This week Farai Chideya dives into the consequences of zero-sum thinking around race with Heather McGhee, author of “The Sum of Us.” Marissa Tirona recounts her harrowing experience with Covid-19, one year after her hospitalization in New York City. Our Covid Update looks at vaccination rates among people of color. Our Body Politic national security contributor Holli Draines breaks down what we need to know about threats to Capitol Hill. And Errin Haines of the 19th and Jess Morales Rocketto of the National Domestic Workers Alliance dissect the Covid relief package, the White House’s latest move on gender policy, and voter suppression in Sippin’ the Political Tea, our weekly political roundtable.
EPISODE RUNDOWN
0:54 Heather McGhee on the role racism plays in U.S. domestic policy failures
12:03 Marissa Tirona recalls her hospitalization with Covid-19 one year ago
22:06 Holli Draines on vetting security personnel at the U.S. Capitol
27:53 Sippin’ the Political Tea: Covid relief, White House gender policy, and voter suppression in Georgia
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening and sharing Our Body Politic. As you know, we're only a few months into the show and we are still shaping it with lots of input from listeners like you. So I want to ask you a small favor. After you listen today, please head over to Apple Podcasts on your phone, tablet, laptop, or anywhere you listen and leave us a review. We read those because your ideas matter to us. Thanks so much.
Chideya:
This is Our Body Politic. I'm the creator and host, Farai Chideya. This week, we're talking about voting rights, racism, and public policy, and one woman's battle with COVID-19.
Heather McGhee spent years as an economic policy wonk and was president of Demos from 2014 to 2018, transforming it into a think tank that describes its work as "race forward." She just published her book, "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together." In it, she set out to analyze why white Americans believe in a zero sum racial competition. That's the idea that progress for people of color comes at the expense of white people, and she uses social science research to show that this belief harms everyone.
Heather, it's great to have you on Our Body Politic.
Heather McGhee:
It's so great to be with you.
Chideya:
Tell us about the time that you write about in the book where you're 25 and you have a sort of moment where the race class narrative clicks in for you.
McGhee:
So I spent nearly 20 years helping to build and then being president of for four years a progressive economic think tank called Demos. And I was just a young economic policy staffer, and I was working on the issue of debt. Consumer debt, household debt, student loans, credit cards, mortgages. And I was in the Russell Senate Office Building, one of my first lobbying visits down there. We were trying to bring our economic research to policy makers to show them that it was going to be a very bad idea to change the bankruptcy laws as the credit card companies wanted to make it harder for people who had lost everything to get a fresh start and get back on their feet.
McGhee:
And we felt like kind of, we had the math, right? We could make the point that this was just a really bad economic policy decision, that it wasn't personal irresponsibility that was driving bankruptcy. It was the structural issues in our economy and people just having to borrow to make ends meet. And so we came there with our numbers and I was wearing pantyhose. You have to wear pantyhose in DC. You did at the time and they kept slipping off. And I remember I went down to fix my shoe and I was close to the bottom of a door that I could hear a voice. And it really sounded like it was the Senator. It was a Senate Office Building. It sounded like it was the Senator the way the other people were talking to him. And he said these deadbeats, they're having these babies by multiple mamas and they are using the government to avoid the personal responsibility through bankruptcy.
McGhee:
And he didn't say anything about race. He didn't say these Black men. He didn't say these Brown men, but it made my heart rate speed up. And the hair stick up on the back of my neck. And I had this moment where I felt like, how did I spend all this time in this predominantly White world of economic think tanks and economic research and forget one of the first lessons I ever learned as a Black person in America, that the majority of White people have pretty negative views about our worth in this society. And that that, more than anything, helps explain why the majority of White people support a political party and ideology that is bankrupting the country, that is leading to us being unable to handle the pandemic. All of these dysfunctions that so many of us are scratching our heads about, why is it that America can't seem to get its act together? Why can we not, as I say, in the first line of the book, why does it seem we can't seem to have nice things? And of course, I mean-
Chideya:
I loved that you started with that.
McGhee:
Right? I mean, it's true, right? Don't you feel like, what is going on? Why are we so seemingly unable to just get our acts together, to do some of the basic things that a high functioning society should be able to do. And on this journey that I took to write "The Sum of Us," it became clearer and clearer to me with every step that racism is the common denominator in our most vexing public problems.
Chideya:
I want to go into some of that work you did talking to people and also of course continuing your analysis. So I want to circle back to how white people operate in the American framework, but let's talk a little bit about Janice and Isaiah Tomlin. Who are they? Why did you talk to them? What did you learn from them?
McGhee:
I'm so glad that you're talking about this because I've done a number of interviews and so few people want to talk about the financial crisis chapter in my book. Wonder why. So the first issue, as I said, that I really cut my teeth on in policy was the issue of debt. And that gave me a front row seat to the early phases of what would become the great financial crash and great recession. I, for the book, talk to a couple named Janice and Isaiah Tomlin, who were a really emblematic Black home-owning couple who were targeted by completely unscrupulous mortgage brokers who had a corrupt kick-back deal with one lender. And they sold the Tomlin's a refinance loan on their existing mortgage that they had never missed a payment on that had an astronomical double digit interest rate and all of these hidden fees. And it was just really emblematic of what happened really in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There were these deregulated lenders who were testing out, what can we get away with? How much can we charge? How many tricks and traps can we bury in these mortgages? Who's going to stop us, if we start first in the communities that are the least protected and the least respected? Black and Brown communities.
And it was so important for me to tell this story, because during the crisis, you had this narrative that it was actually government being too soft, basically. Too encouraging, too coddling of these minority home buyers who were trying to reach for houses that they shouldn't have been able to afford. When the facts are, the majority of these loans, these subprime loans were not going to get people into houses that they were stretching for. They were going to people who already had houses. They were refinancing and stripping equity out of existing homeowners.
And that's how you end up with a story that, to me, is so emblematic of American systemic racism today. Obviously Black folks get targeted and hurt first and worst. The Black home ownership rate still has not recovered. It is back to what it was before the Fair Housing Act. It is a crime. It is a tragedy of epic proportions, and also, whose life was not touched by the great recession. You had 8 million jobs lost, $19 trillion in home equity and lost savings. And so it's this idea that we are ultimately connected, that racist policymaking and racist business practices cannot be contained and it's costing our country.
Chideya:
Let's dig into that a little bit more. A couple of other nuggets from the book, when you're talking about the zero sum hierarchy, the perception that white people cannot win if Black people and other people of color win, you say racial hierarchy offered white people a reprieve from the class hierarchy. And then you go on to explain in your words, the economic benefit of the racial bargain is shrinking for all but the richest. Your work with the race class narrative project, really, I think demonstrates that logic is not always a selling point. So what do you do when logical arguments fail? And tell us a little bit about the race class narrative project as well.
McGhee:
This need that I think progressives have to deal with the framework as it exists, you can't communicate successfully without recognizing where your audience is. And what are the frameworks in your audience's mind? What are the deep stories that your audience is bringing to the conversation? And so often when progressives want to win over the majority of White people to the progressive cause, which has not happened since Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, that majority of white people have voted against the party of civil rights since it became the party of civil rights, right? But even those appeals to white audiences, so often particularly white progressives say, well, let's not talk about race, right? Let's talk about the things that we all want. Let's talk about raising the minimum wage and taxing the wealthy and funding our schools and universal health care.
And the problem is that ignores the fact that all of those issues are highly racialized. That race has become the central character in folks' minds about the story of the economy and government. And that is because of a deliberate strategy by the right wing to racialize the idea of government, to turn White people away from government, away from labor unions, away from collective solutions, and towards the market, right? And towards the market, which is dominated by white men, right? It's an identity play away from a multi-racial coalition towards a white hierarchical status promise.
When I say that the benefits of the economic bargain are shrinking. It's because two generations now of that economic formula, of tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulating everything, underfunding our schools, and underfunding all that we have in common, failing to update our infrastructure, failing to rise to the moment of the country's biggest challenges, has broken the country.
Chideya:
So where do we go from here?
McGhee:
Isn't that the question? Honestly, this journey that I took to write The Sum of Us left me more hopeful than when I began it. In some ways after spending nearly 20 years trying to fix the minimum wage, trying to fix student debt, trying to fix affordable housing, trying to fix health care, all of these individual issues. Once I found the thread of racism underneath all of these public problems, it was clear to me that if we could just pull that, progress on all of these other issues would be further within reach. And my point is that we had the formula for making sure that working people had a middle class standard of living and could have that kind of economic security, and standard of living, and could have that kind of economic security, and this country walked away from that formula when they had to share with people of color.
Chideya:
Thank you so much, Heather.
McGhee:
Thank you so much. It's so wonderful to be with you in conversation.
Chideya:
That was Heather McGee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.
Chideya:
The United States continues to hit grim milestones in the fight against COVID-19. Half a million dead and counting, over a year since it hit our shores. Some hope is on the horizon though. President Joe Biden has announced that there will be enough vaccines for all adults by mid May. My next guest has a story that is also both painful and hopeful. Next week marks the one year anniversary of Marissa Tirona's hospitalization with COVID-19. Tirona has a long career in organizing and philanthropy. And I know her as a friend and former coworker. Marissa, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Marissa Tirona:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad to be in conversation with you. Always, but especially today.
Chideya:
When did you get sick?
Tirona:
So it happened really early on as the pandemic just sort of took shape here in the United States. It was an early March and our office had closed because there was a colleague who had tested positive for COVID-19, but up until that time, I, as many other New Yorkers, was taking the subway, was in public spaces. We had begun, in our own family, to begin to protect ourselves by cleaning diligently and pretty intensely our home whenever we came home, ourselves whenever we came home from work and from school. Even though we had taken all of those precautions, I got sick. I just started coughing uncontrollably and I couldn't stop coughing, and then I began feeling very weak as if a very... I was experiencing a really intense flu.
And then I had fevers that went as high as 104 and they weren't abating. So later in that week, I then reached out to practitioners about what to do. And at that point in time, the COVID testing in New York City, it wasn't widespread. And so it was... You couldn't get tested, unless you had, I think, pretty serious symptoms at that point, but when I had reached the doctors over... It might've been that I think Friday the 13th quite honestly, they said they're going to open them up on Monday, and so I signed up for what might have been one of the first three or four tests for COVID-19 on that Monday, and then the next day, because my fever hadn't abated and I was still coughing quite a bit and was having more difficulty breathing, my primary care physician by telephone told me you need to get to the emergency room.
Chideya:
Because we knew each other before you got sick. I remember getting a text saying that you were going into the emergency room and I was just so devastated by that, and then hearing that you had been intubated. Can you tell us what you remember about going in and essentially being told that you needed help breathing?
Tirona:
I arrived at the emergency room on the 17th. And so you had all of the nurses, the technicians, the doctors who are on staff, who were basically triaging a kind of growing crowd of people who were ... at least to me, and I'm not a medical professional, clearly had been affected by COVID. And so, it was at that point that I'd overheard one of the nurses say, "Watch her sat rates," I think is what she said, which is basically my oxygen saturation, and I guess at that point in time, it was much lower than what they would want to see in a healthy human being, right? And so what happened was that I was basically in the ER for a couple of more hours waiting for a bed in an ICU in one of the NYU hospitals.
The last time I had seen my family was after my husband had dropped me off at the ER and I had said goodbye to my daughter, Beatrice, at home, and so about four or five hours into, I guess, being at the ER is when I finally found out that they had a bed that was available for me. And the moment that they transferred me into the bed, a team of healthcare professionals came in and there was a doctor, a couple of nurses, and an administrator who asked me, and this is when I knew that it was ... what was happening, asked me basically who had my proxy. And so I was like, "Okay, so that's my husband." And you asked the question about when I knew that about being intubated. I actually have no recollection of it whatsoever, from what I could piece together in conversations with Ephraim, my husband, it happened the following day on the 18th that I was intubated.
Chideya:
So, you go into... I'm going to be dramatic here, but you go into the Valley of Death and then you come out. What do you remember about coming out?
Tirona:
The first thing that I remember when I woke up, I thought that Beatrice and Ephraim had died. So I thought I was all alone. It was actually my very first thought, because when I was in a medically induced coma, which they had to put me into, right? Because when they intubated me, because they knew that I was going to have to be on the ventilator for a very long period of time, it ended up being 28 days, they had to perform a tracheostomy, so the intubation happened through my throat. So I was out for a really, really long time and I had a very vivid sort of dreamscape, but part of that very vivid dreamscape was this firm belief that I had when I woke up, that my family had died and I was the only one who had survived. And from what I understand, it took the hospital staff, in a very generous, very caring way, about a week to convince me that my family was in fact alive and healthy. So from what been told, apparently I was awakened, either on Easter Sunday or the day after. And then I spoke to my family for the first time, about a week after that.
Chideya:
There was also a Hamilton connection, I understand, to your recovery. Can you tell us about that?
Tirona:
Yeah. So, I'd been under sedation for such a long period of time, and so you don't just wake up. I've learned this now, right? You just don't wake up. It's a gradual reduction of the sedation, and I was insistent that Lin Manuel Miranda was hanging out in my hospital room.
Chideya:
As he should.
Tirona:
As he should. And I told every person who came into the room, and to their credit, the nurses and the doctors were just so indulgent of my insistence that he was hanging out in my room. So that was entertaining, at least for me now that I think about it and when I tell this story to others.
Chideya:
You posted some video of you being wheeled out of the hospital and all of the staff cheering. How many days was it before you left the hospital and what happened next?
Tirona:
So I was in the intensive care unit at NYU for 50 days, and the video that you're referring to when they wheeled me out. It was amazing, because they line up in the hallways as you're being taken from your hospital bed out to an ambulance, which in my case was taking me to a rehabilitative hospital, that I swear I spent another 11 days, working to basically learn how to walk again and brush my teeth and put my clothes on and climb upstairs.
Chideya:
Wow. Your sister was also ill at the same time, at least part of the same time. Is that right?
Tirona:
That's right. If you can imagine, it was a really, really difficult time for my entire family, and for my parents, there was a two week period where both of their daughters were on life support. So my family, my sister and my parents, my nephew, all live in Nevada, and the last time that we'd all seen each other was we see each other every Christmas. And we were all together at Christmas time, but three months had passed since we had seen each other, and yet my sister and I, within two weeks, both were hospitalized and on ventilators because of COVID.
Chideya:
And did she recover?
Tirona:
Yeah, she's doing really well.
Chideya:
The last thing is, a lot of people are just really getting tired of the COVID era. What would you say to people who are like, "I'm just so done with this? I can't. I'm just going to go out. I'm going to not pay attention to science."
Tirona:
I would say that we all have a deep responsibility and obligation to care, not just for ourselves, but for each other. That's the only pathway forward. We actually will never turn the corner on this pandemic unless we have a deep seated, shared, collective belief in our collective health and safety. When I think about the hundreds of strangers, I will never meet Farai, who were so committed to my survival and recovery and still are to this day and do this for thousands of people, that's the same level of commitment I would hope that people would bring to what we're experiencing right now. There is no pathway through this as an individual. You have to do it by centering the wellbeing of your entire community and other people for all of us to actually get through this, and not just survive, but to thrive. So wear a mask people. Wear a mask.
Chideya:
Yeah, amen to that. So, Marissa, so grateful for your time and so grateful for your healing, and just grateful for you.
Tirona:
Thank you Farai. I really appreciate being in conversation with you. So thank you for your leadership my friend.
Chideya:
That was Marissa Tirona, President of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees.
Chideya:
Each week we invite you to tell us what's on your mind by calling the speak line. This week we're asking, if you had one hour to talk about one topic affecting your local community with the US Senator for your state, what would you talk about and why? To leave us your message, call (929) 353-7006. That's (929) 353-7006, or go to Our Body Politics.show and scroll down to find a Google forum to respond in writing.
This week, I'm proud to invite our newest contributor to Our Body Politic to help us dissect the news about security at the US Capitol. Holli Draines is the CEO of security consulting firm Elite Strategy Global and a former secret service special agent who served during the Obama administration. Welcome Holli.
Holli Draines:
Thank you so much for having me.
Chideya:
So Holly, it's great having you on and you are someone who is so well-equipped to lead us through what's going on at the Capitol and throughout Washington DC. Can you lead us through what we know about General Honore's report and he's the person, General Russell Honore, tasked with investigating what happened in the breach of the Capitol on January 6th. So, he released some public facing recommendations. What stood out to you?
Draines:
Some of the recommendations that the General mentioned that really caught my attention were, number one, establishing a quick response team. The General mentioned that there was not a quick reaction force in place and with DC being a prime tourist attraction, it remains a major target for attacks. Number two, the General insisted that mobile fencing was a viable option to quickly implement secured fencing that is both easy to construct as well as take down, especially in the event of an unanticipated threat. He talked about mounted law enforcement units, which was one of the more unique solutions. It's been integrated in other major cities and deemed effective in separating crowds and easing tensions. And the fourth recommendation that General Honore made that really stood out to me, was the suggestion for hiring more US Capitol police officers. Obviously with what took place on January 6th. These officers were, they were outnumbered, even though they were committed to the mission. We all know that they were simply outnumbered.
Chideya:
Out of the siege on January 6th, there also was a sort of public discussion of the vetting of the National Guard members and there were just a tiny handful out of 23,000 who were removed. Tell us a little bit more about that vetting process, not necessarily how that one was conducted, but why would one vet people who already are in service?
Draines:
A couple of things about vetting and vetting folks in service. So I am in a former Secret Service status. So one thing I want to say is that, you know, as a former special agent, first and foremost, I continued to really honor the sensitivity of the information regarding internal operational procedures. However, what I can tell you is that the vetting process that goes on within that particular agency is both comprehensive and very consistent. Uh, the secret service has a zero fail mission. And so to that end, that zero fail mission, it is based upon careful analysis of threat levels and is always proactive. What I’ll also say about vetting is, it’s also something that’s not out of the ordinary. It's not so different from a private employer exercising their liberties with conducting other types of vetting, whether it's updated background checks, whether it's random, you know, drug screenings or testings.
Chideya:
As someone who left the Secret Service to care for your nephew after your sister passed away and who made a great sacrifice leaving this career that you loved to found your own company, and have another career that you love, how as an individual with a family, are you thinking about the security of the capital and, and, and, you know, the importance of it?
Draines:
My job is to do my best to not panic. Um, I try to, to the best of my ability teach my nephew the same principle. There are times that things are going to cause you to feel fear, to feel anxiety, that's human, that is understandable. Um, we're in the midst of a pandemic, great example. My job is to stay informed. To stay prepared on a daily basis, regardless of whether there is something heightened going on in the world or not. Simple things like I'm, I'm going to probably go out later on this afternoon because the day is beautiful. Do I need to have both earbuds in my ears when I go for my walk, as I like to listen to music, or does it make better sense for me to have one side in and one side out so that I can hear what's going on around me? Can I let someone know where I'm going? Hey, I'm going to hang out for about two hours, I’m going to set in this direction. So that’s what I teach my nephew.
Chideya: So this has lessons for us all.
Draines:
It does. It really does. Like I said, I, I know that sometimes the focus is on what is happening right now. But I think the bigger takeaway is what, what can I be doing all the time?
Chideya: Holli, thank you so much.
Draines:
It was great talking to you, Farai.
Chideya:
That was Holli Draines, retired Secret Service special agent and currently CEO of a security consulting firm.
Chideya:
Each week on the show, we bring you a roundtable called Sippin' The Political Tea. Joining me to dissect the week in news are our body politic contributors, Errin Haines, editor at large at The 19th and Jess Morales Rocketto, Civic Engagement Director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Welcome back, Jess.
Jess Morales Rocketto:
Hey.
Chideya:
Errin, another week in hot and heavy politics.
Errin Haines:
Farai, beware the Ides of March!
Chideya:
We've got to keep an eye out for them.
Haines:
Watch those Ides.
Chideya:
Exactly.
Haines:
So look, wow, it's been a year since the start of the pandemic. How has the pandemic changed how each of you see politics? Farai, I'll start with you.
Chideya:
Yeah. I won't spend too long on this because we're going to get into it, but this whole idea of what a government spends and what services it provides, it's completely changed because of the pandemic because this whole idea that you can be a sort of self-sufficient island and that government help is unwanted. I think a lot of people who believed that are really grappling with the reality of life, which is that we need each other to survive and that there's no reason for government not to play a role in that. You have to be judicious, but I wish that there had been the kind of child tax credit that is coming online when I were of childbearing age. And I no longer am. And I'm just going to put that out there.
Haines:
So Jess, where are you a year later?
Morales Rocketto:
In some ways I think I'm actually more optimistic. In part because I think that everybody in their house all of this time has kind of opened folks eyes to what's happening. People are feeling the ways in which our government and our elected leaders do affect their lives. They can literally determine whether or not they stay inside their house. They can determine whether or not we get a vaccine. So, I'm hopeful that as we begin to get everyone vaccinated, begin to reopen, people's awareness won't go away. And I hate to talk about silver linings in a really terrible time, I don't think that makes sense, but I do think that once you kind of woke up, it's hard to go back to sleep.
Haines:
Yeah. Both good points. I'll tell you, I think for me, the importance of hearing from voters, hearing from the people that are directly impacted by the politics and policy that is being decided in Washington, I think that this year reaffirmed that for me, just hearing from so many people who were directly affected by this pandemic, whether they ever got sick or not, just felt like my best and highest use as a political journalist. And it really just, I think, it had a chance to reorient all of our focus on who it is that is being impacted by the politics that we cover. So, that's where I am a year later.
But let's turn our attention back to Washington because so much is happening in Washington DC. So, let's talk about this COVID-19 relief bill or the American Rescue Plan. Here's president Joe Biden on prime time TV this past Thursday.
So, Jess, tell me about the parts of the relief bill itself that you think are important for working Americans?
Morales Rocketto:
Yeah. Well, the biggest thing is this is some of the biggest anti-poverty legislation that we've had in decades. And I don't think you're going to hear about that so much in the news because of all of the kind of like party polarity that has happened as a result of the vote. But as a result of this, there's projections by people at the Urban Institute that poverty will fall by 42% for black people, 39% for LatinX folks and 34% for white folks, just from the American Rescue Plan.
Haines:
Wow. Yeah. Farai, tell me about the significance of this politically for the Biden-Harris administration and for Democrats.
Chideya:
The Democratic party is in a really, really interesting place. I was reading a bit about how during the Obama administration that the administration didn't actually get much credit for saving the economy. So there is still some concern, I think, from some people in the Democratic party that right now the bill is really popular, but will it actually continue to produce political gains? But that said, it's actually a moment of unity for the various wings of the party. You have Manchin all the way on one side, you have Sanders and the squad and you have everybody else. And everybody was like, "Let's pull together and get this across the finish line." So, I think one of the most notable things to me, is that the Biden-Harris administration in working with the democratic leaders on Capitol Hill has really achieved some party unity.
Chideya:
And I'm also watching something else, which seems unrelated on the surface, but which I think is also a bellwether about the party, which is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, representative from New York, of course, and a lead member of the squad had been working to make it easier to not be penalized for primarying a Democrat. And she helped achieve a change in something called the DCCC Blacklist, about consultants working with challengers and whether or not they would get Democratic party money. So, I think that there's interestingly, a sort of flourishing within the party of saying we can be many things and we can pull it together and get important legislation across the finish line.
Haines:
Yeah. Let's continue with the Biden-Harris administration. The president signed an executive order to establish a White House Gender Policy Council. Here's Vice President Kamala Harris in an event celebrating two women who were nominated to be four-star generals in the military. Let's listen to a clip.
Kamala Harris:
Recruiting more women to our military, adjusting policies to retain more women, enforcing policies to protect women and ensure they are heard and advancing more women on fair and equal footing will without any question, make our nation safer. And that's the work ahead.
Haines:
So, Jess, what does that mean? And how does it feel to know that these priorities are back in focus at the White House?
Morales Rocketto:
Well, it's a really big deal. The Obama administration had what was called like the White House Office of Women and Girls and this is a little bit of a remix on that.
Haines:
Yeah.
Morales Rocketto:
Really big change that they made. And I think actually, it's really important that this is a gender policy council. I think it's a real signal of what has changed from an Obama-Biden administration to a Biden-Harris administration. This isn't just about women and girls, it's about gender more broadly-
Haines:
Yeah.
Morales Rocketto:
Which is so, so, so important and much more inclusive, which is a testament, I think, to the organizing and narrative change and all that we begin to learn about how gender plays out in our government and in our society. And the other thing that I think is really important about this is there are some folks in it who, I would say these are people with teeth at the very head, even as sort of like co-chairs, just a somewhat ceremonial role, Jen Klein and Julissa Reynoso. So, a white woman and a Afro-Latino woman who are both sort of big policy, heavy hitters. Julissa is of course, the Vice President Chief of Staff. So, this is like a big, important roll out and the White House is doing a lot of signals to tell you this is a really big, important, and the White House is doing a lot of signals to tell you this is a really big, important deal.
Haines:
Yeah and your point about kind of the evolution of this office, right from the Obama era to now, with Biden kind of reestablishing this office with that focus on uplifting the rights of women, really addressing gender based discrimination and violence. Right? It's something that we also know is being tackled in the military. That was one of the early priorities that was set over in the defense department. And so, just the idea that they're going to look at a range of issues from gender bias and discrimination to economic security and opportunity. I think I would add to that as Vice President Harris noted that they are an example for grown women who may be making their way up the ranks in the military and so, continuing to kind of center and normalize women's leadership at the highest levels, I think does a lot for our imagination as a democracy and a society.
So let's go back to my home state of Georgia. The state Senate has passed a bill this week to roll back, no excuse absentee voting. Jess, what can be done to limit these efforts to suppress the votes?
Morales Rocketto:
Well, we are seeing the Democrats in Congress are making a big play around H.R. 1, which is about democracy reform, voting rights protection and then we're seeing that in the states, Republicans are really taking it to the state legislators. Georgia's is a great place for this and actually from experience, I can tell you that many of the kind of a wave of anti whatever legislation that Republicans are moving, really does start in Georgia.
So this is really scary and we should be fighting with all of our might. We need to nationalize this issue. We need to make sure people understand that this is the first of many states, the Republicans will try to pass us in. And since Democrats got completely shellacked on state legislators in 2020, that should really scare us; really, really scare us. So this is something that you're seeing Stacey Abrams of course talk about this, but, I think it would be really important actually for Democrats in Congress to also talk about this and really make sure that there's a big push to the Georgia legislator to not just stop this, but make clear who is rolling back voting rights in this country.
Haines:
Yeah. Yeah. It's certainly an old fight happening in a new day, especially in places like Georgia. I am old enough to remember when I was covering these very issues in the Georgia legislature when they were kind of pioneering voter ID laws, more than a decade ago. So you saw President Biden on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, issuing executive order around voting to try to counteract some of the activity that we see happening in state legislatures, even as we speak. Farai, I want to turn to you for your thoughts on this.
Chideya:
Yeah. I mean, I think that this is just naked gloves off, voter suppression, without even the fig leaf of like this is good for democracy. It's so transparent, but it's also very much a real effort and you can break down the numbers showing that the reason that there's a carve out for people who are 65 years old or older for this absentee voting to be continued is because the majority of people who vote in that demographic absentee are white. I mean, it's just, it's disheartening that it's so transparent, but it also makes the stakes clear and so are some other things.
There's literally a group called Stop Stacey to try to block Stacey Abrams from running for governor in 2022, or to at least undermine that and they launched in February and called themselves a robust state and national fundraising operation of engaged conservatives who are committed to protecting our future from Stacey Abrams, her left wing backers and their radical un-American agenda. I mean, I know I shouldn't laugh and the reason I'm laughing is just because like the dog whistle is gone. That's what died in 2020, the dog whistle. The dog whistle died. It's just like, it's all out in the open, you know what I mean?
Haines:
Yeah, Farai, you're exactly right to talk about who benefits from vote by mail? Because for years it has been Republicans and white voters, and that shifted in 2020 in a pandemic, when you had organizers encouraging black and brown voters, the same folks who were being disproportionately killed in this pandemic, to exercise a safer option potentially for them, which was to cast a ballot absentee. And we know that the black share a vote by mail surged from 23% to 31% and that nearly 30% of black voters cast their ballot by mail in 2020, but just 24% of white voters did so.
And now you have former President Donald Trump even requesting a mail-in ballot. But listen Farai, you brought up talking about the quiet part out loud. So I want to, I want to look at this moment, I'm British TV network, Sky News, with GOP strategist, Matt Gorman, and his Freudian slip regarding voting rights. Let's listen.
Matt Gorman:
Look, I think the biggest balance is how we as a party, certainly we have appealed and we should continue to appeal to the white suburban, or excuse me, the working class, blue collar workers. But also how do we appeal to those suburban voters?
Haines:
Excuse me. The working class. Jess, let me get your thoughts on this. Is this a winning strategy?
Morales Rocketto:
Well, I mean, I think that so far it has been a winning strategy for Republicans and I think that's actually really important. I was reflecting as you all were talking about the voting rights piece, like all of this is part of a very seamless strategy of racism. It just is. That's like the main message that they're using. It's the main constituency of people that they're trying to engage, which is white people and not just white people, but like white supremacist people or people who are interested in maintaining the status quo of white supremacy.
And I say that because there you're right about there's not a dog whistle, but it's also that the more they talk about that, the more they sort of say these little blue collar workers, working class, suburban voters, whatever, all those are synonyms for white, just different levels of whiteness, the more that they animate their base. So there's a reason that they've sort of just said it out loud because they're actually finding that that is motivating people. That is the strategy of the Republican party and it's frankly been the strategy of the Republican party for 50 or 60 years at this point,
Haines:
Right. I was just, I was just going to say, Jess, this is something that proceeded the former president and certainly is still present in our politics and it is a strategy that has worked, that has been a winning strategy for Republicans but whether or not it will continue to be so as they play a game of subtraction and not addition at the ballot box, is an open question.
So we learned this week that donations to the GOP have actually increased since the January 6th insurrection and a lot of those are grassroots and individual donations. So does this mean that corporations are losing their strong hold in our democracy and are more Americans willing to fill in the gap out of pocket? Farai, help us understand the implications of this?
Chideya:
Well, you know, it's since Citizens United, which was the ruling that basically, opened the flood gates to increased money and less accountability in politics, there has been sort of virtue signaling around getting small donors versus big donors, but money, and I personally think Citizens United is a disaster. I'm just going to say that. However, money doesn't always follow the good, it follows whatever people want it to follow. And I think that in a situation like this, the small donations may actually offset what is a movement to get corporate responsibility for donations.
But if the move to call for corporate social responsibility around this, then results in a fundraising campaign that gets people more money, it doesn't mean that it didn't work, but it just shows that money flows in strange ways in a culture war environment and people can actually weaponize.
If they lose a corporate donor, they may actually be able to make more money from small donors. So, I guess it just reaffirms that money itself is amoral, it's not immoral. It's not moral. It's just amoral. Money does what people ask it to do and in this case, the individual donations may actually defray any costs of this move for corporate social responsibility around donations to people who called for the active undermining of American democracy.
Haines:
Yeah. Such a good point about voters really speaking with their dollars in terms of corporations and candidates in this culture war, political climate and I think that that's something that we are seeing really on both sides and really so many Americans rethinking what it means to be a donor, like that's not some kind of high minded, far off thing, the idea that somebody who is giving not necessarily tens of thousands of dollars, but even in small increments, that enough of those people coming together, can really make a difference and have an impact. Well, time flies when we're sipping the tea ladies. It was nice talking with you again.
Chideya:
Thank you so much, Errin. Love this conversation.
Haines:
And I hate to go, but we have to leave it there for now, Jess.
Morales Rocketto:
See you next week.
Chideya:
So that was Jess Morales Rocketto of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Errin Haines of the 19th. Thank you so much for joining us on Our Body Politic. We are on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Our Body Politic is produced by Lantigua Williams and Co. I'm the creator and host Farai Chideya. Juleyka Lantigua Williams is executive producer. Paulina Velasco is senior producer. Jen Chien is executive editor. Cedric Wilson is lead producer and mixed this episode. Original music by associate sound designer, Kojin Tashiro. Our producer is Priscilla Alabi. Julie Zann is our talent consultant. Michelle Baker and Emily Daly are assistant producers. Production assistants were Mark Betancourt, Michael Castañeda, and Sara McClure.
This program is produced with support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies, from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, from BMe community, a network designed to build caring and prosperous communities inspired by black people, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.
CITATION:
Chideya, Farai, host. “The Actual Cost of Racism in the U.S., One Woman’s Battle with Covid-19, and the State of Security at the Capitol.” Our Body Politic, Diaspora Farms LLC. March 12, 2021. https://our-body-politic.simplecast.com/