know welcome to backstory with joan goldstein i have a credibly interesting show today with two people who are backing candidates for president are they backing republicans now i wouldn't say so are they backing the democrats maybe but i'm going to let you tell them tell you themselves so to my left and i right here excuse the left right to my ideas is crazy garcia who is with a new jersey working families alliance right and he's going to explain his position about his group because the maybe not everybody knows about it and next to him  michael mangles who is the secretary of the green party of new jersey and perhaps soon to be vice chair ok gentlemen why don't you explain what your sending out the right message on a lot of issues so interesting so and mike by jonah thanks for giving me an opportunity to come here so i represent the green party of new jersey and i'm currently the secretary and the green party of new jersey does not have a candidate yet there are actually five candidates running right now for the nomination but it looks like the most likely nominee of the party and the one who i'm personally backing is jill stein she was our candidate back in two thousand and twelve she's running on the same platform she ran then which is people and planet over profit and i think those are the massive pillars that we need looking forward as we as we face the climate crisis as we face an economic crisis and as we face you know the problems with the war economy that you know democrats and republicans have both been backing for years and i think that she meets all the pillars of the party which are ecology democracy what is it in your own history that brought you here shirley well i started off working as a labor organizer up in northern new jersey for our local local want to wait our deputies here to i spent a bit of time there and i did a lot of work with the immigrant low worker low wage worker community in northern new jersey and i had found that it was quite difficult to organize those workers along traditional union campaigns so i did a lot of work trying to figure out how to do that and i got hooked up with an organization called new labor which is a worker center close by here in new brunswick that sort of an alternative labor organization that works with immigrant workers and there i did a lot of work around the issue of wage theft and workers don't get the money that they're owed for their work i did a lot of campaigning around that work to develop and to wage that ordinances and i guess it's probably because of that work on sort of municipal policy campaigns that i was asked to join a new jersey working families where i run a lot of our issue campaigns including struggle for paid sick days which is actually oh sure yeah i mean they're absolutely struggling that this new reality for many working families in new jersey is just devastating to the current minimum wages it's a thirty eight and it's not even remotely a living wage in this state and people things that people talk about but inequalities the inequality economic inequalities are greater than they've been it's not like it's a new problem but it can be a worse problem or a better problem because through the years and michael yes so i joined the green party in two thousand and four i had graduated high school in in two thousand and four actually and so the iraq war was part of what helped shaped my consciousness growing up as a as a teenager and so the green party was really the only party taking a very coherent stance against the imperialism that was shown both in the invasion of iraq of afghanistan and then later in the invasion of iraq and the green party through its candidate at that time ralph nader was articulating a very clear any imperialism message and a very any aggression message and a message based off of compliance with international law and so that a very clear and coherent message was very attractive to me when i was going through college given that i had joined a some campus organizing around any war type stuff i've probably been to d c more as an activist than i have as a tourist even though i grew up in baltimore so it's that was a big part of my consciousness and so after i graduated college i was i was involved in the green party of pennsylvania at the time when i was in school  and then i moved up to new jersey and i've been very much involved with the party since about two thousand and twelve with like a little bit of hiatuses but so you know i had a kid in between so that type of thing to interfere with your ability to stay really active but the green party has a consistent message peace is one of our four keep is one of our four pillars nonviolence as one of our ten key values and i think that's what drew me into the party but at the same time the green party of new jersey as well as the national green party have taken strong stances in support of the black lives matter movement they've taken strong stances we were actually one of the first people to sign on to the fifteen now campaign  in twelfth two thousand and twelve issued a statement in support of the fifteen now movement before anybody in the democratic party was really behind that push in a really sustained way fifteen now fifteen now is a national movement started by co sponsored by an organization called socialist alternative that is pushing for a fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage all around the country and so back in two thousand and twelve our presidential our then presidential candidate jill stein issued a strong statement of support and solidarity with the fast food workers who were going out on strike along with the actual legislative push for the fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage and back in when the campaign came to new jersey we were one of the first organizations that signed on in support of the fifteen now push and we've been partnering with fifty now i actually just spoke at a rally sponsored by fifteen now last sunday and so we're very strong supporters of that  message as well and so the i've been around the economic justice movement i was also spent some time as a labor organizer before i went to law school and yes so i think that those messages really spoke clearly but the one that really differentiates the one that drew me to the green party specifically it was the any imperialism message of those early campaigns because it's not something i hear from the democratic party even in a campaign like bernie sanders who is coming around now is not articulating that kind of clear message about an aggressive american foreign policy the way that the green party candidates are anti imperialist can you kind of explain it sure so imperialism refers to sort of like the positive way to look at it is kind of this american exceptionalism theme that a lot of people are touching on but what i see that is as and some of the downside of that is a belief that american sort of get to run the world as george the as first george bush said what we say goes and that's the lines he used to invade you know iraq back in one thousand nine hundred one and launched the first persian gulf war so the green party has a strong stance in support of principles of international law which is not necessarily present in either the democratic party platform or the dead certainly not in the republican party platform that's that's very clear they seem to want more of that as opposed to less but even the even the more progressive campaigns within the democratic party structure are more concerned about tamping down some of that as opposed to actually rejecting the framework and so a stance on international law as opposed to american imperialism and supremacy is a big thing that differentiates the green party from you know the other parties that exist in the political system here have a strong back their particular parts of the country more interesting than others and more import there are some i mean we tend to have a lot of support on the coasts and yes so the green party was one of the first parties to take a stance in support of gay marriage we actually had a mayor in new paltz new york perform an illegal gay wedding because new york state law prohibited but he decided that he was going to issue the license anyway so the green party has taken it takes a lot of the social issues and  kind of is out in front of the curve on them and so the being that you know politics is in america what it is now and social issues tend to shape a lot of people's perceptions because realistically we don't have real distinctions between economic choices until this year surprisingly but usually the social issues kind of function in as people's as what people can kind of grapple with and so based on that we tend to draw a lot of our support from the issues that are more from the places that are more socially liberal coast to coast to the coast second california new york new jersey new jersey has had an as had a green party since i believe one nine six maybe yeah i'm pretty sure they were around since about that that might have been when they were formed i don't have the exact date i'm not the party historian i'm sorry we do have one of those but it's not me so we've been around for a while waned the high point of the high water mark for the green party was the nader candidacy in two thousand and then since then we've been really growing now the last couple of years have definitely seen an influx of new people into the green party and a lot of new energy so the green party of new jersey is definitely growing we ran seven candidates for might have been more than that so don't quote me on the number i'm sorry but a number of candidates last year for state assembly and actually got one of our candidates cleared five percent in terms of the state assembly race and that was out in a place we didn't expect which was in sussex county so it's so you can't really predict where the support is coming from it tends to be on the coast but sussex county is not one of the most socially liberal places in the state and we had our best showing out actually out there so we don't know where it's going to break through what it does but we pressing to make it break through   the party historian it had its roots in the formation of the new party which i believe took place in minnesota and illinois and i don't know exactly when twenty years back now though it's really come to prominence in new york where there's fusion voting and the party has been it off of the ability to say you can vote for a candidate that's running as a democrat but they can also run on the working families party line and the vote totals that they get from those and really helped push politics in new york state but especially new york city to the left i mean that's why we've recently seen victories on the by fifteen campaign in new york california and you know i think one of the things you'll notice is that there's probably probably hard pressed to see a lot of disagreement between the two of us as you were saying if you do a lot of work on the fifteen now with the you know a lot of folks that we're working with i actually managed to fight for fifteen campaign in new jersey which works closely with fifteen now in trying to get fifteen thousand minimum wage so well both of you seem to be in parties that are representing the less affluent the less wealthy the workers i mean one of the things that and growth and lots of the those that need the workers are sending them to other places where they can pay the much less money which leaves the american working class really without jobs and without hope of finding a way to support themselves and their families so you seem to be there for them and you seem to have arisen from this enormous economic inequality actually that's a great point in the context of not only offshoring labor but the issue of technological innovations actually decreasing the amount of work in this country or program on talk radio yesterday about the increasing possibilities of automation and the way in which automation may actually decrease the overall amount of jobs in the economy and i think in all honesty i think that's part of what's drawing people towards trump is that people are facing really economically precarious situations right they're losing their form of income and so they see somebody who says they will make america great again and create jobs and i think that's appealing to people because they're losing some of their ways of economic self sufficiency we provide a different answer to that same question which is rather than being rather than looking for an answer with respect to assertions like i will just sort of i don't know returning to immigrant blaming and sort of the scapegoating that trump has done what we do is we say rather than that automation isn't necessarily a bad thing automation could be a very positive development the green party takes a stance in support of a guaranteed minimum income that's in our party platform it's part of george it's part of joe's stein's platform we want guaranteed minimum income and that would apply to everyone in the entire country regardless of labor right it's a form of income that would apply to everybody that everybody would be able to pull in income and what that would allow us to do is share in the benefits of automation as opposed to the benefits of our nation going to the top one percent of the top one percent that's the problem isn't automation automation could make our society incredibly good it could be a positive thing as long as we all get to share in the benefits of it that's that's the crucial distinction and so if you want to blame an immigrant for taking your job when realistically it's the c e o who wants to increase their profit margins then i think that's missing the point the reality is we need to find a way to democratize those gains and i think the green party has the answer with the guaranteed minimum income along with those increasing wages for low wage work where you're more full agreement on the idea of her guaranteed minimum wage you know guaranteed minimum income i think one of the things that we see is that we have an economy that's not working for the people who who really run the economy we have people working although there's less jobs people working more more hours and i was totally unnecessary based on you know the increase of in automation the fact the matter is it's an economy that's functioning based court interest there are you know what's motivating the decisions made by the political class in this country and it's working families that suffer from it and it's also we know our environment but also suffer so yes environmental issues are certainly another one that's come up such as the coal industry and such is the nuclear power industry and yes and i've always you know i've told you earlier before the show book that i edited and wrote in nineteen eighty two i think was called the politics of offshore oil and it was yeah it was awesome because  discovered was it was all about making money not about getting oil right and what i was saying now to people is keep your eye on the oil prices this is going to look at how it's affecting life in the middle east look how it's affecting life in this country where can it possibly be headed you know so that's a very key factor the other thing is i know bernie sanders supports education free public education and it wasn't long ago some man sitting next to be some kind of gathering and he said that's ridiculous giving free tuition you know and i said well no not really have you ever heard of the city university of new york you know that's for a lot of people and i got there myself included got their degrees but wouldn't have been able to otherwise and he said oh yeah he said i did too so i said well then why wouldn't you support he said that was a different time so you know it's where you are today and he's now through his own efforts these much more affluent and therefore doesn't want to see the latter shrug and i think that's another thing that it brings us together as you have many other candidates pretty much all the candidates that we're not supporting have this political sense of this is the reality and we have to suffer through it and you know we don't have a choice and we can you know make decisions within it but demanding more is not something that's an option and you know to be frank i see see that with some of the points that hillary clinton makes says well you know bernie sanders arguments are you know unreasonable we can expect that well and then they accuse him of not understanding politics well one thing that i just don't understand about that is that that's exactly politics i mean we take the example of again of the the five fifteen or thirteen now campaign a couple of years ago the idea of having a fifteen dollar minimum wage would have been laughable for many folks even folks who consider themselves to be progressive now we see that was when it was first started with food service workers fast food workers you know going on strike in new york as as something that was demanding the impossible and now it's a reality that's something  that you know bernie sanders is pushing i think also our candidates like you'll sign are our backing we need to make demands of our political system because otherwise it doesn't work for us but it works for the corporate capitalist class i think i made that exact point sunday actually know i like to wake up in the morning and trick my cup of coffee and i have a quote from frederick douglass on there that says power concedes nothing without a demand and i think that and that is that is what how we need to approach politics right the only thing that's politically impossible is the demands you don't make you're not going to get something that you don't ask for and i think we need to approach politics that way the reality is that we weren't going to get single payer health care under an obama administration because it wasn't even on the table the green party has for years supported a single payer health care system and we still think we need it people are going through medical bankruptcies now it's obscene people that have health insurance should not be broken by going to the hospital for surgery that's not what an industrialized democracy that has obscene wealth rates at the top should be doing and so and i think the point you made was quite good the the approach of mainstream politicians is that well they can outsource so you need to suffer the problem is the economy is not suffering we are it's us we're the ones that have to make the decisions about going to the hospital or not going to the hospital when the reality is the money's there it just keeps going to the top one percent and we need in the kind of me that works for all of us and not just them we need an economy that works for the ninety nine percent and the green party i think is the one that really pushes this internalizes this fight because we do we talk about we've been talking about concentrated income for years i mean the  one of the points of our one of the ten pillars of our organization is future focus and sustainability and the reality is an economy that is structured the way that it is right now is not a sustainable economy people need money to put more money into the economy all the economists will tell you that when wages increase at the bottom it helps stimulate the economy money that goes to the bottom helps stimulate the economy for fat for more than money that goes to the top and yet the answer of every right wing and unfortunately a lot of democratic politicians is if we put money into the top it will trickle down to the rest of us that's not true what's true is that money that goes to the bottom comes back around the economy and that's how we need to approach the problems and we need to start demanding more we need to start demanding things like if one thousand dollars an hour minimum wage which not only not only were the republicans making fun of people it was the entire mainstream media was saying oh if anything comes out of this it will be some sort of compromise it's not we got fifteen we might not have gotten it tomorrow but we got the number that we were asking for as opposed to what they were telling us back then which is this is a pipe dream and there's no way you're going to get fifteen we got fifteen it just wasn't we compromised on the time period as opposed to the number and so the demands are what's crucial and we need to be really aggressive in what we need and demand what we need as opposed to what we think that will give us and i think hillary clinton articulate a vision of demanding what she thinks the elites are willing to compromise to and obama had the same sort of position whereas the green party and to an extent senator sanders articulates a vision where what we need is the floor and that's where he starts and that's a much stronger position to build from then what do we what do you think you'll give us couldn't agree more i mean i think it is around the politics of need and it reminds me of one of the campaigns that i'm working on here locally which is this campaign to get paid sick days for workers here in princeton the reaction that we've gotten from the local merchants association is that they can't give workers who work part time here in town paid sick days this paid sick days campaign is asking for three to five days for workers per year that seems like a basic human right and yet the reaction we've got people say the well that i have to take their business out of town they can't possibly stand they also managed to keep many of their workers part time so that justifies not giving them the benefits yeah that's exactly right and so you know the campaigns that  works on that i know the green party backs as well is about and starting from that basic need and working our way up we demanded fifteen dollars in wage in new jersey because the cost of living for a single adult in the state is eighteen dollars an hour if you're working a full time job and many folks as we just said don't work full time jobs fifteen isn't even enough as it is basic paid sick days to care for a sick child we've had members of the  that say what we can't let them have paid sick days it's unconscionable we have to make this about you know the thing is the thing to talking about it in europe and especially in western europe and going on for years i mean i was in an accident in england i was a bicyclist i use hostler and i was taken to a british hospital and they had national health and i talked to the other patients there i said how do you find this national health i could tell that they were not wealthy people from various things and they said oh we can have a surgery we weren't able to have before the same thing was education they get that they were getting the education they were more highly taxed but that the tax money went to benefit them which was not vibrant discussion i wish you well q thank you and i wish us all well thank you thank you for coming to backstory with joan goldstein