theintercept--2020-09-17--Fool Me Twice: How Democrats Risk Repeating the Mistakes of the Financial Crisis in the Era of Covid

Fool Me Twice: How Democrats Risk Repeating the Mistakes of the Financial Crisis in the Era of Covid-19

As the U.S. economy was spiralling out of control in 2008 and 2009 , economist James Galbraith predicted that an insufficiently large stimulus would lead to a prolonged recession .
He was right , and today he has a different set of economic prescriptions to address the economic crisis brought on by Covid-19 .
If Biden wins , will he listen ?
Senior politics editor Nausicaa Renner talks to Galbraith about his recent piece for The Intercept .
Ryan Grim : In the fall of 2008 , the U.S. economy was spinning out of control .
The housing crisis had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Wall Street demanded that Congress pony up a $ 700 billion , no-strings-attached bailout .
If they didn ’ t , there would be financial armageddon .
With a gun to its head , Congress passed the bailout bill .
Huge payouts were made to financial institutions with little accountability , and the Great Recession followed .
Twelve years later , it ’ s starting to feel a bit like déjà vu , isn ’ t it ?
Sen. Bernie Sanders : Some of our Republican friends still have not given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poor and working people .
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez : One of the largest corporate bailouts , with as few strings as possible in American history .
Robert Reich : Now is not the time to worry about the national debt .
RG : Today on the show , we ’ re gon na talk to someone who made the right call when it counted — 12 years ago .
Someone who predicted that the approach the white house was taking was too weak to seriously address the banking and housing crises .
Because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 2008 and 2009 , we might want to listen to him this time around .
I ’ m Ryan Grim , D.C. bureau chief for The Intercept .
Welcome to Deconstructed .
RG : Back in 2008 , when I was a congressional reporter working for Politico , I spent hours in the hallways of the Capitol , chasing lawmakers who felt huge pressure to deliver the ransom that Wall Street was demanding .
And one morning there , I ran into the economist James Galbraith .
He was on the Hill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both parties who were skeptical of what bank lobbyists were telling them .
He told me then that what was being proposed would not be enough to prevent a major recession .
A few months after that conversation on Capitol Hill , lawmakers were back at the drawing board .
The financial crisis had sparked an economic collapse ; Congress was preparing to pass the famous $ 787 billion stimulus bill .
So I reached back out to Galbraith and asked what advice he was now offering .
He used an analogy that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there ’ s a massive hurricane headed your way .
You ’ re the mayor of the town , and you have a warehouse full of sandbags .
You have to decide how many sandbags to use , but you ’ re not sure just how big the hurricane will be .
Some people are urging you to use all the sandbags , but others think you should just use half of them , and save the rest for the next time they ’ re needed .
If you use too few and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ everything .
If you use too many , well , you have extra sandbags lying around .
So , for James Galbraith , the answer was simple : Use them all .
He warned Democrats that if they went too small with their stimulus , the result would be a deep recession , a slow recovery , and mass unemployment .
But they went small anyway .
Everything he predicted came true .
The following year Democrats were wiped out by a different sort of flood , the Tea Party wave in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the unemployment rate was 9.8 percent .
There was a lot of pain around the country , and voters punished the Democrats for it .
Losing that election effectively ended the legislative ambitions of the Obama administration ; he never got back his House majority .
If a Joe Biden administration wants to avoid the same fate , they might want to listen more closely to Galbraith this time around .
Because he says that what we need today is entirely different than what he recommended over a decade ago .
He made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Intercept , which was edited by my colleague Nausicaa Renner .
Nausicaa , welcome to the show .
Nausicaa Renner : Thanks , Ryan , for having me .
NR : So I was interested in getting outside of the political orthodoxy when it comes to thinking about the economy .
You know , as you noted , in 2008 , Galbraith had really different ideas than everybody on the Hill about what exactly it was going to take to fix the economy .
And he ’ s always seemed to me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clear-eyed but also not horribly politically biased .
I really wanted to hear from him what sort of radical vision was actually necessary to get us back up and running again .
So we asked him to write a piece , and for the show this week , I called him up to talk more about what he thinks the U.S. economy needs to get back on its feet .
James Galbraith : Thank you very much .
Good to be with you .
NR : So I want to just start by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve been asked a lot in the course of this election , and in the course of the pandemic , which is : What is the economy going to look like in the long run ?
If we keep doing what we ’ re doing now , how many small businesses do you think will survive ?
And what does the economy look like in a year ?
RG : Oh , a year is a long way away from where we are now .
The situation is extremely fluid , it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We know we ’ re in an exceedingly dangerous period , in which , fundamentally , the economy was , to a degree , stitched together in April by pouring a great deal of money into people ’ s pockets , and into the pockets of businesses .
And a good deal of that is now drying up .
You have many , many businesses that are hanging on because the owners have some capital , and they may hope that things will get better .
But if they don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to be there indefinitely .
And so we could see another wave of closings and another wave of unemployment as the situation unfolds over the course of the fall and winter .
NR : So the worst is definitely not over .
JG : Dangers are certainly not over .
We don ’ t have the pandemic under control to begin with , so we don ’ t have a real basis for asking people to go back to their ordinary routines .
But beyond that , there ’ s a huge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their future , their own jobs , they ’ ve either ended or they might end pretty soon .
They ’ re facing cutbacks , even if they ’ re in relatively stable sectors like state and local government ; they ’ re facing severe budget cutbacks .
So everybody is going to be looking at their own , you know , own bank account , their own savings and saying : Look , I ’ m going to be storing up to make sure I can make my rent , make my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and I ’ m not going to be going out even if the health situation improves .
I ’ m not going to be going out to restaurants , or bars , or concerts , or any activities , for that matter , that I can do without for the time being .
And so you have an enormous retrenchment , which is only partly the direct result of the health situation , but also because people are uncertain of their economic futures — and rightly so .
NR : So let @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the election in November , and he comes in in January .
What is his strategy to deal with this ?
JG : Well , we don ’ t really know because there are conflicting signals coming out of the Biden campaign .
You know , some people have said , “ Well , he ’ s going to be the next Franklin Roosevelt ” and others have said , “ No , he ’ s not really going to do very much .
Because the cupboard is bare.
” That was Ted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that needs to be clarified as to what Vice President Biden ’ s intentions actually are .
And I can talk more effectively about what they should be [ laughs ] — the one thing that we don ’ t know , which is where is he in his thinking of these various currents , who ’ s got the upper hand ?
NR : Well , what you wrote in your piece is that the signal is that the Biden administration will be taking its clues from 2008 and reacting in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s fair enough ; that seems to be the case , that what one sees is the dominant tendency .
They believe that what they did in 2008 , 2009 , and 2010 worked ; that they can pull the economy out through a short-term program of stimulus and then shift to rich transmitted one kind or another in the following years .
And I think it ’ s fair to say that that is a projection of a situation that was very different then from what we have now .
It doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public health issue .
And it did have a certain degree of uncertainty , but the uncertainty over what was going to happen next was resolved in a fairly short period of time .
And that ’ s not necessarily going to be the case now .
NR : And so tell us what ’ s different about how the Obama administration reacted to 2008 ?
And why just extending unemployment benefits , giving money to small businesses , the Federal Reserve , pouring money into the economy , why won ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ JG : Well , I think there are two or three basic problems here — let ’ s call it three basic problems — that are really signatures of the situation .
The first is : the major industries in which the United States is competitive , which depend upon world markets , are seeing their markets basically dry up .
And that ’ s true if you think about aerospace , the civilian aircraft industry — a major industry , major employer — it depends upon world demand for aircraft .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is no demand for new aircraft .
One can go down the list , the oil industry , you may not like it , but it fueled the recovery in the last 12 years , and it now operates in the United States in a situation where the price that they get is half the cost of extraction .
It ’ s not going to go on like that indefinitely .
So all these elements that make up the advanced sectors of the economy are in limbo at the moment , and there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just by pouring money into the firms .
You can keep the firms alive , but you can ’ t make their markets function ; you can ’ t make it profitable for them to produce what they ’ re accustomed to producing .
So that whole sector needs to be reorganized and mobilized to do things that we actually need doing , like dealing with climate change , for example , or reconstructing our living environments so that we can handle the public health emergencies that obviously have hit us now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the future .
Those kinds of things require reorganization and mobilization of the most advanced sectors .
That ’ s not where most of the jobs are .
Most of the jobs are in services .
The problem in services , small and medium businesses , is that if I ’ m in a service sector and you ’ re in the service sector , your job depends upon my willingness to buy the service you ’ re providing .
And your job depends upon my having an income and therefore me having @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , of course , is in this enormous retrenchment .
So one has to think about how to restructure that sector so that at least a significant part of it can keep going .
And the third thing is that yes , all these incomes have become , the economists call this contingent — they ’ ve all become uncertain , and people are anxious over whether they have incomes .
And their incomes , in many cases , are being cut off : The unemployment insurance that they got in April and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But their debts are not contingent , their debts continue to pile up .
So the rent bill is still there , the mortgage bill is still there , the utility bill is still there .
And all of these things can put them under enormous pressure and end up putting them out of a house , a place to live , as soon as the moratorium on foreclosures and evictions is lifted .
And so one has to think about how to deal with that .
And that ’ s a major @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reason why people who were put out of work by a public health emergency should be put out of their homes , because they couldn ’ t maintain incomes while their debts continued to pile up .
That ’ s a fundamental injustice .
As that problem develops — for the moment it is held in abeyance — it ’ s going to have to be dealt with , because it should meet an enormous amount of popular resistance of contracts to be fully enforced .
And that means working it out , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mom and pop landlords who own a few units , and their incomes depend upon being able to get the rental payments that they have .
So one has to work out a general resetting of the situation that can hold people , more or less harmless in their situations .
Simply pumping money into the economy can hold things up for a period of time , but it ’ s not going to produce the recovery , in my view .
NR : So the recommendations that you make sound a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I mean , a jobs guarantee — JG : [ Laughs . ]
They do to me , too !
NR : So just to go over them : I mean , you have the jobs guarantee , you have rebuilding domestic manufacturing , basically inventing a new economy to deal with climate change and putting people to work there .
Do you think that we ’ re prepared to make such a large shift in the economy ?
JG : Well , I think the American people are prepared to do it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re anxious for the kind of leadership that would give them the opportunity to show what they can do .
And that was true in 1933 , as well ; people were ready for the leadership when Roosevelt provided it .
Could you get it done in the present political environment ?
Well , you know , that depends upon what the people decide to do in November , and whether the elected leadership gets the message .
And that ’ s obviously going to be , under any circumstances , a pretty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New Deal is the right example .
The New Deal showed that it is possible to reconstruct the economy .
And it wasn ’ t that Roosevelt simply revived the pre-existing economy of the 1920s or the early 1930s .
No !
They set out to change , fundamentally , the nature of American agriculture , to provide economic development through the American South , and electricity — it had never been there before — and to rebuild the entire , what we now call , infrastructure of the country : the roads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the schools , the courthouses , university buildings , it ’ s all over the country , the legacy of the New Deal .
And this was imagined at the time .
And that strikes me as fundamentally the mindset we need to have in dealing with the aftermath of this , because we ’ re not going to get back .
Whatever one thinks about the economy that existed , and that developed over the last 40 years and it took a mature form in the last dozen years : We ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s not coming back in that form .
We ’ re going to have to find new things for millions of people who ’ ve been working in offices who will find themselves no longer needed ; millions of people who have been working in services that are not going to be revived very quickly , to do .
And there are lots of things to do .
There ’ s never a shortage of work to be done , but we have to organize people to be able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the the talents of the advanced sectors and their capacity and get them off of doing things which people are not going to be needing , and not going to be demanding , and into doing things that are actually , the future generations are going to say , “ Yes , that was a good idea.
” NR : One of the most surprising things to me about the run-up to the election , and I know you ’ re you ’ re an economist , not a political pundit , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the economy .
Do you have a read on that ?
JG : Oh , yeah , that is a bit of a mystery .
But I suppose that , first of all , over the three and a half years before the pandemic , the economy played out reasonably well for him : The unemployment rate went down , the stock market went up , and it ’ s so hard for people to overlook that .
And it appears to be that his strategy may be succeeding , which is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something for which he is not to be held responsible .
And , furthermore , the idea that they ’ re promoting , which is that when it ’ s over the economy will come back .
And there , I think it ’ s understandable why a politician would express that message .
But it ’ s not a message to be believed .
It ’ s fundamentally unlikely that that ’ s the case .
NR : Thank you for coming on here .
It ’ s such an intense , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sort of shocked by the amount that it seems like normal people are not paying attention to the long-term effects this is going to have .
JG : I don ’ t know .
I think a lot of normal people do understand that the long-term effects are going to be very serious , but they have no voice — JG : — for , you know , for making that concern concrete .
You need to have real alternatives out in front of people before they can grasp them .
NR : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thank you so much for being here to discuss this important and , in my opinion , under-covered topic .
JG : Thank you very much .
NR : That ’ s our show !
Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept .
Our producer is Zach Young .
The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh .
Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw .
Betsy Reed is The Intercept ’ s editor in chief .
I ’ m Nausicaa Renner .
You can find me on Twitter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If you haven ’ t already , please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week .
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See you next week .

As the U.S. economy was spiralling out of control in 2008 and 2009, economist James Galbraith predicted that an insufficiently large stimulus would lead to a prolonged recession. He was right, and today he has a different set of economic prescriptions to address the economic crisis brought on by Covid-19. If Biden wins, will he listen? Senior politics editor Nausicaa Renner talks to Galbraith about his recent piece for The Intercept.
Ryan Grim: In the fall of 2008, the U.S. economy was spinning out of control. The housing crisis had sent the financial sector into a tailspin, and Wall Street demanded that Congress pony up a $700 billion, no-strings-attached bailout. If they didn’t, there would be financial armageddon.
With a gun to its head, Congress passed the bailout bill. Huge payouts were made to financial institutions with little accountability, and the Great Recession followed.
Twelve years later, it’s starting to feel a bit like déjà vu, isn’t it?
Sen. Bernie Sanders: Some of our Republican friends still have not given up on the need to punish the poor and working people.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: One of the largest corporate bailouts, with as few strings as possible in American history.
Robert Reich: Now is not the time to worry about the national debt.
[Musical interlude.]
RG: Today on the show, we’re gonna talk to someone who made the right call when it counted — 12 years ago. Someone who predicted that the approach the white house was taking was too weak to seriously address the banking and housing crises. Because if we want to avoid the mistakes of 2008 and 2009, we might want to listen to him this time around.
I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. bureau chief for The Intercept. Welcome to Deconstructed.
[Musical interlude.]
RG: Back in 2008, when I was a congressional reporter working for Politico, I spent hours in the hallways of the Capitol, chasing lawmakers who felt huge pressure to deliver the ransom that Wall Street was demanding.
And one morning there, I ran into the economist James Galbraith. He was on the Hill to brief a group of congressmen from both parties who were skeptical of what bank lobbyists were telling them. He told me then that what was being proposed would not be enough to prevent a major recession.
A few months after that conversation on Capitol Hill, lawmakers were back at the drawing board. The financial crisis had sparked an economic collapse; Congress was preparing to pass the famous $787 billion stimulus bill. So I reached back out to Galbraith and asked what advice he was now offering. He used an analogy that has stuck with me since.
Imagine there’s a massive hurricane headed your way. You’re the mayor of the town, and you have a warehouse full of sandbags. You have to decide how many sandbags to use, but you’re not sure just how big the hurricane will be. Some people are urging you to use all the sandbags, but others think you should just use half of them, and save the rest for the next time they’re needed.
If you use too few and you’re wrong, you lose everything. If you use too many, well, you have extra sandbags lying around. So, for James Galbraith, the answer was simple: Use them all.
He warned Democrats that if they went too small with their stimulus, the result would be a deep recession, a slow recovery, and mass unemployment. But they went small anyway. Everything he predicted came true.
The following year Democrats were wiped out by a different sort of flood, the Tea Party wave in the 2010 midterms. By Election Day, the unemployment rate was 9.8 percent. There was a lot of pain around the country, and voters punished the Democrats for it. Losing that election effectively ended the legislative ambitions of the Obama administration; he never got back his House majority.
If a Joe Biden administration wants to avoid the same fate, they might want to listen more closely to Galbraith this time around. Because he says that what we need today is entirely different than what he recommended over a decade ago.
He made that argument in a recent essay for The Intercept, which was edited by my colleague Nausicaa Renner.
Nausicaa, welcome to the show.
Nausicaa Renner: Thanks, Ryan, for having me.
RG: Yeah. So, Nausicaa, why Galbraith?
NR: So I was interested in getting outside of the political orthodoxy when it comes to thinking about the economy. You know, as you noted, in 2008, Galbraith had really different ideas than everybody on the Hill about what exactly it was going to take to fix the economy. And he’s always seemed to me to be somebody who’s really clear-eyed but also not horribly politically biased.
I really wanted to hear from him what sort of radical vision was actually necessary to get us back up and running again. So we asked him to write a piece, and for the show this week, I called him up to talk more about what he thinks the U.S. economy needs to get back on its feet.
[Musical interlude.]
NR: Jamie Galbraith, welcome to Deconstructed
James Galbraith: Thank you very much. Good to be with you.
NR: So I want to just start by asking you a question that I’ve been asked a lot in the course of this election, and in the course of the pandemic, which is: What is the economy going to look like in the long run? If we keep doing what we’re doing now, how many small businesses do you think will survive? And what does the economy look like in a year?
RG: Oh, a year is a long way away from where we are now. The situation is extremely fluid, it’s extremely unpredictable, and extremely fragile. We know we’re in an exceedingly dangerous period, in which, fundamentally, the economy was, to a degree, stitched together in April by pouring a great deal of money into people’s pockets, and into the pockets of businesses. And a good deal of that is now drying up.
You have many, many businesses that are hanging on because the owners have some capital, and they may hope that things will get better. But if they don’t get better, they’re not going to be there indefinitely. And so we could see another wave of closings and another wave of unemployment as the situation unfolds over the course of the fall and winter.
NR: So the worst is definitely not over.
JG: Dangers are certainly not over. We don’t have the pandemic under control to begin with, so we don’t have a real basis for asking people to go back to their ordinary routines.
But beyond that, there’s a huge psychological impact. People are uncertain of their future, their own jobs, they’ve either ended or they might end pretty soon. They’re facing cutbacks, even if they’re in relatively stable sectors like state and local government; they’re facing severe budget cutbacks. So everybody is going to be looking at their own, you know, own bank account, their own savings and saying: Look, I’m going to be storing up to make sure I can make my rent, make my mortgage payment, pay my utility bills, and I’m not going to be going out even if the health situation improves. I’m not going to be going out to restaurants, or bars, or concerts, or any activities, for that matter, that I can do without for the time being.
And so you have an enormous retrenchment, which is only partly the direct result of the health situation, but also because people are uncertain of their economic futures — and rightly so.
NR: So let’s say that Joe Biden wins the election in November, and he comes in in January. What is his strategy to deal with this?
JG: Well, we don’t really know because there are conflicting signals coming out of the Biden campaign. You know, some people have said, “Well, he’s going to be the next Franklin Roosevelt” and others have said, “No, he’s not really going to do very much. Because the cupboard is bare.” That was Ted Kaufman’s unfortunate message. So that needs to be clarified as to what Vice President Biden’s intentions actually are.
And I can talk more effectively about what they should be [laughs] — the one thing that we don’t know, which is where is he in his thinking of these various currents, who’s got the upper hand?
NR: Well, what you wrote in your piece is that the signal is that the Biden administration will be taking its clues from 2008 and reacting in a similar way.
JG: That’s fair enough; that seems to be the case, that what one sees is the dominant tendency. They believe that what they did in 2008, 2009, and 2010 worked; that they can pull the economy out through a short-term program of stimulus and then shift to rich transmitted one kind or another in the following years.
And I think it’s fair to say that that is a projection of a situation that was very different then from what we have now. It doesn’t have the complication of the public health issue. And it did have a certain degree of uncertainty, but the uncertainty over what was going to happen next was resolved in a fairly short period of time. And that’s not necessarily going to be the case now.
NR: And so tell us what’s different about how the Obama administration reacted to 2008? And why just extending unemployment benefits, giving money to small businesses, the Federal Reserve, pouring money into the economy, why won’t that work in the long term?
JG: Well, I think there are two or three basic problems here — let’s call it three basic problems — that are really signatures of the situation.
The first is: the major industries in which the United States is competitive, which depend upon world markets, are seeing their markets basically dry up. And that’s true if you think about aerospace, the civilian aircraft industry — a major industry, major employer — it depends upon world demand for aircraft. And since nobody’s flying, there is no demand for new aircraft.
One can go down the list, the oil industry, you may not like it, but it fueled the recovery in the last 12 years, and it now operates in the United States in a situation where the price that they get is half the cost of extraction. It’s not going to go on like that indefinitely.
So all these elements that make up the advanced sectors of the economy are in limbo at the moment, and there’s nothing much you can do just by pouring money into the firms. You can keep the firms alive, but you can’t make their markets function; you can’t make it profitable for them to produce what they’re accustomed to producing.
So that whole sector needs to be reorganized and mobilized to do things that we actually need doing, like dealing with climate change, for example, or reconstructing our living environments so that we can handle the public health emergencies that obviously have hit us now, and may well hit us again in the future. Those kinds of things require reorganization and mobilization of the most advanced sectors.
That’s not where most of the jobs are. Most of the jobs are in services. The problem in services, small and medium businesses, is that if I’m in a service sector and you’re in the service sector, your job depends upon my willingness to buy the service you’re providing. And your job depends upon my having an income and therefore me having a job. And the service sector, of course, is in this enormous retrenchment. So one has to think about how to restructure that sector so that at least a significant part of it can keep going.
And the third thing is that yes, all these incomes have become, the economists call this contingent — they’ve all become uncertain, and people are anxious over whether they have incomes. And their incomes, in many cases, are being cut off: The unemployment insurance that they got in April and ran out in June and July.
But their debts are not contingent, their debts continue to pile up. So the rent bill is still there, the mortgage bill is still there, the utility bill is still there. And all of these things can put them under enormous pressure and end up putting them out of a house, a place to live, as soon as the moratorium on foreclosures and evictions is lifted. And so one has to think about how to deal with that.
And that’s a major reset, because there’s no reason why people who were put out of work by a public health emergency should be put out of their homes, because they couldn’t maintain incomes while their debts continued to pile up. That’s a fundamental injustice. As that problem develops — for the moment it is held in abeyance — it’s going to have to be dealt with, because it should meet an enormous amount of popular resistance of contracts to be fully enforced.
And that means working it out, because you have a whole lot of mom and pop landlords who own a few units, and their incomes depend upon being able to get the rental payments that they have. So one has to work out a general resetting of the situation that can hold people, more or less harmless in their situations.
Simply pumping money into the economy can hold things up for a period of time, but it’s not going to produce the recovery, in my view.
NR: So the recommendations that you make sound a lot like the New Deal to me. I mean, a jobs guarantee —
JG: [Laughs.] They do to me, too!
NR: So just to go over them: I mean, you have the jobs guarantee, you have rebuilding domestic manufacturing, basically inventing a new economy to deal with climate change and putting people to work there. Do you think that we’re prepared to make such a large shift in the economy?
JG: Well, I think the American people are prepared to do it, sure. I think they’re anxious for the kind of leadership that would give them the opportunity to show what they can do. And that was true in 1933, as well; people were ready for the leadership when Roosevelt provided it.
Could you get it done in the present political environment? Well, you know, that depends upon what the people decide to do in November, and whether the elected leadership gets the message. And that’s obviously going to be, under any circumstances, a pretty tough road to hoe.
But the New Deal is the right example. The New Deal showed that it is possible to reconstruct the economy. And it wasn’t that Roosevelt simply revived the pre-existing economy of the 1920s or the early 1930s. No! They set out to change, fundamentally, the nature of American agriculture, to provide economic development through the American South, and electricity — it had never been there before — and to rebuild the entire, what we now call, infrastructure of the country: the roads, the bridges, the airfields, the schools, the courthouses, university buildings, it’s all over the country, the legacy of the New Deal. And this was imagined at the time.
And that strikes me as fundamentally the mindset we need to have in dealing with the aftermath of this, because we’re not going to get back. Whatever one thinks about the economy that existed, and that developed over the last 40 years and it took a mature form in the last dozen years: We’re not going to get it back. It’s not coming back in that form.
We’re going to have to find new things for millions of people who’ve been working in offices who will find themselves no longer needed; millions of people who have been working in services that are not going to be revived very quickly, to do. And there are lots of things to do. There’s never a shortage of work to be done, but we have to organize people to be able to do it, and bring to bear the the talents of the advanced sectors and their capacity and get them off of doing things which people are not going to be needing, and not going to be demanding, and into doing things that are actually, the future generations are going to say, “Yes, that was a good idea.”
NR: One of the most surprising things to me about the run-up to the election, and I know you’re you’re an economist, not a political pundit, but is that Trump is polling so well in the economy. Do you have a read on that?
JG: Oh, yeah, that is a bit of a mystery. But I suppose that, first of all, over the three and a half years before the pandemic, the economy played out reasonably well for him: The unemployment rate went down, the stock market went up, and it’s so hard for people to overlook that. And it appears to be that his strategy may be succeeding, which is to persuade people that the pandemic was something for which he is not to be held responsible. And, furthermore, the idea that they’re promoting, which is that when it’s over the economy will come back.
And there, I think it’s understandable why a politician would express that message. But it’s not a message to be believed. It’s fundamentally unlikely that that’s the case.
NR: Thank you for coming on here. It’s such an intense, important issue. And I’m sort of shocked by the amount that it seems like normal people are not paying attention to the long-term effects this is going to have.
JG: I don’t know. I think a lot of normal people do understand that the long-term effects are going to be very serious, but they have no voice —
NR: Yeah.
JG: — for, you know, for making that concern concrete. You need to have real alternatives out in front of people before they can grasp them.
NR: Yeah. Well, Jamie Galbraith, thank you so much for being here to discuss this important and, in my opinion, under-covered topic.
JG: Thank you very much.
[Musical interlude.]
NR: That’s our show! Deconstructed is a production of First Look Media and The Intercept. Our producer is Zach Young. The show was mixed by Bryan Pugh. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Betsy Reed is The Intercept’s editor in chief.
I’m Nausicaa Renner. You can find me on Twitter if you just search my name. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. Go to theintercept.com/deconstructed to subscribe from your podcast platform of choice: iPhone, Android, whatever. If you’re subscribed already, please do leave us a rating or review — it helps people find the show. And if you want to give us feedback, email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com. Thanks so much!
See you next week.


theintercept--2020-09-16--A Progressive Prosecutor Faces Off With Portland’s Aggressive Police

office as Multnomah County ’ s new prosecutor , Portland was two months into a wave of protests that continues to this day .
Schmidt , a progressive who won a landslide victory in the county that includes Portland , Oregon , was scheduled to take office next January , but his predecessor announced early retirement days into the protests .
By the time Schmidt took over , some 550 people , including journalists , legal observers , and many peaceful protesters , had been arrested during nightly standoffs with police — the vast majority over low-level , nonviolent charges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violent crime had already bogged down court proceedings , and most of those arrested at protests would have to wait months for their hearings .
So on August 11 , 10 days into his tenure , Schmidt announced that his office would decline to prosecute protesters over the majority of misdemeanor charges they were being arrested for , including criminal trespass , disorderly conduct , and interference with a police officer .
Prosecutors would also decline to pursue charges for rioting , a felony , unless accompanied by more severe charges .
Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serious protest-related crimes , like property damage , theft , and the use or threat of force .
“ There was a very real practical consideration that nonviolent cases would really gum up the system , so let ’ s think about what ’ s really important to focus on .
If I have to dedicate a finite amount of resources , I want to put it on the cases that are actually going to have a positive impact on public safety , ” Schmidt told me during a recent interview .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are concerned about what they see as wrong with the criminal justice system .
There ’ s no public safety value to their prosecution.
” But there was a more fundamental consideration at stake , Schmidt noted .
The Portland protests came in the midst of a historic reckoning over systemic racism in the country , and the criminal justice system was under particular scrutiny .
In many states , officials have increased the stakes for those arrested in connection with protests , charging them with felonies and in some cases terrorism .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is being protested the most , and to have the capability to use that system to stop people ’ s protest is inherently a conflict of interest , ” Schmidt told me .
“ It just seemed like some of the arrests we were seeing really had the potential to chill speech , and we wanted to make sure we weren ’ t complicit in that.
” “ It was incredibly reasonable and really as far as he could go as a prosecutor , ” said Crystal Maloney , a local lawyer and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you still have to enforce the law no matter how progressive you are , but he ’ s not focusing on the really low-level offenses , which are really the majority.
” Bobbin Singh , executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center , a civil rights group , noted that most protest-related charges would drag through the system for months before being dismissed or before prosecutors likely lost at trial .
“ So what he is saying is , I ’ m going to use the resources of this office to prosecute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and not have to deal with hundreds of protesters and using hundreds of hours of staff time for cases that will ultimately not really pan out.
” But police swiftly condemned Schmidt ’ s decision .
In a statement , Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell said that the new policy “ does not change the law.
” “ Whether the District Attorney decides to charge cases we send to his office is up to him , ” Lovell added .
“ The Portland Police Bureau will continue to do the job the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the president of the local police union , told Schmidt to “ step up and do your job.
” In the streets , police ignored the policy altogether and carried on arresting people , often violently , dedicating time and manpower to taking protesters into custody and booking them over charges they know will not be prosecuted .
“ They really have continued to arrest for all the crimes I said I wouldn ’ t charge , and it appears that they have actually done that even more , ” said Schmidt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases had been referred to his office as of mid-September , the “ vast majority ” for interfering with a police officer , a charge easily levied against anyone who ignores police orders to disperse .
Schmidt ’ s office is pursuing charges in 111 of those cases .
Nearly 300 cases remain under review or are awaiting further investigation .
The Portland Police Bureau did not respond to a detailed list of questions .
Schmidt conceded that the crowd dynamics had changed in recent weeks , particularly after far-right groups and supporters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in response to the protests .
On August 29 , Aaron J. Danielson , a man affiliated with the far-right group Patriot Prayer , was shot and killed in downtown Portland as Trump supporters clashed with protesters .
Michael Forest Reinoehl , a self-declared anti-fascist and the prime suspect in Danielson ’ s killing , was himself shot and killed by police five days later .
But as the nightly gatherings have grown more chaotic and violent , and as opposing factions have faced off in the streets , police have also apparently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serious incidents .
Critics say that ’ s intentional and seems aimed at creating the impression that it is Schmidt ’ s policy that has led to chaos .
“ What you see is not actually a focus on more targeted law enforcement around activities that are causing harm , ” said Singh .
“ The evidence suggests that they are doing it intentionally to make Mike look bad .
The narrative that ’ s been spun out by law enforcement here is that Mike is creating lawlessness.
” “ They are lashing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Portland activist and campaign manager for Sarah Iannarone , who will face Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler at a runoff election in November .
“ They try to sort of blackmail the community to say , well , that ’ s what happens when you defend yourself , that ’ s what happens when we feel unsafe .
They think that ’ s going to help their cause , but I think it ’ s doing the opposite.
” Peaceful protesters noted that police seemed to have doubled down on their crackdown , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them with rioting .
Forrest Woods , who has attended almost every protest in the last four months and was recently arrested for the first time , said police seemed to have responded to Schmidt ’ s policy by taking their frustration out on protesters .
“ Like , if the DA is not going to keep us safe , we ’ re going to have to go out there and punish these protesters , ” he said .
“ The week that he announced that he wasn ’ t going to prosecute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ got more physically brutal , ” said Rachel Myles , another protester , who was violently dragged by officers through the street days after the policy was announced over conduct that Schmidt had said he wouldn ’ t prosecute .
Woods , a 31-year-old Portland comedian , was arrested after ignoring orders to disperse along with several others .
He was charged with interfering with a police officer and disorderly conduct , misdemeanors that are among the most easily applied in a protest context .
When he was booked several hours after his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ charges to him .
Then , the officer took his charging documents and added “ riot ” next to the existing charges .
Woods later asked another officer what exactly constitutes a riot charge .
“ The lady couldn ’ t tell me , ” he said .
“ What she told me is that it was a Class C felony.
” All charges against Woods were dropped a few days later — though he said he had to call several numbers to find out .
“ But at the time it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jail for a felony right now , ” he added .
“ The psychological aspect of that when you ’ re sitting in jail … it just puts you under duress.
” Myles , another comedian who has been showing up at protests wheeling around a portable speaker to play music , said she had a similar experience .
She has been arrested three times since the protests started , twice after Schmidt ’ s policy was put in place .
The charges against her were dropped every time , including once when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ waiting online for her virtual court arraignment .
Myles said officers kept personal items they confiscated during her most recent arrest , claiming that they were “ evidence ” even though there are no standing charges against her .
And as in Woods ’ s case , she noted that officers added a riot charge at the last minute .
“ I ’ m still not entirely sure what the Portland police use to justify the declaration of a riot , ” said Woods .
“ I ’ ve been at protests where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ civil disturbance and then 15 seconds later , they ’ ll say this has been declared a riot , and in that 15 seconds , nothing has happened .
There ’ s been no explosions , no violence .
But once the riot ’ s been declared , that ’ s when the riot charges are allowed.
” Because rioting is a felony , which can have enormous implications , protesters believe that police are using the charge liberally in an effort to silence them .
“ I always kind of figured that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out there , ” said Woods .
“ But there are people who if they have the unfortunate luck of getting arrested the first time , they ’ re not coming back.
” That ’ s precisely why Schmidt chose not to pursue rioting charges , unless accompanied by destruction of property or other harmful behavior that he is prosecuting .
“ The word ‘ riot ’ evokes this emotional response .
I ’ ve heard from members of the public saying , ‘ I can ’ t believe you ’ re letting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me .
“ Because when you think riot , you think pitchforks , torches.
” In fact , under Oregon law , a person can be accused of rioting if “ participating with five or more other persons the person engages in tumultuous and violent conduct.
” During protests , police would often label a crowd a riot because an individual set a trashcan on fire or threw rocks — and then charge any other individual arrested in that context with rioting , even if that individual was not engaged in the riotous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will prosecute individuals actively engaging in harmful behavior , but not those who merely find themselves in a place where someone else is .
“ That ’ s not good enough to implicate you in a felony , ” he said .
Police have pushed back against that reasoning , arguing that peaceful protesters refusing orders to disperse are preventing officers from reaching individuals in the crowd who are committing harmful acts and that making arrests is necessary to clear the streets in order to get to them .
But those engaged in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the time police has arrested everyone around them , Schmidt noted .
His office has issued rioting charges in 29 cases so far — all involving other serious charges .
“ The hope was , if I ’ m going to send the signal that I ’ m focusing my office ’ s resources on violent crime , then the police will maybe follow suit , ” he said , noting that police wouldn ’ t usually waste time arresting someone for low-level marijuana possession if a prosecutor has said he will not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ added , “ I don ’ t have control over the police ; the police can make lawful arrests in our society .
I can only say what I am going to do once it comes to me.
” Tensions between prosecutors and the police they work with are nothing new , and a number of reformist prosecutors elected in recent years have faced fierce backlash from police and their unions .
Schmidt ran as an unabashed progressive and won a stunning 77 percent of the vote just days before George Floyd ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pushback from some in law enforcement , but he hoped his resounding victory would send a clear message to police and other officials that their constituents want reform .
“ My hope would be , of course , that the Portland police would say , Hey , we should be rethinking the way that we ’ re doing things .
Let ’ s work with this progressive prosecutor who clearly has a mandate from our community , ” he said .
“ Unfortunately , that ’ s not been the reception so far.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ with police , the first officer to speak told him , “ I don ’ t trust anything you do or say because you ’ re antifa.
” The president of the local police union accused him of being “ George Soros-backed.
” Police and their supporters have also gone out of their way to link Schmidt ’ s tenure to the growing violence surrounding protests in Portland , even though the protests and violence predated his time in office .
In recent weeks , tensions have escalated following a series of drive-through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and in anticipation of a gathering by the Proud Boys , a far-right , violent group , planned in Portland for later this month .
So far , police have largely left right-wing demonstrators alone , allowing them to drive through the city with covered license plates and to shoot counter-protesters with paintball guns and pepper spray .
Schmidt said he thought it was ironic that police were accusing him of fostering disorder by refusing to prosecute minor infractions by peaceful protestors when officers were ignoring those committed by armed white supremacists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They ’ re bringing guns to the fight .
And although some of their rhetoric is very pro-law enforcement … I think there ’ s a bit of caution on the law enforcement side about how they engage with this.
” To protesters , it simply appears that police are on the side of the armed pro-Trump militias , who actually pose the greatest public safety threat .
“ When the Trump rally came through and that man was killed downtown , the police were escorting them like they were a parade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually was murdered .
I feel like that should be more of a big deal than people spray-panting buildings.
” Similar narratives blaming protests against police violence for spikes in crime have also been peddled across the country .
“ To say that reformist prosecutors are lending to this would be absurd , but people will seize on that , people who have their own agendas to fight against reform , ” said Schmidt , pointing to the overlapping crises gripping the nation as a more compete explanation .
“ We all know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that narrative can be created.
” But so far , it seems Portlanders aren ’ t buying that .
Recent polls put support for peaceful protests in the city at 92 percent and for the Black Lives Matter movement at 76 percent .
Fifty-six percent of respondents said they believe that there are systemic problems with police in Portland , and only 26 percent viewed Mayor Wheeler , who is also the police commissioner , favorably .
“ The community here has actually already spoken out , ” said Singh .
“ To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why city leaders and the mayor aren ’ t recognizing that .
”

When Mike Schmidt took office as Multnomah County’s new prosecutor, Portland was two months into a wave of protests that continues to this day. Schmidt, a progressive who won a landslide victory in the county that includes Portland, Oregon, was scheduled to take office next January, but his predecessor announced early retirement days into the protests. By the time Schmidt took over, some 550 people, including journalists, legal observers, and many peaceful protesters, had been arrested during nightly standoffs with police — the vast majority over low-level, nonviolent charges.
The pandemic and a spike in violent crime had already bogged down court proceedings, and most of those arrested at protests would have to wait months for their hearings. So on August 11, 10 days into his tenure, Schmidt announced that his office would decline to prosecute protesters over the majority of misdemeanor charges they were being arrested for, including criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, and interference with a police officer. Prosecutors would also decline to pursue charges for rioting, a felony, unless accompanied by more severe charges. Instead, the office would focus on more serious protest-related crimes, like property damage, theft, and the use or threat of force.
“These are just our neighbors, who are concerned about what they see as wrong with the criminal justice system. There’s no public safety value to their prosecution.”
“There was a very real practical consideration that nonviolent cases would really gum up the system, so let’s think about what’s really important to focus on. If I have to dedicate a finite amount of resources, I want to put it on the cases that are actually going to have a positive impact on public safety,” Schmidt told me during a recent interview. “These are just our neighbors, who are concerned about what they see as wrong with the criminal justice system. There’s no public safety value to their prosecution.”
But there was a more fundamental consideration at stake, Schmidt noted. The Portland protests came in the midst of a historic reckoning over systemic racism in the country, and the criminal justice system was under particular scrutiny. In many states, officials have increased the stakes for those arrested in connection with protests, charging them with felonies and in some cases terrorism. “To be in the system that is being protested the most, and to have the capability to use that system to stop people’s protest is inherently a conflict of interest,” Schmidt told me. “It just seemed like some of the arrests we were seeing really had the potential to chill speech, and we wanted to make sure we weren’t complicit in that.”
Photo: Nathan Howard/Getty Images
“It was incredibly reasonable and really as far as he could go as a prosecutor,” said Crystal Maloney, a local lawyer and activist. “As a prosecutor, you still have to enforce the law no matter how progressive you are, but he’s not focusing on the really low-level offenses, which are really the majority.”
Bobbin Singh, executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center, a civil rights group, noted that most protest-related charges would drag through the system for months before being dismissed or before prosecutors likely lost at trial. “So what he is saying is, I’m going to use the resources of this office to prosecute serious crimes and keep his focus there, and not have to deal with hundreds of protesters and using hundreds of hours of staff time for cases that will ultimately not really pan out.”
But police swiftly condemned Schmidt’s decision. In a statement, Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell said that the new policy “does not change the law.” “Whether the District Attorney decides to charge cases we send to his office is up to him,” Lovell added. “The Portland Police Bureau will continue to do the job the community expects of us.” Daryl Turner, the president of the local police union, told Schmidt to “step up and do your job.”
In the streets, police ignored the policy altogether and carried on arresting people, often violently, dedicating time and manpower to taking protesters into custody and booking them over charges they know will not be prosecuted.
“They really have continued to arrest for all the crimes I said I wouldn’t charge, and it appears that they have actually done that even more,” said Schmidt, who noted that about 851 protest-related cases had been referred to his office as of mid-September, the “vast majority” for interfering with a police officer, a charge easily levied against anyone who ignores police orders to disperse. Schmidt’s office is pursuing charges in 111 of those cases. Nearly 300 cases remain under review or are awaiting further investigation.
The Portland Police Bureau did not respond to a detailed list of questions.
Schmidt conceded that the crowd dynamics had changed in recent weeks, particularly after far-right groups and supporters of President Donald Trump started showing up in response to the protests. On August 29, Aaron J. Danielson, a man affiliated with the far-right group Patriot Prayer, was shot and killed in downtown Portland as Trump supporters clashed with protesters. Michael Forest Reinoehl, a self-declared anti-fascist and the prime suspect in Danielson’s killing, was himself shot and killed by police five days later. But as the nightly gatherings have grown more chaotic and violent, and as opposing factions have faced off in the streets, police have also apparently scaled back their response to the more serious incidents. Critics say that’s intentional and seems aimed at creating the impression that it is Schmidt’s policy that has led to chaos.
“What you see is not actually a focus on more targeted law enforcement around activities that are causing harm,” said Singh. “The evidence suggests that they are doing it intentionally to make Mike look bad. The narrative that’s been spun out by law enforcement here is that Mike is creating lawlessness.”
“They are lashing out,” echoed Gregory McKelvey, a Portland activist and campaign manager for Sarah Iannarone, who will face Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler at a runoff election in November. “They try to sort of blackmail the community to say, well, that’s what happens when you defend yourself, that’s what happens when we feel unsafe. They think that’s going to help their cause, but I think it’s doing the opposite.”
Police officers drag an arrested and injured protester during a march against racial injustice and police brutality in Portland, Oregon on September 4, 2020. Photo: Nathan Howard/Getty Images
Punishing Protesters
Peaceful protesters noted that police seemed to have doubled down on their crackdown, arresting them more violently and indiscriminately charging them with rioting.
Forrest Woods, who has attended almost every protest in the last four months and was recently arrested for the first time, said police seemed to have responded to Schmidt’s policy by taking their frustration out on protesters. “Like, if the DA is not going to keep us safe, we’re going to have to go out there and punish these protesters,” he said.
“The week that he announced that he wasn’t going to prosecute those charges, I feel like they got more physically brutal,” said Rachel Myles, another protester, who was violently dragged by officers through the street days after the policy was announced over conduct that Schmidt had said he wouldn’t prosecute.
Read Our Complete Coverage Protests for Black Lives
Woods, a 31-year-old Portland comedian, was arrested after ignoring orders to disperse along with several others. He was charged with interfering with a police officer and disorderly conduct, misdemeanors that are among the most easily applied in a protest context. When he was booked several hours after his arrest, an officer again repeated those charges to him. Then, the officer took his charging documents and added “riot” next to the existing charges. Woods later asked another officer what exactly constitutes a riot charge. “The lady couldn’t tell me,” he said. “What she told me is that it was a Class C felony.”
All charges against Woods were dropped a few days later — though he said he had to call several numbers to find out. “But at the time it’s like, I’m in jail for a felony right now,” he added. “The psychological aspect of that when you’re sitting in jail … it just puts you under duress.”
Photo: Allison Dinner/AFP/Getty Images
Myles, another comedian who has been showing up at protests wheeling around a portable speaker to play music, said she had a similar experience. She has been arrested three times since the protests started, twice after Schmidt’s policy was put in place. The charges against her were dropped every time, including once when she received an email notifying her while waiting online for her virtual court arraignment. Myles said officers kept personal items they confiscated during her most recent arrest, claiming that they were “evidence” even though there are no standing charges against her. And as in Woods’s case, she noted that officers added a riot charge at the last minute.
“I’m still not entirely sure what the Portland police use to justify the declaration of a riot,” said Woods. “I’ve been at protests where they’ll say this is a civil disturbance and then 15 seconds later, they’ll say this has been declared a riot, and in that 15 seconds, nothing has happened. There’s been no explosions, no violence. But once the riot’s been declared, that’s when the riot charges are allowed.”
Because rioting is a felony, which can have enormous implications, protesters believe that police are using the charge liberally in an effort to silence them. “I always kind of figured that I could get arrested if I went out there,” said Woods. “But there are people who if they have the unfortunate luck of getting arrested the first time, they’re not coming back.”
“When the Trump rally came through and that man was killed downtown, the police were escorting them like they were a parade.”
That’s precisely why Schmidt chose not to pursue rioting charges, unless accompanied by destruction of property or other harmful behavior that he is prosecuting. “The word ‘riot’ evokes this emotional response. I’ve heard from members of the public saying, ‘I can’t believe you’re letting rioters off,’” he told me. “Because when you think riot, you think pitchforks, torches.”
In fact, under Oregon law, a person can be accused of rioting if “participating with five or more other persons the person engages in tumultuous and violent conduct.” During protests, police would often label a crowd a riot because an individual set a trashcan on fire or threw rocks — and then charge any other individual arrested in that context with rioting, even if that individual was not engaged in the riotous behavior. Schmidt has said his office will prosecute individuals actively engaging in harmful behavior, but not those who merely find themselves in a place where someone else is. “That’s not good enough to implicate you in a felony,” he said.
Police have pushed back against that reasoning, arguing that peaceful protesters refusing orders to disperse are preventing officers from reaching individuals in the crowd who are committing harmful acts and that making arrests is necessary to clear the streets in order to get to them. But those engaged in the riotous behavior are usually gone by the time police has arrested everyone around them, Schmidt noted. His office has issued rioting charges in 29 cases so far — all involving other serious charges.
“The hope was, if I’m going to send the signal that I’m focusing my office’s resources on violent crime, then the police will maybe follow suit,” he said, noting that police wouldn’t usually waste time arresting someone for low-level marijuana possession if a prosecutor has said he will not prosecute such offenses. But, he added, “I don’t have control over the police; the police can make lawful arrests in our society. I can only say what I am going to do once it comes to me.”
President Donald Trumps supporters hold a rally and caravan in Oregon City, Oregon on September 7, 2020. Photo: Allison Dinner/AFP/Getty Images
Prosecutors vs. Police
Tensions between prosecutors and the police they work with are nothing new, and a number of reformist prosecutors elected in recent years have faced fierce backlash from police and their unions.
Schmidt ran as an unabashed progressive and won a stunning 77 percent of the vote just days before George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis. He expected pushback from some in law enforcement, but he hoped his resounding victory would send a clear message to police and other officials that their constituents want reform. “My hope would be, of course, that the Portland police would say, Hey, we should be rethinking the way that we’re doing things. Let’s work with this progressive prosecutor who clearly has a mandate from our community,” he said. “Unfortunately, that’s not been the reception so far.”
Instead, at a recent meeting with police, the first officer to speak told him, “I don’t trust anything you do or say because you’re antifa.” The president of the local police union accused him of being “George Soros-backed.”
Police and their supporters have also gone out of their way to link Schmidt’s tenure to the growing violence surrounding protests in Portland, even though the protests and violence predated his time in office. In recent weeks, tensions have escalated following a series of drive-through rallies by Trump supporters and right-wing groups, and in anticipation of a gathering by the Proud Boys, a far-right, violent group, planned in Portland for later this month. So far, police have largely left right-wing demonstrators alone, allowing them to drive through the city with covered license plates and to shoot counter-protesters with paintball guns and pepper spray.
Schmidt said he thought it was ironic that police were accusing him of fostering disorder by refusing to prosecute minor infractions by peaceful protestors when officers were ignoring those committed by armed white supremacists. “This is a different group. They’re bringing guns to the fight. And although some of their rhetoric is very pro-law enforcement … I think there’s a bit of caution on the law enforcement side about how they engage with this.”
To protesters, it simply appears that police are on the side of the armed pro-Trump militias, who actually pose the greatest public safety threat.
“When the Trump rally came through and that man was killed downtown, the police were escorting them like they were a parade,” said Woods. “Somebody actually was murdered. I feel like that should be more of a big deal than people spray-painting buildings.”
Similar narratives blaming protests against police violence for spikes in crime have also been peddled across the country. “To say that reformist prosecutors are lending to this would be absurd, but people will seize on that, people who have their own agendas to fight against reform,” said Schmidt, pointing to the overlapping crises gripping the nation as a more compete explanation. “We all know from Willie Horton and other experiences that that narrative can be created.”
But so far, it seems Portlanders aren’t buying that. Recent polls put support for peaceful protests in the city at 92 percent and for the Black Lives Matter movement at 76 percent. Fifty-six percent of respondents said they believe that there are systemic problems with police in Portland, and only 26 percent viewed Mayor Wheeler, who is also the police commissioner, favorably.
“The community here has actually already spoken out,” said Singh. “To me, the most perplexing thing is why city leaders and the mayor aren’t recognizing that.”


theintercept--2020-09-16--Indigenous Activists Arrested and Held Incommunicado Following Border Wall Protest

who were arrested by federal agents while attempting to block border wall construction in southern Arizona last week say they were chained and held incommunicado by the government without access to a phone call or lawyer for nearly 24 hours .
Nellie Jo David and Amber Ortega visited the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument early Wednesday morning to pray at Quitobaquito Springs , a desert oasis that has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration ’ s ongoing effort to bulldoze its way through protected lands and stand up new sections of border wall .
In order to mix concrete @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tapped into a desert aquifer that feeds into the springs , draining the only source of fresh water for miles around and slowly killing a sacred and ancient site of deep spiritual significance for the Tohono O ’ odham and Hia Ced O ’ odham people ; David and Ortega are both Tohono O ’ odham and Hia Ced O ’ odham .
In an exclusive interview following their release from government custody , the two women described a baffling and terrifying ordeal in which they were bounced from one federal agency to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prison with no idea when they would be let out .
“ They didn ’ t read us any rights , ” Ortega told The Intercept .
“ We both asked to speak to a lawyer .
We were not given the opportunity to speak to a lawyer or make a phone call , and then we found out that it was a petty charge and that we shouldn ’ t have been arrested and detained to begin with , that we should have been given a citation and released.
” Complaints filed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ show that David and Ortega were given misdemeanor charges of violating a lawful order of a government officer and violating a closure order ; the area where their confrontation took place was closed to the public in October to allow for wall construction .
The arrests were carried out by U.S. Park Service law enforcement personnel with support from the Border Patrol .
The women were processed at a nearby port of entry before being driven to a private detention center more than 130 miles away .
David and Ortega were taken to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal facility owned and operated by the private prison corporation CoreCivic , following their arrest Wednesday morning and remained there until Thursday evening .
They described being strip searched twice during their time at the facility .
Both women were chained at the feet and waists “ well into the night , ” David told The Intercept .
“ We heard that they did that only because the Border Patrol or the Park Service or whoever handed us over didn ’ t give them any information , but they just agreed to house @ @ @ @ @ @ @ added that detention center officials told the women that they had no authority to release them , nor did they have any information about their charges .
“ We kept hearing that they were full and that they didn ’ t have any place for us , and so I guess for that reason we were left waiting , ” she said .
It seemed that part of the problem stemmed from confusion over the two women ’ s genders .
“ They thought that we were men , ” David said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point prepared to move the pair to a men ’ s section .
“ They were going to put us in the men ’ s facility , and then I asked to use the bathroom and then they were just kind of like , ‘ Oh , oh , oh , she ’ s not a man.
’ ” Before processing , the two women spent much of the evening in a cold room with cage-like walls , waiting to be moved to their final location .
Their shackles remained on while they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ There was a toilet , but it was really hard to use because we were handcuffed , ” David said .
“ There was no soap available .
There was no hand sanitizer available , ” Ortega added — in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this year , the ACLU accused officials responsible for the Florence facility of failing to provide basic safeguards for people in its care in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic .
It wasn ’ t until the following morning , when they were moved to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that the women said their shackles were removed and they were given access to basic hygienic items and allowed to use a cellphone .
“ It was heartbreaking , ” Ortega said .
“ Knowing that this is the process that migrants go through , that a lot of people go through.
” Ryan Gustin , a public affairs manager at CoreCivic , confirmed that David and Ortega were held at the Florence facility from 3:48 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon until 6:30 p.m. Thursday , and that their detention was requested by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enforcement agency with jurisdiction on public lands .
Gustin said the claims that the women were chained and lacked access to soap or hand sanitizer were “ patently false , ” and that every detainee at the facility receives sanitary items and bedding .
As for the chains , Gustin said the women were placed in “ approved restraints ” according to policy , and that they arrived in restraints without any documentation that would allow detention center officials to determine the level of threat that they posed .
Gustin confirmed that David @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their intake but added that “ the holding cells have phones that they could have used had they made a request to do so.
” David and Ortega maintain that it was absolutely untrue that they had standing access to phones in their cells .
They said they made multiple specific requests to speak a lawyer from the moment of their arrests Wednesday morning — those conversations were not facilitated until the following day .
David added that she was “ shocked ” to hear CoreCivic push back on the fact that they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ put the chains around our bodies and secured our hands and our feet , ” she said , adding that there was simply no other way to describe it .
“ We were tired , ” David said .
“ We had been out there early in the morning in the heat , and we were in those chains , high-security chains , well into the night , and they would not let us sleep.
” Why David and Ortega were transferred to a federal facility over low-level misdemeanors in the first place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Organ Pipe ’ s public affairs office were not returned .
With the 2020 presidential election nearing , the Trump administration has seized on federal lands in southern Arizona as a means to run up the total number of new border wall miles completed before voters head to the polls .
In keeping with that goal , the Department of Homeland Security has focused its efforts on the state ’ s wildlife refuges , wilderness areas , and national monuments , using the post-9/11 Real ID Act to waive scores of federal laws @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spaces like Organ Pipe ’ s Quitobaquito Springs .
The costs of the race toward expansion have been severe .
In early February , The Intercept broke the news that DHS had begun using explosives to clear the way for border wall expansion on Organ Pipe .
By the end of the month , the Border Patrol was inviting members of the press to observe its explosives in action .
Laiken Jordahl , a borderlands campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity and former Park Service employee at Organ Pipe , said the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through the national monument after breaking ground last August has been staggering .
“ I think a lot of people thought that this much damage couldn ’ t be done in a year , that the wall couldn ’ t go up and destroy Organ Pipe in just a year , and I so wish they were right , but the truth is that this place will never be the same , ” Jordahl told The Intercept .
“ We can rip down the wall , we can employ mitigation measures and habitat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never piece back together these sacred sites that have been destroyed .
You can never put back together the puzzle of cultural and natural history that make Organ Pipe so special.
” This year , water flow at Quitobaquito hit an all-time low , Jordahl explained , from an average of 30 to 45 gallons a minute down to just under six .
“ It ’ s slowed to a trickle , ” he said .
“ The springs itself looks like a mud flat most of the time , the pond is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just devastating.
” At the same time , DHS contractors are pushing forward with the installation of a power grid to illuminate giant lights over the pristine desert habitat , a move that , along with the installation of towering steel walls , will drive away the migratory animals that have passed through the area for thousands of years .
With national security waivers in the DHS legal arsenal , the federal agencies entrusted to protect places like Organ Pipe and Quitobaquito Springs have been powerless to stop border wall expansion in southern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Indigenous stakeholders who would normally appeal to laws designed to preserve cherished and sacred cultural spaces .
“ They ’ ve really left Indigenous people with no choice but to put their bodies on the line to stop this project because they ’ ve silenced their voices in every other possible way.
” In southern Arizona , David and Ortega have been leading voices challenging the Organ Pipe project , drawing national attention to the existential danger it poses to Quitobaquito Springs .
In November , on the 30th anniversary of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pair rallied hundreds of people on Organ Pipe to oppose border wall expansion .
Native resistance to the border wall has escalated and extended beyond Arizona in recent weeks , with members of the Kumeyaay Nation also blocking construction equipment and access roads in the Laguna Mountains of Southern California .
Both David and Ortega said that while they anticipated an increase in heavy construction near Quitobaquito last week , their decision to take direct action was not preplanned .
“ We just wanted to go out there and visit the springs and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The two women parted ways soon after they arrived Wednesday morning , each going through their own process of communing with the land .
“ When we visit , we check the land , we look for anything out of place , ” Ortega explained .
“ We were at the spring praying , crying , singing , and then we went on our separate ways.
” Ortega said she was approaching the base of a mountain when she heard the sound of construction trucks nearby .
From different areas , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We just knew , ” Ortega said .
“ We knew in our hearts that they were about to dig , so we stood in front of the construction truck.
” She added : “ We just knew we had to stop it in some way.
” For the better part of an hour , David and Ortega faced off against the construction vehicles and the contractors alone , as they waited for other border wall activists and media to arrive .
“ It was really last minute , ” David said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ at all , and we were really scared because we were just out there by ourselves.
” Some of the contractors appeared confused , she said ; others were visibly angry , including one contractor who she said swung the bucket of his front-end loader at them .
“ He just swung it around , like really macho , and he had this angry look on his face , ” David recalled .
“ I just felt like he was fighting us with his machine.
” David managed to get inside the bucket @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she took a seat and refused to move .
Across the road , Ortega attempted to block a second vehicle from digging into the earth .
Eventually , Border Patrol agents and park rangers arrived at the scene .
“ There were so many , ” David said .
Around the same time , outside media started to show up .
In a video from the scene , Ortega can be heard imploring the men to leave .
“ This is O ’ odham land , ” she said .
“ This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have permission to be here.
” The arresting agents approached David first , as she remained seated in the bucket of the front-end loader .
“ I put my head down because I didn ’ t want to see it , ” she said .
“ I just stayed where I was in that bulldozer until I felt a bunch of hands grab my arms and then they lifted me up.
” Ortega , who was on the other side of the road , said the words and actions of law enforcement felt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had permission to leave , but they wouldn ’ t let me leave , ” she said .
The presence of so many men with guns near the springs left her shaken .
“ There was so many I couldn ’ t even count , ” Ortega said .
“ It was really intimidating , and I was trying to explain that they were on sacred land , and it was not OK for them to be there in the way that they were with their weapons , and how violent it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our people , to our land.
” Both women were handcuffed for the long drive from the border to the Florence detention center .
As the hours ticked away inside the facility , they grew increasingly concerned .
“ We knew we had to have our initial appearance , but they were making it seem like we were there for the long haul , ” David said .
“ We were getting really scared .
We hadn ’ t gotten a phone call .
We hadn ’ t been able to even tell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were giving us directions and clothing allocations.
” The following morning , the pair learned that they would be given an afternoon hearing and Ortega was eventually able to speak to a court-appointed attorney who informed her family of what had happened .
It was well past midnight by the time they made it home .
Nearly a week later , the two women are still recovering from the ordeal , leaning on friends for support and taking measures to ensure that they were not exposed to Covid-19 as they plan their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ odham land .
Ortega described the struggle as intergenerational and said it will not end soon .
“ We come from a people that have had to fight to be recognized , ” she said .
“ This isn ’ t over .
This isn ’ t the end of the story .
This has been an ongoing process and it ’ s another chapter .
”

Two Indigenous women who were arrested by federal agents while attempting to block border wall construction in southern Arizona last week say they were chained and held incommunicado by the government without access to a phone call or lawyer for nearly 24 hours.
Nellie Jo David and Amber Ortega visited the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument early Wednesday morning to pray at Quitobaquito Springs, a desert oasis that has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to bulldoze its way through protected lands and stand up new sections of border wall. In order to mix concrete for the wall, government contractors have tapped into a desert aquifer that feeds into the springs, draining the only source of fresh water for miles around and slowly killing a sacred and ancient site of deep spiritual significance for the Tohono O’odham and Hia Ced O’odham people; David and Ortega are both Tohono O’odham and Hia Ced O’odham.
In an exclusive interview following their release from government custody, the two women described a baffling and terrifying ordeal in which they were bounced from one federal agency to another before being dropped at a private prison with no idea when they would be let out. “They didn’t read us any rights,” Ortega told The Intercept. “We both asked to speak to a lawyer. We were not given the opportunity to speak to a lawyer or make a phone call, and then we found out that it was a petty charge and that we shouldn’t have been arrested and detained to begin with, that we should have been given a citation and released.”
Complaints filed in federal court in Tucson on Thursday show that David and Ortega were given misdemeanor charges of violating a lawful order of a government officer and violating a closure order; the area where their confrontation took place was closed to the public in October to allow for wall construction. The arrests were carried out by U.S. Park Service law enforcement personnel with support from the Border Patrol. The women were processed at a nearby port of entry before being driven to a private detention center more than 130 miles away.
David and Ortega were taken to the Florence Correctional Center, a medium-security federal facility owned and operated by the private prison corporation CoreCivic, following their arrest Wednesday morning and remained there until Thursday evening. They described being strip searched twice during their time at the facility. Both women were chained at the feet and waists “well into the night,” David told The Intercept. “We heard that they did that only because the Border Patrol or the Park Service or whoever handed us over didn’t give them any information, but they just agreed to house us,” David said. She added that detention center officials told the women that they had no authority to release them, nor did they have any information about their charges.
Nellie Jo David, left, and Amber Ortega, right, ride in the back of a pickup truck to Quitobaquito Springs after a day of action at the U.S.-Mexico border wall on Nov. 9, 2019. Photo: Kitra Cahana/MAPS for The Intercept
“We kept hearing that they were full and that they didn’t have any place for us, and so I guess for that reason we were left waiting,” she said. It seemed that part of the problem stemmed from confusion over the two women’s genders. “They thought that we were men,” David said, adding that detention center officials at one point prepared to move the pair to a men’s section. “They were going to put us in the men’s facility, and then I asked to use the bathroom and then they were just kind of like, ‘Oh, oh, oh, she’s not a man.’”
Before processing, the two women spent much of the evening in a cold room with cage-like walls, waiting to be moved to their final location. Their shackles remained on while they waited, making it impossible to sleep. “There was a toilet, but it was really hard to use because we were handcuffed,” David said. “There was no soap available. There was no hand sanitizer available,” Ortega added — in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this year, the ACLU accused officials responsible for the Florence facility of failing to provide basic safeguards for people in its care in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. It wasn’t until the following morning, when they were moved to the cells that they had been waiting for, that the women said their shackles were removed and they were given access to basic hygienic items and allowed to use a cellphone.
“It was heartbreaking,” Ortega said. “Knowing that this is the process that migrants go through, that a lot of people go through.”
Ryan Gustin, a public affairs manager at CoreCivic, confirmed that David and Ortega were held at the Florence facility from 3:48 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon until 6:30 p.m. Thursday, and that their detention was requested by U.S. Park Police, the federal law enforcement agency with jurisdiction on public lands. Gustin said the claims that the women were chained and lacked access to soap or hand sanitizer were “patently false,” and that every detainee at the facility receives sanitary items and bedding.
As for the chains, Gustin said the women were placed in “approved restraints” according to policy, and that they arrived in restraints without any documentation that would allow detention center officials to determine the level of threat that they posed. Gustin confirmed that David and Ortega made no phone calls during their intake but added that “the holding cells have phones that they could have used had they made a request to do so.”
David and Ortega maintain that it was absolutely untrue that they had standing access to phones in their cells. They said they made multiple specific requests to speak a lawyer from the moment of their arrests Wednesday morning — those conversations were not facilitated until the following day. David added that she was “shocked” to hear CoreCivic push back on the fact that they were kept in chains. “They put the chains around our bodies and secured our hands and our feet,” she said, adding that there was simply no other way to describe it. “We were tired,” David said. “We had been out there early in the morning in the heat, and we were in those chains, high-security chains, well into the night, and they would not let us sleep.”
Why David and Ortega were transferred to a federal facility over low-level misdemeanors in the first place remains unclear. Calls and emails to Organ Pipe’s public affairs office were not returned.
Irreversible Damage
With the 2020 presidential election nearing, the Trump administration has seized on federal lands in southern Arizona as a means to run up the total number of new border wall miles completed before voters head to the polls. In keeping with that goal, the Department of Homeland Security has focused its efforts on the state’s wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, and national monuments, using the post-9/11 Real ID Act to waive scores of federal laws designed to protect sensitive environmental and cultural spaces like Organ Pipe’s Quitobaquito Springs.
The costs of the race toward expansion have been severe. In early February, The Intercept broke the news that DHS had begun using explosives to clear the way for border wall expansion on Organ Pipe. By the end of the month, the Border Patrol was inviting members of the press to observe its explosives in action.
Laiken Jordahl, a borderlands campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity and former Park Service employee at Organ Pipe, said the speed with which the government has pushed through the national monument after breaking ground last August has been staggering.
“I think a lot of people thought that this much damage couldn’t be done in a year, that the wall couldn’t go up and destroy Organ Pipe in just a year, and I so wish they were right, but the truth is that this place will never be the same,” Jordahl told The Intercept. “We can rip down the wall, we can employ mitigation measures and habitat restoration, but you can never, never piece back together these sacred sites that have been destroyed. You can never put back together the puzzle of cultural and natural history that make Organ Pipe so special.”
This year, water flow at Quitobaquito hit an all-time low, Jordahl explained, from an average of 30 to 45 gallons a minute down to just under six. “It’s slowed to a trickle,” he said. “The springs itself looks like a mud flat most of the time, the pond is just dried up — it’s just devastating.” At the same time, DHS contractors are pushing forward with the installation of a power grid to illuminate giant lights over the pristine desert habitat, a move that, along with the installation of towering steel walls, will drive away the migratory animals that have passed through the area for thousands of years.
With national security waivers in the DHS legal arsenal, the federal agencies entrusted to protect places like Organ Pipe and Quitobaquito Springs have been powerless to stop border wall expansion in southern Arizona, Jordahl said, as have the Indigenous stakeholders who would normally appeal to laws designed to preserve cherished and sacred cultural spaces. “They’ve really left Indigenous people with no choice but to put their bodies on the line to stop this project because they’ve silenced their voices in every other possible way.”
Nellie Jo David, an O’odham activist, addresses a crowd of protesters near the construction site of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on Nov. 9, 2019. Photo: Kitra Cahana/MAPS for The Intercept
Praying, Crying, Singing
In southern Arizona, David and Ortega have been leading voices challenging the Organ Pipe project, drawing national attention to the existential danger it poses to Quitobaquito Springs. In November, on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the pair rallied hundreds of people on Organ Pipe to oppose border wall expansion. Native resistance to the border wall has escalated and extended beyond Arizona in recent weeks, with members of the Kumeyaay Nation also blocking construction equipment and access roads in the Laguna Mountains of Southern California.
Both David and Ortega said that while they anticipated an increase in heavy construction near Quitobaquito last week, their decision to take direct action was not preplanned. “We just wanted to go out there and visit the springs and have some time,” David said. The two women parted ways soon after they arrived Wednesday morning, each going through their own process of communing with the land. “When we visit, we check the land, we look for anything out of place,” Ortega explained. “We were at the spring praying, crying, singing, and then we went on our separate ways.”
Ortega said she was approaching the base of a mountain when she heard the sound of construction trucks nearby. From different areas, the pair raced toward the commotion. “We just knew,” Ortega said. “We knew in our hearts that they were about to dig, so we stood in front of the construction truck.” She added: “We just knew we had to stop it in some way.”
For the better part of an hour, David and Ortega faced off against the construction vehicles and the contractors alone, as they waited for other border wall activists and media to arrive. “It was really last minute,” David said. “We didn’t have support at all, and we were really scared because we were just out there by ourselves.” Some of the contractors appeared confused, she said; others were visibly angry, including one contractor who she said swung the bucket of his front-end loader at them. “He just swung it around, like really macho, and he had this angry look on his face,” David recalled. “I just felt like he was fighting us with his machine.”
David managed to get inside the bucket of one of the machines, where she took a seat and refused to move. Across the road, Ortega attempted to block a second vehicle from digging into the earth. Eventually, Border Patrol agents and park rangers arrived at the scene. “There were so many,” David said. Around the same time, outside media started to show up. In a video from the scene, Ortega can be heard imploring the men to leave. “This is O’odham land,” she said. “This is a sacred area. You do not have permission to be here.”
The arresting agents approached David first, as she remained seated in the bucket of the front-end loader. “I put my head down because I didn’t want to see it,” she said. “I just stayed where I was in that bulldozer until I felt a bunch of hands grab my arms and then they lifted me up.” Ortega, who was on the other side of the road, said the words and actions of law enforcement felt contradictory. “They said that I had permission to leave, but they wouldn’t let me leave,” she said. The presence of so many men with guns near the springs left her shaken. “There was so many I couldn’t even count,” Ortega said. “It was really intimidating, and I was trying to explain that they were on sacred land, and it was not OK for them to be there in the way that they were with their weapons, and how violent it was, and how disrespectful it was to our people, to our land.”
Both women were handcuffed for the long drive from the border to the Florence detention center. As the hours ticked away inside the facility, they grew increasingly concerned. “We knew we had to have our initial appearance, but they were making it seem like we were there for the long haul,” David said. “We were getting really scared. We hadn’t gotten a phone call. We hadn’t been able to even tell our parents where we were, and they were giving us directions and clothing allocations.”
The following morning, the pair learned that they would be given an afternoon hearing and Ortega was eventually able to speak to a court-appointed attorney who informed her family of what had happened. It was well past midnight by the time they made it home.
Nearly a week later, the two women are still recovering from the ordeal, leaning on friends for support and taking measures to ensure that they were not exposed to Covid-19 as they plan their next steps in the defense of O’odham land.
Ortega described the struggle as intergenerational and said it will not end soon. “We come from a people that have had to fight to be recognized,” she said. “This isn’t over. This isn’t the end of the story. This has been an ongoing process and it’s another chapter.”