everybody's got a right to live frederick douglass her patrick and welcome once again to the radical imagination i'm your host jim brett ose i'm a sociologist who's taught to john jay college of criminal justice and you s university here in new york a strong case can be made that the united states is in the midst of a storage shift to independent politics in the past fifteen years tens of millions of americans have left the democratic and republican parties every have become independent nearly two thirds of americans are now calling for a major new party and just as many are saying they won't vote in the midterm elections because the establishment parties are so corrupt in a country that is overwhelmingly progressive on the issues low turnout in the absence of a major party for working people is empowering donald trump and the far right how can the left rise to meet the challenge build in the pen a political power and give working people the major new part that they are calling for the answers to these questions could well determine the success of the most important and inclusive progressive movement of our time we're thrilled to have a powerful voice and vision for an independent progressive party on the radical imagination today he's the independent congressional candidate in florida's twenty third district contesting rabb representative debbie he's been indorsed by the movement for a people's party he recently won a lawsuit against a broward county supervisor of elections for the illegal destruction of the balance in his two thousand and sixteen race for the same seat after the validity of the results came into question appointed by senator bernie sanders to serve on an advisory committee on federal reserve reform in two thousand and eleven he currently teaches law and public finance nova southeastern university college of law in davie florida and welcome to him because over to the rock a magic agent from florida right right thank you thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for considering the struggle for independence and left politics which is desperately needed and tell us what you've been doing down in florida as you that goes all the way back to our last campaign in two thousand and sixteen we ran against wants a close democratic primary there were some folks who were urging me to run as an independent then and perhaps i should've but this is a very heavily gerrymandered districts it was clear whoever won the primary was going to sail on to victory against a republican but it's very challenging to crow a close primary in this day and age it's very difficult to challenge an incumbent i should  say but we ran a great campaign and we raised a lot of money in small donations from all over the country and all over the state in our district and we put the money back into the field we have four field offices couple of hundred folks who are not going on doors every day and at the height of the campaign we were knocking on over ten thousand doors week so we had some very impressed field numbers and we were quite surprised that we didn't win so i put in a public records request and as you sort of  alluded to we had to file a lawsuit while the lawsuit was pending the broward supervisor of elections destroyed all the paper ballots i've been calling for her to be replaced suspended and replaced and also for criminal investigations and i reached out to all the democratic party leaders in my district in the county and around the state to urge them to call for an investigation as well and none would even response me this is a very  closed and powerful and corrupt political machine here in south florida of course dominated by none other than debbie wasserman schultz and when we got that kind of a response to this kind of blatant law breaking by the supervisor of elections  the republicans have only twenty five percent of the voter registration in this district non party affiliation independents make up about thirty five percent right behind democrats were forty percent so with those kinds of demographics it's hard to imagine a republican even taking second place in a three way race so there are folks of course the democratic establishment folks who are already calling me a spoiler and bringing up the ghost of ralph nader from the two thousand election and of course they're ignoring a couple of realities first this is a very heavily democratic and independent district and secondly you know so many of the voters now are  not party affiliation a lot has changed since nader ran in two thousand back then i think the country was pretty evenly split something like forty eight percent to forty eight percent between democrats and republicans and now you take a look at voter registration and i think among new voters something like seventy percent of young voters are not party affiliation and overall in the higher entire electorate it's about forty five percent now almost as much as the two parties combined so we reject the notion that we're playing spoiler at all we're in this to win i think democrats to bring up that that canard are really worried that they're true that they are not going to win a three way race and when they want to talk about spoiler she has boiled american democracy not just for the democratic party but for this country i think this is such a great point to make a very important point you just made about the nader effect into bogus issue at this point extent i just want to read a brief page or so from nick brand who is the organizer for poor people for a movement for people's party about the harsh political reality that you've alluded to he's referring to the june fifth primaries progressive democrats were suppressed and cheated across the board in the june fifth primaries nearly all of the progressive candidates were defeated the democratic party  establishment you're talking about doesn't even prepare and pretend to abide by its impartiality rules anymore it openly floods races and corporate money feeds opposition research to the media forces progressives to spend three quarters of their fundraising on consultants and ads changes the rules required to get party support knocks progressive's off the ballot denies access a crucial voter data data endorsers establishment democrats and even give hundreds of thousands of dollars to republican candidates finally adding insult to injury the democratic party will now demand that progressives who had just cheated endorse their corporate opponents and host a unity rally with them so in the face of that sort of onslaught what what is your reaction to em well i couldn't agree more with nick's analysis and what i find interesting is it's not so much that progressives are losing these elections in fair elections these just are not even fair elections right to the point where you see mass purging of voters mass voter suppression in our race in two thousand and sixteen again we had serious doubts and there were folks who were coming to me who had done demographic analyses the results they thought that the vote may have been flip through either hacking or manipulation of the computer software and our internal field numbers showed us as actually winning the rates so now with the ballots destroyed it certainly has stolen election and i'm not sure if we'll ever know sort of a criminal investigation it's gotten to the point where it is so easy for outside sources or insight sources to hack into our voting systems to manipulate the software this is why all over europe every major so moch prosy has been the electronic voting machine and the only very transparent really transparent and verifiable way to conduct elections is through paper ballots that are counted in public and that's the only way and we're so far from it so when we say we hear that dennis kucinich lost his race for ohio governor by two to one i must say my reaction now is really do we know that for sure and the thing is after an election results announced there's so much pressure on the losing candidate to just fold up not to challenge the results i didn't even formally challenge it i put in a public records request to inspect the ballots i came under tremendous pressure to even do that and the pressure was mostly from democrats and what i guess you could call the progressive establishment within the beltway in washington d c so i did what was very unusual which was just to say look i want to look underneath the but i want to take a look at the ballots maybe a dozen precincts and see if they add up and if they do then you know i'll be satisfied we verify right to vote we can put it to r and we couldn't even do that to destroy the ballots so i think progress is all over the country are really with their backs up against the walk in june fifth was a terrible day for progress in california but we know that one hundred eighteen thousand votes voters in l a were disenfranchised essentially showing up to go to being told they were registered given provisional ballots that perhaps would never be counted past experience is correct so you know there are two questions ken progressive when in this environment and two can they win and make sure the race is haven't been stolen away from them well it seems that the for after the first one of the definitely can win which makes that point morally politically economically need we do have the majority on our side so he gets here second point these these elections are being stolen aren't they i believe  they very well might be and i say that because the folks who run the elections have the means the motive and the opportunity to steal these elections it has become so incredibly easy to manipulate the software of any of these voting machines to slip a vote and it's that easy to do what's preventing them from doing their their ethics their moral code i don't believe that for a moment these are corporate interests that  want their own results they don't want progress that's getting in it any less and i think when we sweep these kinds of election fords under the rug and say nothing about what happened in two thousand and sixteen whether it's my primary or bernie sanders rates  others we are essentially serving to normalize election rigging the future absolutely actually let me let me quote from nick one more time here a paragraph about again some of the effort r being attempted to crush progressive candidates and more than a hundred years of efforts to reform the democratic party show that blocks the large majority of progressive candidates in the primaries the few that make it through much show deference to corporate party leaders to receive desired committee sat assignments and party support for legislation and campaign they must moderate their critique of the party support conservative democrats and swing districts to turn legislative chambers blue they must trade favors and votes would need a little committee heads to get the legislation heard they must secure the blessings of the establishment to avoid well funded primary challenges and keep their jobs must hold the party line to move to progressives are going in there thinking they're going to try to have a long twenty or thirty year career and those are the time horizons and we've got to you know play ball with nancy pelosi and chuck schumer we've got to wait our turn and up the ladder we've got engage in the horse trading trade away our principles our values our programs our agenda all in the interests of getting along i don't think anything's going to change i think progressives have to get elected around this country have to work very hard to see corporate leadership in both the house and senate if there's enough of a vote bloc perhaps they can play to their role in that but i don't believe the day of incremental change i think that days beyond this at this point i think are just too many people in this country the system has failed has failed us and you know it's certainly a daunting task not just to win an election against an establishment  machine but then to go to washington and how are we going to operate are we going to represent our constituents when just about everybody else who's up there in the house and senate are pretty much dominated and controlled by huge corporate interests poor people's campaign in washington d c a short clip of me from democracy now talk a lot about him but let me tell you what the on labor and poverty and living wages and guaranteed incomes we believe we've got to shift the narrative of this country not all that we can do it is people got to put their lives and their and their bodies on the line and you have  campaign to change the narrative to shift the voting in this country mobilization and to be a power from among the poor so we aspire to dr king and others what we also know is this is not a commemoration movement to change the narrative tim i know that you admire reverend barber so much and i to your back there right tim you're able yes great wonderful corruption within the democratic establishment within both parties for that matter how do you respond to barbara's powerful moral political and economic message well there's an awful lot to respond to be covered an awful lot there you know when he talks about radical love you and i have had this conversation before and i certainly agree that this is needed we need to recognize our common humanity and that's what seems to be woods missing in the times we're living in right now i've also mentioned and you've heard me say this that i think what we do see is a different kind of radical and that's radical love for money and the super rich are rich bot but beyond anyone's wild imagination you know when you've got billionaires who have more money than they can spend if they live to a million lifetimes and still that's not enough they want more more more it truly is  pathological reminds me of what john maynard keynes wrote many years ago i think it was in an essay on the economic possibilities of our grandchildren in which he talked about this as something that was a pathological disorder a mental disease this absolute love of money over humanity so that resonates with me you know reverend barber also talks about this as a prophetic movement that we can't give up no matter how to moralize we get and i know how difficult it is to keep to keep writing on against all odds we spoke earlier about how difficult it is to make sure that these elections are not rigged a stolen away from us and we have to keep working on that but if the electoral route is being closed off to us because of outright corruption in the system we have to keep fighting we've got to do exactly what reverend barber's is doing himself which is to try to change the narrative you know if enough people in this country are continuing to engage each other sort of this civic dialogue outside of the mainstream media outside of electoral politics that is a prerequisite for change but then the final part is rather barbara talks about the necessity for a movement of mass nonviolent civil disobedience especially at a time when the electoral system is being closed off there aren't many other options left to us you know of course we have to turn away from violence as a means to change we have to embrace nonviolent civil disobedience and that requires waking up our our neighbors our fellow men and women and then that's  i couldn't agree with you more but but again your struggle is still at the selectorial level which i think is absolutely crucial because the levers of power need to be transform and when you're talking about that we can talk about in cultural terms and talk about a spiritual term intellectual terms but it does come to power legal power political power and you are in the electoral system you're striving to transform that so you've got that that incredible role to to to lead us through and again what about this idea of an massachusetts i worked hard as a volunteer on a number of democratic campaigns over the years so it took a lot for me to start giving up on the democratic party i feel that the muzzle is off that i can speak to a much wider audience if i were running at a democrat in the close august primary here the electorate in that primary is a very narrow electorate older super voters people who follow the democratic party line no matter what now we're in a november general election competing for all those others disaffected democrats  independents even republicans and libertarians and greens of course in a general election and that means the conversation discussion is a much wider freer conversation and very happy  that you know i think what happened to bernie sanders in two thousand and sixteen was a disgrace and a crime huge crime that has not been invested it's been swept under the rug you know right where you are in new york we know that the new york city board of elections it made it to purging over two hundred thousand american citizens from the voting rolls in the days prior to bernie's primary against hillary clinton and there's been no repertoire whatsoever nobody has lost their job there's no no criminal investigation no sanctions and again that normalizes this kind of fraud in the future what we're trying to do here in south florida debbie wasserman schultz's own district is to not sweep it under the rug we've made a we're trying to make a federal case out of this because it is violations of federal law with the supervisor of elections and we've put an awful lot of our own and money and resources into this lawsuit and some people have said just let it go should be concentrating all on medicare for all the jobs for all of the basic income in the hope progressive agenda well you know first of all we are concentrating on those issues but at the same time those issues me nothing if we cannot break through and win elections and make sure there are installment so you know that's why i think election integrity in election justice has got to be among the central focuses of any progressive campaign right now i think we put enough attention on the supervisor of elections now that it will be that much more difficult for them to steal the selection from us come november and we're going to keep putting that pressure on i have said i said today that i qualified to be on the ballot i said it i was quoted in the papers and  haven't backed down that we're going to be prepared to sue to bring another lawsuit to challenge the election result whether we lose by one vote or by tens of thousands of votes i just don't trust the selection system at all i don't think anyone should millions of people have lost faith and confidence in the integrity of the system and you see it by voter participation i just heard from john p one of the great election integrity activists in this country and he crunched the numbers over  agree with you more of the notion of fusion politics you're talking about the general election where the the narrative in the discussion is is broader than barber talks a lot about politics bringing people together from all backgrounds and speaking to them in a way that is very inclusive rather than the cutthroat sort of divide and conquer politics of both parties what do you think about that in terms of a political strategy to win power electorally the idea fusion politics that barbour is talking about i fervently believe in it and i believed in it last campaign last campaign when i ran as a democrat in the post primary we put a lot of resources into converting republicans independents to read registers democrats we got about five thousand people that was our estimate in our district who did register democrat or change their registration i should say from republican or independent democrat most i think most americans have many of the same concerns whether there's an r or d or an independent in front of their name and i think this year ten of the great depression for most folks almost all the income gains in the last ten years have gone to the top one tenth of one percent top one percent for most americans this is been a depression in jobs and income and say they it's been downward mobility the life expectancy of americans is actually stagnated started to decline for the first time in american history these are real issues that can we can speak across the board across the political spectrum and engage americans and gauge voters of all stripes i think this is fusion politics has got to be the way to go at this point when you've got the two parties you are probably both parties are of how this might play out with a particular action for example criminal justice or what we're seeing now at the border how do you reach out to people down there in south florida and make it resonate short well tell you  two years ago when i was on the ballot for the democratic primary on the same day on our ballot was medicinal marijuana and debbie wasserman schultz campaigned against medicinal marijuana for marijuana a gateway drug she takes money from big pharma from private prisons so you couldn't have had a bigger difference for the voters between her campaign and mine i was all in for the distal marijuana i think we should decriminalize it actually legalize it in whatever states where the voters decide to legalize it federal government should get out of the way from that of this experiment of basically freedom for american adults to choose and what happens more than seventy percent of the voters in the state of florida voted for medicinal marijuana and it cut across the board and you see this and you take a look at the entire progressive agenda whether it's solar energy comprehensive immigration reform that this no marijuana criminal justice reform ending the war on drugs and mass incarceration super majority of democrats and independents and even a majority of republican voters are all on board for this agenda and that even includes single payer national health insurance a majority of republican voters and a super majority of all the rest want to single payer system so i believe the american people are way out ahead of the politicians the political class the status min of both parties for progressive agenda and it makes sense if we really are in you know the throws your intent of what essentially is feeling like a depression for so many people of course they're going to be looking at the open minded to progressive illusions that speak to th absolutely absolutely how about issues of money how do you get the sort of money you need to run your campaign how do you get the message out there in the face of the corporate traditional media i know you and gary kno campaigns like mine every now and then we have a moment where even fox news wants me on last campaign m s n b c and c n n it was quite an interesting orse race for them to cover but now it seems like t blackout is is whining and we have to make sure that we keep getting our message out and then that's why shows like yours are so important so i need your viewers to consider going to our web site it's in can open dot com and making small donations i will take a penny from any corporate pacs or any kind of corporate interests and wasserman schultz has been swimming in that corporate money so it makes it very challenging the corporations the top one percent are doing better than excitement centered around the presidential sweepstakes so people were paying attention this race people are demoralized and they're giving up on politics completely all i can do is urge folks not to give up on our campaign we are not like a lot of other campaigns we are really fighting to make sure that you with budgets aren't stolen and that things aren't swept under the rug you know we've come under pressure all the time to try to curb our progressivism and we refused to do so so you know we are appealing across the board for grassroots donors i'll say that ever since i declared i was running as an independent our fundraising has picked up quite noticeably and we wanted to continue to do so i think as it gets closer to november it will continue to pick up and  what other assets do we have you know we took a look at the list of volunteers in our district from the last campaign and we're talking about literally thousands of folks who signed up and wanted to volunteer for us and at any given time a couple of hundred folks were knocking on doors in the florida heat so we've been going back through that list and calling up you know we have phone banking where we're mobilizing all of this volunteer energy you don't need big dollars to run a big ground game  when you've got the heart and soul of the american people on your side of people who are willing to volunteer their time and energy and that's what we're counting on a real people's movement people powered campaign to bring us over the finish line in  r where is bernie in all of this what could well i think bernie has come under tremendous pressure the last two years and i think it really reached a peak in the summer of two thousand and sixteen and in fact  relation to our own campaign at the democratic convention bernie was quoted as discussing the down ballot races that he would campaign for and he mentioned our race several times and actually ours was the only one mention and then at the end of the day i think he came under tremendous pressure this is what i've heard through the grapevine pressure from chuck schumer and others to stay away from our campaign and you know i don't know all the to face inside the beltway but he has not been able to campaign for not just me but for all of an awful lot of other progressive challengers spec very much what he has done he's woken up millions of people in this country really galvanized the movement i think this is movement that it's been around a lot longer than two thousand and sixteen you can trace it back to the one thousand nine hundred ninety s the world trade organization it's a corporate globalization movement and of course the occupy wall street movement of two thousand and eleven so i think bernie did a great job of mobilizing the movement and galvanizing them but we can't count on bernie sanders to to  do all the heavy lifting for us this is a people's movement and we have to appeal to the people directly to come and support it's how can we help you here connecting to reverend barber and  i think it's a natural fit to and i must say as a scholar as a law professor for years i focused an awful lot on martin luther king's agenda especially his agenda in the last couple of years of his life  and to see reverend barber resuscitating that agenda is just a beautiful thing it really is king was talking about it federal jobs carried king was talking about a basic income guarantee he was talking about a g i bill of rights for of the movement that he is leading and to see how he he might be willing to help us i would love for him to come to south florida not just to help my campaign but south florida is so in need of this kind of a an injection of a better g m vision that that reverend barber would bring well let's see what we can do i think he would love to meet you as well and there's going to be some opportunities next couple of months to see what we can do in terms of range by the way it looks of fort lauderdale and maybe half an hour north of miami our campaign headquarters is downtown maybe about two miles from where i live we've got beautiful beaches the last time we campaign dozens of folks came from around the country to our district we organizers from within the district so i would urge people from around the country come visit us come help us knock on doors and we're already waking folks up here in the district hollywood florida and the twenty third congressional district is a lot like an awful lot of districts around this country we see tremendous disparities in wealth and income between the super rich and the men folks who are struggling to make ends meet i know reverend barber has talked a lot about the fight fight that we support in our campaign i would say that i would love to see the fight for fifteen include a different kind of fifteen you know president obama in his final year i think  signed an executive order that said any corporation anyone who does business with the federal government has to pay a federal minimum wage and there's three to four trillion dollars of business the federal government is doing every year with some of the largest corporations in the country well i would like to see not just the commitment that those big companies that contract with the federal government pay fifty dollars an hour i'd like to see a commitment that their c e o s make only fifteen times what their rank and file workers make because right now those c e o s are making some estimates are five hundred six hundred times as much as the rank and file so we can work our butts off to try to get the minimum wage to creep up but if at the same time ninety four percent of all the eight and ten games are going to the top one percent in this country it means that rent and food prices and education prices and health care costs are all going up at a rate that means that that fifteen dollar minimum wage will be like  fading in the distance that even when we get there it doesn't solve the problem the problem is income inequality wealth and power disparity and one way to go about it is to make sure that these big corporations they start behaving themselves and paying their c e o s something that is much more in line with with what is jobs what is fair and what is right all over europe where you've got labor representatives sitting on corporate boards in germany and sweden and denmark other trees you don't see c e o s making five six hundred times their rank and file so i'd like to see the fight for fifteen be a fifteen dollar minimum livable wage and big corporations where the c e o s only make fifteen times as much as the rank and file workers makes a lot of sense tim we just have about a minute to go so again one more time let us know how our audience can reach you and also very convincing and i my wife join together and unite in building this this movement and a political party that can really take back power truly for the people so how do you go ahead well i hope you can come and campaign really and i hope reverend barber can as well made and this is a campaign that walks the walk and doesn't just talk the talk we won't take a penny of corporate money and we're fighting for elections and making sure that election don't get swept under the rug i think this is a bellwether election again i still believe the political revolution runs through the twenty third congressional district if we can take out debbie wassermann schultz in a general election through fusion campaign through an independent campaign i think it opens the door to all kinds of possibilities for third part s in the future i urge folks and double down on this this campaign come to our web site it's going over dot com throw a few dollars our way our average contribution is only twenty dollars to tribute whatever you can and come and work for us work with him you're absolutely right thank you so much we urge our audience again touch with you you've been terrific taker down thank you so very very much tim and thank you all for watching us this week to