therealnews--2020-08-12--Reformers Aim to End Prison Firefighters’ ‘Indentured Servitude’ in California

Brandon Smith was incarcerated in Wasco State Prison in 2012 when a correctional officer approached him about becoming a firefighter—not after prison , but during his time inside .
Smith would , if he said “ yes , ” serve in what the state calls its Conservation Camp Program .
“ I remember being in a cell when a counselor at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation , ” Smith told The Real News .
“ She came and knocked on my cell and said , ‘ Hey , do you want to be a wildland firefighter ?
Do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
’ And at first , I said , ‘ No.
” Smith was hesitant to do a dangerous job that he had never done before .
But he came to see the camps ’ facilities dotting the state ’ s landscape as a chance to escape the four walls of prison , eat “ 10 times better ” food , learn new skills , and also get the highest pay among California prisoners .
“ When I talked to folks , I realized that the conditions and the situations , life would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Smith said .
” So I decided to do it and lo and behold , I loved it.
” It was something of an unrequited love , though .
Smith found it hard to get hired as a firefighter when he got out of prison in 2014 .
“ I tried to do it once I came home and it was pretty much no pathway , ” Smith said , due to “ public perception ” and institutional barriers .
“ I ’ m not naive to the fact that I went @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a public nuisance or a public safety issue , to a public safety officer , ” Smith said .
He eventually found a way into the field but considers it “ only by the grace of God ” —through copious networking and by meeting the right person .
“ I got my first opportunity professionally from a Black woman , ” said Smith , who is now the executive director of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program after working four years as a wildland firefighter after his time spent in prison .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fire department in Big Bear , and she was the one who decided to kind of ignore my past and give me an opportunity to go do the work.
” The Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program , a nonprofit organization , aims to create a career pathway for those who served in the camps program .
Smith ’ s goal is to end the “ false narrative ” about people who are or have been incarcerated and “ spread awareness ” about opportunities for those who served in the program while incarcerated to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Administered jointly by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ( CDCR ) and CAL FIRE , the Conservation Camp Program has existed since the post-World War II era .
The camps program has faced criticism in recent years as the climate crisis prolongs and worsens fire seasons .
A recent study by Stanford University researchers concluded that climate change could extend California ’ s wildfire season , traditionally thought of as existing between August through October , further into the fall due to weather patterns making autumn more summer-like .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gov .
Gavin Newsom put the gravity of worsening wildfire seasons into context , stating “ just in the last 10 years , five of the most destructive wildfire seasons we have incurred ” took place .
According to CAL FIRE statistics , about 28 % more wildfires blazed so far in 2020 compared to the five-year average .
One of those—the Apple Fire in San Bernardino , California—is currently burning and is over 32,000 acres in size .
Prisoners fighting fires earn abysmally low wages : between $ 2.90— $ 5.12 per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ per hour paid by CAL FIRE during active fires .
That , at maximum , just over $ 15,900 per year for those who work a 50-hour week , the industry standard , and at minimum just over $ 7,500 per year .
The low wages—combined with the disproportionate number of Black , Brown , and Indigenous people in the state ’ s prisons—have raised fundamental social justice questions about the state ’ s carceral system .
Up until July 2018 , the state admitted that this pay scale saved California $ 100 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that information from its website at the beginning of wildfire season in August , the Web Archive shows .
According to numbers provided to The Real News by CDCR , the state had 2,215 firefighters in 42 camps as of June 22 .
That ’ s compared to the over 9,000 employees , about 7,000 full-time and 2,300 seasonal , at CAL FIRE .
Prison reform measures passed by the California Legislature in recent years have caused a drop in numbers in the fire camps program , losing about 1,000 participants since 2007 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the moment , too , because about half of the fire crews statewide are under quarantine after their members contracted COVID-19 .
Breathing in smoke from wildfires increases the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus , and could also worsen the symptoms .
As the number of incarcerated firefighters has dwindled , Newsom recently announced CAL FIRE would hire 1,030 new firefighters for the 2020 fire season , 172 permanent and 858 seasonal , at an average salary of over $ 69,000 per year—over $ 26.43 per hour for a typical 50-hour week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wages that reformers see as the problem .
The state ’ s laws also make it nearly impossible to get a job in the field for those who serve in the camps program .
Recently , legislation passed through the California Assembly and in Senate committee which would create a regulatory mechanism to expedite the criminal record expungement process for those who served in the fire camps .
Pay-based reforms do not appear to be on the horizon , however , despite calls from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ programs at the prison reentry advocacy group Root & Rebound , said prison labor responding to wildfires has helped the public see incarcerated firefighters through the lens of class .
“ These wildfires were reaching urban areas , they were reaching Los Angeles , they were reaching the Bay Area and large cities across the state where huge numbers of people live , ” she told The Real News .
“ And there ’ s a lot of wealth in places like Los Angeles and the Bay Area and in these communities .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ homes and land being impacted.
” Smith , who calls the current system for prison wildland firefighters “ indentured servitude , ” said the racial dynamics are also hard to deny and symbolize a need for reforms .
“ What you ’ ll see actually in California ’ s fire camps is you ’ ll actually see majority African-Americans , Black folks , Hispanics , Asian communities , ” said Smith .
“ The optics of this look very clear .
You know , you have 17 Black and Hispanic folks on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ type person.
” Reformists , though , have centuries of history to contend with in attempting to change the fire camps system .
This history dates back to California ’ s history as a Spanish missionary colony in the late 1700s .
In a 2019 academic paper titled “ California ’ s First Mass Incarceration System , ” historian Benjamin Madley describes the state ’ s Spanish Catholic Church colonial missions as sites in which the state ’ s Indigenous population were treated akin to “ slaves.
” The missions were a major @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They produced massive amounts of barley , corn , and wheat , while managing a massive array of livestock that included pigs , mules , horses , cattle , and sheep .
It all came at a serious cost : death at a massive scale .
Out of the 89,800 who were baptized , 66,100 Indigenous people died working on the missions .
One out of every three Indigenous babies did not make it to their first birthday ; four in ten died before the age of five .
The state began a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constructed its first two prisons under U.S. rule , both of which still exist today : San Quentin and Folsom .
For the next 100 years or so , the state offered a preview of the camps program by putting prisoners to work building major water projects and roads , and doing agrarian labor .
Among other things , prisoners built part of perhaps the state ’ s most iconic highway—Route 101 , running from San Francisco to Eureka—with the granite they helped to extract as laborers at Folsom State Prison .
U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in San Francisco .
Doug Kerr/Wikimedia Commons Out of this history came the Conservation Camps .
While the future of camps is up for debate today , they were also the subject of similar activism in previous decades .
In 1972 , 800 prison firefighters at the Sierra Conservation Center went on strike .
The “ predominantly nonwhite camp population found itself guarded by overwhelmingly white guards , ” Volker Janssen , professor at California State University-Fullerton , wrote in an article published by The History Channel .
That strike ended with prison @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shooting almost 120 rifle rounds at windows and doors over several hours , but not killing anyone , ” wrote Jannsen in a 2009 paper .
While the strike failed to achieve concessions , efforts to reform the camps system continue to this day .
One of those efforts came in 2018 .
During his last year in office , Gov .
Jerry Brown signed an over $ 25 million budget provision creating the Ventura Training Center in Ventura County .
Administered by CAL FIRE , CDCR , and Anti-Recidivism Coalition to create @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 80 participants per year , the program acts as a career pipeline for those who served in the fire camps .
The program faced opposition from the Camarillo City Council , the Ventura County Board of Supervisors , and Ventura Council of Governments—its hometown governments .
“ We have serious objections to your budget proposal [ to create ] a de facto parolee half-way house on the edge of our City , and within walking distance to five Camarillo neighborhoods , ” the council wrote in a letter to Brown .
“ With @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 70 % statewide , the housing of 80 parolees ( some of whom may have been convicted of robbery and burglary ) adjacent to residential areas is a serious threat and an affront to the safety and security concerns of the citizens of Camarillo.
” Undeterred , Brown budgeted for the program anyway .
Nicholas Reiner , the communications director for the Los Angeles-based Anti-Recidivism Coalition , said the Camarillo City Council ’ s initial backlash has so far proven unwarranted .
“ These individuals are here to make their lives better and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Reiner , whose group advocated for the training center , told The Real News .
“ It ’ s not like a job training program .
If it was only to enhance their lives , it would still be useful .
But this is actually serving your community.
” The 2018 opposition movement failed , and the Ventura Training Program is a reality .
But another opposition movement prevailed in the 2019 debate over AB 1211 .
AB 1211 , introduced by Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes ( D-San Bernardino ) , called for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ provide a career pathway to individuals with previous criminal convictions who have demonstrated rehabilitation and desire to work as firefighters ” in the form of a “ statewide firefighter apprenticeship program.
” It did not even get a committee hearing , though , and is now officially dead .
The California Professional Firefighters Association proved instrumental in killing it , speaking out and lobbying against it .
In the 2020 legislative session , Reyes introduced yet another piece of Conservation Camp reform legislation , AB 2147 .
That bill would create a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with felonies and who served in the fire camps by allowing them “ to enter a plea of not guilty ” into their official criminal record files .
The legislation does not cover those who committed violent felonies , sex offenses , arson , or escape from a secure perimeter .
As it stands , most municipal fire departments , as well as CAL FIRE , will not hire those with a felony on their records .
The legislation passed in the Assembly 54-0 on June 15 and 5-1 in the Senate Public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The bill has lobbying support from the California Public Defenders Association , but has drawn opposition from the California District Attorneys Association .
“ While we understand the risks posed by wildfires and the need to use available resources to mitigate wildfire danger , relief such as expungement/dismissal of criminal cases should be limited to lower level offenders , ” the District Attorneys wrote in opposition to the legislation .
“ In addition , prison inmates participating in conservation camp or fire camp already receive incentives and benefits such as increased conduct credits.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ by The Real News , Amanda Martin—former California Deputy Attorney General under Brown—is registered to lobby on behalf of the Association .
Despite the opposition , Reyes ’ office believes the bill still stands a good chance of passage .
“ We are very positive on its chances , but nothing is guaranteed , ” Mark Farouk , chief of staff for Reyes , told The Real News via email .
Just four days after AB 2147 passed in the Assembly , Dario Gurrola , an alum of the Conservation Camp Program , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ District Court for the Eastern District of California in an attempt to remove another hurdle to entering the profession .
State law currently prohibits those who have a felony on their records from getting an emergency medical technician license until 10 years after serving in prison , and bars those with two felonies on their record from obtaining an EMT certification .
The Camarillo City Council actually cited this hurdle in 2018 in opposing the Ventura Training Center , writing that “ Realistically , parolees won ’ t be able to compete for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ echoes the council ’ s statement , but for a different reason .
“ California trains and uses prisoners with felony records to fight wildfires , and it allows people with felony records to serve as seasonal or volunteer firefighters , ” reads the complaint filed by the Institute for Justice , a libertarian organization , submitted on behalf of Gurrola .
“ Yet , because full-time firefighting usually requires EMT certification , the state effectively prohibits these same people from pursuing firefighting careers .
This irrational prohibition does not pass constitutional muster.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ gas industry employs prisoners to both clean up its excesses and assist in its extractive activities which are worsening the climate crisis .
Agencies have summoned prisoners to clean up both of the largest oil spills in U.S. history , the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill which served as the inspiration for the first Earth Day and the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico .
Louisiana also has a post-release Transitional Work Program for its prisoners to clean up oil spills , assist in pipeline construction , make meals at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make equipment for the oil and gas production itself .
Further , climate change has made the conditions within the walls of prison hotter for prisoners , according to multiple academic studies .
Ryerson University ’ s Brett Story , the co-author of one such study , told The Real News that climate change ’ s impact in the form of fires could serve as further impetus for criminal justice system reform in the state in what she calls the “ Green New Deal for Decarceration.
” “ California in the ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ largest prison building and prison filling program in the world , ” she said .
“ I think there ’ s an opportunity here , in looking at the deployment of prisoner firefighters , to put the state response to climate change in conversation with the state preoccupation with policing and punishment and to point out that there are a hell of a lot of resources at the state level that can and should be used differently.
” Smith agrees .
“ I hope I work myself out of a job ” at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he said .
“ I think the state could respond perfectly by formalizing a pathway for these folks … That ’ s all you got to do … If the state did that , it would be a whole different story.
“

Brandon Smith was incarcerated in Wasco State Prison in 2012 when a correctional officer approached him about becoming a firefighter—not after prison, but during his time inside. Smith would, if he said “yes,” serve in what the state calls its Conservation Camp Program.
“I remember being in a cell when a counselor at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,” Smith told The Real News. “She came and knocked on my cell and said, ‘Hey, do you want to be a wildland firefighter? Do you want to go to fire camp?’ And at first, I said, ‘No.”
Smith was hesitant to do a dangerous job that he had never done before. But he came to see the camps’ facilities dotting the state’s landscape as a chance to escape the four walls of prison, eat “10 times better” food, learn new skills, and also get the highest pay among California prisoners.
“When I talked to folks, I realized that the conditions and the situations, life would be so much better for me,” Smith said. ”So I decided to do it and lo and behold, I loved it.”
It was something of an unrequited love, though. Smith found it hard to get hired as a firefighter when he got out of prison in 2014.
“I tried to do it once I came home and it was pretty much no pathway,” Smith said, due to “public perception” and institutional barriers.
“I’m not naive to the fact that I went from what would be considered like, a public nuisance or a public safety issue, to a public safety officer,” Smith said.
He eventually found a way into the field but considers it “only by the grace of God”—through copious networking and by meeting the right person.
“I got my first opportunity professionally from a Black woman,” said Smith, who is now the executive director of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program after working four years as a wildland firefighter after his time spent in prison. “She was the fire chief of the fire department in Big Bear, and she was the one who decided to kind of ignore my past and give me an opportunity to go do the work.”
The Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, a nonprofit organization, aims to create a career pathway for those who served in the camps program. Smith’s goal is to end the “false narrative” about people who are or have been incarcerated and “spread awareness” about opportunities for those who served in the program while incarcerated to get a job in the field afterward.
Administered jointly by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and CAL FIRE, the Conservation Camp Program has existed since the post-World War II era.
The camps program has faced criticism in recent years as the climate crisis prolongs and worsens fire seasons. A recent study by Stanford University researchers concluded that climate change could extend California’s wildfire season, traditionally thought of as existing between August through October, further into the fall due to weather patterns making autumn more summer-like.
At a July 9 press conference, California Gov. Gavin Newsom put the gravity of worsening wildfire seasons into context, stating “just in the last 10 years, five of the most destructive wildfire seasons we have incurred” took place. According to CAL FIRE statistics, about 28% more wildfires blazed so far in 2020 compared to the five-year average. One of those—the Apple Fire in San Bernardino, California—is currently burning and is over 32,000 acres in size.
Prisoners fighting fires earn abysmally low wages: between $2.90—$5.12 per day, and an additional $1 per hour paid by CAL FIRE during active fires. That, at maximum, just over $15,900 per year for those who work a 50-hour week, the industry standard, and at minimum just over $7,500 per year. The low wages—combined with the disproportionate number of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people in the state’s prisons—have raised fundamental social justice questions about the state’s carceral system.
Image Credit: Prison Policy Initiative
Up until July 2018, the state admitted that this pay scale saved California $100 million per year. But it scrubbed that information from its website at the beginning of wildfire season in August, the Web Archive shows. According to numbers provided to The Real News by CDCR, the state had 2,215 firefighters in 42 camps as of June 22. That’s compared to the over 9,000 employees, about 7,000 full-time and 2,300 seasonal, at CAL FIRE.
Prison reform measures passed by the California Legislature in recent years have caused a drop in numbers in the fire camps program, losing about 1,000 participants since 2007. The numbers were down further in early July, too, because about half of the fire crews statewide were under quarantine after their members contracted COVID-19. The CDCR now reports zero camps on quarantine and no positive cases among staff or prisoners. Breathing in smoke from wildfires increases the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus, and could also worsen the symptoms.
As the number of incarcerated firefighters has dwindled, Newsom recently announced CAL FIRE would hire 1,030 new firefighters for the 2020 fire season, 172 permanent and 858 seasonal, at an average salary of over $69,000 per year—over $26.43 per hour for a typical 50-hour week.
It’s not just low wages that reformers see as the problem. The state’s laws also make it nearly impossible to get a job in the field for those who serve in the camps program. Recently, legislation passed through the California Assembly and in Senate committee which would create a regulatory mechanism to expedite the criminal record expungement process for those who served in the fire camps. Pay-based reforms do not appear to be on the horizon, however, despite calls from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
Sonja Tonneson-Casalengo, the deputy director of programs at the prison reentry advocacy group Root & Rebound, said prison labor responding to wildfires has helped the public see incarcerated firefighters through the lens of class.
“These wildfires were reaching urban areas, they were reaching Los Angeles, they were reaching the Bay Area and large cities across the state where huge numbers of people live,” she told The Real News. “And there’s a lot of wealth in places like Los Angeles and the Bay Area and in these communities. So it was wealthy people’s homes and land being impacted.”
Smith, who calls the current system for prison wildland firefighters “indentured servitude,” said the racial dynamics are also hard to deny and symbolize a need for reforms.
“What you’ll see actually in California’s fire camps is you’ll actually see majority African-Americans, Black folks, Hispanics, Asian communities,” said Smith. “The optics of this look very clear. You know, you have 17 Black and Hispanic folks on a crew led by a white male overseer type person.”
Reformists, though, have centuries of history to contend with in attempting to change the fire camps system. This history dates back to California’s history as a Spanish missionary colony in the late 1700s.
Colonial Routes
In a 2019 academic paper titled “California’s First Mass Incarceration System,” historian Benjamin Madley describes the state’s Spanish Catholic Church colonial missions as sites in which the state’s Indigenous population were treated akin to “slaves.”
The missions were a major moneymaker for the colonizing Spanish missionaries. They produced massive amounts of barley, corn, and wheat, while managing a massive array of livestock that included pigs, mules, horses, cattle, and sheep. It all came at a serious cost: death at a massive scale. Out of the 89,800 who were baptized, 66,100 Indigenous people died working on the missions. One out of every three Indigenous babies did not make it to their first birthday; four in ten died before the age of five.
The state began a new era of prison labor when it constructed its first two prisons under U.S. rule, both of which still exist today: San Quentin and Folsom. For the next 100 years or so, the state offered a preview of the camps program by putting prisoners to work building major water projects and roads, and doing agrarian labor.
Among other things, prisoners built part of perhaps the state’s most iconic highway—Route 101, running from San Francisco to Eureka—with the granite they helped to extract as laborers at Folsom State Prison.
U.S. Highway 101 at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Doug Kerr/Wikimedia Commons
Out of this history came the Conservation Camps. While the future of camps is up for debate today, they were also the subject of similar activism in previous decades.
In 1972, 800 prison firefighters at the Sierra Conservation Center went on strike. The “predominantly nonwhite camp population found itself guarded by overwhelmingly white guards,” Volker Janssen, professor at California State University-Fullerton, wrote in an article published by The History Channel. That strike ended with prison guard brutality, including the guards “shooting almost 120 rifle rounds at windows and doors over several hours, but not killing anyone,” wrote Jannsen in a 2009 paper.
While the strike failed to achieve concessions, efforts to reform the camps system continue to this day.
Reform Efforts, Litigation
One of those efforts came in 2018. During his last year in office, Gov. Jerry Brown signed an over $25 million budget provision creating the Ventura Training Center in Ventura County.
Administered by CAL FIRE, CDCR, and Anti-Recidivism Coalition to create a firefighter training and certification program for 80 participants per year, the program acts as a career pipeline for those who served in the fire camps. The program faced opposition from the Camarillo City Council, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, and Ventura Council of Governments—its hometown governments.
“We have serious objections to your budget proposal [to create] a de facto parolee half-way house on the edge of our City, and within walking distance to five Camarillo neighborhoods,” the council wrote in a letter to Brown. “With parolee recidivism rates between 60% and 70% statewide, the housing of 80 parolees (some of whom may have been convicted of robbery and burglary) adjacent to residential areas is a serious threat and an affront to the safety and security concerns of the citizens of Camarillo.”
Undeterred, Brown budgeted for the program anyway.
Nicholas Reiner, the communications director for the Los Angeles-based Anti-Recidivism Coalition, said the Camarillo City Council’s initial backlash has so far proven unwarranted.
“These individuals are here to make their lives better and also remarkably to serve their communities,” Reiner, whose group advocated for the training center, told The Real News. “It’s not like a job training program. If it was only to enhance their lives, it would still be useful. But this is actually serving your community.”
The 2018 opposition movement failed, and the Ventura Training Program is a reality. But another opposition movement prevailed in the 2019 debate over AB 1211.
AB 1211, introduced by Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes (D-San Bernardino), called for the California Division of Apprenticeship Standards to “provide a career pathway to individuals with previous criminal convictions who have demonstrated rehabilitation and desire to work as firefighters” in the form of a “statewide firefighter apprenticeship program.”
It did not even get a committee hearing, though, and is now officially dead. The California Professional Firefighters Association proved instrumental in killing it, speaking out and lobbying against it.
In the 2020 legislative session, Reyes introduced yet another piece of Conservation Camp reform legislation, AB 2147. That bill would create a pathway for expunging criminal records for those with felonies and who served in the fire camps by allowing them “to enter a plea of not guilty” into their official criminal record files. The legislation does not cover those who committed violent felonies, sex offenses, arson, or escape from a secure perimeter. As it stands, most municipal fire departments, as well as CAL FIRE, will not hire those with a felony on their records.
The legislation passed in the Assembly 54-0 on June 15 and 5-1 in the Senate Public Safety Committee hearing on July 31.
The bill has lobbying support from the California Public Defenders Association, but has drawn opposition from the California District Attorneys Association.
“While we understand the risks posed by wildfires and the need to use available resources to mitigate wildfire danger, relief such as expungement/dismissal of criminal cases should be limited to lower level offenders,” the District Attorneys wrote in opposition to the legislation. “In addition, prison inmates participating in conservation camp or fire camp already receive incentives and benefits such as increased conduct credits.”
According to lobbying disclosure data reviewed by The Real News, Amanda Martin—former California Deputy Attorney General under Brown—is registered to lobby on behalf of the Association. Despite the opposition, Reyes’ office believes the bill still stands a good chance of passage.
“We are very positive on its chances, but nothing is guaranteed,” Mark Farouk, chief of staff for Reyes, told The Real News via email.
Just four days after AB 2147 passed in the Assembly, Dario Gurrola, an alum of the Conservation Camp Program, filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in an attempt to remove another hurdle to entering the profession. State law currently prohibits those who have a felony on their records from getting an emergency medical technician license until 10 years after serving in prison, and bars those with two felonies on their record from obtaining an EMT certification. The Camarillo City Council actually cited this hurdle in 2018 in opposing the Ventura Training Center, writing that “Realistically, parolees won’t be able to compete for firefighting jobs.”
Gurrola’s lawsuit echoes the council’s statement, but for a different reason.
“California trains and uses prisoners with felony records to fight wildfires, and it allows people with felony records to serve as seasonal or volunteer firefighters,” reads the complaint filed by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian organization, submitted on behalf of Gurrola. “Yet, because full-time firefighting usually requires EMT certification, the state effectively prohibits these same people from pursuing firefighting careers. This irrational prohibition does not pass constitutional muster.”
Climate, Carceral Reform Converge
Beyond firefighting, the oil and gas industry employs prisoners to both clean up its excesses and assist in its extractive activities which are worsening the climate crisis.
Agencies have summoned prisoners to clean up both of the largest oil spills in U.S. history, the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill which served as the inspiration for the first Earth Day and the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana also has a post-release Transitional Work Program for its prisoners to clean up oil spills, assist in pipeline construction, make meals at oil and gas production sites, and to make equipment for the oil and gas production itself.
(Original Caption) 2/5/69-Santa Barbara, California- Prisoners called in from forest conservation camps rake oil-soaked hay aong the surf line of Santa Barbara harbor Feb. 5th. Hay was used to soak up oil washed ashore after an offshore oil well began leaking. Beaches along a 30-mile stretch of the southern California coast looked like busy construction camps Feb. 10th as machines hauled away sand blackened by the overflow from the well.
Further, climate change has made the conditions within the walls of prison hotter for prisoners, according to multiple academic studies.
Ryerson University’s Brett Story, the co-author of one such study, told The Real News that climate change’s impact in the form of fires could serve as further impetus for criminal justice system reform in the state in what she calls the “Green New Deal for Decarceration.”
“California in the ‘80s and ‘90s embarked on the largest prison building and prison filling program in the world,” she said. “I think there’s an opportunity here, in looking at the deployment of prisoner firefighters, to put the state response to climate change in conversation with the state preoccupation with policing and punishment and to point out that there are a hell of a lot of resources at the state level that can and should be used differently.”
Smith agrees. “I hope I work myself out of a job” at the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, he said. “I think the state could respond perfectly by formalizing a pathway for these folks … That’s all you got to do … If the state did that, it would be a whole different story.“
Editing contributed by Ericka Blount
Updated 08/24/2020: A previous version of this article said about half of the participants in the Conservation Camps program are under quarantine due to COVID-19. That was the case in early-July, but no longer is the case today, according to the CDCR.
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therealnews--2020-08-12--Trump turning state-owned VOA into personal propaganda arm

The United States Agency for Global Media ( USAGM ) management , which oversees five federally-funded broadcast networks , has suspended four journalists on contract with possible termination .
The four journalists are charged with influencing the US elections and violating federal laws by favoring Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden in a video published by the Urdu language service of the Voice Of America ( VOA ) .
The supervisory staff of the language service responsible for the day-to-day editorial decisions and management meanwhile , has received no disciplinary action .
Contracted employees feel they are being scapegoated to save @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sources told The Real News requesting not to be named because of the possible backlash .
The controversy ensued after Michael Pack – the new CEO of USAGM and a Trump appointee – recently came out with a string of accusations against VOA including publishing Pro-Biden content and violating VOA ’ s charter and federal laws that govern political activities of government employees .
The Biden campaign has since also jumped into the shouting match , with the former vice president ’ s spokesperson Andrew Bates announcing he would fire Pack within days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heart of the ongoing investigation is a video clip published by VOA Urdu service , which caters to Urdu-speaking audiences in the South Asia region and is one of the largest of the 46 language services .
Published on VOA Urdu website and social media platforms on July 22 , the 2-minute video showcases Biden ’ s recent online event urging Muslim-Americans to vote for him .
The video was later taken down after top VOA managers found it violated the network ’ s editorial policies and best practices .
Captioned with Urdu @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promising Muslim Americans that if elected he would overturn the Muslim ban Trump placed on seven Muslim majority coutries .
The VOA management later found the video favored the Democractic presidential hopeful by providing him a platform to reach potential voters through its coverage and violated editorial guidelines as well as the federal law that requires government employees not to engage in political activities .
Following the investigation into the incident , four Urdu Service contractors were held responsible and were asked to appear before the counsel general to record their statements , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Real News .
On July 30 , three of the four contractors appeared for the interview and reportedly asserted that the video in question was okayed for publishing by their full time supervisor – a senior manager at the VOA Urdu .
After the meeting , all four contractors received a 14-day suspension notice from the VOA human resources while the Agency investigated the matter .
This has stirred considerable anxiety among the VOA contracted employees , especially those on J-1 visa because they will be required to leave the US within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Two of the contractors involved in the incident hold J-1 visas .
And this suits Pack – the new USAGM CEO – who , in line with the White House anti-immigrant agenda , is continuing with the freeze on issuing or renewing J-1 visas .
VOA hires foreign journalists on J-1 to augment its language services , a decades-long practice , because of the nonviability of foreign language expertise in the US .
Upon hiring , the J-1 grantees are allowed to bring their spouses to the US , and the Trump administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ potential migration channels .
Reportedly , more than 70 VOA employees on J-1 are up for visa renewal .
As of the filing of this report , there is no official word from the USAGM or VOA management on whether their visas will be renewed or not .
Association with US-government agencies such as VOA often turns its journalists into potential targets back home where hostile governments view them as loyal to the US interests and where conspiracy theories about VOA as a cover for CIA are widespread .
Foreign journalists on J-1 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Venezuela , China and other countries where VOA operations are not seen as favorable .
In response to TRNN inquiry , a spokesperson at the VOA referenced a news release issued last month in which Pack alleges that “ other federal agencies ” has conducted assessments that “ reveal systemic , severe , and fundamental security failures , many of which have persisted for years.
” It is not clearly stated whether visa renewals are being withheld because of the “ security failures ” the statement alleges .
As standard practice , all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ checks before coming onboard .
The Real News has spoken to VOA employees who mentioned they know several colleagues whose J-1 visas are expiring as early as late August .
“ We do most of the work in VOA and this is how we are treated , ” lamented one foreign journalist awaiting J-1 renewal .
Requesting not to be named for the fear of reprisal , the journalist compared working at VOA to modern-day slavery .
“ We have no rights or recourse available against this injustice , ” they said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ worked to earn our right to stay .
But our managers are not saying a word about visa renewal which is a very painful experience.
” And punishing contractors for editorial negligence of supervisory staff , who enjoy government job protections , has added to these grievances .
With no recourse available or voice in the management decisions , the incident has led to a widespread fear among the contracted employees prompting the VOA acting director Elez Biberaj to send out Agency-wide memo emphasizing the severity of the incident .
“ This incident @ @ @ @ @ @ @ VOA ’ s Urdu Service , but it has cast a shadow on the credibility of hundreds of dedicated journalists working around the clock to fulfill VOA ’ s mission , ” the memo reads .
It goes on to say that “ in light of this unfortunate incident , we are taking immediate measures to strengthen our editorial oversight procedures and quality controls throughout the organization.
” A person briefed TRNN on the ongoing investigation explained what they believe is the reason for Pack to go after the contractors and spare the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ does not want to turn VOA bureaucracy against him in case his tenure is cut short after November , ” they said.
“ So , he ’ s chosen a soft target to make his point .
Suspending or terminating contractors is a win-win , no questions asked and you don ’ t antagonize the bureaucrats.It keeps his boss [ Trump ] happy and lets him score a few low-hanging fruits.
” Running on taxpayer dollars , VOA is no stranger to controversies on account of management inadequacies and editorial blunders and has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ amongst US federal agencies in terms of job satisfaction and employee morale .
It stood at 23 of 25 agencies assessed in the 2019 federal government employees annual survey .
According to a 2019 statement from the American Federation of Government Employees , , the union which represents most of the USAGM Federal employees , the workforce is demoralized and fearful .

The United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) management, which oversees five federally-funded broadcast networks, has suspended four journalists on contract with possible termination. The four journalists are charged with influencing the US elections and violating federal laws by favoring Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden in a video published by the Urdu language service of the Voice Of America (VOA).
The supervisory staff of the language service responsible for the day-to-day editorial decisions and management meanwhile, has received no disciplinary action. Contracted employees feel they are being scapegoated to save the jobs of their supervisors, VOA sources told The Real News requesting not to be named because of the possible backlash.
The controversy ensued after Michael Pack – the new CEO of USAGM and a Trump appointee – recently came out with a string of accusations against VOA including publishing Pro-Biden content and violating VOA’s charter and federal laws that govern political activities of government employees. The Biden campaign has since also jumped into the shouting match, with the former vice president’s spokesperson Andrew Bates announcing he would fire Pack within days of a Biden presidency.
At the heart of the ongoing investigation is a video clip published by VOA Urdu service, which caters to Urdu-speaking audiences in the South Asia region and is one of the largest of the 46 language services. Published on VOA Urdu website and social media platforms on July 22, the 2-minute video showcases Biden’s recent online event urging Muslim-Americans to vote for him. The video was later taken down after top VOA managers found it violated the network’s editorial policies and best practices.
Captioned with Urdu subtitles, the video features Joe Biden promising Muslim Americans that if elected he would overturn the Muslim ban Trump placed on seven Muslim majority coutries. The VOA management later found the video favored the Democractic presidential hopeful by providing him a platform to reach potential voters through its coverage and violated editorial guidelines as well as the federal law that requires government employees not to engage in political activities.
Following the investigation into the incident, four Urdu Service contractors were held responsible and were asked to appear before the counsel general to record their statements, two people familiar with the incident told The Real News. On July 30, three of the four contractors appeared for the interview and reportedly asserted that the video in question was okayed for publishing by their full time supervisor – a senior manager at the VOA Urdu.
After the meeting, all four contractors received a 14-day suspension notice from the VOA human resources while the Agency investigated the matter. This has stirred considerable anxiety among the VOA contracted employees, especially those on J-1 visa because they will be required to leave the US within a month in case of termination. Two of the contractors involved in the incident hold J-1 visas.
And this suits Pack – the new USAGM CEO – who, in line with the White House anti-immigrant agenda, is continuing with the freeze on issuing or renewing J-1 visas. VOA hires foreign journalists on J-1 to augment its language services, a decades-long practice, because of the nonviability of foreign language expertise in the US. Upon hiring, the J-1 grantees are allowed to bring their spouses to the US, and the Trump administration has lately moved aggressively to block all potential migration channels.
Reportedly, more than 70 VOA employees on J-1 are up for visa renewal. As of the filing of this report, there is no official word from the USAGM or VOA management on whether their visas will be renewed or not. Association with US-government agencies such as VOA often turns its journalists into potential targets back home where hostile governments view them as loyal to the US interests and where conspiracy theories about VOA as a cover for CIA are widespread. Foreign journalists on J-1 often come from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, China and other countries where VOA operations are not seen as favorable.
In response to TRNN inquiry, a spokesperson at the VOA referenced a news release issued last month in which Pack alleges that “other federal agencies” has conducted assessments that “reveal systemic, severe, and fundamental security failures, many of which have persisted for years.” It is not clearly stated whether visa renewals are being withheld because of the “security failures” the statement alleges. As standard practice, all VOA hires go through months-long background security checks before coming onboard.
The Real News has spoken to VOA employees who mentioned they know several colleagues whose J-1 visas are expiring as early as late August. “We do most of the work in VOA and this is how we are treated,” lamented one foreign journalist awaiting J-1 renewal. Requesting not to be named for the fear of reprisal, the journalist compared working at VOA to modern-day slavery.
“We have no rights or recourse available against this injustice,” they said. “We came here legally and have worked to earn our right to stay. But our managers are not saying a word about visa renewal which is a very painful experience.”
And punishing contractors for editorial negligence of supervisory staff, who enjoy government job protections, has added to these grievances. With no recourse available or voice in the management decisions, the incident has led to a widespread fear among the contracted employees prompting the VOA acting director Elez Biberaj to send out Agency-wide memo emphasizing the severity of the incident.
“This incident has not only tarnished the work of VOA’s Urdu Service, but it has cast a shadow on the credibility of hundreds of dedicated journalists working around the clock to fulfill VOA’s mission,” the memo reads.
It goes on to say that “in light of this unfortunate incident, we are taking immediate measures to strengthen our editorial oversight procedures and quality controls throughout the organization.”
A person briefed TRNN on the ongoing investigation explained what they believe is the reason for Pack to go after the contractors and spare the VOA federal employees .
“Pack probably does not want to turn VOA bureaucracy against him in case his tenure is cut short after November,” they said.“So, he’s chosen a soft target to make his point. Suspending or terminating contractors is a win-win, no questions asked and you don’t antagonize the bureaucrats.It keeps his boss [Trump] happy and lets him score a few low-hanging fruits.”
Running on taxpayer dollars, VOA is no stranger to controversies on account of management inadequacies and editorial blunders and has consistently ranked as one of the lowest amongst US federal agencies in terms of job satisfaction and employee morale. It stood at 23 of 25 agencies assessed in the 2019 federal government employees annual survey. According to a 2019 statement from the American Federation of Government Employees, , the union which represents most of the USAGM Federal employees, the workforce is demoralized and fearful.
Editor’s Note: The author is a former VOA international broadcast journalist and covered politics and international affairs.
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therealnews--2020-08-12--This Is Not A Drill Live

This Is Not A Drill Live

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The sprint to November 2020 is underway. The question that remains for left organizers is, who will we bring in to our growing coalition organized around racial justice and radical economic democracy? The overlapping political and economic crises of our time have opened the door to growing far beyond our normal base of support. How will we take advantage of this opening to build power not only in 2020 but well beyond the general election? What groups of people and organizations will included in this new bloc?


therealnews--2020-08-13--New strategy builds a multiracial coalition in Trump country

Deep canvassing can connect rural white voters to issues of racial justice to build a multiracial coalition we need.
Story Transcript
Jacqueline Luqman: This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network. An organizing experiment that was conducted among white working-class voters in rural Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania by a national network of 40 state and local progressive and left-leaning grassroots power-building organizations has shown some pretty impressive results. And not just engaging voters for the upcoming election, but in shifting the attitudes of some people in those communities about issues like immigration and racism. Rather than door knocking with a clipboard and a candidate platform spiel, the deep canvassing experiment was different. Here to talk about the experiment, the outcome, and the implications, not just in the next election, but in grassroots organizing and beyond is Mehrdad Azemun senior strategist for People’s Action. Mehrdad has been organizing for 20 years and his roots are in the immigration rights movement and in community organizing and he’s an immigrant from Iran. Mehrdad, thank you so much for joining us.
Mehrdad Azemun: Thank you so much for being here and your important work. Very, very much appreciate what your network does. Thank you for having us.
Jacqueline Luqman: People’s Actions started having conversations about the need for a more robust role in small town organizing. That was from the inception of these conversations, race, conscious and would work in majority white areas where people were struggling economically. So instead of talking about politicians and policies and who people were voting for, your organization focused on issues. But what were those starting points, those issues for those conversations with people in these communities, if candidates and policy platforms weren’t the beginning of the conversation?
Mehrdad Azemun: We started with was a massive listening campaign in 2017 and 2018, in which we knocked on tens of thousands of doors and in a bunch of different rural communities around the country. What we found in those conversations was really interesting in that there was a real battle for meaning among people in these communities. We asked people what were the issues that were happening in their communities? What did they care about? There were a couple of very interesting reactions that happened. One, the overriding reaction was, well, no one’s actually ever knocked on my door and asked me what I care about. So much so that the organization that we work with in North Carolina, Down Home North Carolina, they actually titled their report that followed up on those conversations. They titled it, no one’s ever asked me before.
The other thing that happened is that people in rural communities really felt a lack of all kinds of things, lack of jobs, lack of healthcare, lack of basic resources in their own communities. So much so that we did an analysis of the words that people use in these conversations. And that four-letter word lack was by far the biggest one. The people that they blamed for that lack of whatever it might be, there was a real struggle in people’s minds around who was really the culprit. A lot of people did tend to blame immigrants. It was immigrants and people of color and we saw that there was a real danger there. Of course.
The other thing at the same time was that more often people blamed the 1% big corporations and their ability to buy our government as another major culprit. And in people’s minds, there was a real struggle for who that real enemy was. We decided to try to investigate that and try to complicate that in fact, by following up and having a more focused research project. That really tried to figure out how is it that we can essentially widen the circle of humanity in this era, in which we’re having so many conversations about race, so many conversations about the perceived other. So many conversations about immigrants, ourselves, undocumented, documented all immigrants. And decided to go back into these communities in three different states, and really have honest conversations, deep conversations with people about how they thought about immigrants. In particular, try to have conversations at the intersection of two major issues of our time, immigration and healthcare that led us to the experiment that we ran last fall.
Jacqueline Luqman: Wow. Now it really sounds like you sort of accidentally stumbled on what we know is the Republicans and definitely the Trump administration using racism strategically in these areas. It sounds like you kind of stumbled on the result of them doing that. Fear-mongering about immigration and these kinds of issues. Whether people agree that this is true, or and there will definitely be some who will see this and say, “Well, that’s not true.” But dissenting opinions aside, a lot of this work has involved beating white supremacists and reactionary politicians to these people, to these voters, to circumvent that narrative in these areas. So a couple of questions arise for me when I think about that. One of them is, who are the best people to engage in these conversations with these voters? Because there’s a lot of discussion Mehrdad about how it’s the responsibility of white people to educate and struggle with white people in dismantling their racist ideology, whether it’s conscious or unconscious. But did you find that to be true in this experiment?
Mehrdad Azemun: It’s a very interesting finding from our experiment, from the work that we’ve done on doors and to the question of whose role is it to be having this conversation. Our answer is it’s everyone’s role. I completely understand the extra burden that can be placed on people of color to explain ourselves. I experienced that as an immigrant from Iran. But when it comes to the actual experiment, we had canvassers, we had people who were working inside the three different states, and we had folks who were born here. We had people who were not. We had people who were white. We had people who were people of color and we measured, okay, what’s the effectiveness of a white canvasser who is born here. How much can they break through to a specific voter versus someone who’s a person of color versus someone who is an immigrant?
What we found was that at least for this experiment, we found that it actually didn’t matter that whether it was a native born white person from that state. Whether it was someone who was born in Venezuela and Mexico, came from the continent of Africa. It actually really didn’t matter, what mattered was people connecting around story, around values, not around facts and in particular sharing lived experience, especially even including if a person was not an immigrant. It really mattered to just share the story of an immigrant that they knew. And what that opened up was the person on the other end of the conversation, them sharing, “Oh, actually I do know an immigrant and maybe they’re undocumented. Maybe they’re not, I’m not really sure. Here’s a little bit about their experience.” And suddenly the circle of humanity was widened. It’s a pretty amazing breakthrough at least that we saw.
And what it also opens up is that in terms of this struggle for racial justice, that is the struggle of our time. Everyone has a role. It’s a beautiful thing about movements is everyone can have a role to play. And just referring back to something that you talked about, what we see over and over again is organized white supremacy is on the march in community, after community. And at least in the places that we were door knocking, organizers said to us over and over again. Again, there’s a real struggle for meaning in these communities and whoever is on the front porch of these communities they’re the ones who win.
If we leave this, if we leave those communities, if we say, “No, that’s such a red county, that’s such a red state.” We’ll never be able to break through. We can’t win politically. Then we leave all of that territory. We leave all of those ideas and that struggle for meaning to the right and to the white supremacists. And we may as well be waving the flag of defeat in community after community. What we’ve demonstrated is if we get in there, we have a race conscious conversation that’s about building a multiracial movement that fuses race and class. We demonstrate over and over again, that we can win.
Jacqueline Luqman: That is profound to me, I think, because that leads me to my next question. Because we do so often and by we, I mean those of us on the left and I’m definitely not shy in admitting that there are some weaknesses on the left. I think one of the weaknesses that we do tend to have, that we’re not as careful in reigning in, is our view of rural voters. Where we see people who live in red areas, red states, as not worth the time and effort because they’re whatever a disparaging name we can think of to call them. They’re backwoods, hicks, they’re unintelligent, they’re unsophisticated, whatever. But so many organizations were involved in this project and I’m assuming that those organizations members come from cities, as well as maybe some rural organizations. Did they have to change their orientation, their attitude toward rural voters, as opposed to the kinds of voters they regularly engaged in for them to be able to connect with the people they canvassed?
Mehrdad Azemun: The organizations that we were working with are rooted in those communities. So they really understood how to engage their own base, the people in those communities the best. But to pick up on your question, yes, we make… I myself make a lot of assumptions. I have only lived in big cities, big and midsize cities in this country as an immigrant. So I to make assumptions and the thing that we’re really trying to get to as People’s Action is a big, big progressive electorate. And getting over our own assumptions. I, as an immigrant and I had questions my own skepticism as I drove into these communities. And what I found over and over again was among the people that we were talking to, who were by nature, they were conflicted.
They were conflicted about immigrants, about immigration. The thing that they just really were hungering for was a conversation. We talked beyond parties, we talked beyond partisanship. And over and over again, the thing that I was really surprised by was that even if the conversation did not end up moving them, maybe they didn’t necessarily move in our direction, voter after voter almost to a single person thanked me. Because it was a nonjudgmental conversation that just protected some space where they could contend with all of this jumble and mess of ideas in their minds. Where they had lived experiences, where they had known an immigrant, worked with an immigrant. There was an immigrant who’s there in law, an extended relative, and had had of course, incredibly positive interactions with person after person.
But then they’re met with this barrage of racism and white supremacy, whether it’s coded, whether it’s outright over and over again in the airwaves on social media. So helping them process that jumble of idea, they were thankful that someone could come to them, approach them in a nonjudgmental way and say, “Well, you said this, but you also said this, how do you contend with that?” And voter after voter just thanked me specifically for just saying like, “I needed this. I needed to process this with someone and actually unpack some of the racism that I’ve ingested. I just need some time to process it and hopefully land in a better space.”
Jacqueline Luqman: That is really, really fascinating. And it sounds to me like these kinds of nonjudgmental open conversations based on shared experiences is the perfect foundation, the perfect environment to have a conversation that centers on the race class narrative. That’s actually what the conversation device is called. And as its name implies, it’s a central focus of these deep canvassing discussions. It insists on addressing both race and class at the same time.
Now, there is another discussion going on in a left circles right now. That’s been going on for quite some time. I’ve been involved in many, about whether we should be focusing on class as a major issue in the fight for more progressive leftist policies in politics, or whether we should be focusing on race, if that is the predominant issue that we should be focusing on. But the race, class narrative seems to imply that it’s both, that you have to talk about both in this discussion. So what does that mean? Is that accurate? And what does that mean when you are talking to voters or potential voters about these issues, their experiences, and policy. Can you talk about race without talking about class with people and get them to do this confronting of their conflicting thoughts on these issues?
Mehrdad Azemun: Excellent question first, let’s just name it, the right names, race all the time, all the time, whether it’s implicit or explicit, they use race all the time. We as progressives often respond by running from it. We say, “Well, we’re color blind. Don’t bring up race, that’s divisive.” We’ve seen over and over again, that that is a path to defeat because the other side will name it over and over and over again. We’ll play to things like white nativism, white consciousness in order to win election after election and issue after issue. It’s been part of their playbook for decades.
In this debate about race and class. Is it all about race? Is it all about class? Our answer and our experience is yes. I think it needs to be said. Is that the story of America, the story of the United States? I think you can say the story of America is a story of race. I think that needs to be said in terms of just understanding that the history and the story of our country. What our experience, both my experience on the doors, and the experience from the experiment demonstrates that if you can tell a story that demonstrates that it really is about both. That’s the beauty of the race class narrative is that it’s been able to weave together race and class. I think you need to demonstrate that.
I think it’s also about demonstrating how racism has been used strategically by specific forces, specifically inside the right inside this country to divide people based on race and in order to actually consolidate their power. So I think if you can… What I’ve experienced is that you confuse both of those things, race and class, but also demonstrate to people, especially white people that racism doesn’t just happen. It’s not an accident, but that has been used strategically as a tool to water down power for specific groups can consolidate power for the right. What I experienced over and over again is that that can actually breakthrough shows a great deal of promise.
Jacqueline Luqman: That is fascinating. So Mehrdad I’m wondering, what’s been the outcome of these efforts because they sound very much like organizing to me. They sound like political education a little bit to me, but I’m wondering how they have been successful? Have these efforts been successful? What has your experiment produced? Have you been able to measure successes or changes in perspectives throughout the experiment? What’s happened?
Mehrdad Azemun: The research, and also our experience on the doors demonstrates that we had amazing success in this experiment. We partnered with esteemed researchers from Yale University and University of California Berkeley to work closely with us because we really wanted to see does this actually work? If you had a 15 minute conversation with someone about immigration, about health care, and then they went back after that conversation to social media or right wing radio or Fox News. Or whatever media they’re taking in, what would actually happen? We’re very, very excited and validated to see that for every 100 people that we talk to about this question of, would you be okay with including undocumented immigrants in a universal healthcare plan, say like Medicare for all. Out of every 100 people that we would talk to, eight of them would actually come over to support a position actually being in favor of the undocumented being included in a university healthcare program.
And again, take into account we’re talking about, again, perceived very, very red areas or purple areas in North Carolina, and Michigan, and Pennsylvania in rural areas in small towns. So it’s a pretty mind blowing effect that we saw while we also demonstrated was that we could go back to those same people about four and a half months later. After they’ve had this 15 minute conversation and then gone back and watched whatever taken in whatever social media and other media that they’re taking in. And those results would hold.
Jacqueline Luqman: Wow.
Mehrdad Azemun: Means that it had a really, really durable and lasting impact. So we’re very excited about the kind of methodology that we use. And also, again, the narrative that we were trying to tell with people, and we want to apply it to the election. So we’re having similar conversations in a bunch of swing states going into the fall election and are excited. In fact have built an army of people who are having these kinds of similar conversations in some cases with their neighbors, in some cases with people just one state away, a few states away as we try to again, battle for meaning in this election. And of course try to break through to victory.
Jacqueline Luqman: I’m so glad you just said that, that we are trying to battle or that you and your organization are trying to battle for meaning in this election and breakthrough to victory. Because I want you to end with telling people how they can contact you if they want to learn how they can participate in this, but not just in terms of the upcoming election. But also if they’re wondering if they can use this method, these tools, this tactic, to build this multicultural, multiracial coalition that is so desperately needed at this time of crisis and uprising in this country. How can people connect with your organization to get plugged in, to do this?
Mehrdad Azemun: So happy you asked that we are building 1,000 strong following across this country of people who want to have a deep and meaningful conversations in the places that really matter and welcome people to volunteer. It can be as simple as doing it from your home, from your own smartphone, from your own old school phone, from your laptop, whatever state it’s in. We would love to have you as part of this effort. There is a deep, deep hunger because of the pandemic, because of the murder of George Floyd and so many other people of color by the hands of police. It’s a very, very uncertain time. The tools of the canvassing are made for these kinds of times, for times of crises. There is a hunger…
We’re running, for example, massive text banks and people running social media ads. Those are great things to do. But what we know is that there is a real hunger from people to just make meaning and to connect with people, build community. And the answer to your question is yes, and people can send an email. You can go to peoplesaction.org. If you want to just learn more information about who we are and what we’ve done. You can also just send an email to a couple of different places. One is just press@peoplesaction.org, press@peoplesaction.org. There’s a different email that folks can send to it’s just support@peoplesaction.org. Again, support@peoplesaction.org. If you want to sign up and get more involved and learn about what we’re doing state to state.
Jacqueline Luqman: Mehrdad throughout this conversation, I could not help but think about Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party and the organizing meetings they held with the Young Lords, the Young Patriots and poor white people from the inner city of Chicago. I just feel like this is an extension of those organizing and political education efforts. So I truly appreciate the effort that went into this experiment and that it will continue. I’m very excited to see what the results are. So I really appreciate you coming on and having this conversation with me about it.
Mehrdad Azemun: Thank you so much for having me. Again, just want to appreciate back the amazing work your network does very, very much appreciate our time together, Jackie.
Jacqueline Luqman: Oh, absolutely. So do I. I really appreciate you for watching. This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network in Washington DC.
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therealnews--2020-08-13--Progressives’ problems with Kamala Harris

Liberals praised Harris, Republicans attacked her as a “radical leftist,” but progressives say the selection underscores the need for sustained grassroots pressure.
Story Transcript
Donald Trump: This will be the most corrupt election in the history of our country.
Protestor: What do we want?
Protestors: Justice.
Protestor: When do we want it?
Protestors: Now.
Jaisal Noor: Welcome to The Real News. I’m Jaisal Noor.
Joe Biden has chosen Senator Kamala Harris to be his vice presidential running mate, taking on Donald Trump and Mike Pence in November. Harris becomes the first Black woman and South Asian to appear on a major party ticket in US history. As a US senator, Harris has been described as a fierce critic of the Trump administration, backed criminal justice reform and legislation like Medicare For All and a Green New Deal. Meanwhile, Republicans describe her as a radical leftist.
Narrator: Kamala Harris ran for president by rushing to the radical left, embracing Bernie’s plan for socialized medicine, calling for trillions in new taxes, attacking Joe Biden for racist policies.
Jaisal Noor: But some progressives had opposed Harris’s nomination as VP, citing her record as California’s top prosecutor, where she advocated for arresting parents for their children’s truancy, refused to support body-worn cameras, wavered on the death penalty and defended solitary confinement. Stances deeply disconnected from the historic Black Lives Matter Movement that swept the country in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Well, now, joining me to discuss this is Branko Marcetic. He’s a staff writer for Jacobin magazine, author of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden, a political biography of the 2020 Democratic candidate. Thanks so much for joining us.
Branko Marcetic: Thanks for having me.
Jaisal Noor: So, Kamala Harris, she was a front-runner to be Biden’s VP, so it’s not a big shock that she was chosen, two decades younger than Biden, described to be on the left of the presumptive nominee. Democrats say they’re laser focused on defeating Trump in 2020 and Harris would ease some of the voters’ concerns about Biden and also serve as a sharp foil to Trump and Pence. What’s your response to this? And, also, a candidate that Republicans can try to argue, as we’ve seen, as soft on crime, but clearly that’s not what her record shows.
Branko Marcetic: Yeah. There has been a little bit of mixed messaging from the Republicans. To some extent, it seems like they haven’t quite figured out what the exact message they want to run against Harris is. Was it that she was too tough on crime? Was it that she isn’t tough enough, that she’s a radical, or wedded to the establishment? It does reflect the general approach, the muddled approach Republicans have taken against the Biden in general, where they’ve tried all sorts of different messaging, often contradictory, throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.
So far, it hasn’t really worked for Trump, obviously, given the fact that the coronavirus is raging through the country, and that is the main issue on people’s minds. But yeah, I mean, the idea that Harris is a radical leftist or what have you is completely divorced from reality.
I mean, Harris was really as centrist as centrist gets. In many ways, she was the heir to the type of politics that Joe Biden had spent his career advocating for in the Democratic Party. So, it’s going to be hard for them to cast her as too radical. And really, the main complaint against her through the primary and even before then was that she was too wedded to politics as usual.
Jaisal Noor: The New York Times has described the Black Lives Matter Movement as what could be the largest protest movement in US history. It shifted public opinion and discourse against the carceral state and towards abolition.
Progressives urged Biden to not put a cop on the ticket, including a majority of Democratic delegates from Harris’s home state. They sent a letter to Joe Biden.
You’ve examined her record on criminal justice. And I want to add that this movement has urged the country to look at alternatives to using police to address issues of economic inequality. That is really what this moment in this movement is calling for. You’ve looked at her record on criminal justice in her home state. What did you find?
Branko Marcetic: Not great things, to put it into summary. Even in the Democratic Party, they obviously had embraced the tough-on-crime turn that people like Joe Biden had been advocating for through the ’80s and the ’90s. Even in that context, Harris really stands out for just how far to the right she was on criminal justice. And when she ran for Attorney General in California, she was actually to the right of her Republican opponent on the three-strikes law. She opposed legalizing recreational marijuana for a very long time. And this is another issue that, when she ran for Senate, her Republican opponent was actually to her left on.
Harris has done things like, her office has fought to keep innocent prisoners in jail. She has fought to block payouts for people who are wrongfully convicted. Her DA’s office in San Francisco withheld evidence that would have had people freed around, I think, something like hundreds of drug cases that had tainted evidence used in them. She argued for keeping prisoners in jail as a source of cheap labor to fight fires and that kind of thing. We could go on and on and on and on.
There was a great piece in The American Prospect that examined her role, more recently, in opposing a Supreme Court order to free nonviolent offenders from prison. And she very strongly resisted that. One law professor actually compared it to the 1950 segregationists who were resisting integration orders at that period. So, I mean, this really shows you just how conservative she was on this front.
And it’s one of these paradoxes or ironies or absurdities, whatever you want to say, of the current US political system and the Democratic Party, that, as you say, at a time when there is massive unrest on a scale that has not been seen in this country ever over police brutality, over the injustice of the criminal justice system.
On the one hand, on the ticket, you have the man who, perhaps more than any other, helped to construct that system, at least on the Democratic side, Joe Biden. And then with him now partnering is someone who very enthusiastically used those powers that Biden and his generation gave to people like her to really make people’s lives worse over sometimes minor transgressions, including just drug possession.
Jaisal Noor: So CNBC News reported, Wall Street leaders cheered Biden’s pick of Harris. Quote, “Financial advisory firm, Signum Global, is already telling its clients that the choice of Harris reinforces the notion that the Democratic ticket is more moderate than progressive,” which you’ve already spoken to.
Then, on the other hand, groups like the Sunrise Movement praised Biden’s choice of Harris, citing her support for the Green New Deal and said, noted, she went after big oil during her time in California as Attorney General. Obviously, there is many competing interests in the Democratic Party and one of them is Wall Street and one of them is the climate movement. What are your thoughts on that?
Branko Marcetic: I think it’s one of these things where we are in this holding pattern where we don’t know what exactly we’re going to get. I mean, Biden’s history and suddenly his pick of Harris is, as those analysts point out, does not suggest someone who is going to dramatically turn to the left suddenly if he becomes president and who is going to pursue this kind of FDR-style presidency that he’s been talking about.
I mean, in fact, almost every Democratic candidate either compares themselves to FDR or the media compares them to FDR, especially in a crisis like this. Bill Clinton did so before he decided to embark on a bunch of budget cuts. So that does not tell us very much.
I think ultimately, the thing that’s going to really tell us what the direction of the Biden presidency is going to be like is to look at who he appoints, which we’ve only gotten some glimmers of based on the leaks, or at least, some suggestions that have been made to various outlets like Axios. Whether those are actually the appointees he’s going to make, it remains to be seen.
But we know that he’s had Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel hovering in the wings. And if you want to shoot a progressive FDR-style agenda in the foot, you could do no better than getting those guys to advise you.
Jaisal Noor: I’d like to interject. Summers did say recently that he’s no longer in the running to be in the Biden Administration.
Branko Marcetic: That’s right. Although, whether he’s advising Biden just informally, that remains to be seen. We’re not really sure about that. There is also, as Robert Kuttner pointed out, he could still possibly be in the running for Treasury, although that would be a hell of a fight if Biden picked him for Treasury. But that [inaudible 00:09:48] doesn’t count as being in the Biden administration. But, I mean, Rahm Emanuel, also another very key figure to hamstring Obama’s agenda after 2008. And now, the pick of Harris does not really suggest that Biden is really eager to go in this direction that the party has been moving into.
I mean, Harris, even though she did get some important settlements against fossil fuel polluters and the like when she was in California, Harris has not always shown the greatest propensity for actually fighting against the powerful. Most, I think, famously, she didn’t prosecute Steve Mnuchin’s bank OneWest, which was engaged in a whole lot of predatory behavior and something like upwards of 1,000 cases of misconduct. Her own office actually suggested that she, or recommended, that she prosecute him and she didn’t, for some reason. And then later, Steven Mnuchin donated to her campaign.
Harris also, she made a mortgage strike force when she was California Attorney General, which was meant to go after mortgage fraud and on foreclosure consultant fraud. Her office actually prosecuted and took to court less cases than even some county DAs in California when it comes to that. We also might look at her relationship with tech firms, and we could go on and on.
But the point is, Harris does not have a consistent record of actually going up against the powerful. And given the fact that she’s such a prolific fundraiser, one of the benefits that she brings to Biden’s campaign, it’s hard to see, unless the Democrats do something that typically does not happen, which is take people’s money and then betray them, it’s hard to see how this is really going to play out in a Biden Administration.
Jaisal Noor: Worth mentioning that Donald Trump himself donated to Kamala Harris’s attorney general runs when she was running for Attorney General of California.
I think that perhaps the most important and pressing question going forward for the Left is what this ticket means for organizing. Regardless of who is in the White House, we know that it’s going to take mass struggle and mass movements to bring any type of real change, with the fear being that a Democratic ticket does not bring the needed structural change.
We’ve seen the coronavirus. We’ve seen the greatest transfer of wealth in this country’s history with billionaires taking in something like $600 billion dollars just in the first couple of months of this economic crisis. There is maybe 40 million people that are going to be kicked out of their homes across the country. What is the strategy going to be, if there is a Biden Harris ticket for the left? Does this mobilize the Left or is it going to demobilize and make it harder to [inaudible 00:12:48]?
Branko Marcetic: It could very well make it harder. It really all depends. What tends to happen is when a Democratic president [inaudible 00:12:58], a lot of people who might have been outraged at things that a Republican president does suddenly lose that outrage when it’s the person on the right team doing it. So we saw with Obama, a lot of Democratic voters actually came around to the War on Terror, even though Obama had run on the reverse saying, Bush’s War on Terror are excesses. And so, there is always a danger of that happening.
One thing that makes me a little bit more hopeful about this, that it won’t just be a repeat of the Obama era is, one, Biden is coming into the presidency with a very weak standing. He doesn’t have a lot of enthusiasm behind him. A lot of voters are, they admit they’re just voting for him to get rid of Trump and they don’t really have any particular passion or feel inspired by him. So it’s not like the Obama wave where he came in with this very enthusiastic grassroots base and he had this massive wave of enthusiasm and support when he came in and used some of that for more nefarious ends like cutting Medicare and Social Security. Biden does not have that mandate to be able to necessarily get away with reactionary things as easily as Obama was able to.
This is also a moment of crisis and mass unrest, the protests against police brutality, and by extension, the federal government’s wider botching of the pandemic response. And that’s not going to end just because Trump leaves. I mean, protests are still happening in Portland even though it’s no longer federal police that are brutalizing protestors. This stuff is going to continue. That has the potential to push a Biden-Harris White House to possibly do things that they would otherwise not if there is this level of unrest and unhappiness.
I mean, at the same time, of course, we can also look at it the other way, where it could also spur a Biden administration to embark on some very repressive measures. I mean, we’ve seen most of the repression that’s happened throughout the country at the hands of the police, it’s been at the hands of Democratic-led governments. So it’s far from clear that Biden wouldn’t also take this kind of position.
Like I said, it’s going to have to depend, I think, on the conditions and it’s going to have to depend on what exactly happens, what the coronavirus crisis even looks like six months from now. But, maybe, I think people should get used to the idea, and I think people should tell, particularly their older relatives who may just see Trump as the main problem and plan to just go back to brunch or what have you once Trump is defeated, that the problems that are facing the United States and the world are still ongoing and that a Biden administration could really do some real damage if people stopped paying attention and don’t get mobilized.
But, given the energy in the streets, I do feel a little more hopeful than I did maybe in April that some of these systemic changes that have to happen, at the very least, have some possibility of being addressed in some way. But, yeah, we’ll have to see.
Jaisal Noor: And it’s definitely worth mentioning that even if we’re talking about Biden and Harris that the progressive left within the Democratic Party is growing. All the squad members defeated well-financed opponents in their primaries. We’ve seen the likes of Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman knock off incumbents, powerful incumbents that have been in office for two decades.
And the DNC gave AOC a slot to speak at the convention next week. So, there certainly will be that voice within the Democratic Party going forward. As we know in the polls, the Democratic base agrees with policies like Medicare For All and a Green New Deal, even if its leadership doesn’t quite feel the same way.
Branko Marcetic: Yeah, and I think that’s really important. I mean, Ilhan Omar just won her reelection. There was a lot of news reports saying, in her run up, oh, she’s under threat, she could lose her seat. They said the same thing about Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They’ve all held their seats. They’ve got a couple more members.
It may well be time for the progressive wing of the party, particularly in the House to, even in their small numbers, throw their weight around and do what the Tea Party did, be that pain in the neck for Democratic leadership in order to get what they want. The Tea Party proved that you can have, you can create some pretty radical change with very small numbers.
One thing with this Harris pick that we should keep in mind as well is that, to me, in my mind, Harris has been chosen to shore up some of these deficiencies of Biden. The fact that he’s not a particularly grassroots popular presidential candidate, the fact that he isn’t particularly inspiring, that people aren’t willing to get behind them and see them as her standard-bearer.
I think Harris has been compared to Obama for a very long time for good reason. And she does have that charisma and that political skill to be able to rally Democratic voters to her. Similar to, perhaps, how Sarah Palin did with Republican voters in 2008. And we should be aware that the eventual Biden Administration, if it does come to pass, could very well use Harris as a way to sell voters in a way that Obama did on a more right-wing program, or to narrow their political imaginations and expectations. So that’s one thing that I think people are going to have to be cognizant of.
People are going to have to keep organizing and keep criticizing this ticket. I don’t think it’s going to do any good to just say, well, Trump has to be defeated, so let’s just close our ears and eyes and pretend that this ticket is something it’s not.
Jaisal Noor: Branko Marcetic, staff writer for Jacobin magazine, author of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden, thank you so much for joining us.
Branko Marcetic: Thanks for having me.
Jaisal Noor: Thank you for joining us at The Real News Network.
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therealnews--2020-08-13--Both Parties Honor the Dark Side

Both Parties Honor the Dark Side

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