Miles and Maria. I'm thrilled for you all to be here today and just start talking about the group if you will. That you have you have started up.
Well, Steve, I'll say at the outside, I appreciate it, my friend, And you know this better than almost anyone. Folks like us. I mean, we don't need to be out here doing this, you know. And that was a consideration I had after being targeted by the president. You know I've done. I've been out there for seven years railing against this guy and trying to warn people about a second administration, and to quote Jerry Maguire, it's a
pride swallowing siege every single day. And there's a lot of people in my life, a lot of people in my family who would like us to just lay low and go back to normal life. And that would be very nice. And for a little while we got to do that. But after this guy took office, and when I saw, including personally, the way that he was trying to criminalize criticism in this country, it felt like there
wasn't really an option to go retreat. I mean, you have two choices when someone like this comes to power, whether it's a foreign land or your own country, and that is either submission or defiance.
That's it.
There's no middle ground because if you're just staying quiet, you've already chosen submission. Okay, there's not a middle ground you get to be in. It is black and white, submission or defiance. And this year, as people kept asking me the question what can I do? I got a little pissed off that despite all the organizations out there, great organizations doing great work, there wasn't like an easy one word answer to tell folks about, like, hey, go here and you can find a lot of different efforts
that you can go help out and support. And so a couple of weeks ago, I pitched to a few friends, why don't we just let's go get a domain name. Let's recommend the groups that we love that exist and are doing great work out to the world and try to help drive people towards amazing efforts. And that resulted in the lawn Show Defiance dot org and is doing great work is the group that we're runs and us. They do a whole host of amazing things, from the
grasstops to the grassroots. I mean, they got people like Michael Douglass and Jennifer Lawrence and all these incredible people helping get the word out, but they also have helped mobilize Americans to go put pressure on their elected representatives who have a spinal cord and to not just roll over for belly rubs from Donald Trump. And I admire
what they're doing. So at launch, one of the organizations that we're directing our members of Defence dot org too is represent US and we're really proud to team with them.
Maria, how do you see this moment? Why are you involved in this?
Yeah, well, look, my background is in international human rights work. I grew up abroad in Peru during a time of autocracy and corruption and with the war and all sorts of things, and when I moved to the US, I believed and I saw that we had a thriving democratic culture. This was in nineteen ninety seven. We've come a long way from that, and now the problems that I have spent much of my career working on internationally are very
much present here. And so the main issue I see is a government that is slowly in some ways eroding democratic norms so that eventually all the powers concentrated in the president, and it's in the process of enriching itself and its cronies. So the way things are going to work in future and are starting to work now, are all going to be about fear, you know, rewards for the people who join the administration, and punishment for those who stand up and dissent. Fortunately, we still have courts
that are independent at the lower levels. You know, you still have a lot of Americans who believe in civil liberties and civil rights who will go out and exercise those those rights and freedoms. But the pressure is to destroy that and to make the system answer only to the people who are in power, right, and so that is why it's critically important that we call that back.
We not let that power be concentrated. And that means going out and protesting, It means pushing back in the courts, and for represent us, it means also trying to get Congress to take its power back and do its job. So we've launched the Congressional Courage Campaign, which is one of the things that Divines dot Org is supporting, right, and that is all about mobilizing Americans across the country
to hold their representatives to account. We're going to be prioritizing some swing districts where we really think we need to gain traction. But across the board, we need members of Congress to uphold the constitution and do so strongly, firmly. We need them to hold the executive branch to account. That is their job they need to do. You exert oversight of the different agencies, of the corruption that's going on,
of what DOJ is doing. And they need to reform the system because our political system has been dysfunctional for a very long time. A lot of people have lost trust and faith in democracy because democracy has not really been working the way it's supposed to. We have too much influence of money and politics, you know, we have too many problems like jerrymandering that have made the system
less accountable to the people. And that goes back to the work we've done throughout our existence as an organization. We need a government that's truly accountable to the people. Let's seize this moment of crisis and actually build something that is better, not just return to the status quo.
As of January. When you see Maria, a masked agent deploying tear gas attacking a community. Having grown up in an autocratic society in Peru, during difficult days. What is that like for you?
I mean, it is so appalling that we would have any agents in this country who are operating wearing masks. You know, this is supposed to be a country that has the rule of law, that has accountability. Like we had judges without a face when I was growing up in Peru, so judges that you couldn't see who they were and they were convicting people. And I understand stood there were some security issues there at the time. It was a it was a very politically violent period, but
even that was deeply problematic. You need to know who is in government, who is making these decisions that are life or death or you know, very serious for people. And the fact that this is happening without a second thought, right, they just said, Okay, they're gonna wear masks. They claimed randomly that there are security issues. I'm sorry, but the security issues are coming now from the government itself.
Right.
Law enforcement is supposed to be protecting us. Instead they're turning into an unaccountable force that is in many cases it seems hurting people, targeting even US citizens just because of the language they speak. And now with a Supreme Court approval for some of that. It's it's it's really an abdication of everything that the United States has historically stood for in terms of basic freedoms, basic rights, rule
of law, do process. Uh, you know, a system that works for the people and is accountable to it.
I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning. I invite you to join this community where I promise to be honest, blunt and direct about what is happening in this country. America is in crisis. Follow and subscribe to this channel and on substack. Thank you.