Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. We're on vacation this week, but that doesn't mean we don't have an amazing show for you Today the Washington Post Metropolis blog Gillian Brackau talk to us about the.
History of strikes.
But first we have Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor David Hogg on his new organization, which is dedicated to electing more people to state legislature and Congress. Welcome to Fast Politics, David Hog. Thank you for having me so talk to us about what you're working on.
I just graduated college and as my next step, I'm working on launching a pack and super pac called Leaders We Deserve, dedicated to helping elect young people across the country, especially in state legislatures, to help turn the tide on the far right agenda by investing in the future. We're focused on electing candidates under the age of thirty to state legislatures and under.
Thirty five to Congress.
But really most of our focus is on state legislatures, especially in states like Florida and Texas that are not going to flip in the next cycle or two, but have a chance of doing so in the next decade or so.
That is pretty interesting because you've come from Florida, right, tell us a little bit about, you know, the Democratic Party in Florida. One of the reasons why DeSantis won by so many points and why he really did well there was because Democratic Party sort of imploded in Florida. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and how you're how what you're doing dovetails there.
I've been involved since I was seventeen years old, which was, you know, just basically five five and a half years ago.
So I can't talk to the specifics of the internal politics that happened pre twenty eighteen within the Florida Party obviously, but I do not regardless of whatever is going on, no matter how strong or weak a party is in any state, the best solution all around, I would believe, is investing in the future with some of these really young, charismatic young people across the state in Florida, people like the leaders against the Don't Say Gay Bill, other young
people that are standing up and fighting for what's right. As we've seen is common in Florida after twenty eighteen year. It's common in the media to talk about how DeSantis is just getting win after win after win. But what's not talked about a lot of the time is the fact that Florida consistently passes progressive ballot measures. But because of the way that a lot of the districts are drawn, it has trended towards Republicans in the rout in the
past decade. But I don't think that that's necessarily something
that's going to last forever. I think what's part of DeSantis's wins are the fact that there is an aging population that is retiring and moving to Florida that even when they were my age, we're already more conservative than my generation is, and they only since they've gotten older, and my generation has the greatest asset that you can have on your side in politics, perhaps even more than billions of dollars, which is time, because not even the
coke breathers can buy more of that. And that's what we see this as you know, we might not be able to flip the state legislature this election or the next win, but we're laying the groundwork so that in ten years, when you know, in seven or so years, when redistricting happens, we have a better chance at cutting off the supermajority and making some gains there and giving young people hope that it doesn't have to be this way, that there are people, you know, imagine that justin Jones,
but in Florida right well, that can show them that it's not all hope is lost. There are people that look like you and think like you in the state legislature and that your voice matters. And that's kind of what we see this as as a way of investing in the future and taking from the recent movements of
the past five years. You know, for every year of Trump's presidency, he was so incompetent that there was a new chapter of several social movements that was born, for the Women's movement, to March for Our Lives, to the
Sunrise Movement, to the Movement for Black Lives. Right. What we're trying to do here is take some of the most charismatic and impressive young people from those movements and help raise them up to run for office and other young people with different backgrounds too, that have experienced in areas such as artificial intelligence and others to show them that, you know, our generation is stepping up and we're not
just yelling from the outside. We're working to changes on the inside if we can't get them to do the right thing. Because it's not just enough to have a movement on the outside to hold politicians accountable. We need better politicians to begin with, right, and we've had amazing politicians before, but there have been far too few of them, as evidence by what my generation is currently going through.
Right as we.
Look at Florida and we look at this idea of a kind of more progressive state leaders, what kind of races are you looking at?
Yeah, so the races that we're targeting, I want to be very clear, we're not here to challenge incumbent democrats by any means whatsoever. That those are not the races we're targeting. We're going after open blue seat primaries, and our main focus is going to be helping to elect young people in those seats because they often don't have that much investment. But part of our theory of change here is if we can help elect more young people that understand what it's like to have the anxiety of
not knowing, if you're going to survive math class. We can more young people turn out across the state right because they see that their values, their voice is being reflected, and that helps candidates up and down the ballot. And this isn't to say that we don't need older people in politics. We absolutely do. We need seasoned professionals that
have done this work for decades. I think it's important to point out though, that you know, with somebody like Joe Biden, the reason he's effective is because he's been around for so long. He was first collected with twenty nine years old, if I remember correctly, to the Senate. It's because he has all of that experience on the hill that he's able to do things like work to
get the IRA passed. And obviously the movements on the outside help with that too, but there's nothing quite like gaining that experience from a young age, being part of that system that enables you to get things done. And I see that as what we're kind of trying to do here is to invest in these young people that understand that anxiety because I look back at what older generations went through that's similar to school shooter drills, and
I think of nuclear bomb drills. Right, The generation that went through nuclear boom drills went on to pass some of the most actually the most comprehensive arms reduction treaties in human history. And I believe it's going to take our generation coming into politics that understands that anxiety to do a similar thing, working hand in hand with the older leaders, to be mentored and learn from them.
There was some good gun legislation past after Marjorie Stone Douglas. Can you talk about that.
Yeah, So after the shooting at my high school, Marjorie from in Douglas High School. You know, a lot of people said, it's great you young people care, but this is Florida. Nothing's going to change her. It doesn't matter how angry you are, it doesn't matter how tragic what happened is. It's not going to change. And I think it, honestly is a consequence of just us, frankly, not knowing that much about the real political climate in Florida at
the time. We just didn't care. We said whatever, We're still going to try, and we showed up working with our younger state legislators like Lauren Brook, Carlos Diarra Smith and ask Amani and so many others well, Anna I was elected in twenty eighteen, but many others at the time that worked with young people after park then to give us a voice in Tallahassee that we were able to change lots because young people showed up in Tallahassee demanding action, and older people showed up with us, but
obviously centering the power of those young people and the innocence that they represent, I think helped to push the Florida state legislature. And although they didn't ban assault, which is a major part of what we wanted, they did raise the age to buy a gun in the state of Florida to twenty one, and they also passed a law that would enable somebody who is a risk to themselves for others to be disarmed, which has been used
over six thousand times since Parkland. And mind you, a Republican state legislature passed that, right, it shows the power of these young people to show up.
Why do you think that Republicans they don't see this coming, right? I mean, I think about you know, I'm a little older than you are, sadly for me and I didn't have lockdown drills growing up, but your generation is clearly so traumatized by these lockdown drills.
Can you talk about that?
Yeah, I mean my generation is very traumatized by these lockdown drills. I mean we have the daily anxiety of going to school, and high schoolers every day wonder whether
or not they're going to survive methods. But it's also elementary schoolers, you know, that are asking when they're told that there's going to be they come up with different ways from what I've heard of describing to elementary schoolers when they go through an active shooter drill, they'll say it's something like a scary bear or a monster that they're trying to hide from, to try to make it less scary to the children. But eventually they end up growing up and as they get older, they learn what
that is, and it's an incredible amount of anxiety. When I talk to John del Bolope, who's one of the leading youth bolsters who works at Harvard, he's one of the lead bolsters in the country too, and I ask him, you know, I've known him for almost basically since right after Parkland, and I asked him, you know, what is the difference between our generation and many generations that have come before us in terms of our attitudes toward politics
and our view of the world. One of the craziest things that he said to me is that young people have described to him in these focus groups. High schoolers have said the anxiety that adults feel every day, probably by paying taxes or paying bills or whatever it is, how it's just lingering the back of your mind, like it's always there that you're thinking about it.
That's what it's like for.
Young people to think about school shooter potential school shooters coming into their school. It is a constant thought every single day and anxiety that they have. And it's not like they're of course they're very scared, but it's obviously not an immediate thread to them because they know that it's likely not going to happen at their school statistically speaking, but it's still an anxiety that they have every day. It's also about the long term fear that young people
have of the future. I mean, we live on any this is going to be the coolest summer for the rest of our lives. That is bringing anxiety to our generation. Not to mention the economic pressure that we're under still as a result of the failure to fully recover after the two thousand and eight recession and student debt and so many other factors that stress out our generation. And it's not to say other generations haven't been through incredibly stressful things.
They have.
Thankfully, my generation is not going through the Cold War right now like many others for us did, but we're living through a time with nonetheless major challenges ahead. But what makes me hopeful is knowing that over the past four years of studying history in college, that great generations are not born. Great generations are made by the moments that make them.
I just want to stop you for a minute.
It's good to hear you, and I agree with you, but I just think about what the gun crisis. If the people during the nineteen fifties could have ended the Cold War, they would have. I mean, the gun crisis is not like the Cold War, because the Cold War was. I mean it was ultimately there are larger causes. But with the gun grass like legislators tomorrow could just end it, right. I mean, it is really a you know, it's something
where it is your own politicians targeting you. I mean, I feel like the perversity of it is not something we talk about absolutely.
I mean, it's certainly, thankfully not as challenging as ending the Cold War, but it is challenging, and that we have a cycle whereas more shootings happen, more Americans buy guns because the gun industry fearmongers, right, then they're able to pump more of that money into politics, which then actually loosens gun laws by passing things like permitless carry, which then casts people to want to arm themselves more.
And it's a positive feedback loop where these gun companies are making billions of dollars every year and then they're pumping a lot of that into politics to make sure that they're empowering these politicians who then gerrymander their way into power and make us and create a system where voters aren't picking their politicians, but politicians are picking their voters.
So it's obviously not the same, but it's still challenged nonetheless, because there is that profit motive there in the first place. And I think part of what we're going to have to do as a generation is show that we're not just on the outside right demanding change, that if you stand in our way, we're an existential threat to your power and we will replace you.
Right, talk to me about candidates you're excited about.
Well, obviously, candidate's similar to Maxwell Froster are some of the ones that we're excited about. But I think one important point that I forgot to mention earlier is that although we're our main focus is going to be on these open blue seat primaries after the primary election in these states where there are young people that are running, such as Jay Schuster, for example, who's a young man, an attorney that is an expert on artificial intelligence who's
running in a very competitive district in South Florida. Candidate's like him are the ones that we're excited about. But also looking at, you know, other young people in these social movements that can run for office that don't even know that it's a possibility, or if they do, they think that they have to run for Congress, but and that state legislature isn't an option for them. The other thing is that I look at candidates like Nobilisieed who
have been elected right to state legislatures. She's one of the youngest state legislators in Illinois, and the work that they've done, you know, she's done work to make sure that students that have IEPs to make sure that like the registered to vote. That matters to me because I had an IP growing up, because I have dyslexia.
I'm just going to explain to our listeners, and IEP is something when you have a learning disability and you're in public school, you get given an IEP and that you're able to use to navigate the system. It's just a number, but it means you have either ADHD or dyslexia. I'm dyslexic too.
Anyway, go on, welcome to the club.
Right now, Molly, the main focus that we have is getting it set up and making sure that we really going to go out there and find the best candidates that we can. So when we launch this, we're not launching with endorsements right out of the bat because we have to do the right amount of research and we have to make sure that we have just the best candidates that we can in the first place. We'll be announcing our announcements in the coming.
Months, so part of it will be these legislators and focusing on these races that are so important but get a little less attention, like these state house races.
State can grow you know those level races. De Yeah, that's a vast minority.
And then also there's a certain amount of focus on youth turnout too, which does seem like a really important point. So John Delivolpi, who we're both friends with, who is a gen Z Are you guys gen z or whatever? The youngest generation whisper Is had these incredible polls which showed basically that your generation things Republicans are just morons.
Talk to me about that.
I mean, our generation has clearly been I think we're just fed up and we're tired of the bullshit. You know, it's like MS or X set in their speech after Parkland that we call the yes as a generation, we're tired of the failed policies that are getting us killed in our schools. And there's no amount of spinning that
you can do that's going. You know, you can't just keep talking about funding more mental health programs to stop school shootings and do nothing about it and school shootings can continue and just act like there's some amount of spinning or framing that you can do politically, or a number of consultants you can talk to that is somehow going to make young people not feel the anxiety that they're feeling because school shootings are continuing. It's also it's
a similar case with climate chain. It can't just keep talking about it and gas lighting an entire series of generations of Americans when every summer it's getting hotter. So for our generation, we're basically seeing the I feel like we're there. We're really the first generation to see it as a whole. The amount of stuff that has been swept under the rug constantly by Republicans that now there's so much of they can't keep hiding it over and over.
So it's blatantly obvious for us. And an important point about that is too. In twenty twenty two, young people voted again at one of the highest rates in American history, especially in comarison in twenty fourteen, not only in comparison. I talked about this with John devil Ope. In two thousand, young people eighteen to twenty nine voted about fifty to fifty for Bush and Gore in your average congressional election.
In twenty twenty two, you young people voted not only at one of the highest rates in American history, but plus twenty points for Democrats. That is a critical part of the Democratic coalition now that they have to negotiate that the White House has to listen to that anybody who wants to be elected as a Democrat is going to have to listen to just as much as they have to listen to a lot of the other factors within our coalition. Because we've made our voice heard and
we haven't gone away. And what makes me excited about that is even when we had both the House, the Senate and the presidency, what we saw a deal to filibuster. But even when we had those three young people still turned out. And what that's evidence of is we're not just voting again something we're voting for or something. We're voting for a better future where kids are protected in
their schools. Right, We're voting for a future with an inhabitable planet and for morey just leaders that work to ensure that the interests of the future of the United States are protected and not the short term interests of the NRA are protected in the first place.
Thank you so much, David. I hope you'll come back, of course. Thank you.
Gillian Brockel, writes the Metropolis blog for The Washington Post.
Welcome too Fast Politics, Gillian, Thank you, Balie, longtime listener. Firstian callinter.
So you write a blog for the Washington Post. You also write for the Washington Post, but the blog is called Metropolis.
Explain to us a little bit about what it is. Basically, it's the history block of the Washington Post. It's where you're going to get your historical contexts for news of the day and you know, learn different and perhaps more realistic and authentic versials of the history that you were taught when you were younger.
Let's talk about the strike, because right now there's a massive WGA SAG, which is SAG Screen Actors Guild.
There's a there's a massive strike.
The director's Mabel Doo whatever, right, But you know, actors can't promote movies. They can't write. You know, writers are not writing. Nothing is happening in Hollywood. Tell us about the last time this happened. I was hoping you could talk to us about the one in the sixties.
Sure.
Yeah, in nineteen sixty there was another double strike with the actors and writers. And if he was really similar, it was about residuals for a new technology. So at the time, playing reruns of movies on television was this brand new thing that was just starting to happen, and there was no contract for that with the Screen Actors Skill to pay the movie actors when their movies played on TV. Previously, there had already been a contract for TV reruns playing on TV, but not movie rerunds, and
so this was a new thing. And it was the same with the writers. The writers wanted residuals for movies running on TV, and they struck first, and then the actors joined them, and like in nineteen sixty, the writers struck I think a total of twenty one weeks and the actors for five weeks. At the time, though it wasn't quite as strict as the terms are for the striking workers now, they were still allowed to promote movies
and go to award shows. So actually the nineteen sixty Oscars were held in the middle of this strike, and all of the actors were there and all of their glamorous finery, and Bob Hope, who was a member of SAG, was the host, and the first thing he said, you can watch it on YouTube. The first thing he said when he walked out is he said, welcome to Hollywood's most glamorous strike meeting, and let's talk about Ronald Reagan
was involved in that. Yeah. So Robald Reagan had been the president of SAG from nineteen forty seven to nineteen fifty two. He was brought in again in late nineteen fifty nine and in nineteen sixty. You know, it's sort of a ringer. He had negotiated the contract earlier for TV actors to get residuals on reruns, so he was brought back in to serve a shorter term as president of STAG again to negotiate with the producers at this
time and be involved in this strike. What's weird, and what you know, nobody knew at the time was that Ronald Reagan was also a producer at that point. He had producer credits and really shouldn't have been representing the actors for anything because there was a conflict of interest there. But he just kind of kept through a secret, didn't tell anybody, and they were like, okay.
That's very strange. We also Ronald Reagan, this is going to get people crazy. But Ronald Reagan, it really is. Yeah, wanted to join the Communist Party.
According to your grandfather, Yes, yes, yes.
According to my grandfather, Ronald Reagan wanted to join the Communist Party discuss.
Yeah, so in nineteen thirty eight, this is Howard Facts, your grandfather's story that in nineteen thirty eight, young Ronald Reagan was new in town in Hollywood, and he did use to describe himself for a long time as a new deal liberal. According to Howard Facts, he also wanted to become a commititist and was not let in because the cognitist thought he was too stupid.
Yeah, I can't imagine that's true. I mean, I know my grandfather, I can't imagine that. I mean, I'm sure that, Mike, I'm sure they did think Ronald Reagan was stupid. But that may be where it ends. It's quite interesting to talk about the sort of what happened, because you know, when we think about this strike, there's a lot of talk of AI and things that aren't necessarily relevant to this sort of history and this. Actually they really were
striking about a lot of the same stuff. Residuals, who makes money, who owns things.
It's residuals for a new platform for previously made work. I mean, it's really the same thing. And it was the same thing that in the beginning the producers said, you get nothing the actors and writers will negotiate, and in the beginning the producers said, we say, you get nothing. In the end, the strikers were successful. They if somewhat, they got residuals for movie reruns for movies made after nineteen sixty so after the stern they also wanted residuals
for movies made before nineteen forty eight. They did not get that, but they did get the start of a pension plan for SAG and so that was a big concession. Some people were not happy about the contract that ended the strike that Reagan negotiated. One of those that you know said to be Bob Hope was not happy about it. And then later James Garter, you know, the famous actor.
She wrote in his memoir that he was vice president of the Screen Actors Guild at the time, and he said, the only thing I remember is that Ronnie never had an original thought and that we had to tell him what to say. That's no way to run a union, let alone a state or country.
But the history of workers' rights, I mean, this is what really this strike is about, is how are writers going to be compensated? Our actors going to be compensated? Are you know, what does that compensation look like. The fight for labor has been really an American you know, it's been something Americans have been doing for a long time.
Talk to me about that. Yeah, I mean since the Industrial Revolution, you have, you know, the start of unions and striking workers and anybody who wants to get read in on the history of labor in the United States, I can't recommend. And that Kim Kelly book Fight Like Hell, which came out last year, and it's just terrific and
you know, really just goes over that. I mean, the reason that we have all of these things that we think of as givens today, like fire eving sits for the buildings that we work on, and having the exits be unlocked and not padlocked shut, you know, the eight hour workday, everything, all of that comes from the labor movement. I think a lot of people in my generation I'm like an X and an annual X annual. I think a lot of people don't know that just because we
grew up when labor was at its weakest. Gen Z seems to be really a part of the sort of revival of labor unions that's been happening in the last few years where you're seeing people looking at actors not just as these you know, glamorous, spoiled prima donnas, but saying no, this is a worker who is offering a service that the producers can't do and therefore should be getting a piece of the profits like any other labor right.
I think that I'd love to talk to you a little more about what's happening with labor in this country, because we're seeing from Amazon to Starbucks to the larger ways in which unions were able to fight against wealth inequity. Well.
One criticism that people have had of the labor movement, particularly in the United States versus other countries, is that Americans don't have a sense of solidarity the way they might and say the UK as workers, because we see ourselves as sort of temporarily moor or you know, as like my big break's going to come tomorrow. The idea that you are a worker, that you are, you know, a member of the working class, we don't have that.
We you know, sort of fed this like American dream you can make it big, it's just how hard you work sort of thing, and that has really crushed a lot of the class solidarity in the United States throughout history, and that includes racism and dividing workers by saying, well, you you white. For white workers, you can have it slightly better at least for black workers. Just don't side
with the black workers too. And that the you know, inherent racism in US history that's threatened throughout US history has really been used to benefit people who would seek to crush the labor movement. You know, in the last few years, that's really broken away. And that's happened in journalism too. You see all of these newer media places like Fox and everywhere else becoming unionized. And that's happened at the Washington Post, which has been reported on a
little bit this year. We have, you know, the highest union membership ever in our news room right now and we are negotiating a contract. And happened for a year.
Will you talk to us about an interesting piece you wrote, So your historical quote turned out to be fake, was a problem that many of us have had in our lives. Yeah, the story of a January sixth defendant who had a quote that he used during his federal trial. When governments fear the people, there is liberty when the people feel the government there is tyranny, and he attributed to Thomas Jefferson, right, And.
Thomas Jefferson didn't say that. And actually Monticello keeps a really good database of things that Thomas Jefferson did and did not say, So that is actually one of the easier quotes of historical quotes. Two fact checks. But yeah, I mean it's a pretty common thing. People are always you know, something I said with the sand this book piece that I wrote a few months ago is that a lot of people think that doing history is quoting people and sort of like manipulating the quotes into whatever
you want them to be. And there's that kind of misuse of quotes, and then there's just like the full stop made up quotes.
Take for example, rapper and former presidential candidate Kanye West. He told TMZ that four hundred years of slavery was a choice, later citing Harriet Tubman saying I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.
Yeah, Harriet Tubman did not say that. I don't know what say. Harry Tubman did not say that. Yeah, unbelievable. So back to talk about Reagan. So by the time Regan miss president, he had you know, gone totally conservative, and as people would remember, ended up being one of the more anti union presidents we've had. Everyone remembers the air traffic controllers strike in nineteen eighty one, and you know, his argument there was that these were federal workers and
that federal workers are not allowed to strike. It is illegal for a federal worker to strike. And so she, rather than negotiate, gave them forty eight hours to go back to their jobs, and the ones that didn't were fired. It was tens of thousands of air traffic controllers. She took a tough stands there, but not all presidents have done that. So there was the biggest illegal wildcat strike and American history was in nineteen seventy. It was the
Postal Service. More than two hundred and ten thousand postal workers struck for about eight days. I mean, it completely brought everything in the United States to a standstill.
You know.
Eventually the Possessor General gave them an immediate raise. They ended the strike. Soon Congress passed another race, and no one who struck was ever punished, even though that was both an illegal strike and a wildcat strike. They did not have the permission of their union leadership to strike, and they just did it anyway because they said conditions were so bad and they were paid so poorly. And Nixon was president then and he didn't do anything about it, he didn't hurt them in any I.
Mean, there is always this like liberal fantasy that Nixon wasn't as bad as Nixon actually was.
I'm not saying that, but yes, the postal workers who did this illegal wild cat strike were not puttishing anyway, and they were completely successful in getting what they were asking for. Good for those postal workers. And then Reagan, you know, a decade later, says, well, federal workers aren't allowed to strike, therefore they're all fired.
I mean that was sort of a seminal moment in union, absolutely, and I mean it fits with ultimately a lot of the stuff that Reagan did. Though again, like he did sign this no fault divorce when he was governor. That was the first date to approve no fault divorce, and no fault divorce led to greater freedom for women and less domestic violence. And like it's such a small thing that we don't think of as being as seminal as
it was. But I am curious if you would do two seconds on Eugene Debs because you wrote a piece and again this we're back to can a person run for president from a jail cell? Not that Donald Trump is going to jail, though.
He probably if he were a normal person, might be. But yes, continue, yeah, I mean Trump and Duds's politics cand of not be any more different. Dubs was a union leader and a socialist. But he is the reason that we know that it is legal for someone to run for president a while being indicted for a crime, be in jail. So Eugene V. Deves was jailed in nineteen twenty for speaking out against World War One and continued to run for president from jail and got something
I can't remember. He ran for president eight times and so I don't remember it was that election. R now they were election, but at one point he got almost a million votes. It was a good percentage of the vote. You can run for president from jail. Yes, nobody knows if you can be president from jail, but hopefully we won't have to find out. You know, people say that history repeats itself, and a lot of historians disagree. There and right now, this is something for which there is
no historical president. What happens if you elected president who's in jail. I think the chances of the trials happening before the election our stand. But that's something we may have to confront that has never been confronted in history.
Gillian, thank you for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.