a solitary confinement sauteeing if i was one of those things in the united states that's you know a true embarrassment we have eighty ninety thousand people in solitary confinement every day in this country there are more people saw turning to find the most countries have in prison and letting children you know including children that's right for their own good right as they say  yeah but because our prisons are lousy but it's a it's a real disgrace and people describe people who understands all taken from the researched it and you know written about it describe it as torture and some people recover from it and there are there  black panthers in the sixty's who are still in solitary confinement has merit takes up the political prisoners who because there's a lot of problems in that the way they treated black political activists in the past and people who stand up for them as well so shall see is exemplifies some of the worst things about this country in the way he was a blowers trans people and the way we treat people in prison so it's a really important issue on a lot of fr right well we were discussing earlier about the difference between a lector of politics and movement politics and margaret you are just found out a couple days ago it's a secret it's nice to be running for the senate is that that i'm running for u s senate in maryland that's right barbara mikulski is a retiring after a long career so it's an open seat and it's interesting because actually i think my run has roots in seattle when i was here in april  want and you know spent a few days inside really what was going on here through her position on the city council and how that had moved issues i would you know i was really inspired by that and i was literally here in seattle when i got the text from someone in maryland saying would you consider running for barbara mikulski senate seat as seeking the green nomination in maryland and i had been asked before to run and i always said no i mean because i felt like most of my time and energy needed to be put into movement building and this time i thought oh well maybe it's the right time to do this i spent a few months thinking about it talking to others and we officially filed the end of june and will be launching the campaign in mid movie about net neutrality called kill switch so very excited to that the seattle community is is willing to do this and i'm excited about this kind of next phase and  how we can use electoral tools to augment the movement to raise issues and if i win as a tool for real change it's an uphill battle no doubt it's a rigged election system margaret knows she's getting into she's joining a poker game where they've got aces up their sleeves and she's going to really want to really effective campaign and you know margaret is someone who comes out movement for sure and has a if you look at the course will be traveling around the state i mean we are we are already media greg literally in planning out our strategy and getting organized people are volunteering i have a campaign manager and a treasure and just about have office space and so it's coming together the main thing is you know i see this as a necessity in terms of building that independent political arm that we talked about earlier in the show and so how are we going to build that arm we need to really run serious campaigns and that's what i plan to do i'm taking this seriously i need to raise serious money and i'm going to do what i can to to raise that money i'll be putting you know hundred ten percent into this into this campaign and no matter what i think that we're going to win because i think we're going to we're going to build this party  going to inspire more people to run we're going to raise issues that need to be raised we're going to educate people about things that they don't know about and i see this as you know this is a marathon that we're in and this is the next stage in kind of the work that we're doing to move us it is flowers for senate dot org and we do have while the web site is a show because we need to raise these funds to get to really get going and even to get a decent website we have a bank account and we have a donate button so  people are interested in donating to that you know it's flowers for senate org org lauer's for senate org and you know we've spent a lot of time in the house and senate working in a variety of ways both meeting with members of congress and their staff educating them organizing briefings i've testified before congress we've also been arrested in congress protesting when they're going the wrong way in exposing what's going on and so i really look forward to an opportunity to if i win have a different role in there and to be able to you know it's such a charade in there and there's so much that needs to be said that isn't said because it's so scripted and so i really want to get in there and shake things up and bring in the voices of people that are being excluded to make it real for the other members of congress in there to understand what it is that they're doing and so and to running this campaign we're putting together advisory panels and we're going to start creating a plan if i win what are the things that i can do within my power as a senate outside of passing legislation because that's hard and of course will put introduced legislation but there are a lot of other things that we can do creating task forces trying to hold people accountable to create change in this country so i am excited about learning how to use this as a tool for real dominion against the dominion cove point facility right right and you know if i and if we continue to take action and that's not going to stop as well when necessary and you know if i run for a few weeks down to westlake park at eleven or during lunch time the website for the fight that we're doing in southern maryland with the fact gas refineries we are cove point dot org is indigo campaign right now that's right we actually only have a few months left of funds for that so