Farm Bill

House Republicans unveil their plan for mass starvation in America, an Earth Day conversation with a school principal-turned climate activist, a #SecondChanceMonth conversation with a lawyer who had to sue for the right to take the bar exam, plus the news of the week In Case You Missed It. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

This week on Off-Kilter, the House Agriculture Committee passed its version of the so-called farm bill — a massive piece of legislation that among many other things includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. House Republicans claim the bill is about “lifting Americans out of poverty” — but the draconian nutrition assistance cuts it proposes would be a recipe for massively increasing hunger and hardship, as Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, explains.

Next, in Florida, climate change issues aren’t just the stuff of Planet Earth episodes — they’re a day to day reality. The effects of rising seas and intensifying storms are being felt right now, and especially so in low income communities and communities of color. Meanwhile, President Trump and his EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt are doing nothing except making it worse — but there are people fighting back. As we mark Earth Day, Rebecca talks with Caroline Lewis, a south Florida principal turned climate change activist, who founded the CLEO Institute to make the conversation around climate change accessible to the people most likely to bear its burden.

And finally, continuing Off-Kilter’s Second Chance Month series, Rebecca sits down with Tarra Simmons, who after spending 20 months behind bars due to challenges with substance abuse, went to law school to help remove barriers to opportunity for others with records. She was awarded a prestigious Skadden Fellowship to do this work with the Public Defender Association in Washington State — but then was told she wouldn’t be allowed to sit for the bar exam because of her criminal record. Not to be deterred, she sued for the right to take the bar — and won.

But first, Jeremy Slevin, aka The Slevinator, returns with the news of the week for another edition of In Case You Missed It.

This week’s guests:

• Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America and author of America We Need to Talk: A Self-Help Book for the Nation
• Caroline Lewis, founder of the CLEO Institute
• Tarra Simmons, Skadden Fellow at the Public Defender Association in Washington State
• Jeremy Slevin, director of antipoverty advocacy at the Center for American Progress (and faithful sidekick)

For more on this week’s topics:

• Get more info about the disastrous farm bill and the damage it will do to SNAP
• Take a look at all the work Caroline Lewis’ CLEO Institute is accomplishing in Florida and read more about her activism in this profile from 2016
• Check out the New York Times profile of Tarra Simmons’ successful case before the Washington Supreme Court
• Polls show that the GOP tax cuts are unpopular across the board; the SNAP fraud advertisements cost as much as the fraud they’re “educating us” on; Mark Rank shows how every $1 spent on child poverty yields $7 in the economy; David Madland proves that a progressive platform is popular among the working class across racial groups; and instead of reading that embarrassing USA Today Op-Ed, check out Sara Goldrick-Rab’s far superior response

This program aired on April 19th, 2018

Transcript of show:

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off Kilter, the show about poverty, inequality and everything they intersect with powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas. This week on Off Kilter, the House agriculture committee just passed massive cuts to nutrition assistance dressed up as quote, “workforce development.” I talk with Joel Berg CEO of Hunger Free America about what’s in the 2018 farm bill and why it matters. Next, with Earth Day coming up I talk with a former school principal turned climate change activist about an innovative new approach she’s taking to make climate justice work more accessible to the communities most affected by it. And last but certainly not least, Off Kilter’s series for Second Chance month continues with a conversation with Tarra Simmons, a young lawyer working to help people with records overcome barriers to employment who had to sue for the right to take the bar exam because of her own criminal record. But first, Jeremy Slevin, hot off his single release decided to come back to the show even though we totally punk’d him last week and made him listen to his own music on air.

JEREMY SLEVIN: God forbid.

VALLAS: I know, it was the worst part of your life every, right?

SLEVIN: I know, I was never going to come back again and then you came and you were like you have to come back.

VALLAS: Yeah.

SLEVIN: I’m back.

VALLAS: Well I’m glad you’re back because you have the news of the week and there’s a lot of it and it starts with the fact that this week was tax day, Jeremy did you file your taxes?

SLEVIN: I did file my taxes, did Donald Trump file his taxes?

VALLAS: I guess we’ll never know.

SLEVIN: He did not. Sorry.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: I guess you know.

SLEVIN: He reportedly asked for an extension on his taxes, the contents of which we will never know.

VALLAS: Right, so the fact of which we may know but not the contents. Well I’m not better than Donald Trump and anyone who knows me will know that it’s the great irony of being the granddaughter of an accountant who makes it extremely easy for me to have my taxes done for me by his accounting firm he’s retired from and yet I still had to ask for an extension this year Slevs, so Trump and I have something in common.

SLEVIN: At least you asked, at least you asked.

VALLAS: Yeah well, you know, but so did he.

SLEVIN: Yes, he did ask.

VALLAS: But I’m mentioning tax day because it’s not just the day people file their taxes if they’re Jeremy Slevin and not Rebecca Vallas or Donald Trump, but also because there’s been a lot of activity this week around tax day.

SLEVIN: Yeah, it would seem that tax day is exceedingly relevant this year. If you have been sleeping under a rock you don’t know that congress passed a massive tax giveaway last year.

VALLAS: To the wealthy and corporations.

SLEVIN: Correct.

VALLAS: Sorry, you were losing the last part of your usual phrase there.

SLEVIN: This is the last time since these taxes are for 2017, this is the final year of the old tax regime, the tax cuts already have gone into effect on people’s paycheck but the first tax day since the tax cut went into effect. We got all sorts of data and news around tax day, the biggest of which I think was a new landmark poll that found that just 27% of people think the tax cuts were a good idea so the support for the tax cut is at a all time low this year and has been trending down consistently.

VALLAS: So the law, I keep almost calling it a bill and I guess that’s wishful thinking.

SLEVIN: It was a bill.

VALLAS: It was a bill, it became a law because Schoolhouse Rock is a thing and the law which has now taken effect is back to being the single most unpopular piece of legislation that has ever been passed by congress in modern history so back where it belongs given that it is the opposite of what the American people want.

SLEVIN: Yeah, and to delve a little deeper into the numbers, the majority foresee a negative impact based on higher deficits and disproportionate benefits going to the wealthy and big corporations. Only 39% see a positive impact of the tax [law] and of course this is all in the context of Republicans saying that we need to run on this, we need to sell this for November.

VALLAS: And a huge influx of cash from the Koch Brothers trying to sell this and lie about it to make it something popular so that they can run on it.

SLEVIN: Exactly, millions upon millions of dollars poured into their campaign coffers on the assumption that this is what they need, this is their accomplishment and it’s not working, surprise.

VALLAS: So switching gears a little bit and hey, go file your taxes everyone else, if you’re not a total deadbeat like me and Donald Trump. Also blowing up a little in the past week an op-ed at USA Today that got a lot of attention on Twitter.

SLEVIN: That’s right, quite a turn from taxes.

VALLAS: You didn’t like my segue, is that what you’re saying?

SLEVIN: I thought it was a perfect segue by you. Anyway, I’m going to get to the meat of the story. So basically the USA Today ran an op-ed on their opinion page whose headline was, “Starvation issues in universities? The real college problem is obesity”. It goes on to say, “A new report,” this is what the article is based on, “claims college students are food insecure and starving but better research shows they’re overweight and lazy. Temple University research assert that 36% of four year college students and 42% of community college students are food insecure, a vaporous term beloved by pro-welfare advocates.” And then it goes on to say the study found that homosexual students were at much greater risk of basic needs and security, more than 10% of respondents from four year colleges labeled themselves bisexual and half of them go hungry. This is from the article, “are too busy cavorting with both genders to eat or what? If there were a national conspiracy to starve bisexuals we would have heard about it by now.”

VALLAS: That was the line by the way, the whole thing was outrageous but it was the “cavorting” line, notwithstanding the fact that I would love to bring back the word cavorting because I think it’s a great word but the cavorting line is just unbelievable. It’s more of the same which is the denial of poverty, denial of hunger, let’s just pretend the problem doesn’t exist, it’s like climate change deniers except this is poverty deniers, I’ve said that before. In this case, it’s going one step farther than that and blaming bisexual college students for I guess hooking up too much with each other to remember to eat? It’s like beyond disgusting in the level of disrespect for humans.

SLEVIN: Yes, this person is a member of USA Today’s board of contributors.

VALLAS: Oh god, are they? They’re actually a contributor.

SLEVIN: Yes, this is a Jim Bovard, USA Today columnist. It’s the worst of when you scroll to page six of YouTube comments and find the comment that was voted down like 60 times.

VALLAS: This is that, this is that but an entire op-ed. And the person who of course deserves a huge shout-out because she’s the one who’s done a lot of the research that this was denying and in fact such effective research that this individual felt the need to write such a disgusting op-ed denying is of course, Sara Goldrick-Rab who is a professor at Temple University, a really, really fabulous expert on hunger on college campuses, something a lot of people maybe aren’t aware of.

SLEVIN: It’s where the research came from.

VALLAS: And author of a book called “Paying the Price” that folks should be aware of and check out for actual facts. So also though, actually go ahead Jeremy.

SLEVIN: Two more points, the reason that LGBT folks have high higher levels of food insecurity which is not just in this Temple study, it’s been confirmed, UCLA did a study finding this, and it’s also the case that people who are bisexual face higher rates of mood disorders, substance abuse, eating disorders and other health disparities and part of that is because they experience discrimination. So the irony of someone mocking bisexual people for being food insecure is staggering.

VALLAS: It’s mind-blowing. Well also mind-blowing, maybe you’ll like that segue better, Jeremy.

SLEVIN: What a segue.

VALLAS: Now that I realize I’m being judged for my segues and I could sit here and make you spell segue and embarrass you.

SLEVIN: That’s true, S-E-G-U-E.

VALLAS: Oh God you got it right, dammit, dammit. Alright, Jeremy smarter than he looks, or at least a better speller. So also mind-blowing in the past week or so it has come to light because a lot of folks who have been taking pictures and putting them on Twitter that there are signs all around DC that are telling people that there’s widespread fraud in the SNAP program. Jeremy, what is all this about?

SLEVIN: So if you are in DC you are in the metro area you might have seen these giant signs in Metro stations with a giant white hand and a stop sign saying “SNAP FRAUD”. The sign says, “using food stamps is a crime,” all caps, “punishable by program disqualification and/or incarceration. See fraud, report fraud.”

VALLAS: It’s sort of if you see something, say something of SNAP fraud but it’s got these really offensive sheen to it.

SLEVIN: Also, anyone who knows anything about the program knows that fraud is exceedingly rare.

VALLAS: Less that 1%.

SLEVIN: Less than 1% and in fact the government spends about as much on these stupid signs, sorry DC government, spends about as much on campaigns to quote, “combat fraud” that it loses in fraud itself. So we’re actually doubling the problem by spending money on it. Did some research it turns out DC has committed to taking down the signs because there was such an outcry so credit where credit is due. And they said this was paid for fully with a federal government grant from the US Department of Agriculture.

VALLAS: Well I also appreciate, and actually we should say this, before I get into one of the other reasons that this is so problematic, but I really appreciate that you gave the visual description of what the signs look like because as you said it’s this giant white hand that’s holding itself up to stop SNAP fraud and there’s really obvious racial overtones there given what it’s trying to point out and the statement it’s trying to me.

SLEVIN: Right, right, there’s racial overtones and this is, just like the USA Today story, a theme of the show is that the culture of stigma around accessing benefits, around needing help, like even if you are in no way committing SNAP fraud, over course, over 99% of SNAP recipients aren’t, seeing this sign saying SNAP fraud, big hand saying stop, which is the main thing, evenly subliminally it’s communicating the message, this is something that you somehow shouldn’t be getting or should be really careful about, it’s a crime if you do anything wrong when a lot of people we know, a lot of people don’t even access benefits when they’re eligible for all sorts of reason and this just adds to that.

VALLAS: And also sends the message that somehow SNAP fraud is widespread. So in keeping with the ongoing conversation on this show about how policies like work requirements and drug testing are really all about sending that message so shame on you, District of Columbia government for thinking this was the way to crack down on a problem that makes up less than 1% of the program. And this is what I was about to say before I, as usual, interrupted myself. See, feel better Jeremy, it’s not just you I interrupt, it’s me too. There’s total equity here. I was going to say before I said something to me, that the District of Columbia government yes, committed to taking down these signs but they’re still up as we’re taping.

SLEVIN: I saw one this morning. I saw one this morning.

VALLAS: And people are still taking pictures and still tweeting them out, so if you are a DC listeners take a look at your metro stations and wherever you might see these signs, if you seen one take a picture, tweet it and tag DC government because they need to know it’s not OK to keep the signs up.

SLEVIN: Contact your city council member as I will be doing because I still saw the sign today.

VALLAS: So, say it with me Jeremey, shame!

SLEVIN: Shame!

VALLAS: It’s been a while since we got to say shame. So take us to a good news place, do we have good news this week? I ask this question a lot, usually we have none.

SLEVIN: We talked about the news I’m about to bring up before the segment and you’re like oh good, good news, I don’t know, I think it’s good news theoretically.

VALLAS: Also Will is telling us we don’t have any time for good news.

SLEVIN: OK, I’ll be really quick. Basically we learned that every dollar spent on alleviating child poverty yields $7 in the economy. In other words, if you invest in a kid it helps economic growth, it helps the community it also helps that kid. That’s according to a sociologist named Mark Rank had a new op-ed in the New York Times so that is good news, the bad news is we spend less on alleviating child poverty than almost any developed country and have some of the highest levels of child poverty in the developed work.

VALLAS: Mark Rank of course, Washington University at St. Louis, has been on the show before, maybe we need to have him back to talk about this a little bit more in depth but I think we’ve got another minute if there’s any other good news.

SLEVIN: Oh some more good news. I’m going to fit it in, we’re overruling.

VALLAS: I authorized the minute, Will has said no, he’s thrown up his hands.

SLEVIN: We basically just took the minute talking about that.

VALLAS: Not basically.

[LAUGHTER]

SLEVIN: So a new report actually here at CAP Action looked at a whole wide range of surveys including the American Community Survey and basically questioned the take from 2016, where do working class voters actually situate themselves on policies? And I think to a lot of listeners to the show it will be unsurprising that the working class is overwhelmingly progressive on policy and that is true across demographics.

VALLAS: Economic policy, anyway.

SLEVIN: Economic policy in particular. So the minimum wage of course is broadly popular, it’s especially popular with the working class, more popular than with college educated voters. Workers support paid leave policies, 69% of the white working class supports that, 72% of the black working class supports that. Even healthcare guarantee, 83% of the white working class supports it, 96% of the black working class and 94% of the Hispanic working class. So if politicians are out there saying that we need to cut Medicaid because that’s what the working class wants, they’re not telling the truth.

VALLAS: And of course I love that you did the racial breakdowns there, Will doesn’t love that because it took longer than the minute but really important because of course the overall findings taken together are that working class Americans across races want to see these kinds of progressive economic policies of higher wages, of greater investment in retirement and healthcare, equal pay, paid leave, etc., and also there is a question in there about taxes. They want to see the wealthy pay more in taxes so bye bye hopefully to the canard from the 2016 election that we seem to still be battling that has all these myths about what the white working class supposedly wants and it having to look a lot like the Robin Hood in reverse agenda that Republicans are like a dog with a bone, to continue to move forward. Slevs, thanks for stopping by, thanks for bringing good news too.

SLEVIN: Oh yes, great news always.

VALLAS: And thanks for siding with me instead of Will because I think those were important things to get in. don’t go away, more Off Kilter after the break, talking farm bill and what it means for nutrition assistance.

[MUSIC]

You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. This week the House Agriculture Committee passed it’s version of the so-called farm bill, a massive piece of legislation that among many other things includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. House Republicans claim the bill is about quote, “lifting Americans out of poverty” but the draconian SNAP cuts it proposes would be a recipe for massively increasing hunger and hardship. With me to unpack what’s in the 2018 House farm bill and where things go from here is Joel Berg, he’s the CEO of Hunger Free America, a nation wide advocacy and direct service organization and the author of “America, We Need to Talk: A Self-Help Book for the Nation.” Joel, thanks so much for joining the show.

JOEL BERG: Thanks for having me on, first a disclaimer, I have to disclose that I get lega advice occasionally from Rebecca but she’s never sent me an invoice.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: Oh man, I’m going to lose all kinds of listeners from that one Joel, thanks, thanks for that.

BERG: I’m sorry.

VALLAS: With that out of the way and now that we’re being so above board, so Joel everyone this week is talking about the farm bill, just kidding. Maybe that’s what everyone should be talking about because it’s one of the only very real policy debates that’s happening right now that isn’t getting nearly enough attention as usual, that’s how things go when they have to do with what matters to low-income Americans. But what is the farm bill for folks who might be hearing that term and not really sure what it’s about?

BERG: The farm bill is by far the most important bill ever passed by congress and signed into law by the president that the vast majority of Americans know absolutely nothing about. I knew nothing about it until I accidently got to work at the Department of Agriculture in the 90s in the Clinton administration. But it impacts everything every American eats, not only the domestic and international food assistance programs like SNAP, the new name for food stamps, not only food distributed by food pantries and food banks, not only international food aid but all food safety regulations, all animal health and safety regulations, what grade our fruits and vegetables are, international trade and very, very critically it impacts rural economic development. A lot of people don’t know USDA is sort of the rural HUD and most of that is decided by the farm bill.

VALLAS: So there’s a lot in there that has to do with livestock and farms and vegetables and all of that. We’re not talking about that right now because what I want to dig into, as important as all of those things are and interrelated I should say as well is the portion of the bill that authorizes the SNAP program, food stamps as you just mentioned. So the farm bill debate, part of the reason everyone should be paying attention to it right now and media should be covering this really, the debate started in earnest last week and into this week when House Republicans introduced their opening bid for what they want to do on the farm bill. And in particular, they introduce their opening bid for how they want to dismantle the entire nutrition assistance program that is SNAP. I would love to hear you talk a little bit about what’s in the bill that people need to know about when it comes to nutrition assistance.

BERG: Well two things I’d say as a preamble. Number one is 41 million Americans struggle against hunger. That’s a number far higher than before the start of the recession so when people ask why do so many people need SNAP, the broader question is why is America so hunger? Because our wages are so low and our safety net is so inadequate. That’s number one. And number two, SNAP’s already been cut by billions of dollars over the last decade. Out of two previous bills, the previous farm bill and the child nutrition bill. So today the House Republicans through the House Agriculture Committee passed a bill that would have a net cut in SNAP on top of those previous cuts by $17 billion. That’s $17 billion with a ‘b’ and of course this comes just a few months after them passing $1.9 trillion in tax cuts so a little portion of paying for those tax cuts in taking food away from children, senior citizens and veterans and working families and unemployed people. That’s their idea of fun.

VALLAS: Now, if you ask Chairman Conaway, he’s the Republican chairman of the House Agriculture Committee who held a hearing on Wednesday of this week and as you mentioned passed this bill so now the next stage it’s going to head to is actually going to the house floor for a vote in the coming weeks and we’ll talk more about that in a minute. But Chairman Conaway has been saying and including an op-ed published in USA Today when he introduced the legislation and I’m going to quote here, “People will try to demonize what we’re doing here and say that this proposal is too much, too fast, too soon. They will try to claim that this bill is about kicking people out of the program to save money but that couldn’t further from the truth.” He goes on to say, “under this work proposal, that’s what he’s calling this bill, only an individual who chooses not to participate in workforce development,” called ENT, Employment and Training, that’s the techincial term for workforce development through the SNAP program, “will lose eligibility for SNAP.” So Joel, I know his op-ed in USA Today was actually an open letter to you saying Joel will try to demonize what we’re doing here, is there any truth in what he wrote?

BERG: Short answer, no, long answer, not at all. The reality is the Congressional Budget Office which is the congressional budget arm of congress, thus the word ‘congressional’ and congress is theoretically a bipartisan office but the Republicans are in charge but their own budget office says the bill is kicking a few million people off the program. I have marginally more respect for the people wanting to cut these programs if they were just honest about it, ok we’re putting forward a bill, we’re going to cut a few million people off the program, we don’t think they deserve it or need it, or we think it’s more important to pay for tax cuts to the ultra rich but this persistent habit they have of not telling the truth about the very basic factual things they are doing is almost as disturbing as the policies themselves. The fact of the matter is much of the work bureaucracy they will fund will not create actually work slots for everyone who needs it, we know from the experience of different work requirements in the SNAP program and in other programs that many people fall off even people who are looking for work, and again this isn’t even about requiring work, ti’s about requiring people to report work every month.

This is lunacy, you’re going to have people who are working and the vast majority of people in the SNAP program are already working, the majority of people in the SNAP program are working within the year they are getting SNAP, 90% of the parents with children in the program were employed the year before or the year after they were getting SNAP, documented by our friends at the Center [on] Budget and Policy Priorities. And so it’s the wrong answer to the wrong problem. The problem is hunger in America and the problem tens of millions of people are working hard and playing by the rules and not earning enough to feed their families. So instead of raising the minimum wage, instead of creating jobs, instead of bolstering the safety net so we finally enter the rest of the industrialized western world who are civilized and don’t have hunger, they’re actually taking money away to pay for tax cuts for the rich, to pay for huge bureaucracy for states for meaningless job training programs and pushing through a bill, they can put any spin they want on it but the reality is it’s going to significantly increase hunger in America including among children, working people, seniors and veterans.

VALLAS: And you —

BERG: But other than that it’s great.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: Alright, I was waiting for the moderation there, of course. So I couldn’t agree more with your very comprehensive and concise even in being comprehensive takedown of what is really a dumpster fire of a bill. That is all of course, packaged in puppies and rainbows language about helping people work. That’s certainly how they’re messaging it, that’s certainly what the frame of that USA Today op-ed that I was quoting from is the title of which it’s down right Orwellian, “Food stamp work requirements will lift Americans out of poverty. We believe our program can support families in need while also creating opportunities that move people forward and improve their futures”. But Joel, let’s get concrete here with what this bill would do and who would be effected. You mentioned seniors, you mentioned kids, you mentioned working people. Help me break it down, what’s actually in this bill that gets you to millions fewer people being helped by SNAP?

BERG: And not only millions fewer people, there will be millions of people on the program who still get stung but get less. And just to respond to this idea, just so people truly understand, we’re not making this because we’re progressive activists. The Republican position is by taking away food is going to decrease hunger. That means from Ryan on down the Republican position is that taking away food is going to decrease hunger. That is so preposterous it’s beyond belief. You never hear them say taking away tanks is going to increase our national security. That’s like saying taking away water is the best way to fight droughts. So that’s the theory, it’s ridiculous. But specifically what they’re doing is a real bait and switch. There’s a lot of attention in this bill on the work requirements or really the work reporting requirements but a lot of the money coming out of this bill isn’t from the work side, it is from taking away options from the states. So many states including some Republican run states use an option to make it easier when people with high heating or cooling costs who are low income, to combine that with getting SNAP benefits without massive paperwork. It reduces bureaucracy. Another option the states use is allowing a thing called categorical eligibility, it’s a wonkish term but what it means is states and governors and many, most of the governors are now Republicans, use this flexibility to say for instance, more low income people can save money and still get SNAP so they can stay out of poverty, or very importantly people just above the current SNAP cutoff nationwide can get some SNAP while they’re working in low income jobs.

Why in the world Republicans would take flexibility away from states when they claim on every other thing we love states, we love states, we love states, states know better. It seems they’re only ideological consistency is wanting the shaft poor people, that’s number one and number two, why they would make it more difficult for people to save money or have higher paying jobs though it actually reduces their long term need for these programs is just insane. They’re cutting off their nose to spite their face. I think these proposals are half-baked but that’s giving a half baked good too much credit. I don’t think they turned on the ready oven, what are those kids baking things with the little lightbulb and the toy oven? They didn’t even do that and when congressman McGovern, one of our great heroes on the committee, a democrat was questioning them, they couldn’t even answer basic questions about their own bill. It seems their policy is shaft poor people first, think later.

VALLAS: You make some great points. Laying out all the ways that they’re actually restricting state flexibility, I often like to say it seems that Republicans have a real love hate relationship with state flexibility. They talk about it all the time except for when they’re taking it away because it might do things that help poor people and in particular when it comes to programs like SNAP where flexibility has allowed states to for example, make it easier for low income people to save for the future, something that Republicans talk about all the time as something that families should be doing so that they can get ahead and yet this bill actually makes that harder for states to do. So I’d love to get into the work reporting requirements as you call them and I really like that because that’s probably the piece of this bill that’s getting the most attention in the media. In part because it’s just one part of a much larger agenda on the part of Republicans, on the part of President Trump to take away health care and food and housing from people who can’t find work or get enough hours at their job and really to make it as hard to access assistance programs like SNAP as possible when people in a place of needing a little bit of help. So help break down what the work reporting requirements in this bill would do, in particular because SNAP already has work reporting requirements.

BERG: It does and as you know the administration is also pushing for work reporting requirements on public housing, work requirements on health care, at least 20 hours per week and by all media accounts the President of the United States who gets government funded food, who gets public housing and who gets free health care doesn’t work 20 hours a week so I can’t help but note the hypocrisy of the president who doesn’t meet work requirements pushing this on everyone else. But understand the cruelty of this, currently under law, currently under federal law if you’re between 18 and 50 if you don’t work and can’t get into job training program and you don’t have a child under 18 you could lose your benefits. They are making that worse in a few ways, number one they’re raising it from 50 to 59 and we know there’s plenty and plenty and plenty of job discrimination in this country against older Americans so under the Republican bill you’re 58 years old, the factory in your town closes down because Trump broke his promise to keep your job in America, your factory closes down, you’re 58 years old, you can’t get a job, you’re in a rural area where there’s no job training program near you and the government takes away your friggin’ food.

That’s what they promote. They’re also saying remember when arrogant democratic consultants blasted Mitt Romney’s wife for supposedly not working because she was raising children and the right was up in arms, how can these progressive raising children isn’t work and that was a ridiculous claim by one progressive but all of us progressives understand that raising children is work. This bill would say if you have a 7 year old, you have an 8 year old, that’s not work, that’s not work. So merely saying you’re exempt if you’re raising a kid under 18 that’s not good enough for them. They say oh we’re over the age of this and then they have stricter cut offs, a year cut off and then a three year cut off making it really harsh no matter what you’re doing you can’t get food. And the truth of the matter is the surest way to ensure someone’s not going to be able to perform well at work is taking away their food. The British had a very similar policy during the Irish famine, they said if you don’t work you can’t get food. And of course people, because they couldn’t get food they were starving to death and they couldn’t work. It seems we never learn.

VALLAS: And of course it flies in the face of all of the research as if that matters in the climate where facts don’t matter but hey I’ll go there, telling us that having access to adequate nutrition along with health care and housing, the other things that are on the chopping block as you described actually helps people be healthier, be better able to work and therefore have higher earnings so this is the exact opposition of what we would be doing if we were trying to invest in the nation’s workforce. But I want to dig a little bit into the job training piece because one of the most pernicious lies that Chairman Conaway and his colleagues in congress are telling about this bill is that it somehow a massive investment in workforce development which of course listeners of this show will know well is Paul Ryan’s new code for taking away healthcare and housing and food from people who he deems undeserving. But what is really in this bill just to break it down and then I want to get your take on this is one billion dollars a year and that sounds like huge money to support the new job training mandate that the bill would put on states. So this guarantee of a job training slot for anyone who wants one to live up to Chairman Conaway’s big tagline for this bill. A billion dollars sounds like a lot but if you actually crunch the numbers as our friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have down, you find out that that breaks down to just over $300 per person for training for an entire year for the people who are now going to need to be served which doesn’t get you much if we’re trying to help anyone build any skills.

BERG: Right and it doesn’t create jobs in many low-income areas despite the low unemployment rate, there aren’t many jobs and there certainly aren’t living wage jobs. First we’d all agree, let’s just raise the minimum wage that wouldn’t cost tax payers a penny but if they really want to spend government money on this use the $7 billion or $10 billion whatever they’re spending on this vast new bureaucracy which is basically payback to get Republican governors slush funds for their states, use that instead for job subsidies, raise the Earned Income Tax Credit by $10 billion a year for low-income people including childless adults. Use this for job training, use it to expand the AmeriCorps national service program. They are not using this to create jobs, they’re using this to create bureaucracy which you’d think the Republicans would be against. If you live long enough and I don’t want to date myself, I’m 63, in the Carter era, the political Obamacare of the time, the program that Republicans made fun of as the example of bloated out of touch liberalism was the CEDA Program supposedly because it was creating job training classes that didn’t work, having people write resumes for jobs that didn’t need resumes and the greatest irony in the world is this welfare to work regime, of course food and housing and healthcare aren’t work but this whole regime pushed by the right is creating these fake, bloated bureaucracies that aren’t really placing people in jobs and aren’t creating jobs, exactly the kind of huge out of touch ineffective bureaucracies not tied to the real job market but they spent decades making fun of.

Again, there is no ideological consistency, no one has thought this through at all, it’s just a great sound bite that we’re going to get these lazy SOBs to work. And what they’re missing is that the people in America who most want SNAP recipients to be able to work and not need SNAP are SNAP recipients. The people on the program are already overwhelmingly working and the ones that are underemployed or unemployed who are able-bodied, they definitely want jobs that pay enough so they don’t need [SNAP]. So this idea people don’t want to work and of course the fake racial subtext under that, ignoring that the largest number of people in America who are SNAP recipients are white, really adds [INAUDIBLE] Congressman Scott, African-American, I believe he’s from Virginia called the committee out on that today in a very powerful way.

VALLAS: Yeah, he did that at the hearing and he actually evoked the history of slavery and the true origins of the dog whistle that is work requirements given that’s really part of the Republican strategy to reinforce myths about poverty in America and the programs that help people avoid hunger and hardship. Joel, you mentioned before that raising the minimum wage is what these policymakers would be doing if they actually cared about the people they’re pretending to want to help quote unquote “climb the economic ladder” in their Orwellian speak. But it’s actually an even stronger case for why they would be getting behind this than just that is don’t cost the taxpayer any money and that’s that it would actually save money and it would save money in SNAP analysis that my colleague Rachel West has done here at the Center for American Progress finds that raising the minimum wage just to $12, not even the $15 that’s seriously being talked about these days would save $53 billion in SNAP over a decade because oh my God, low wage works might actually earn enough to be able to afford food.

BERG: Absolutely right and I’ll see your CAP study with a Hunger Free America study. We did a study comparing food insecurity rates, hunger rates in states versus the minimum wage and no shock, states with higher minimum wages had lower hunger rates. So again, I’d have slightly more respect for the corporate titans who oppose minimum wage increases, they sometimes say we just want 8 vacation homes instead of 7 and if we don’t pay a minimum wage we can have that 8th vacation. Instead when they say oh we’re opposed minimum wage increases because we’re really, really worried it will hurt our workers is a bit much. Although I do make the point in my recent book that Democrats and progressives should push for higher minimum wages but that’s doesn’t help people who are unemployed and other work based activities that progressives push, family medical leave and all these other things, if they’re work based they don’t help people who are unemployed. So I always say the progressive message should be coupled not only by work based strategies like wage hikes for existing jobs but we’ve got to focus laser like on job creation strategies and living wage job creation strategies.

VALLAS: So we’ve got a critical period coming up ahead of us which is that now that this bill has passed the Republican controlled agriculture committee in the House we’ve got a couple weeks before House Republicans are saying they want to bring it to the floor, it’s sounding like that may be early May after the May recess that is the first week of May so maybe it’s the week of May 7th but that gives us a real moment for folks to be lighting up those phones and telling their members of congress hands off nutrition assistance, taking away someone’s food isn’t going to help find work any faster and I know folks know if they listen to this show they can go to handsoff.org to get lots of good information about how they can do that and who SNAP helps and what it means in their state and congressional district but Joel, much as I wish I had you for another few hours because we’ve got a lot more to talk about I know folks are probably curious having heard the title of your book, “America We Need to Talk: A Self-Help book for the Nation” would love for you to talk about what that book is about and why you think that the United States needed a self-help book.

BERG: The book is basically a parody of self-help clichés so the first chapter is the breakup chapter, America I love you but I’m not in love with you anymore, another is they’re just not that into you, why white guys are voting against the Democrats, another is Democrats are from Venus, Republicans are from Mars, but the serious points I make is the relationship that needs to be fixed and that’s between the American people and our government and our society and that the supreme cop-out is saying oh we can’t fix this problem because the system, you can’t see my bad air quotes, “the system” or it’s the politicians. But it’s all of our responsibility to fix this and sometimes we coddle voters a little too much. I know some say, oh let’s really understand the people who are choosing between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, they’re fascinating people and I say, we’ve got to call them out for being sort of misinformed, that the only thing Trump and Sanders share is perhaps not the best barbers on the planet and let’s get serious. It’s all of our jobs to learn about this stuff and all of jobs to fight back. And so the first two thirds of my book is a slightly humorous but also serious critique of everything and anything wrong with American society and the last part of the book is a call to fix it. And most importantly for progressives is the strategy I call for moving beyond oh is it our base or is it rural white voters and understanding that many of the same reasons people of color staying home in the election are some of the reasons Trump voters voted for him as they feel they’re not being served by a political system and calling for policies like an expansion of AmeriCorps, like remaking the safety net to better serve low-income people and using technology. We need policy that serves everyone better and a really clear progressive message that things aren’t ok and they need to be fixed and we need what I call radical centrism. A massive society changing change but based on mainstream values that the vast majority of Americans could support. So that’s my brief summary of a bunch of hundreds page book. But it’s got lots of pictures and hopefully amusing graphs in it too.

VALLAS: So come for the pictures and the graphs, stay for the self-help that this country desperately needs. Joel Berg is the CEO of Hunger Free America, it’s a nationwide advocacy and direct serve organization. He’s also, as he has mentioned, the author of “America We Need to Talk: A Self-Help book for the Nation” you can find him on Twitter @JoelSBerg, he is very much worth a follow and not just because he and I have recently been tweeting about work requirements and cats. Joel thank you so much for coming on the show and we’ll have to have you back soon as this debate moves forward.

BERG: Thank you so much Rebecca.

VALLAS: Don’t go away, more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas

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You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. In Florida, climate change issues aren’t just the stuff of Planet Earth episodes, it’s a day to day reality. The effects of rising seas and intensifying storms are being felt right now and especially so in low-income communities and communities of color. As to be expected, EPA administrator Scott Pruit and President Trump are doing nothing except making it worse but there are people fighting back. One such person is Caroline Lewis, a south Florida principal turned climate change activist who founded the CLEO Institute in 2010 to make the conversation around climate change accessible to the people most likely to bear it’s burden. I’m thrilled to have Caroline on the show today to help us understand what’s going on in Florida and how she plans to win. Caroline, thanks so much for joining the show.

CAROLINE LEWIS: Great, thank you so much.

VALLAS: So Caroline, tell us the story of why you founded the CLEO Institute in Miami almost a decade ago and what it’s doing.

LEWIS: Well I’m a science teacher and a school principal and in 2002 I got a chance to leave school teaching and went out into a botanic garden, I thought of creating programs to engage disengaged teenagers, high schoolers. And very quickly the program took off and scaled and annually engaging 100,000 plus students every year and was replicated in certain cities around the country and around the world. So that experience really gave me wings to think about how it was I was able to engage a disengaged audience. So when I left that job a few of my supporters asked to form a non-profit and we came up with the CLEO Institute to engage disengaged adults on environmental issues. And the climate scientists pretty much convinced me that no, climate was the focus and it’s a threat multiplier for everything that we worry about. And so the CLEO Institute was formed in 2010 with the sole purpose of elevating climate literacy and heightening the urgency for climate action.

VALLAS: So why is it and people may be familiar with this but maybe not much more than surface level, why is it that climate change matters so much to low-income communities and communities of color?

LEWIS: Well when you think about it, people use words like we can always retreat or we can harden our infrastructure. When you use terms like that you’re not understanding that vulnerable communities do not have safety nets that allow them the luxury of thinking of how to do that. So they are 100% reliant on the foresight of elected officials who are elected to serve the public and should act in the public interest but [INAUDIBLE]. So climate change becomes a threat multiplier from so much more than sea level rising, South Florida, it’s like the gateway drug to get people to pay attention to climate change issues and a warming world because it’s so visible. Our shoreline is shrinking, the sea is coming in, the land is diminishing and we all see that the ocean is coming up through the very system designed to take away extra rainwater. Output is bringing it in, so visibly we see it and then we’re starting to see effects like unbearable heat and we’re starting to feel the effects of mosquito born diseases that we had not heard about like Zika and we realize the intensity of hurricanes are nothing to be messed with. I think the frequency is good news that it’s gone down but the intensity is such that this Irma thing that came by didn’t even hit us, wasn’t even a category 2 it was a category 1 I believe. And Miami was paralyzed, so many parts of the state of Florida are still recovering so the vulnerability is just that 58% of Miami-Dade county is poor or working poor, meaning they are paycheck to paycheck. So the inability to harden your infrastructure and plan for a hurricane and get three days of food and carry on your life without 8 days of [INAUDIBLE] because of hurricane damage presents a completely new reality to vulnerable populations which are significant majority in Miami-Dade.

So the equity issues, the social justice issue and the climate issues are colliding and this arena called climate justice is emerging like rapidly from environmental justice, from this [INAUDIBLE] that those who know better should do better. And elected officials really are meant to keep the public out of harms way and to deliberately not act to mitigate the effect of [INAUDIBLE] is almost criminal.

VALLAS: Scott Pruitt who leads the EPA although he is somewhat philosophically opposed to the mission of the agency, perhaps that’s unsurprising in the era of Trump but there it is.

LEWIS: It’s uncanny.

VALLAS: It is uncanny and yet that’s the new normal we’ve become so used to it’s almost unremarkable at this point which is why I feel the need to remark upon it. He has been in the headlines a lot and not in ways that are particular favorable to him with actually even some Republicans now increasingly calling for his removal. What is it like to be doing this work at the state level at the local level in a way that’s engaging new communities, building new coalitions at the same time we watching just an epic dumpster fire in Washington on many, many issues but particularly when it comes to environmental policy?

LEWIS: I couldn’t have said it better. Well it’s frustrating beyond belief, it’s paralyzing at times, there are days I don’t want to get out of bed. But it’s almost that very dystopic future that I see because of their decisions that gets me out of bed. I have two daughters, they’re in their twenties right now and they’re just simply beautiful gorgeous girls and they’re thinking twice about having families and they’re marching for the first time in their lives and there’s a civic awakening and I guess that’s a good thing, it’s enlightening. But what it means to me personally doing this work is a slap across my face. It’s akin to crimes against humanity because the suffering of not just humanity but humanity and biodiversity that these negligent decisions to keep warming the earth with greenhouse gases and disregarding the science that currently tells us we have to mitigate the causes, we have to leave some of oil, coal and gas in the ground, we did not abandon the stone age because we ran out of stones so let it go and let’s build this renewable energy and just future that is ripe, it’s just there, everything’s coming down, [INAUDIBLE] is coming up and this determination by the fossil fuel industry to pull that cigarette industry prank knowing the outcomes, the outcomes are global and severe and unmanageable by these vulnerable communities, I mean they are criminal so I am outraged. I worked for the EPA, the Obama administration actually honored me as a White House climate champion of change for building community resilience in 2013, I’ve been to quite a few summits in the White House and I feel like all my work has been vain. And your listeners should know my brother who I love, two of my sisters whom I adore voted for Trump. So I just don’t even know where to begin to think what has happened to America and what has happened to our sense of decency and morality and justice and I’m quite a bit outraged.

VALLAS: Well you’re far from alone and you’re in very good company with me and I’m sure with the listeners of this show. But it makes the work that you’re doing all the more important and offers in so many different ways I would hope lessons for advocates and activists and policy experts to take away what we can be learning from this success that you’re finding in Florida when it comes to what other states, other localities could be doing on these issues at the state and local level while Washington not only doesn’t move the needle forward but actually tries to set it back. I would love to hear from you what you hope people might take away from the project, from the work that you’ve been doing, from the success that you’ve had and in particular not just folks who do climate work or work in related spaces, what lessons do you think there might be to take away for folks working in other spaces who are working to and are interested in getting folks engaged in a direct way who maybe haven’t found the policy debates accessible in the same ways that you found barriers and founded the CLEO Institute to overcome them?

LEWIS: So great question and the truth is there’s no silver bullet you have to use multiple access points for people to grapple with this issue. I think equity factor, the climate justice factor is not something we rely on enough to move people. The economic issue is one that we have to develop because there’s some people who will not act unless it’s an economic gain and that story can definitely be told through so many research based publications from risky business down to federal and state resource guides online that tell you that a dollar spend today will be 6 to 8 dollars saved tomorrow. It’s telling you that the price of solar and wind and the capacity and cost of battery powers coming down, so all the indicators point to an economic gain, a boon from doing the right thing and leaving it in the ground. So what we need to seize is a way to pitch all the arguments, economic gains, the moral gain, the dystopian gain or un-dystopian gain that slowing that warming of the earth has to happen because I don’t think bankers thought about it until 30 year mortgages are starting to be questioned. Do we want to have a 30 year mortgage here in Florida when tidal flooding is so visible 6 to 8 times a year and is predicted to be 160 times a year in the not so distant future. Will you give a 30 year mortgage to a homeowner or would you maybe stick to 15? So those questions are starting to come up. Should we have stronger policies of building in harms way as cities like Miami Beach are building to raise the tax base to afford the pumps to adapt to this changing world and this climate changed different Miami where we have to elevate roads and create green infrastructure and buffers for low lying areas. So landscape design, building design, policy design comes in. hydrologists are now dealing with the health concerns of this tidal flooding coming up through broken sewers, and the [INAUDIBLE] community is starting to rally so I don’t think there’s a single interest group or career group or focus group that is not able to connect the dots to what we are doing by building oil, coal and gas and putting more and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And the future is not bright and it is time for us to acknowledge that and do the right thing.

VALLAS: Caroline Lewis is a South Florida principal turned climate change activist who founded the CLEO Institute in 2010 to make the conversation around climate change accessible to the people most likely to be impacted. Caroline thank you so much for the work that you’re doing and for taking the time to join the show.

LEWIS: My pleasure, thank you so much Rebecca.

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VALLAS: You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. April is Second Chance Month and here on Off Kilter we’ve been having a series of conversations about what it takes to ensure that the 1 in 3 Americans with some type of criminal record have a fair shot instead of a life sentence to poverty. Next up in that series I sat down with Terra Simmons who after spending 20 months behind bars due to challenges with substance abuse went to law school to help remove barriers to opportunity for others with records. She was awarded a prestigious Skadden Fellowship to do this work with the Public Defenders Association in Washington state but then she was told she wouldn’t be allowed to sit for the bar exam because of her own criminal record. Not to be deterred, Tarra sued for the right to take the bar exam and she won. Let’s take a listen to my conversation with Tarra.

Tarra, thank you so much for joining the show and it’s awesome to see you in person for a change.

TARRA SIMMONS: Thank you, thank you for having me. It’s nice to see you too.

VALLAS: So I love actually having a segment about good news so huge good news as I mentioned up top in the form of the ruling coming out of the Supreme Court in Washington but before we get into that and what was in the opinion because the opinion itself was actually full of drama and some details that I would love to get out. I want to rewind the clock a little bit and have you share your story of how you got to the place where you had to sue the Supreme Court.

SIMMONS: OK well I am former incarcerated and grew up in generations of poverty and trauma and substance use and everybody in my family had been to prison and I really didn’t think I would be able to do much more. But when I finally went to prison I realized that our legal system really needs to change and I thought it was unfair how everybody coming out of prison wasn’t able to get a job or a place to live and faced all these barriers and so I decided to go to law school to work on changing the system. And I had great inspiration of other lawyers who I knew were formerly incarcerated and were successful in their new career journeys, and specifically Shon Hopwood who went on to become my attorney but I had read his book “Law Man” when I got out of prison and followed his story. So yeah, I started law school in 2014, did everything I was supposed to do, graduated near the top of my class, did five public interest internships, became a Skadden Fellow and was very much prepared to go and do my Skadden fellowship and help other people with barriers to reentry but then yeah, the bar association said that I wasn’t able to sit for the bar because I didn’t have the character and fitness necessary to practice law.

VALLAS: So here you were, saying hey, I went to law school to work on removing barriers to opportunity for people with records like yourself and then ironically you basically woke up one day and had the same door that you’re trying to open for other people shut in your face.

SIMMONS: It was very devastating, it was re-traumatizing I couldn’t believe it was happening especially in Washington state where I think we’ve made some progress on these issues. I mean we have certificate of restoration of opportunity which allows people to get professional licenses and I was the first person in the state to get one of those. And I really thought we had made progress so it was very traumatizing and very confusing time for me.

VALLAS: So what did you do next?

SIMMONS: Well I was very fortunate that because I had built this network of people who think like me and believe in second chances that I was able to organize with various organizations and pull together a legal team that would eventually represent me and we threw a hail Mary pass to the supreme court because it hadn’t been done for 35 years. They hadn’t taken up a case on bar admissions. We didn’t know the process, we had nothing to follow but there was a court rule allowing this procedure and we filed an appeal in the state supreme court they took it up and the ACLU of Washington filed an amicus brief for 48 organizations, lots of our allies and friends signed on to this amazing amicus brief and my day in court was November 16th of last year. Shon Hopwood came out from DC to argue my case in the same supreme court that allowed him the opportunity to take the bar exam with out this major hurdle and it was interesting to have the former bank robber arguing on behalf of the person with substance use disorder and drug convictions and the state supreme court it was a very great argument. They were very, you could see their being upset about what happened and within hours they issued an order unanimously giving me opportunity to sit for the bar exam so I sat for the bar exam in the end of February, I get my results on Friday, the opinion just came out on Thursday which shed a lot of light around their thinking around why they gave me that opportunity.

VALLAS: So tell a little bit about of what’s in that opinion. It’s an incredibly sharply worded almost piece of theater that we’ll link to on the syllabus page so people can read it if they want to nerd out with us and follow along but what did they end up saying in their opinion?

SIMMONS: Well basically they said that your past does not define your future. That was the ultimate takeaway from that and that they really shot down the reasons why the bar denied me, a lot of that had to do with their misconstruing my attitude and believing that I had some kind of sense of entitlement and they totally put that to rest in about 3 pages. And also they did point out that there’s not much difference between my lawyer and I except for our gender. And that was a thing that I think women in particular struggle with. if we show any sense of pride in our accomplishments and having some self worth sometimes men in positions misconstrue that as having a sense of entitlement but the supreme court really gave me a lot of healing justice by saying she worked for everything that she has so she rightfully takes pride in her accomplishments.

VALLAS: So I’m really crossing every finger every toe your bar results are going to come back and I know without jinxing it although I’ll knock on the radio studio table here which is a nice big piece of wood as I say that but I know you’re going to pass and I’m really excited to celebrate with you when you get those results. But now that you’re on the path to actually doing this work wit the law license that you worked so hard to get, what’s the work that you’re planning to do with this Skadden fellowship? We’ll say as a full disclosure I’m also a fellow Skadden fellow so that’s part of how I know you.

SIMMONS: Yes so up until now what I’ve been doing is a lot of legislative advocacy because I think I have built some connection within Washington state where people, legislators do see me as a credible messanger on issues of reentry and so I’ve been using those relationship I’ve built to build coalitions and be a part of other coalitions to get some legislative reform such as we finally got ban the box for our state this year and we finally got some reform on legal financial obligations and the interests that accumulates on those. And now I do want to after I am sworn in hopefully if I did pass my swearing in ceremony is already scheduled so hopefully I pass, for June and then I intend to starting taking some more individual clients on, helping people get the new certificate of restoration of opportunity or if they’re facing employment discrimination around their criminal history or need help with financial barriers upon reentry, those types of things, and then I do forsee myself getting into some impact litigation also. Probably in conjunction with some other institutions in Washington state, I’ve already been helping and assisting on some amicus briefs, other impact cases coming along. Very similar to mine in fact so not bar admissions but other licensing barriers. I do want to use my law license for more than just legislative advocacy but I also want to have that voice in those policy discussions in Washington State too.

VALLAS: Do you think that the process of bringing this lawsuit and in such a high profile way, you might not have expected that when you were filing it but it made national news, it was in The New York Times, it was all over the place. Do you believe that the fact of filing a lawsuit and now the outcome has educated policymakers either in Washington state or elsewhere on how backwards it is to be stopping people like you from doing this exact work because of the close minded nature of our policies when it comes to people who have even old and unrelated to anything that matters criminal records?

SIMMONS: Yeah I do believe that, if I didn’t believe that I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to do it. I had to waive my rights to confidentiality in order to make it public in fact the bar association filed a motion to seal the hearing. They didn’t want anyone to come to the hearing, they didn’t want the court to accept the amicus brief, they wanted to continue to do things behind closed doors. But what we found through our investigation was that behind closed doors results in some very harmful things for people who deserve a second chance. And so I asked the court to please waive those confidentially requirements, allow it to be public because I knew that there are level headed folks who are running our system, legislators, proscutors who need just a little bit more education and when they saw this, I mean even people from the far right to the far left and all in between could relate to that and thought this was really unjust. And so now when I go down there and talk about hey we need to vacate criminal records, we need to expunge records, we need to allow people more opportunities for second chances, they’re listening to me because they’ve seen me walk through this process.

VALLAS: I’ve been speaking with Tarra Simmons, she is a Skadden Fellow with the Public Defender Association in Washington State and the individual who just successfully brought a lawsuit to get herself allowed to do the work she went to lawschool to do for people that are just like her. Tarra, thank you so much for coming on the show, for the work that you’re doing and congratu-friggin-lations.

SIMMONS: Thank you and thank you for all of the work you’re doing too.

VALLAS: And that does it for this week’s episode of Off Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host, Rebecca Vallas, the show is produced each week by Will Urquhart. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @offkiltershow and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the WeAct Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.