Episode 23: Netroots Nation 2017

Progressives are gathered in Atlanta for the annual Netroots Nation conference to discuss the future of the movement. We’ve been on radio row speaking with great activists, leaders, and candidates for office.

This week, we brought Off-Kilter to Atlanta for the 2017 Netroots Nation, a yearly conference of progressive bloggers and activists. Listeners need no introduction for our first guest, Randy Bryce, who is running to unseat Speaker Paul Ryan in Congress. What’s so exciting about Bryce’s campaign, apart from the opportunity to replace a far-right extremist with a solid progressive, is seeing a working guys’ guy go from obscurity to stardom for all the right reasons. Later in the show, Rebecca speaks with Ezra Levin, co-Executive Director of Indivisible, about how we can win on the next fight post healthcare: tax and budget. And last, but certainly not least, Rebecca sits down with a group of bad-ass disabled activists who explain how disability can save the progressive movement.

This week’s guests:

• Randy Bryce, candidate for Congress in Wisconsin’s 1st District
• Ezra Levin, Indivisible
• Rebecca Cokley, disability advocate
• Mia Ives Rublee, Women’s March
• Vilissa Thompson, Creator of #DisabilityTooWhite
• Kathryn Perez, National Coalition of Latinxs with Disabilities

For more on this week’s topics:

• Learn more about Randy Bryce’s campaign from his website.
• Get involved with Indivisible to fight the Trump agenda.
• If you’re in Atlanta for Netroots Nation, check out “#BADASSHELENKELLER AND #FIERCEFANNIELOU: HOW DISABILITY CAN SAVE THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT” on Saturday at 1:00pm.

This program aired on August 11, 2017.

Transcript:

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): With the Slevs, the Slevinator.

JEREMY SLEVIN: Hello, what’s up?

VALLAS: Hey Jeremy how are you doing? We’re here at Netroots because it’s what we do, we come here we hang out on radio row, and I have to say it’s been kind of amazing to see the energy here in a year that’s been really different from any other year I’ve been at Netroots, both because it’s Trump’s America and there’s this sort of ground zero of the resistance but also because of all of the new life blood that we’re seeing. New groups, new activists, new folks we’re meeting all around the place.

SLEVIN: Yeah I think it’s really exciting. It was interesting seeing the contrast between last year and this year. Last year felt more like the Netroots old guard.

VALLAS: It did.

SLEVIN: I was honestly wondering, I was like I wonder how long Netroots will go on and this year it’s like, it’s gained a new life and it’s amazing seeing the progressive energy in person. I mean like we know it exists and we see it on Twitter.

VALLAS: And we see it in Indivisible.

SLEVIN: Yeah, Indivisible, and we see it on the ground and in the media but being at a convention with thousands of people all who are here and ready to get active is super exciting.

VALLAS: I have to say it’s been exciting not just to see new activists, many of whom are, I mean, there actually there are badges that people wear that say “first timer” and it’s like almost everyone here has a first timer badge because they have never been to Netroots before they’re brand new to a lot of this work. I credit Indivisible and a lot of the other newer groups with sort of helping to harness a lot of that energy and momentum following the election. But the other thing that’s been really interesting to watch is that probably the biggest celebrity at this convention this year is not anyone currently in congress, it’s not Elizabeth Warren this year, it’s Randy Bryce.

[LAUGHTER]

SLEVIN: I was going to say it’s either, it’s one of your two guests which are Randy Bryce and Ezra Levin.

VALLAS: But of whom we will have later on in the show.

SLEVIN: Yeah well, he’s amazing! I mean —

VALLAS: They’re both amazing.

SLEVIN: Well yeah, Ezra Levin’s amazing too, sorry Ezra if you’re listening but Randy Bryce has injected a kind of authenticity in the party that doesn’t really exist from congressional candidates. Even —

VALLAS: Or rarely exist.

SLEVIN: Rarely exists, I mean for all the talk of the resurgence of populism and the white working class, I say that in air quotes, in this election obviously Donald Trump’s a billionaire and it was a fraud. And even Bernie Sanders who mounted an amazing campaign is a long time senator. Randy Bryce is an actual ironworker, steelworker from, the lights just went dark, and they went dark again.

VALLAS: There’s probably a deeper meaning there.

SLEVIN: Yeah.

VALLAS: We’ll try not to read into it.

SLEVIN: He’s from Paul Ryan’s district, I think his whole candidacy makes me so hopeful.

VALLAS: And of course Randy Bryce is the guy running against Paul Ryan, I’ll have him on later on in the show.

SLEVIN: Yeah, I’ll let him talk about him.

VALLAS: We’ll let him explain himself but I will that it’s just amazing to see this influx, and he’s just one of several folks I’ve spoken with while here on radio row, people who have either never been involved in politics before or this is really the first time that they have run for office in this way. Can’t wait for that conversation to go to air, but Jeremy, this has been great thank you for being here to help me kick off this episode.

SLEVIN: I’m happy to be here, I think there’s a lot of great content to come on how we build a progressive movement.

VALLAS: And with that we’ll get out of the way, that plus also an awesome segment on disability in the progressive movement.

[MUSIC]

VALLAS: Welcome to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. And here at Netroots Nation in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m so thrilled to be joined by Randy Bryce, you know who he is, he doesn’t need much of an introduction for folks who are listening to this show because he’s the guy running against Paul Ryan. Randy Bryce, thank you so much for joining the show.

RANDY BRYCE: Thanks for the invitation it’s a pleasure to be talking with you.

VALLAS: So I’m really excited to hear your views on a lot of things but I really want to start with your personal story. What spurred you to run? You’re, we were just talking before the tape started rolling, you’re actually a regular person, not someone who came up, you know, in politics. What spurred you to actually run for office here?

BRYCE: Just things that are going on, you know in our district and then seeing that amplified onto the national level. Looking at how bad things have gotten for working people since Scott Walker, and I call him the banana republicans have taken over, pretty much taken over Wisconsin. It’s not just how horrible the policies have been that have reduced everything as far wages, since he’s been in the middle class has been disappearing from the state faster than any other state in the country. He talks about how we’re getting more jobs but the poverty level in increasing at the same time which tells me that you know, what kind of jobs are there that are coming in? They’re horrible jobs and seeing this being taken to the national level it’s gotten to the point where you know, it’s almost like on behalf of our state’s honor to do something because he’s Speaker of the House.

VALLAS: So you’re known as actually being kind of a working guy’s guy. That’s a lot of the press you’ve gotten and that makes you very different as sort of a political persona and a political individual than Paul Ryan who in many ways is sort of the opposite of that. I’m curious to hear you speak a little bit about your district and what people in the district that you’re fighting to represent think about Paul Ryan and what kind of reception you’ve had in challenging him?

BRYCE: Well it’s been, it’s overwhelming working class district and there is you know, there are cities, the urban population areas and then in between there’s a good rural population too. Lot of farmlands that I pass to get to the freeway to go north, that’s where my job site is. But from, I mean the big thing I hear is health care. And it’s not just what they’re doing now, I mean first of all they’ve had over 7 years to have some kind of alternative in place to just, all they’re doing is repealing. They don’t have any plan to replace, they’re even talking about well let’s just take it away. Basically, let’s just take it away. And we’ll worry about something later. And I mean you know that it’s all tied in with tax reform which is part of this, and I refer to it as wealthcare, it’s not health care, it’s wealthcare because you’re going to have millionaires that are going to be getting more money. That’s the tradeoff, everything politically is like trading off. You get something and somebody gets something in return.

So they’re taking away basic healthcare which I mean for my son that’s me worrying about him going on a sled ride going down the hill in the wintertime. For me, being a cancer survivor, that’s, my thanks for surviving cancer is being listed as a preexisting condition. For my mom who’s in the video, that’s her independence, that’s her ability to go to the grocery store, to go visit my dad who has Alzheimer’s, that’s living in assisted living right now. That’s a huge issue. And it’s not just that I would say that’s a big thing overall. Now Paul Ryan is having these captive audience townhalls. I’d been calling him out saying he hasn’t had a public town hall in over 600 days, well his campaign, Politifact did me on it, so —

VALLAS: I saw that. Turns out they were wrong.

BRYCE: So I have to correct myself, it’s been over 650 days that he’s had a public town hall. [LAUGHTER] And now there’s a billboard in his district in Janesville, some PAC came up with some money that is counting how many days it’s been, I want to say 671 days now. But the number changes every day he doesn’t have one. And people are now, these private events that he’s having with the captive audiences, people are starting to call him out. They’re like wait a minute, we heard you kept telling us you had all these great ideas. Where are they? You’re not doing anything. You have, it’s a Republican congress, senate, you have a Republican kind of in the White House and even a right leaning, a conservative Supreme Court. You can pass anything. You have the ability to pass anything your heart desires and even the Supreme Court is going to say yup, it’s constitutional. That’s the same thing they did in Wisconsin, they redrew lines so that they could stay in office, we have thousands more votes of, on behalf of Democrats than we do on Republicans yet Republicans win more seats. That where the political world is going to.

VALLAS: And it’s an interesting way to put it, right. They obviously have all the levers of power under their authority, right as you said. But I would argue it’s actually worse than doing nothing, they are actively working in concert, Republicans in Washington and in all of the different branches of government to take things away from working people that they need to actually make ends meet, to thrive, to put food on the table, to know that they’re going to have a secure retirement, to know that their kids are going to be healthy and have an opportunity in this country, all to pay for those taxes for the wealthy as you were describing. Do people in Wisconsin understand that? Is that being made clear and are they aware of Paul Ryan’s role as the architect of that agenda?

BRYCE: It’s starting to become clear and that’s the main focus of our campaign which is why I’m running. Everybody in the district will know that he’s the ringleader of what’s going on.

VALLAS: So tell me a little bit about, instead of what you’re against, right, which is all the things we’ve just discussed. What is your campaign about? Obviously it’s change, it’s about putting someone in that district who actually represents folks who are from the district as opposed to the donor class and that’s been very clear from your campaign. What are the kinds of policies that you would fight for if you were in Washington instead of Paul Ryan?

BRYCE: Well being in favor, the health care advocate, Medicare for all is one of the things that I feel should be something we get started right away. Senator Tammy Baldwin who’s also coming up for reelection has a terrific idea to start covering people from 55 on up.

VALLAS: So actually lowering the Medicare age.

BRYCE: Correct. And I think that’s a brilliant idea, that’s, I don’t see this Medicare for All happening overnight, it’s going to be a process, so when people, when I say I want to get to there and I’m, sometimes people try to put me on the spot, well how long is that going to take? It’s like, realistically I don’t know. Within 10 years, definitely.

VALLAS: Policy takes time.

BRYCE: Right but the next step, I mean I see it, you know, taking steps to get there I think is a great idea. That 55 and older is one step, and then I’d like to start lower and go from like birth up to maybe mid 20s. Because you’re going to have the healthiest people paying into it, that’s going to help keep it solvent and then also as far as children, then if a parent loses their job and health care has been tied to work, a parent’s place of work, they’re still going to be covered because kids shouldn’t have to suffer because a parent gets laid off due to no fault of their own.

VALLAS: You also mention wages, and that’s been a strong piece of your campaign has been really talking about working people who are working 2 and 3 jobs in some cases and still not able to actually make ends meet, not make it into the middle class. I mean Donald Trump campaigned heavily, if he had any policy in his campaign last year around helping communities who have been left behind and that’s what he and Republicans are claiming to be doing right now even though it’s the opposite of what they’re doing as we’ve been discussing. We’re now actually at a point where the minimum wage in this country, the federal minimum wage has not been raised in 7 years. And that’s a big piece of what’s going on there. Would raising wages be part of what you would do in Washington?

BRYCE: Absolutely, I’m in favor of a minimum wage of $15 an hour. I mean, there’s this misconception that it’s high school kids just having a job, it’s not. A lot of, especially single mothers are working jobs and dependent on whatever they can, working 2, 3 jobs. If they’re not getting 40 hours a week they’re not getting health care. And I mean personally I experience working 2 full time jobs, not having a day off, like a day off was one shift on a Sunday, 6 hours on a Sunday. That was my day off, that’s going on all too frequently now and we find too it’s not just the fact of doing the right thing so that you know if you talk about family values you work your hours then you go home, you spend time with your family.

VALLAS: Sure.

BRYCE: You should be able to do that with one job. You get time with your kids, time for your own self, just to rest, relax. And if you have extra money it’s, you can buy things. Otherwise what you’re doing is you’re saving and one you have a couple extra dollars to buy something else that’s contributing to helping boost up the economy. And that’s, it’s just a no brainer. You know it help creates the demand and then you need to create a supply for that demand which in turn is going to create more jobs.

VALLAS: One of the things that is one of Paul Ryan’s favorite talking points that makes me bang my head against the wall more than anything is that he likes to say that the difference between being in poverty and not being in poverty is a job. As though people who are struggling to make ends meet are in that condition because of laziness or because they’re not working hard enough. Is that something that, have you had the opportunity to actually have an exchange with him about your differences in views and if you haven’t, what would you say to him in response to that?

BRYCE: No I haven’t. First of all, he hasn’t been very present in the area. I’ve never been invited to one of his telephone town halls which are basically paid infomercials with taxpayer money. As far as jobs go, looking at the government jobs right now in the county of Racine, we had the county executive come who’s conservative but he addressed the Racine County Democratic Party meeting and I gave him credit right off the bat just for coming and having that dialogue.

VALLAS: Sure.

BRYCE: But it was brought up, he was like we have so many jobs available for working for the county. Which is you know, government jobs. Turns out a lot of them are temp agency jobs. And I know personally from talking with other people these temp jobs, you go in and you work for say 60 days before they have to hire you on a permanent basis or 30 days, whatever the contract reads, and you don’t have any benefits as a result of that, basically you’re getting paid a wage and the temp agency is making money off of you. That’s how, that’s their service but just doing that. And when you get close to that day where you think you’re going to get hired on as a full time employee because you bust your butt, you show up a half hour early, you stay 15 minutes, 20 minutes, a half hour, an hour late trying to help show that you’re a hard worker and deserving of this job, to get let go and it’s like oh we’re sorry, we don’t need you anymore.

And then to hear about somebody else coming to take that same job. So it’s not, it’s not the person, they’re a burden because you have to provide benefits. It’s almost like you know having a kid and then it’s like aw, I got to feed him now.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: Kids need food, it’s true.

BRYCE: Right.

VALLAS: So I would love to hear a little bit more about your personal story and how it influences your policies that you’re in favor of. I think when people talking about Paul Ryan’s personal story I think the closest we can get is that back in his kegger days when he was in college he was dreaming of cutting Medicaid right? That much we know. But your personal story is very much connected to why you hold the views on policies that you hold.

BRYCE: Right, shortly after getting out of the army one of the first jobs I had was working with homeless veterans. And I saw from how like this hero worship of you know, these are our heroes. This is the military, USA, USA with the chants and all that. To going and finding out that 60% of the homeless population was made up of veterans at the time. And I think that number’s better, but just the fact that you can worship one group of people while they’re dodging bullets and wearing the uniform and waving the flag, then when they come home and you see them laying on the side of the street you walk by them and they’re considered a burden on society. I would say just that thought process there has a huge effect on how I carry my thoughts out. And then getting involved with the union movement and knowing that even somebody that doesn’t pay dues into the union, they still, the job site that they come on to if they don’t belong to a union, that job site is still safe because of things that unions have fought for. So everybody benefits from that. And it’s just a thing of just fairness. It’s like we have so much, this country is so fantastic and there’s an abundance of everything. There’s no reason why people can’t have enough and it’s been, that’s been a huge issue for me is just making sure people have enough. There’s no reason why we can’t do it, and it’s not that I have a problem with rich people, I have a problem with greedy people.

VALLAS: And with fairness as you were describing.

BRYCE: Exactly.

VALLAS: Especially given that the entire conversation that we’re having in Washington right now is all about how can we give tax cuts to millionaires paid for by everybody else. So in the last couple minutes that I have with you, where is the campaign headed in the months ahead and what should folks be looking for as they get excited about your candidacy?

BRYCE: We’re working on continuing the momentum that we have. It’s just kind of been shot of a rocket and more and more people are asking how can we help. A lot of national groups are getting involved with us. So we’re planning to have more events within the district. Aside from meeting people that want to, it’s like we’d love to give you money, can you come out and visit us? And that means a lot, just the kind of support we’ve been getting from around the country. But we’re going to be involved, having some kind of community service projects within the district, people coming to visit our district, to meet the people that you know, that they’re helping support to get rid of Paul Ryan.

VALLAS: My last question for you just because I’m personally curious and we were talking a little bit about this before we started rolling the tape, you overnight went from a regular guy in Wisconsin, doing regular work, having a family. To being something of a national celebrity. What has that been like as an experience?

BRYCE: I still feel like a regular guy. That just, every time somebody comes up and is like encouraging, hey keep it up, thank you for doing what you’re doing, that’s at times very surreal just especially the amount of travel, going to different places and just meeting people I never thought that I’d meet that just, it’s really amazing how many people also want to help make the United States a better place to live.

VALLAS: Well Randy Bryce, running for congress, I am deeply, deeply excited by your campaign and hoping very much that it’s you who folks in Wisconsin get to turn to to represent them instead of the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan after the election takes place. But I really appreciate you taking the time, glad that you’re here at Netroots and I look forward to seeing where your campaign goes from here.

BRYCE: Pleasure to talk to you, thank you.

[MUSIC]

VALLAS: You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas and I’m so pleased to be joined by a good friend who is a big deal here at Netroots Nation his name is Ezra Levin, not “Levin” as you were often called in the early days of your celebrity. [LAUGHTER] He’s the president and co-creator and other things of Indivisible. Did I get that right?

EZRA LEVIN: That’s more or less right.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: More or less, I will take more or less especially if it’s more than less. But he’s here at Netroots talking to a lot of folks in particular about our big health care win. It’s kind of an amazing moment to be here among a whole bunch of progressives. Ezra thanks first of all for joining the show. Always love having you. But would love to hear from you a little bit about kind of what you’re thinking and how you’re understanding what that victory meant.

LEVIN: Right, no and always love to join you and discuss our victories whenever we have them.

VALLAS: Especially when we have victories and even when we don’t though I still love having you on the show.

LEVIN: Oh, well I’ll come on the show anytime.

VALLAS: Just to be clear.

LEVIN: Absolutely. So the health care victory in Trumpcare in the senate was absolutely phenomenal. I think we talk a lot about constituent power. This idea that people not just during elections but during the legislative process have power in the system. That individual members of congress, while they may have some policy priorities, while they may want to go along with their president if they’re in the Republican party that fundamentally, they don’t care about anything more than their own reelection. Which means that they care what their constituents think, they care how they’re portrayed in local media which gives constituents power. It gives people power on their home turf. They don’t have to come all the way out to D.C., they don’t have to go to their state capitol, they can just operate on their home turf and effect nationwide policymaking. And we saw a couple weeks ago with the failure of Trumpcare. It might not be dead for good, we called it the zombie bill because it has this habit of dying and then coming back and then dying again.

VALLAS: I’m knocking on wood as we even talk about it.

LEVIN: I think this is plastic but yeah, point taken.

VALLAS: Does that count? [LAUGHTER] I’m knocking my head now, I feel better about that.

LEVIN: No but this defeat was a real defeat and you know, regardless of whether it comes back and regardless of future battles, this was a huge victory for, and not just Indivisible but the broader progressive movement. This includes CAP, this includes Move On, this include National ADAPT, this includes all of the groups that were coming together to push back against this and nothing’s ever going to take that away. Nothing ever is going to un-prove this theory of change that people can effect change on their home turf. It’s amazing to see.

VALLAS: And it’s not something a lot of us expected in January, I think there was this moment of mourning following the election where it wasn’t just hating the outcome, it wasn’t just feeling defeated about the absence of the opportunity to advance progressive causes but there were also a lot of things that felt like we sort of quote, knew them. We knew them to be true, we knew the Affordable Care Act would be repealed, we knew that there would be a budget that would get passed that would slash everything to give tax cuts to millionaires. And that conventional wisdom, that knowing that we did so much of, my scare quotes are all over the place here but appropriately so. Turns out not to have been true at all and this is a big eating crow for all the folks who said we couldn’t win.

LEVIN: Look, it’s absolutely right. You are absolutely right. Back in November and December I think you and I were in a lot of the same rooms with progressives and the word on the street was gosh the Affordable Care Act is dead. Possibly as soon as the first day of the Trump administration. I mean if you think about it, they have been promising this for about 7 years, they have passed a repeal of the Affordable Care Act dozens of times in the house, they passed it in the Senate as well. So President Obama had to veto it. Word on the street, it was going to be dead immediately and that’s not what happened. And so every week that went by without it getting done, every month that went by without it getting done was shocking. Like why wouldn’t they get this done? For the first time in over 10 years we have a unified conservative congress with a conservative president, they made this their number one legislative priority and they couldn’t get it done because people in blue states and red states and purple states were standing up saying, I will be dead or bankrupt if you take away this legislation. This is what allows me to survive, either financial or literally. And it worked! It’s been working and that’s amazing and it’s a lesson that’s not just about health care. It’s a lesson about how policy is made in this country and it’s a lesson that we can take into the fights to come on taxes and budget.

VALLAS: Well that’s exactly where I want to go —

LEVIN: Oo, can I stop right before we do that though?

VALLAS: I think we should, I think you have something to say.

LEVIN: So just one thing on this, I’ve heard from a lot of folks that you know, love that we defeated Trumpcare, but it came down to Alaska, Maine and Arizona. And that’s not true, it’s just not true. Yes, that was the final vote to fail, but three bills, three bills died in that final week. There was a bill that was the Senate version of Trumpcare that failed, there was a bill that was repeal and delay that failed and there was a final skinny budget fail. All of those votes required a difference combination of senators to defeat it. So it wasn’t just those three senators that defeated it. And the way we got to those three final votes was phenomenal, it was because Democrats stood strong. They played hardball. If you have a democratic senator you should thank them because the way we got to that point, it was not a given. We didn’t know that all the Democratic senators were going to stand strong. But the way we got to that point was that they saw the action in the streets, they saw the grassroots energy and they thought, well I’m going to stand with those folks because they really know what I should be doing and I know what I’m going to be hearing from them. So this is a victory that is practically in every single state, even if you had two uber-conservative senators who ended up voting for Trumpcare, voted for everything, you can bet that they were in back room meetings with the rest of the Republican senators saying, yeah I’m getting this too in my state, it’s everywhere. So everybody is responsible for this victory, everybody owns this victory and that’s something that we should really, again, now we can transition, take that into the battles to come.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: Well now that I’ve been authorized to transition to the next topic. That’s actually a perfect segue because what I wanted to ask was sort of, there’s been a lot of OK, what are the lessons we can take from healthcare and I think a lot of folks are taking away top line what we can win, and that democrats need to stand strong as opposed to assuming the conventional wisdom that no, you know, we can’t actually win, we’re going to lose everything and so we may as well start from a compromise place to make it less bad. I think there’s a resounding defeat to that theory of change right. But I would love to hear from you, what else you feel we’ve learned from this victory when it comes to how we can win and what that means as Republicans pivot to what they’re calling tax reform but what I’m calling tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and corporations paid for by everybody else.

LEVIN: Well it’s not just you calling it that, that’s objective analysis calling it that too.

VALLAS: I love when you say what I’m saying is objective analysis, thank you for that.

LEVIN: Absolutely right. So one thing that we learned, especially in the senate, although in the house to some extent as well is that the GOP when they really want something, like they wanted Trump care, are eager to blow up years of precedent, years of procedural norms in order to get what they want. So looking at tax cuts for the wealthy, which is the number 2 priority apparently after cutting health insurance away from 23 million Americans.

VALLAS: And not just the wealthy, the ultra, ultra-wealthy.

LEVIN: Well we can’t just cut it for millionaires, we’ve got, billionaires have a hard time these days. Do you see how expensive yachts are now?

VALLAS: Especially when you need two of them.

LEVIN: Right, I mean you have to have one for your kids and one for you.

VALLAS: I think it’s like llamas, you can’t just have one llama.

[LAUGHTER]

LEVIN: I didn’t know that, but I’m learning a lot on this.

VALLAS: My family’s looked into getting llamas before, mostly as a joke for my dad but it kind of became a thing and so you can’t just have one. You need two.

LEVIN: Well that’s good to know. What is a group of llamas called?

VALLAS: Well I don’t know if two count as a group.

LEVIN: Oh, bummer.

VALLAS: But you know what, I’m going to look it up while we’re talking because I want to know what the plural of llamas is. Please, please.

LEVIN: Absolutely. So the thing we learned about blowing up senate procedure and house procedure in order to get what you want, we expect that to carry through in the tax reform fight, or the tax cut for millionaires and billionaires fight. So what I expect to see in the Senate is almost identical to what we saw in the healthcare fight. So Mitch McConnell who is a brilliant legislative tactician. Yes, he failed but he came awfully close to repealing the Affordable Care Act. Mitch McConnell is going to do the same thing. He’s not going to allow this bill to exist in the open, he’s not going to allow sunlight on the bill, he’s not going to allow hearings on the legislation. So what we expect is nothing, nothing, nothing and all the sudden, hey, we’ve got to vote on this right now.

And that is a conscious effort because he understands constituent power. He understands that if something so unpopular like tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires gets out in the open, even his caucus, even his Republican, fellow Republican senators could come out against it.

VALLAS: And he also learned from healthcare, right?

LEVIN: Exactly.

VALLAS: Because oh my God, a CBO score that shows that 22 million or maybe 32 million Americans are going to lose their health insurance, having that said out there makes it a lot harder to actually get your votes.

LEVIN: Right, so before the July recess, Mitch McConnell was desperate to get health care done and he was desperate to get it done before the July recess because he knew what the Senators would face when they head back to their home states and actually the reporting since Trumpcare failed totally corroborates that. Mitch McConnell is a smart guy, he understood. What we heard was Susan Collins went back to home state in Maine and heard from everybody that they didn’t want this Trumpcare bill. We saw that Jerry Moran held a town hall in Kansas, in Palco, Kansas with 150 population, 150 person population and tons of people flooded the town hall saying they didn’t want it. That affected what could get done at the national level. We’re going to see the same thing in taxes because Mitch McConnell, smart guy, we should not underestimate him. So we’ve got to be prepared for that. Now that means we need to be ready to push back right now against what we know is coming which is exactly what you said, it’s an attack on our progressive [INAUDIBLE], it’s an attack on how we fund programs that actually invest in our communities and allow us to be a prosperous nation.

VALLAS: And for people who don’t have yachts.

LEVIN: Well yeah.

VALLAS: I looked it up, I looked it up —

LEVIN: Oh, please.

VALLAS: Llamas are a herd, so it’s a herd of llamas but interestingly enough a baby llama is called a cria.

LEVIN: That is interesting enough.

VALLAS: Trivia, trivia for you. [LAUGHTER] I didn’t want to be like oh it’s a herd and have you be like that was a huge bummer because that’s so obvious.

LEVIN: But now I’m walking away with something I can really take to the bank.

VALLAS: I like to give people new things to know. OK, so back to tax and budget, llamas aside. So for folks who are looking to make sure that they understand the process here that was a lot of what Indivisible was so useful in doing for folks in the grassroots, helping break down what can often feel like a very removed but also very technical and very wonky conversation that the media doesn’t always do a great job of covering and accessible and even honest, balanced way. And sometimes forgets about when Russia and other things are happening, now we’ve got nuclear war dominating the headlines so people have forgotten that the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires are what Republicans are trying to do and spending August recess planning for for September through Thanksgiving. Where can folks get more information about what’s coming, how they can plug in and what’s Indivisible going to be up to?

LEVIN: Oh, absolutely. So right now we’re in the middle of the longest congressional recess of this year, August recess. And there is a lot of opportunity right now to go and talk to your representatives and senators. Many of them are back home, some of them are hiding but many of them are back home. Even if they’re hiding, we see a lot of indivisible groups and other folks holding their own missing member town halls where you can go and at least talk about the issues and invite the representative or senator, maybe they’ll come. And so how do you actually pull that off? How do you know what questions to ask or what issues are up? We have a website, if you go to Indivisible.org you can —

VALLAS: Laughing because Jeremy Slevin also known as the Slevinator, who our listeners know well is doing very silly things behind you right now trying to make me laugh.

[LAUGHTER]

LEVIN: It’s working.

VALLAS: And now, and I had to come clean. [LAUGHTER] Thanks, Slevs. You were saying smart things about Indivisible.org.

LEVIN: So Indivisible.org, if you go to Indivisible.org you can find a lot scripts and toolkits about how you can make the most of this month right now. You can be talking about taxes, you can be talking about the environment, you can be talking about the budget. There are tons of things you can be doing and you should because this is when your representatives are at home and if they’re not at home they should be.

VALLAS: So where can folks find those resources again?

LEVIN: Indivisble.org.

VALLAS: Not hiding the ball but I appreciate that very much. Ezra Levin who is not Ezra “Levin” but who doesn’t know much about llamas but who is still someone I love.

LEVIN: Cria, I love crias.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: You’re so on message, you’re so on message Ezra. Ezra Levin is the dude you know at Indivisible who created the Indivisible guide with other people who are great. And he’s a beloved friend of the show and someone I am so lucky to count as a friend, thank you for being here and I’ll have you on soon.

LEVIN: Thanks.

[MUSIC]

VALLAS: Welcome back to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas, broadcasting from Netroots Nation in Atlanta, Georgia. I am so honored and thrilled and privileged, all three of those things to be joined by an amazing, amazing set of badass ladies. And in order this way we have Rebecca Cokley, who this show does not need any introduction to because she is a friend of the show and amazing and wonderful. We’ll get to you and why you’re amazing later. Vilissa Thompson right here with Ramp Your Voice. Kathryn Perez, with the National Coalition of Latinxs with Disabilities, and Mia Ives Rublee of the Women’s March. We’ll explain why you guys are all here but I’m so thrilled about what you’re doing at Netroots which is talking about how progressive need the disability community in ways that frankly most people haven’t realized until healthcare. So without further adieu, thank you so much for being here and for joining the show.

[ALL TOGETHER]: Thank you for having us.

VALLAS: So I wanted all four of you because you guys are doing a badass panel on this tomorrow talking about how disability can save the progressive movement. There are probably a lot of folks hearing that right and going wait a second, A, I don’t know that the progressive movement needs saving and B, why is it that disability is going to do this? So I’m going to start with you Rebecca and then I want to hear from everybody, what’s that about.

REBECCA COKLEY: Well for is I mean it really comes down to the fact that you know, our panel’s named #BadAssHelenKeller, #FierceFannyLou

VALLAS: You need the hashtags in there.

COKLEY: Because most people don’t realize that in addition to all that Helen Keller did in terms of activism around disability issues, she was also a co-founder of the ACLU. She flew herself to South Africa to see first hand how fucked up apartheid was and then came back to the states and made it part of her mission to like actively speak out against it. Most folks also don’t realize that Fanny Lou Hammer was a woman with polio who was involuntarily sterilized when she was young against her will and didn’t find out until years later when she wanted to, when she got married and wanted to have kids. And she had to go back to her OB and he’s like yeah, people like you shouldn’t have babies. And I sterilized you when you were relatively young. And so for us disability has always been part of the progressive movement but I think as we hear terms thrown around, things like self care and you know, it’s one of those things where it’s kind of funny to me and y’all pop in but like it’s like, oh you just discovered self care. How cute. You’re Christopher Columbus-ing, you’re discovering America.

[LAUGHTER]

We’ve been talking about this for decades and in our community we call it reasonable accomodation. And welcome. You know, and so I think there’s a lot of things that as we talk about moving forward as a progressive movement, that folks outside of the disability community can take that we’ve learned and making a movement more inclusive, making a movement where our folks aren’t burning out. Making a movement that can actually sustain itself and actually thrive.

UNIDENTIFIED: And can include more people.

COKLEY: And include more people, definitely.

VALLAS: And which by necessity needs to be including more people. I think a lot of folks recently and very recently discovered ADAPT and frankly discovered the power of the disability community because of the health care fight. And they saw ADAPT protesters literally putting their bodies on the line to say no this actually what you’re trying to do by taking away my Medicaid would mean my loss of independence which would be worse than going to jail so I’m will to do that. A lot of people were inspired by it, maybe shocked, maybe impressed, and now there’s this conversation happening where people are going Oh, oh those disability folks, I feel like maybe they would be valuable to have at the table in a way that’s, I don’t know, 30, 50, 100, 1,000 years late by my own opinion. But this is a lot of you, Valissa, have been working on. Is that the intersectionality of the progressive community and of tables within the progressive community. Help me understand some of that work and I’d love for the listeners to hear a little bit about what you’ve been up to.

VALISSA THOMPSON: I became an advocate because I didn’t see other particularly black disabled women talking about the issues that matter to me. So I created Ramp Your Voice 4 years ago and then last year I had the hashtag #DisabilityTooWhite that tackled the overt whiteness and erasure and exclusion and harm that disabled people of color endure in disability, in our community and the lack of us not talking about racism. That we have this fear of talking about anything other than disability. And I say that if you only focus on my disability you’re not seeing the whole me. Being black is just as important to me as being a woman. Being a woman is just as important to me as being disabled. So all three of my identities have shaped my experience as well as how the world reacts to, interact with me. So what my work [INAUDIBLE] intersectionality, bring that voice that is not always seen in our community as well as the broader society. And talking about the stories, creating the black disabled woman syllabus where we have black writers and creatives talking about their experience through journaling and through books and through research and things of that nature to really have a better understanding of why the black disabled experience matters and why intersectional disabled experiences should be known within the community and to really break the mold so that disabled people of color do not feel like there’s only just slim pickings of who’s out there. And our experiences should be heard loud and clear just as everybody else.

So my work is really focused on that so I’m really pushing that more, focusing on the health of black women that I be doing, actually bring #DisabilityTooWhite into our project to where I talk more about why we need diversity in the community and educating white disabled people, for them to get right and get in the lane that they need to be in to be better allies. I hate that word but allies or co-conspirators or just supporters.

VALLAS: I’ll take co-conspirators over ally anyday.

[LAUGHTER]

THOMPSON: You know, to cause some good trouble that John Lewis is always talking about. So, that’s what matters to me to really create this space for myself to where not only am I empowered but also see that empowerment onto other particularly black disabled women who now see somebody and see stories and voices that look like them and that they can relate to.

VALLAS: And while we’re talking about the hashtag #DisabilityTooWhite which folks should check out if they’re not aware of it, it’s still active on twitter, it went viral when you started it, it was a big deal. But I sort of want to take a moment just to reflect on the makeup of the conversation that we’re having here right now. Because I’m going to quote Ms. Cokley in saying your classic line about the disability movement of yesteryear being pale, male and stale, right? [LAUGHTER] Which was in many ways the face because of who was controlling who was at the table and who was the face who got into the meetings and who was in the media appearances whenever those happen but you guys are none of those things.

THOMPSON: Right.

VALLAS: And that’s been pretty amazing. What is paving the way for this greater intersectionality and this greater diversity within a conversation about disability. And I would love to go to you Mia, because of your role within the Women’s March.

MIA IVES RUBLEE: You know I think that there’s a couple of things. I think there’s people like Rebecca who are willing to go to bat for people who have other multiple identities, marginalized identities. I think it’s also a lot of us are just taking the reigns and going with it, you know. We’ve come to realize that if we’re not at the table we’re not getting involved, we’re not going to be able to have a voice there. We’re going to be on the menu basically.

VALLAS: I was waiting for you to say that part, right, exactly.

RUBLEE: I think in my work when I was working with the Women’s March I was seeing all on facebook and twitter that people were like hey, hey, Women’s March, what are you going to do about disability? Are you going to be accessible, what are you going to do? And for me to see that all down the line and nobody getting a response, that’s what really made me decide that I needed to do what I could and use my own voice and my own abilities to really try and go to bat for people who might not be able to put that much energy or that time in to get us going. And I think realizing that people you know, like all of us who are multiply marginalized is understanding that we understand how disability affects everything, you know. And understanding that it can’t just be about accessibility in terms of inclusion. That we have to be included in leadership and we have to be included within the platforms and everything like that. And so I think it’s super important that people like us are showing up because we really understand the issues and understand how disability and all these other identities play amongst each other.

VALLAS: This is a big part of what you Kathryn also do with your work. Your work is literally intersectional in that you’re bringing together the Latinx community and the disability community in a way that I haven’t seen happen before through an actual coalition and through convenings. Talk a little bit about why it’s been important to activate the Latinx community in this conversation.

KATHRYN PEREZ: Yeah so I, you’re saying why are we here at the table and how is this growing and why? And I think I’m just, I’m sick of hearing about diversity at conferences and we need more diversity and I just wanted to do diversity. It’s not talking about, thinking about diversity and I get it from both sides. I live in this Latinx world and then I live in this disability world and I think kind of like what you’re saying I have this sort of fractured identity where I don’t feel like my whole self in the Latinx space or in the disability space. Like I said I’m at those conferences for disability, they’re always talking about how can we bring more diverse people in? Well, we’re here, OK? And in the Latinx world I don’t think that they do a good job reaching out to people with disabilities, you know. Like Mia’s saying, we need to represent our whole embodied self and all of our identities.

VALLAS: And I’m going to jump in and I’m going to ask a question and this is to anyone that wants to answer it. Why is that? What have the obstacles been to greater intersectionality. We have applause happening for the pundit’s cup which is also going on right now. What have the obstacles been to not just inclusion but truly intersectional work? That’s to anyone.

THOMPSON: I’d say that some of that is the leadership in the disabled community. They being very white and really, like you say, pale, male and stale.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: Like Rebecca Cokley said.

THOMPSON: I know [CROSS TALK] love that. But when you have leadership that are white, male, upper class and they don’t, they have all these privileges. They don’t think about other identities. They don’t think about black disabled people. They don’t think about Latinx disabled people, they don’t think about Asian-American, Native Americans, multiracial, disabled people who live abroad. They don’t think about this, they don’t understand that being disabled is one identity but when you have these other identities on top of it, being marginalized, being oppressed looks different. My experience as a black disabled woman is different from a white disabled man, from a white disabled woman. And that difference has to be talked about because there are disabled people who are living in very extreme situations and they have no one coming to bat for them. And our community has failed those people for years and I think it takes those like Mia and Kathryn and Rebecca you know to really come up and really say hey, we have a place at the table or we create our own table. And we want our issues heard and we want our issues to matter. And you’re going to listen to us, and if you don’t there are consequences.

VALLAS: Well and so, that I think gets perfectly back to my original question I kicked us off with and you know what, I’m going to make you guys answer it because I want to know the answer. So let’s get back to it, how can, and before I even ask how can disability save the progressive movement, I do want to hear you talk to why is it that the progressive movement needs saving? What is it that’s broken and that’s not working.

COKLEY: I was at a session yesterday on diversifying the progressive movement. And one of the things that struck me from three of the four speakers. People talked about feeling traumatized. People talked about people doing this work being depressed, people talked about people doing this work having substance abuse issues, all of which qualify as disabilities under the ADA. And so first off, we’re already there, we’re already there doing the work. John Lewis and Diego Sanchez are two notable activists obviously, everyone knows Congressman JL and Diego with his work with [INAUDIBLE] are both very open talking about the fact that they acquire traumatic brain injuries as a result of doing activist work.

VALLAS: Back to the self care point you made.

COKLEY: Exactly. And to me it’s really one of those things that if we want our movement to survive we have to address disability. Because disability is occurring as a result of doing movement work. I think we were in St. Louis last year for Netroots and an activist, her name is Terra [INAUDIBLE] she’s from Ferguson. One of the things she said, she’s like I don’t believe in PTSD because there is no such thing as post.

VALLAS: Oh right, I remember this.

COKLEY: Living in Ferguson, Missouri we are constantly traumatized, stressed and disordered. There is no time for there to be a post.

VALLAS: It’s ongoing trauma.

COKLEY: And it’s been an earworm for me, I hear her in my head every single day when I wake up in the morning. And it’s really changed how I think about this work that we do and how we, how we make the justification and the case for us to be at the table in these spaces. And then also for how we, I think the onus is on, I think a lot of times the leadership in our community will act as though, and V I know you’ve actually heard this from the pale, male, and stale folks. It’s not on us to find the leaders of color in the community, it’s on them to find us. Like, it’s not like, I don’t have the time to go out and find black disabled leaders, like they need to come to us. And it’s like then you don’t understand anything about intersecting oppressions.

PEREZ: Sorry, I just wanted to jump in here. I mean this is my personal story but I think this is a story of a lot of people, a lot of leaders. I don’t know if you guys can resonate but I think there is a historical and generational component to this, where Latinx people, black people, people of color have been excluded from a lot of power structures. So for myself, like I’m the first person in my family to graduate college and other people followed in my family. I’m both a Latina and I’m disabled and you know I went into law school, I’m a lawyer, now I’m getting a Ph.D degree and you know, my whole focus wasn’t on being an activist. You know, you kind of, when you enter these spaces that we’ve been excluded from for so long you kind of become the token person, you become the person that starts to have to represent everyone else. We kind of get thrust in this space. So it’s both you know, it’s an opportunity but it’s also a burden that I think a lot of us have so. And with that said I want to acknowledge my privilege, being both a J.D. and almost Ph.D., also I’m a light skinned Latina, you know, my disability is a little less apparent than others right so I think a lot of it is just a lot of people who had otherwise been completely in the shadows and locked away are finally like making it up. And it’s our role, it’s my role to look behind me and pull other people up who are even further marginalized than I am.

RUBLEE: Can I add one thing? I think that people don’t realize the resources that disabled people have.

VALLAS: This was exactly where I was going to go so I’m going to let you go there.

RUBLEE: That the amazingness of disabled people and the amount of work that we have to do just to exist is something that a lot of progressives could learn from. We are individuals that have to spend every day proving that we have the right to exist and also figuring out how to exist. We are some of the most creative individuals you will ever run into because we have to figure out how to go grocery shopping. We have to figure out how to cook our own food. You now like all these able bodied people try and tell us how we’re supposed to do something and it’s usually the least efficient way to do it. So understanding that we are a resource and to use that resource.

VALLAS: Well this is exactly the note I wanted to close on. Frankly I wish we could just do this all day because this is the best conversation I have had hands down at Netroots yet. But not that I’m surprised. But for folks who are interested in figuring out how they can be better co-conspirators because we are replacing the word ally starting now, starting here, I’m stealing that Valissa. For folks who want to be good co-conspirators. For folks who want to make sure that disability is contemplated not as an afterthought, not as a box checking exercise, not as the day before because you want some tweets but as a true intention part of advocacy work, of progressive work, of the fight for social justice. What should folks be thinking about for how they can actually do that?

PEREZ: Well I’d just like to say first of all we’re everywhere. I like how you’re saying that. You know people are just realizing before we went live, you’re talking about someone just came out last year, I think disability, we’re here getting rid of the myth of normalcy, of this idea of perfection right. And so I think we’re making it OK to be different, to be diverse and I think that’s something that resonates with a lot of people. And I think a lot more people and a lot of different communities could identify as disabled if they really thought about it.

VALLAS: Rebecca, it looked like you had something to say too.

THOMPSON: I know that in my work, I really kind of think about what Kathryn said, you know, getting people who don’t identify as disabled to understand that they have a disability. I meet a lot of bright women who have disability, they don’t self-identify and I’m like, you’re a part of this. And they support my work, I’m like come on to this side, to this community, and to really have this identity that is empowering. So for me I understand that you yourself may be disabled and that’s OK. You know, say the word. It’s an identity, just as being Latina, just as being Black, just as being queer. It’s an identity that you can embrace. You’ve got community of people that really want to —

COKLEY: I was just going to say, it’s an identity, it’s a community, it’s a culture.

THOMPSON: Exactly, and we want you here. We need your voice here, we need your experiences here. So that it won’t be so pale, male and stale. So that we can really get the representation that we need so we can get some of these older leaders out that don’t want to listen and have that new leadership in. so really understand that 1 in 5 people are disabled. And disability is all around us.

VALLAS: I’m realizing by the way, we have the opportunity here to turn PMS on its head because that’s pale, male and stale. The new PMS! [LAUGHTER] We’ve got some dudes out there suffering from PMS they just don’t know it yet. So I’m going to let you guys take it out, Mia and Rebecca with any final thoughts about how, what people need to know and how we can be better co-conspirators.

RUBLEE: I think one thing that I’ve learned through my work as a social worker and then working as a rehab counselor and then working in advocacy and working with the likes of Rebecca and Valissa is that we need to continuously amplify other voices because it’s going to stay PMS until we can start bringing, you know, we have to reach down the ladder, you know. When we make it up to the next rung we have to reach down and pull people up along with us, and that’s going to change the culture and that’s going to empower more people and that’s going to tell other people it’s ok to identify as disabled and be proud of it.

VALLAS: Rebecca Cokley bring us home.

COKLEY: I think co-conspiratorship has to be intentional to be successful. I think you can’t just say oh I’m an ally I retweeted something. And so I think they’re actively, tangently has to be a commitment, an investment on behalf of those of us with privilege to say no like how can I help you. I know like, I’ve talked to all of you on the phone before I met any of you in person because I saw what you guys were doing and I was like holy shit this is amazing, like this huge. And I see it both in terms of what you’re doing as individuals and I also see it as the mom of two black disabled kids that want them to grow up and not have to walk into a movement space and choose whether they’re black or disabled. And so for me it’s like how do I use my privilege to change what the chess board looks like so my kids don’t have to deal with that. And so it literally, it came down to the point, I’m going to use my husband for a second but we were driving down Constitution ave one day in the minivan and we saw a black guy on crutches with a government badge like going up the hill. And we pulled like a Liam Neeson in “Taken” like slammed on the brakes, opened up the side door of the minivan, my husband jumped out and was like, “Hi, my name’s Patrick Cokley, I help build a list of African Americans with disabilities and we don’t know you. Who are you and what do you do?”

VALLAS: I resonate with that.

COKLEY: And like —

VALLAS: Also I’m just picture Patrick, big part of this right now.

COKLEY: I was like you need to go talk to him! And we ended up talking to the guy and become friends with him and I mean ten years ago we were just as intentional about building a youth leadership movement within the disability rights movement and I really feel like if we want to continue changing what the community looks like, we have to take that same level of intention, we have to build lists. We have to stop folks where we see them and talk to them. I mean Stacy Abrams yesterday talked about her father who was dyslexic and her brother with mental health disabilities who’s incarcerated right now. And I immediately flagged down her people and was like we need to talk. Like how can we talk, who’s writing your policy, how can we help with this. And we have to because if we don’t do it, the PMS’ers aren’t going to. That’s how we change the dialogue, that’s how we control the table, the menu and the dinner conversation.

VALLAS: The words to end and to live by, to end on and to live by. You’ve left me speechless Rebecca Cokley I can’t even get words out. Rebecca Cokley is a friend of the show, one of my favorite co-conspirators and one of the people speaking here at Netroots about these issues. But joined by Mia Ives Rublee, Valissa Thompson, Kathryn Perez, all badass ladies I am so honored to know and now to know in person and that I look forward to working with to actually save the progressive movement in all of these ways. Thank you guys so much for being here.

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 We Act Radio network, or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.