Brandon Lemay of Rights & Democracy Project | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: Get command, don't get supremely magxell coming.

0:08 Speaker 2: Hey, Welcome everybody. This is Matt Connorton Unleashed. This is of course the podcast only addition, which we also affectionately affectionately referred to as mcu AF. Because this is strictly online, we are completely unencumbered and uncensored and truly unleashed on this version of the program. And of course Jenny is with me as always.

0:30 Speaker 3: President and account it for.

0:32 Speaker 2: And joining us for his first time on the show. Brandon Lemaye is here. Hi, Brandon Hobby, so welcome, and for those of you who are streaming the show live, welcome. I will have the chat room open if you'd like to chime in. Of course, most people will get the podcast version of the show, which we will of course be including in the podcast feed. So of course, as always, you can get Matt Condorton Unleashed on your podcast platform of choice or go to Matt connorton dot com for the podcast. But if you are joining us live, you know we didn't really do much to promote this ahead of time.

1:05 Speaker 2: This is a little bit spontaneous, so welcome, and you are again you are invited to participate in the chat room. But Brandon, so your first time on the show. Jenny and I of course have known you for for a bit now, at least a couple of years, right, especially you know, Jenny of course knows you better than I do. But it's been how how long has it been? It's been at least a few years, right.

1:29 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it definitely has been, Yeah, because I met Jen through my work as an organizer for rights and democracy, Okay, yeah, and you know it feels like I've known Jen for a while, but also not that long either.

1:43 Speaker 3: You know.

1:43 Speaker 1: Yeah.

1:44 Speaker 2: Yeah. So so Brandon, who are you and what do you do? Let's let's uh give the give our our listeners and viewers some background on you.

1:53 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So you know, I was born and raised here in Manchester, New Hampshire. You know, I am a product of the public school system here. I went to Plymouth State University, where I studied political science and minored in French. And that's about that time that I got involved in politics because at the time, this is around like twenty ten actually sorry, twenty twelve now at this point twenty eleven, and there was a huge effort to defund the university system, and I don't know if either of you are aware of this, but New Hampshire College students graduate with some of the most debt at public universities in the country.

2:34 Speaker 2: I didn't know that, but it doesn't it doesn't actually surprise me either.

2:38 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we are like routinely like forty eight, forty nine, fiftieth in terms of like average student debt. And a lot of that is because we just don't fund public institutions in the state like we do in a lot of our surrounding states as well. So, you know, I was, I was political before that. I grew up in a union household. You know, my first direct action was standing at a picket line and when I was four years old, and actually Bernie Sanders was huge in helping to end that strike at the time.

3:07 Speaker 1: So my dad was part of the ib W twenty three twenty. They had a bunch of members in named Hampshire Vermont and so like, that's what I really learned about the value of leveraging, you know, the power that elected officials have. And in that case, you know, Bernie Sanders was using his soft power as as a senator. Actually I think he's being centered at that time, but anyway. But anyway, as as a public elected official, you know, Bernie Sanders was able to you know, use his leverage because the unions had backed Bernie and now it was time for Bernie's to back the union, and you know, he was able to help put pressure and to have management and sign the contract that you know led me and my family to have all the things that we need in life.

3:51 Speaker 1: So, you know, I learned some early political lessons, you know, as a kid, but again became really charged in college because then, you know, my own well being was at stake here because you know, I was working thirty hours a week. We're gonna at the grocery store, and I still graduated with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and it was clear to me that we needed to invest more in our university systems, not less. So you know, it became involved, you know, with the College Democrats at the time, I became an organizer.

4:22 Speaker 1: I'm the Manhasion Democratic coordinated campaign. And then I would say more recently in my career, I've gone more towards like the nonpartisan issue advocacy groups, and I kind of good that work a lot more fulfilling.

4:36 Speaker 2: So where are you now in terms of what you're doing and your your activism, your advocacy and groups that you're involved in, and and and the causes that you're involved in that matter the most to you, and that and that you feel are the most pressing.

4:51 Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like in my time as an organizer, writes in Democracy, I originally had started in housing issues. You know, I was actual knocking doors not too far you know, from your neighborhood actually, because there were out of state landlords coming in buying up you know, these multi family homes from you know these previously, you know, you'd have like a mom path you know on the first floor, rent out, you know, second third floor. Now they start to retire and they want to cash in on their investment.

5:20 Speaker 1: So there was this guy who was basically coming in with all this money that was financed in New York City. They were looking at places where they the landlord said this, by the way, quote unquote, where landlords are undercharging their tenants for rent because a mom pod landlord, they usually just want to charge, you know, to pay for the mortgage, the property taxes, and you know, whatever repairs and stuff are needed over the life of a building. But it was obvious to me and some of our leaders that like we needed to talk to these tenants to be able to talk to each other and to either resist these rent hikes a lot of these people.

5:59 Speaker 1: We're also facing renovation evictions in the Hampshire. If the landlord wants to renovate, they can just say get out in thirty days, and there's no legal definition of what our renovation is. So like we've seen times where like a landlord like literally just repainted and that was considered we called a renoviction. And so seeing a lot of these injustices, you know, has really kind of just even charged me even more. And the housing crisis has not gotten any better in that time. But also, you know, in my time at Writes and Democracy, now you know, I've opened up a little bit more into issue areas, particularly working with Gen on like healthcare and how terrible this system is.

6:43 Speaker 1: And before meeting Gen, I knew that our healthcare system was terrible. Yeah, and you know, after knowing Gen, I can specifically articulate why in in depth, and so you know, like like issues that are really important to me and important to the organization I work for. Rights in Democracy is really giving access to things that you need to survive, Like you can't just get by with less housing to a certain extent, right, Like, sure you can downsize your home, but once you're a renter, I mean, your choices are pretty slim and you're either, you know, faced with either paying more money in rent or you go homeless.

7:22 Speaker 1: I also got to see the same similarity with healthcare, Like you can't go with less health care. You can't, you know, go with less blood pressure medication. You can't you know, just have a good quality of life. And then you know, go so long between like confusions that you might need. So I see the profit incentive really ruining the lives of working class people. And now particularly kind of talking more like today at Rights in Democracy, we put on a summer training series. We're gonna be doing the same series again this fall, and really the point is is that we want to help people to identify the problem, to be able to use the same language to identify the problem, and then to be able to talk about the solutions.

8:05 Speaker 1: One thing that I've kind of noticed in my lifetime, and I'm not the first person to make this observation, is that it feels like the right wing is really good at messaging. I was just listening to a podcast about Bill Clinton. It's called the Dolla. I absolutely love it, and I forget what the actual thing was, but like Bill Clinton said something silly, all right, and Rush Limbaugh had bumper stickers of that printed out like the next day, like yeah, this is like pre internet here, So like, you know, and I see this too a lot on social media.

8:37 Speaker 1: I'll hear it when I go to the Borderman and Alderman and I hear public testimony. Conservatives are on point with their messaging. Yes, like one of their leaders says something and they are saying the same thing over and over again, now heavily with what they're saying. I'm a little jealous of that, of how well they stay on message. I think sometimes problem with like the left is that we're a bit more I think diversified. We have different reasons, you know, like why we're involved with this. We have our own unique perspectives.

9:08 Speaker 1: We cherish unique perspectives, but it doesn't quite always lead to good messaging or using terms that people don't quite understand. So really like a huge point of this is kind of just getting our messaging, you know, And like the messaging of like our leaders, our members on point and then we are launching conversation pods with people who attend the training. So what we want to do in this is to create a space for like minded people to be able to talk about, you know, the difficult conversations they're trying to have with their family members, with their neighbors, with their community members, and kind of like work through, like some of the problems that people are having and communicating.

9:50 Speaker 1: A huge point of our summer training series is just how to talk to somebody who might disagree with you politically. And I can give you a little bit of an example of kind of what we focused on you like here.

10:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, and before you do that, I mean just interject, I do want to say that, you know, and and we we talk about this on uh also do you know the Hanging Left podcast with Todd Air and and I kind of went on a rant on one of our shows on there, and I've probably I'm sure I've said it at some point on here too, that you know, one of the things that frustrates me so much as a registered Democrat about the Democratic Party is I I think, I think, I mean, I I'll even go I'll speak a little further and stronger on it.

10:30 Speaker 2: I my personal opinion is that Democrats are generally horrendous at messaging, absolutely horrendous that, you know.

10:40 Speaker 1: Uh.

10:41 Speaker 3: And and on the shooting their own what's that, they're really good at shooting their own. They're really good. Can you hear me?

10:51 Speaker 2: Okay, it's it's a little choppy say that again, They're really good at what.

10:55 Speaker 4: They're really good at shooting their own, especially here in New Hampshire. You know, prime example being this is primary seasons, people starting to run for different offices, but the party is already trying to pick their favorites and tell people not to run, which is absolutely wrong. The party back the candidate after the primary, but when it comes to the primary, they shouldn't be stepping in. They shouldn't be telling anybody whether they should run or not. The people make that decision when they go in and vote at the primary.

11:29 Speaker 2: Yeah. I just though I think there's a broader just problem with Democrats having so much difficulty communicating. And I always like to give this example. You know, on the rare occasion that a Democrat comes along who actually doesn't know how to communicate, well, they wind up serving two terms as president. You know, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, you know Democrats who actually understood how to talk to people about the issues that matter to them. But I feel like that's such a rare thing.

11:58 Speaker 1: Yeah. And also to I was just talking about this with one of our leaders at RANS and Democracy Today,

12:06 Speaker 1: is that I take Trump as an example. The party establishment didn't really like Trump, especially like twenty fifteen around the era, Trump is really really popular with the Republican base, and once the party realized that, like, oh Trump is going to be the nominee very likely, and he's really popular with our base, then they acquiesced to him. And then, as use the example of Bernie Sanders on the side of the Democrats, and what did they do. You know, they saw Bernie was especially in twenty twenty, they saw Bernie gaining momentum, and then what happens.

12:40 Speaker 1: You know, Pete Boutage Edge drops out, endorses Biden. You know, all the others drop out, endorse Biden. Biden gets enough to win the primary, and you know, here we are today and now we have a second Trump term. Obviously Biden won that race, but what good did that do to only have the white House for four years. So I really see that, like the Republican nurture their base, and it seems like Democrats fight their base quite a bit.

13:05 Speaker 2: Yeah, that goes to what that goes to the point Jenny was making about shooting their own.

13:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, now you're right, literally, the Conservatives are better at shooting each other.

13:16 Speaker 2: Well, that's uh, obviously obviously obviously, Brandon, because we don't want to get canceled. Obviously you're referring to former Vice President Dick Cheney, uh shooting his lawyers.

13:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. And also the two.

13:32 Speaker 3: Guys that was a funny one, you.

13:34 Speaker 1: Know, also conservatives. Also the guy actually, you know what, I want to say this. I don't know if you also saw, but some guy was arrested for threatening Kelly a I our governor here, and I saw the committee to elect House Republicans try to claim this guy as a leftist. Now, I'm not going to try to claim this guy was a conservative. A lot of these people are often they have incomprehensible politics.

13:58 Speaker 2: That's true.

13:59 Speaker 1: But he was also mentioning like how he wanted to like, you know, fight the like Jewish controlled FEDS. Doesn't really quite sound like a leftist to me. But again, like the right is really violent, and I find it really hilarious how they try to pinnle a lot of this violence on the left, even though most domestic terrorism in the past fifty years, like I'm talking, like like for every one incident of leftist terrorism in that time, there have been three instances of right wing terrorism.

14:28 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I hear, I hear what you're saying.

14:32 Speaker 4: But I'm going to interject into saying that I would like to see us get away from all of that because in every instance where a murder has taken place, where somebody has done harmed to somebody else, there's something wrong with that individual, not right, not left. There's something mentally ill wrong with them, or something wrong that enables them the ability to take another human life. And that's what we should be talking about as a society, not the it's a left person, it's a right person. It's a grant we all can see there, you know.

15:09 Speaker 4: But when you get down to the the the crux of it, these people have an illness about them that something about them in their brain told them that murdering somebody was okay, right, yeah, So for me, so I wish that was more the conversation. And hey, guess what, we don't do good in mental health care at all. You know, we could talk about that, right, It's how many of these people who fell out of the system or were missed by the system, who were exhibiting signs beforehand, and people missed it, right, just like we do when somebody takes their own life.

15:49 Speaker 4: We miss those signs as a as a society. But we're in this point now. It's really scary because there's so much hate and vitrioll out there that it is giving people almost a permission to be harmful to one another. Right, Oh yeah, yeah, and that's terrifying in and of itself.

16:12 Speaker 3: Sorry.

16:13 Speaker 1: I also think too that we just have a deeply violent culture. So you know, I was making some jokes here about like right wing violence here, but I do want to state that, like Americans as a whole, left, right center whatever, we are a violent bunch. We love violence. Our foreign policy is violent, our domestic policy is violent.

16:33 Speaker 3: Violence, our sports are violence.

16:36 Speaker 4: What do we entertain ourselves with violence of a sort?

16:41 Speaker 3: Right?

16:41 Speaker 1: Yeah?

16:41 Speaker 3: Yeah, Well that's a human thing. That's a human thing.

16:44 Speaker 4: But in America we go too far in that. Now it seems like, especially in the last decade we have, we're etching more and more into the society.

16:53 Speaker 3: We're going backwards.

16:54 Speaker 4: It's okay to be a racist out front now, it's okay to be a white supremacist.

17:00 Speaker 3: Now you're defended for being that.

17:03 Speaker 2: I can't I can't recall a point in a moment in my lifetime up to now where it's been as cool to be openly racist and anti Semitic and and all of it and anti immigrant than it is right now. Like it seems like it seems like all the cool kids, you know what I mean, they're they're open about it. They're you know, the the the Maga bros. They're they're proud, They're loud and proud, and they think it's great. And they they they're really uh, they're they're enjoying themselves. They're having a good time.

17:35 Speaker 1: They're having fun. They are ye no but no, But seriously, though, I I okay. So I'm on TikTok a lot, and I really respect us. Name's Jammel Bowie. He's also a columnist for The New York Times. Not a great big fan of his publication of these days and we're a very big fan of him the individual, and he pointed out something that has made me think quite a bit in one of his tiktoks, which is, we are returning to a level of political violence not since seeing, not seen since the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies.

18:07 Speaker 1: You know, I mean, think about all the leaders that we lost in that time. I mean JFK, Martin, Luther King Junior, you know, Fred Hampton. You know, like we've had a lot of prominent political figures assassinated in that timeframe. And you know, in his opinion, yeah, we are regressing back to that.

18:27 Speaker 3: I feel like we are too.

18:29 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, no, no, it's a it's a really scary time. And you know, violence doesn't it's like it's especially like to have violence we're seeing today. It doesn't accomplish anything, if anything, Like I mean, it's really sad. But like when I hear that, like you know, a public figure, especially on the right, you know, is attacked or there's an attack that's barted, my first thought is like, please don't let this guy be a leftist. Please don't let this guy be a leftist, like, because it's only going to give the right more justification for reprisals.

19:01 Speaker 2: Well, it doesn't matter. Though. It doesn't matter, though, Brandon, because even no matter what his political no matter what the shooters political proclivities may be, the right is going to call them a leftist. They'll just lie about it. It does, so it doesn't even matter.

19:15 Speaker 3: They'll go back on in time to do that.

19:18 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Timothy.

19:19 Speaker 4: McVay, Yeah, what would they say, Oh, Timothy mcveay, Right, they'll that all must be must be woke. You know, if that's and it's and that that just speaks to the degregation of our society the way it used to be is Democrats or Republicans. You could give a disagreement with something like Reagan would say, I can disagree with you, but I can get a but we can work together on the things that we do agree on, Like you know, maybe eighty percent of the things I agree with you on, but twenty percent we don't.

19:50 Speaker 4: Well, eighty percent, I'll work with you on that twenty percent. And when I served in the House, you know, I could be on opposite sides of the PODi having a debate with somebody on one thing, and then on the next thing we're on the same side, working together. On it, and it feels like that doesn't exist anymore. There's no coming together anymore.

20:13 Speaker 3: You know.

20:13 Speaker 4: The President of the United States used to say, immediately after taking the oath, I am the President for all Americans. And now we have a president who says, I am the President for Republicans. But the left are demons, and the left are bad and evil and dehumanizing.

20:33 Speaker 3: And the country and hate America.

20:36 Speaker 2: That's the part that just makes me the angriest when I hear that.

20:40 Speaker 4: Yeah, because there's a whole lot of people serving in this military that fall on the left side of the political spectrum that would be really offended by that, not to mention a whole lot of the rest of us. You know, I consider myself a patriot. I've always considered myself a patriot. I was a proud first responder. One of the proudest things I ever got to do was so the America can flag onto my jackets. I like that is a memory that was etched in me, getting to sew the flag on my shoulders, when I got my bunker jacket, when I you know, got my gear, and to have anybody tell me that I'm not a patriot, My grandfather's name is inscribed on harmon wall at Norwich University after thirty years in the marine.

21:25 Speaker 3: Screw you.

21:27 Speaker 4: My family knows plenty about this country, and we're very proud, and we're very patriotic.

21:32 Speaker 3: And how dare you?

21:34 Speaker 4: Yeah, what's more patriotic than being able to debate with one another?

21:39 Speaker 1: Well that's what they claim. But the thing about it is they don't really want you know, and I don't want to do leg a left right thing here, but like I do just have a lot of this on my mind right now, considering, you know, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, you know, eight days ago. You know, like we're seeing like Jimmy Kimmel get you know, indefinitely suspected did from you know, his talk show for not even making fun of Charlie Kirk. He was making fun of trust to Charlie Kirk. You know, I think Stephen Colbert, the highest rated uh you know, nighttime show, gets canceled for his jokes.

22:14 Speaker 1: Literally, He's literally got canceled for jokes about Donald Trump.

22:19 Speaker 3: And that's what just happened here.

22:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, and and and just and maybe I'm spending a little too much time on social media here, but like I I really like to follow the right quite a bit. Like I'm still on Twitter, I'm never calling it X. And I've been seeing a lot of like the rhetoric that's been that's been kind of coming out here. And I mean, these people just went from like you know, like six months ago, being like I should have a right to say that black people have a lower IQ. And these are the same people that are now saying like, you're not mourning Charlie Murk, Charlie Kirk sufficiently, you know, and like what I want to say, he did not deserve to be to be killed.

22:57 Speaker 1: He did not deserved to be murdered. But also I got it didn't sit right with me how much the media has kind of whitewashed what he said, like, oh, he just wanted you know, the spirit of debate. It's like, now this guy would just.

23:10 Speaker 4: Spirit of debate is not complaining about Jewish money and things.

23:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like going to campus and talking to some like high eighteen year old and then like finding like you know, like the dumbest clip and then posting that online Like that's not really good faith debate. That's not really like listening to each other, like he was just trying to get slammed dunks and he had a radical agenda that was incredibly hateful. So I think sometimes when I point that out, people say, like, what you think he deserved to die? And like, but also I'm not going to whitewash his legacy either, Like he believed really hateful things, right, he.

23:48 Speaker 4: Said that if he saw a black pilot, he'd be really worried.

23:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, he'd literally you know, like that's how.

23:55 Speaker 3: We would do. So what would he say?

23:56 Speaker 4: I wonder what his opinion was for a female pilot, because we all know that he thinks a woman's place is in the home, in giving birth, and it's that kind of thinking that puts a lot of women in bad places. And I could speak from that personally. Did the man deserve to be murdered? No, nobody deserves to be murdered. I'm anti death penalty for any you know, period. And you know, he had every right to spew whatever he wanted to spew and to debate people on that. We might I don't necessarily agree with how or what he might say, but that doesn't give anybody the right to take him away from this.

24:32 Speaker 3: For them, there are two children that.

24:34 Speaker 4: Are going to grow up and they're not even gonna have a memory of their father because they're too young that they will have no memory of their dad. And that's super awful, horrible, And Jimmy Kimmel didn't say anything to the contrary of that. He didn't say that murder was correct at all. He was Trump was literally asked about the guy's murder, and he flipped the conversation to his ballroom, like, go watch what Jimmy Kendall actually said and what he was playing, and he was picking on Trump. Because Trump didn't go, gee, you know, sorry, yes, I'm very sad.

25:08 Speaker 4: He immediately changed the conversation to check out all this equipment over here. We're building the ballroom they've wanted for the last one hundred and fifty years, because you know, for the last one hundred and fifty years, the Americans have been complaining about not having a ballroom in the White House, not about not having chemo for their children.

25:25 Speaker 2: Carolyn Poole put in a comment that's worth reading because it's on this subject read earlier, that they want Kimmel to apologize and give a substantial donation to the family and his Foundation. By the way, there is there is something, there's another element to this whole thing. There's a common thread between what happened to Colbert and what has happened to Jimmy Kimmel is that in both instances, there is a merger that someone wants to get approved. So they that's why they So that's why Colbert is his contract does not be He's still on, but his contract is not being renewed.

26:02 Speaker 2: And that's I think the real reason they've done this to Jimmy Kimmel. They want to make sure that that these mergers that are happening behind the scenes get approved. And that's the real reason they're acquiescing to Trump is is uh is money folly? Yeah?

26:16 Speaker 1: Also also full full transparency here. You know, I am an anti capitalist, I am a socialist, and I think that this is a great example about how capital conspires with bascists. See what is it viacom? And then what is it? Is it? Uh? What's the name of the bachel parent company? Was it Byte Dance or something like that? Oh? Uh, sky Dance, sky Dance, yeah, whatever.

26:38 Speaker 2: Dance is TikTok yeah, skydance Yeah.

26:42 Speaker 1: Yeah. So here's the thing. The the interest of Viacom and sky Dance is only to make money and they do not care about you know, like the concept of free speech. They don't care about democracy. Their only job is to make money for their shareholders or whoever. And by the way, this is a problem in healthcare and housing as well too. There's no regard for human rights. There's no regard for any of this except for making money. And you know, I think that this is really like a canary in the coal mine here.

27:11 Speaker 1: If you've looked at how like authoritarian governments have risen in any part of the world. The media, the comedians are usually the first targets because they are the most visible targets, right And I think that's exactly what's happening right here, Like we don't have freedom of speech, Like go ahead and say your true thoughts about who Charlie Kirk was, say your true thoughts about you know, Israel committing a genocide, you know, say your true thoughts.

27:37 Speaker 3: You know, people are losing their jobs with Donald Trumps.

27:41 Speaker 4: They say something negative about Charlie Kirk, they're losing their jobs if they disagreed with his opinion. And a lot of these people have said nothing that supports a murder or what happened to this man, because it's horrible. Yeah, none of us, and none of these people are saying, oh, he deserved it, because nobody deserves to have their life taken from them.

28:02 Speaker 3: That's just no.

28:03 Speaker 2: I mean, just for the record, I think he was a bad guy. I think you put a lot of really toxic things out into the universe in terms of his politics. But that being said, I'm absolutely horrified. But what happened to this man, my god, And that's I mean, I mean, it's chilling. I think it's horrible and and I could if it can happen to him, it could happen to any of us.

28:24 Speaker 4: But going beyond that, though, let's expand this a little bit, because what's really bothering me is the assault on the press period. Not just that these guys are getting taken off the air, but the press in general is being assaulted. People are losing their jobs in that regard. And if you look at like I was watching a video earlier from one of the press guys who were in la during with Ice trying to stand up with Ice and them literally being targeted and shot at with these less than lethal like the guy had to have emergency surgery.

28:57 Speaker 4: They had to take this thing out of his leg. It was really bad. But the press are being assaulted intentionally, Like they're very obviously press, but they're they're being targeted. And the only reason to target the press is to silence them so that people don't know what's going on. Why else do you target the press exactly, and to control the message. So if we're attacking the press, if we're attacking people and costing them their jobs, if they say it's something you don't like, we're what free speech?

29:29 Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean well also too. It's kind of complicated here because in some ways I also do blame the press for normalizing Trump, especially like what they're doing today. I just don't think that they have done a good job, Like they're kind of in this weird middle position where they don't want to lose their access to Trump and other Republicans. And by way, this is true of any like this even applies to Democrats to as well, but I think it's incredibly worse on the on the right here. But like they they normalize Trump, they you know, like ABC again, like they cowed down to Trump, you know, in this very instance, with Jimmy Kimmel right here.

30:12 Speaker 1: So it's like, you know, they're being attacked for you know, opposing Trump or having one of their employees opposed Trump. But at the same time, like a lot of media, like executives and media owners, they are in lockstep. They love Trump, tax cuts, they love a lot, they love the bill. So it's always kind of this weird balancing act. But the press always ends up getting burned anyways, Like anytime you try to appeal to a fascist, you're going to get burned.

30:40 Speaker 2: True, true, Well, loyalty when it comes to Trump only goes one way ultimately.

30:45 Speaker 1: Oh well yeah, well, I mean yeah, exactly.

30:48 Speaker 2: Yeah.

30:49 Speaker 1: So it's a losing game and I feel like we're all paying the price for it, you.

30:52 Speaker 2: Know, mm hmmmm hmm.

30:54 Speaker 1: I think it should be a little bit more optimistic though.

30:58 Speaker 2: So let's kind of circle back to the part about messaging, because you know, we've talked about a lot about again, these are these are examples, right because you mentioned how the right is so much better at messaging, and and here here we are we've been talking about. This is how they control the message. Here's an example. You know, what's happening right now, so so what what is the solution, because you started to talk about earlier Brandon solutions as far as how democrats can get better, because, like I say, by the way, I'll just give you a quick example of how I feel democrats are horrendous at messaging and and and maybe maybe you can maybe you have an idea of how to fix us.

31:36 Speaker 2: This is a rant I'm sure as Jenny's heard me say this before. During the Biden administration, when uh, the economy was actually doing extraordinarily well coming out of COVID and except for inflation, that was like the one major problem that everyone was complaining about. But we actually we were doing better on inflation than the entire rest of the industrialized world. Coming out of inflation. We actually had the lowest inflation of anybody. But we had a president who couldn't manage to put these sentences together to explain to the American people, Yes, we understand prices are too high, I know, but we're actually doing better than the rest of the world and this will get better.

32:13 Speaker 2: To just hang in there, because the fundamentals of the economy are actually extraordinarily strong, record low unemployment. You know, all everything else about the economy is great. We have this one problem, but we'll get through it. But we are doing better than everyone else we had. We had a you know, at that point, a near octagenarian president who who couldn't I mean we all saw the debate. I mean Biden could barely you know, he was not the messenger he was at one time. And and but unfortunately, because the Democrats are so bad at messaging, there really wasn't anybody else in the Democratic Party who could explain what I just did either.

32:46 Speaker 2: So this is this is an example of where that's That's an example of where I'm coming from, where something should be very, very easy and simple to explain. I'm not an economist, I'm not even good at math, but I understood and I can and I can explain it, but nobody. It's like once Democrats get elected, it's like they forget how to explain anything to people. It's really strange. But but how do we fix that? Well?

33:11 Speaker 1: I do want to push back a little bit here because I don't think actually the economy was that good though, because I mean, you did explain inflation, but I believe that like they could have talked about well, they talked a little bit about corporate greed depending on like who you were listening to. Yeah, but there's this weird balancing act that Biden had to make was that like, listen, the economy is really good right now, and don't talk about inflation at all. Like look at the stock market, look at you know, like, hey, we have like you know, we're routing jobs.

33:39 Speaker 1: But it's like, you know, are people going from working in a factory to going to work out like RB's you know, for like considerably less. So I think also it's really important about messaging is actually having a good policy, having a good plate of policies.

33:52 Speaker 3: Agreed.

33:53 Speaker 1: I can't really tell you what, like Harris's plan was on healthcare. I couldn't really tell you like what like like she had like a housing plan that was going to give first time home buyers twenty thousand dollars. But I'll tell you right now, I make the medium wage in Manchester. Throwing that twenty thousand dollars help throw in an extra hundred thousand dollars, I'm still not qualifying for a mortgage anywhere in the city. The city that I grew up in, and that was you know, working, It was a working class town.

34:19 Speaker 1: And it's harder and harder for folks, and they never really acknowledged, you know, like the the like they'll play a lip service like, oh, housing's really expensive. We're gonna you know, get more horrible housing. How are you gonna do that?

34:32 Speaker 3: Right?

34:33 Speaker 1: I don't think I'm not seeing you know, any prominent Democrats maybe outside of like like the Bernie Sanders you know, you know, you know, the Corey Bushes or yeah, yeah, but you know she did to leave as well, Like you're not seeing like, hey, we need to invest in public housing. We need to repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which prevents us from adding new housing units without destroying existing housing units. A lot of these solutions are private markettions that are making developers wealthy, and they're leaving you know, the poor and working class.

35:04 Speaker 1: Well there's really only the working class. Uh, you know they're leaving this you know, basic human need to be unaccessible. So I think like, like, like a really good first point of good messaging is we actually need something to.

35:18 Speaker 2: Message, have a policy that you can articulate. Yeah yeah, right.

35:23 Speaker 1: Yeah, And and here's the thing I'm not I I have critiques of Bernie Sanders, even though I did just praise him quite a bit year, but I would say he was probably one of the best messengers that the party has ever seen, Like you like what he actually supported, Like what's Bernie gonna do about, you know, skyrocketing health care costs? Oh Medicare for All, Like these are like solid policies that you can go out and communicate to them. So I tend to believe that, you know, our future presidents should be current aldermen or city councilors or state senators at this time.

36:00 Speaker 1: So I really think that focusing as local as we can, it's where you have the most control. I say that, like we need to be holding our local uh you know, I mean really any level too, but holding our elected officials accountable, demanding that they actually have solid policies that we can go out and communicate. And I think also what's really important as well too, is like, you know, being present in your community. You know, I recommend to anybody here, like go to your like your city hall, go to a Bordemar and Algrin meeting, go to like, you know, a committee meeting up at the state House.

36:35 Speaker 1: If you can spend some time and conquered, you really see how like what's going on and communicating you know, whether it's a podcast, whether you know, it's a coffee hour that you want to do with some friends where you kind of like discuss everything. But then also I think it's really good that like we're that we need to be like recruiting people to run for these positions, supporting them to get elected, and then also working with them while they're in powered or you know, the work doesn't stop as soon as the election's over, that's when the work really just begins.

37:07 Speaker 1: So I really value you know, getting friends together, getting a group and trying to make as much change as you can, even if it's just like a little bit like maybe it's making you know, the zone and codes in your city like more lax. Maybe it's you know, advocating for universal childcare and you know, the state house. But I really think that like the core there is like we need good candidates that actually stand for stuff. And also, mind you too, I'm not I'm not an elected I'm not a Democrat anymore.

37:41 Speaker 1: You know, I work for a non partisan organization, and I think that if you're really frustrated with the Democratic Party, we really need to be decentering the Democratic Party. They are not going to save us. They do not want to listen to us. They do not want to hear what we have to say. They want to stick you know, their fingers in their ears and say like, let's send out like another like fourteen postcards, you know, two weeks before election. You know, they're not expanding their base at all, you know, Like I've knocked a lot of doors for various Democrats in my time, specifically here in Manchester, and I can tell you I've noticed that the doors are getting further and further apart.

38:19 Speaker 1: The party is not adding new people, especially compared to Republicans and independents. It really tells me something that, you know, when a plurality of the people here in Manchester are choosing to register as independence, it would make me think if I were a party leader, like why are people opting, you know, not to associate with my party? Now? Maybe they want to vote both primaries, right, but the mythod like a true independent is not real. Like most independents vote one way most of the time, right right, There are like split ticket voters here and there, But people don't want to associate with the brand of the Democratic Party because what does the Democratic already actually stand for?

39:02 Speaker 1: So I personally have tried to change the party within. I'm I got really tired of that, so I do my issue advocacy. I like to say I help any good person running for office here, if they happen to be a Democrat, then great. But I really don't think that the party is going to be the basis of our salvation. It's going to be people that are forming groups, people that are working together, building their own power, and then having the party come to you, Like we need to have like a strong group of people here in New Hampshire that are just advocating for medicare for all.

39:38 Speaker 1: And these people are willing to knock on doors, They're willing to make phone calls, they're willing to camp paign for a candidate if they support this one issue, Like you know, I mentioned Medicare for alls as an example. I think that's really the only way. Like we can't ask the Democratic Party to, you know, drop their corporate donors, like they are going to have to realize that they don't have a big support anymore. But we overhear you and we will help you. But here are conditions. I don't really I don't really see any any better way, if I'm being honest with you.

40:10 Speaker 2: But well, you know, for a long time I called myself an independent because I didn't want to be associated with either party, either of the two major parties, and I kind of still don't. But then, you know, I sort of gave in, I guess you could say, and said, I'll just start calling myself a Democrat again because I'm not changing my registrate. You know, I don't bother to change my registration back and forth. And at this point, I think there's I mean, unless something drastic changes on the right, I don't think I'll ever vote for another Republican, you know, I mean, most of my most of my votes over the years have been for Democrats anyway, but I have voted for independence at certain times, and and I have voted for Republicans a couple of times, usually just if it happened to be in a local election and there was a Republican on the ballot who I knew personally and who I felt was someone of integrity.

40:57 Speaker 2: Even if I didn't necessarily agree with them on everything, I might I might vote for them, and I will publicly acknowledge and Jenny knows this about me, I did. I kind of regret it in hindsight, but I did vote for Kristan Nunu a couple of times. Ideologically the kind of here, this is how low the bar is for, you know, the type of Republican I would accept. But ideologically Kristan Nunu uh, always seemed to me that the kind of of Republican who does not entirely terrify me, you know what I mean, like a like a Northeastern moderate Republican who I don't think is totally evil.

41:37 Speaker 2: So yeah, in hindsight, I regret it because as soon as it became inconvenient to him to continue to oppost Trump, he just completely gave in and got right back on the Trump train. So now I regret it because I don't think he has any character.

41:52 Speaker 1: But uh, I don't think. I don't. I don't really think Snonia stands for really anything other than maybe his family's legacy, you know, but definitely yeah, like he he's not you know, he's not like the the Laura Lumer type of conservative. You know that's saying like florides, turning your kids trends or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, but he's if anything, it's more kind of like a dangerous like I think it's more dangerous, you know, like he's affable, like the media in New Hampshire loves to New New Yes, you know, I actually used to be his tracker.

42:25 Speaker 1: I used to used to film him giving speeches and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I can tell you every reporter that he bumped into like instant pals with them. You know. He's just yeah, yeah, and he and he kind of has a tendency to say yes to like the last person that he talked to, yeah, which is honestly sometimes a huge plus in politics, you know, uh, you know, just kind of saying oh yeah, oh yeah, that sounds great to me. You know, like he said, he said like things about like not wanting to change the abortion laws in New Hampshire, ends up signing a bill doing that anyway.

42:59 Speaker 3: So you know he and that they buried it inside the budget.

43:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's like and that's I mean, it's calculated, and I gotta respect.

43:08 Speaker 3: That utilized rate by medical instrumentation.

43:12 Speaker 2: But he could but he so but speaking of that too, so Sanudu also could just blatantly there was Jenny and I, Uh, this was a number of years ago now, but there was a podcast that Jenny and I became aware of. I don't remember what show was on, but Sonunu was on this right wing podcast. And Sanuduo had always portrayed himself publicly as being as being a pro choice Republican and it consistently pro choice, and that was something he was never going to budge on on this podcast. The podcaster kind of asks him about that, and Sanudu actually said, well, I don't think there's a I don't think you'll find a more pro life governor in the entire country.

43:51 Speaker 2: I've I've been consistently pro life.

43:53 Speaker 4: Like he just blatantly lies in front of a right wing reporter and his whole lingo changed.

44:00 Speaker 3: I liked that man. I liked that man. I voted for that man.

44:05 Speaker 4: But what he signed that budget into law knowing farewell that there was a mandate in there that would force rape by medical instrumentation, which when I say that, that means forcing a transvaginal ultrasound on anyone prior to them being allowed to have an abortion, regardless of siety of circumstances of what have you. I was done that. That's just disgusting, beyond disgusting. Yeah, there's no coming back from signing something like that. You should have said, nope, go fix it, take that out, not going to do this.

44:43 Speaker 4: And later, but not until after it had been law for a year in this state. And I have no idea how many women or young girls were put through something that they should have never been forced to go through. That there was one should be forced to go through prior to an abortion. It was law for a year.

45:07 Speaker 2: I don't know if it was ever enforced him anyway, because I don't know if most people even realize it was there.

45:11 Speaker 4: Do you think that the medical community goes against the law, You're crazy because they lose their licenses to practice if the law says you must do this.

45:22 Speaker 3: I'm I'm in a terrible situation.

45:25 Speaker 2: No, I know, I'm just I'm just saying I think.

45:27 Speaker 4: It happened to one person. That's one person too, I agree,

45:33 Speaker 4: But nothing like that should ever be in law. That should never be in law. But of course I'm taking this a little up. But he was supposedly pro choice and.

45:45 Speaker 1: Then yeah, and if I'm going to tie this back in though, this is because like no one's really held new accountable for anything. The media in New Hampshire absolutely has not, and part of that has been because local journalism has been so gutted. A lot of like the people that I've been and conquered, you know, for decades, have told me like every like you know, major for New Hampshire publication would have their own state House reporter. And now when I talk to like reporters from like NHPR, Union Leader, Conquered Monitor, you're seeing them having to cover the state House and a bunch of other stuff too, So like there's not really a lot of attention necessarily paid to what's actually going on.

46:28 Speaker 1: And also to like these reporters don't want to lose their access to the politicians, holding them accountable is again kind of like a balancing act. So I really think that's kind of where like citizens kind of have to fill that void. We shouldn't have to necessarily, But I really think that like we really should be drawing more attention and talking about the things that we're seeing a conquered or like our local city hall or or really.

46:51 Speaker 3: Don't suppressed challenges at all, No, not at all, Like you know, a lot if anything they they.

47:00 Speaker 4: I don't, for lack of a better term, they whitewashed stuff. Okay, when the Nazis were in conquered and they did a Nazi match salute down the street, WMUR.

47:12 Speaker 3: Reported they were walking.

47:13 Speaker 4: They walked down the street. They did not walk down the street. We were there, We saw it, We videotaped it. They were watching and doing the tittle hitler thing. And when they said that, I was so angry by the way that they said it and made it sound like to me, it was like they were saying the person that they assaulted it was their fault, that it was the person's fault they got assaulted by these people just walking down the street.

47:41 Speaker 2: I think they refused. They didn't even call them Nazis, and they they kind of made it sound like they were just out for a summer stroll and somebody got in their way or something. NBC News ten in Boston did a much better job. Yeah, they also saw their report and they did a really good job, and they called them neo Nazis and they were and and they they covered exactly what happened. But Channel nine just really was like, like.

48:05 Speaker 3: Those call themselves Nazis, they're very proud of who they are.

48:09 Speaker 4: They carry the Nazi flag, they did the Hail Hitler salute, they were saying Ale Hitler. They I mean, they're not quiet about being Nazis. The fact that the media doesn't have enough courage to call them that is alarming because that's how the media has gotten.

48:25 Speaker 2: Some of the media, Like I said, NBC town out of Boston.

48:27 Speaker 3: Maybe, yes, they did do a much better Dan, Yes they did it.

48:31 Speaker 1: Funny though that like a Boston a Boston media organization like covers New Hampshire better than New Hampshire media like has. Yeah, it's absolutely wild to me. And I will say, like they are in Bolden because Trump is in office. Oh yeah, a lot between twenty sixteen twenty twenties here in Manchester and you know, the four years that you know that Biden was president, you know they were they were sad, they were sad. But as soon as Trump got reelected, you know, I've seen my friends and I have seen an increase in Nazi stickers being posted all over Manchester seeing we're seeing these people that are proud to be marching.

49:09 Speaker 1: And then we have a.

49:11 Speaker 4: Business Downstown that was assaulted. There was a bit of a street that had a swastika painted on their window. And there was also last weekend at the Mosaic, not in the Mosaic or collective itself, but the bathroom just outside of it, the men's bathroom.

49:30 Speaker 3: There was something put there that was racial.

49:34 Speaker 4: That actually, uh, which is why they're doing a fundraiser right now for Black Lives Matter because of what was written in that bathroom.

49:41 Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what was said, I just know that it was bad enough.

49:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, As kind of going back to the media, So what's been really frustrating is a lot of ridiculous stuff gets said, specifically in the inter State House, and w WR does not cover it. The UNI Leader does not cover it. And somebody from WMR has told a friend of mine that WMR does not cover anything in the New Hampshire State House unless it gets regional media attention. They are so afraid to actually call anything out, and so they're not really doing their due diligence to inform the citizenry, like wm R if you want to know what happened during the legislative session, Like they don't cover anything really, So it's like there's not really a lot of good sources of information and these processes, like you know, the process as genos like passing a bill, you know, to somebody that doesn't really know the legislative process, it's really complex.

50:39 Speaker 1: Like you need people that know, you know something about the process. You need to know, you know what an executive you know what an executive session is on a committee. You know, they need to know, like what does an expedient to legislate actually mean. It's really difficult for the average person who's busy with a lot of things to be able to kind of discern that. So again, I think that's kind of where like you know, like we and I think you're doing this yere at your show, is you know, showing people like what is actually going on, to talk about it and to maybe actually do something about it.

51:11 Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, yes, indeed, Like I always say, you may not get into politics, but politics gets in there the aspect of your life.

51:20 Speaker 3: Everything that you do, breathe, eat, drink, think about has got some level of government involved in it. So you should be a little more concerned with what those critters are doing.

51:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, if you don't care about politics, your boss, your landlord, and your insurance companies certainly do.

51:38 Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, absolutely, absolutely, Well, we've been on for almost an hour. Is there a we can start to wind this down? But I mean, I mean, is there anything we didn't discuss? I mean we're not on a you know, on the podcast here, We're not on a particular schedule or anything. So if there's anything we didn't get into that that either of you want to touch on, we certainly can.

52:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, just kind of one thing that's been kind of on my mind, kind of keeping it local here in New Hampshire. So, as a community organizer, I like to spend a lot of time in the field. I like to leave the house. I like to go all over the state talk to as many people as I can. And you know, I'm a chatty person. I'm an organizer and a leader of ours. At rad invited me out to the Antrim Home and Harvest Festival this weekend and you know, they had like a bunch of table set up on Main Street. I don't know if you've ever been to Antrim, it's cute as hell.

52:35 Speaker 1: I love it. That's a very cute downtown and so like I was just like striking up conversations with people and kind of asking them them like so like you know, I'm just stopping it from Manchester, like what are like the issues like out here, Like what problems are people facing? And virtually everyone I talked to said, like the school funding, you know, like our school budget is raising our property taxes. And when I go all over the state, it's pretty much a similar story. Our property taxes are through the roof here and a lot of this and a lot of people don't realize this is like this is tied directly because the state is not providing municipalities, you know, with like adequate education funding.

53:16 Speaker 1: We've slashed the interest in dividends tax, which I like to call it the millionaire's tax, and then that burden is following more heavily on the working class here in New Hampshire. You know, property taxes are really regressive. And actually, my friend John Kuiper did really good TikTok about this where he compared a home and I want to say it was just not a Portsmouth that was like one of those surrounding towns. It was a home that was about six hundred thousand dollars out there, and he did the property tax assessment on it, and their property taxes for the year.

53:51 Speaker 1: I think we're something like, you know, like nine thousand bucks, and then he finds a house half the cost and new market and which is much more work in class, and did the property tax calculation, and the tax bill was the same. So when we have a system that relies so heavily on property taxes, the people that can afford it the least end up paying a higher share of what they're actually taking in what their homes are worth. And we're not really considering, like, how else could we be raising revenue in this state.

54:23 Speaker 1: And I think that a lot of particularly Democrats, are really afraid to talk about things like, you know, like not even just reinstating the millionaire's tax, but even upping it. I think that we need some sort of progressive income tax in the state to invest in things like education so that the students here don't graduate with some of the highest amount of debt in the country. That we need to be investing in rural hospitals. There is a hospital in Franklin that's closing down soon and people in the North Country hospital.

54:54 Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't conquered bought that Franklin hospital, the only one that I know of that's in Franklin, which would mean that means all of those patients will either have to be going to Lakes Region, Dartmouth or Conquered Hospital.

55:13 Speaker 3: And that's that's that's that's not cool. That's I.

55:20 Speaker 1: Was just talking to somebody in Gilmington today, one of one of our tendees of our training series. You're saying that paramedics are actually training on how to give birth in a car or an ambulance.

55:31 Speaker 2: Wow, we already do that.

55:32 Speaker 3: They already do that. But they already do that.

55:35 Speaker 1: They've had six berths in the ambulance in the past years. Shoot, yeah, because.

55:41 Speaker 3: Oh, I get what you're saying.

55:43 Speaker 4: Yeah, because there's no there's no well New London Hospital closed their obstructors a long time ago. Franklin closers. If you go here in Manchester CMC closed, there's years ago.

55:55 Speaker 1: Yeah.

55:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, there's nowhere to have a baby.

55:58 Speaker 4: You can have a baby a Conquered Hospital at Dartmouth, I think, Lakes Region and Elliott.

56:06 Speaker 3: But that's not a lot used to be every hospital delivery not anymore. And that's the thing about there's gonna be a lot of stork pins going on.

56:14 Speaker 4: But you know that's scary because that's that's a lot of risk when you're you know, something goes wrong and they bleed out.

56:20 Speaker 3: There's yeah, there's a lot of things that can go wrong.

56:24 Speaker 4: It's better to be in a controlled environment or at least in a in a in a midwiffery.

56:29 Speaker 3: Situation where you've got.

56:32 Speaker 4: Yeah, he's The next thing gonna tell me is the cops are going to be training to deliver because they make it to the scene sometimes first.

56:41 Speaker 1: Yeah, And like I think that I don't see enough of this on the left, I think particularly, you know, unfortunately Democrats are the main you know, party of power on the left, but I'm not really seeing a lot of messaging, particularly from the newancial Democrats about like how like, you know, these things are not just costs to a community, They're an investment in a community. Like why would you want to move into a community where if you're going to start a family, you know it's going to be forty five minutes at like the quickest to be able to get to a maternity ward.

57:11 Speaker 1: No, that's scary, you know, you know, like if we're not putting money into these basic things, like these are services, they're not supposed to be making money, Like highways don't make money.

57:21 Speaker 4: It's not just not too The other side of that coin is when that ambulance is traveling that much farther another twenty minutes to get to the next closest hospital, that's your crew and your ambulance that's out of town. So if you're an andover New Hampshire and used to bring your patient to Franklin, now you're bringing your patient to Conquered, that's a twenty minute additional run there and back. There's the ambulance is no longer in town, So you're hoping that the next towns are going to cover your town if another call happens, because you can't get a quicker turn not turning around quicker.

58:00 Speaker 4: I mean I used to work there. I used to bring people there, and at least in Franklin you could like run back kind of.

58:07 Speaker 3: But yeah, you can't. There's no note. You can't do that. You can't do that from Conquered.

58:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, And I just want to say, this is not an accident like this just didn't. It's not an unfortunate series of events that have led us here. It has been an intentional disinvestment in public good. In the public good, whether it's hospitals, whether it's an EMS service, you know again, education, you know, Like, these are all problems that are fixable, but the people in power in our state government right now don't want to fix that. They personally don't want they don't want these things.

58:42 Speaker 4: I feel like Americans are just ignorant because if we were smart, we would want our children to be the best doctors, the best paramedics, have the best equipment.

58:52 Speaker 3: You would want the best.

58:53 Speaker 4: So then when your ass is old and it's you they're picking up, they got the best, and you've got the best taking care. Instead, we make med school so freaking difficult that we don't have enough neurosurgeons. We can't have a level trauma one center or a level true center even in most places, because we don't have the providers necessary to provide that care, which often is talking about pediatric emergency medicine.

59:19 Speaker 3: I mean, we don't have that. You can't get to that trauma center.

59:23 Speaker 4: Right. This is what we're denying ourselves is the very best because we're too chinsey to want to invest in it, and we're gonna nickel and diamond bitch about everything.

59:35 Speaker 3: Why should I pay for this? Why should I pay for that? Well, so you live longer, so.

59:40 Speaker 4: You live better, right, so you live in a better, cleaner, happier world. And instead we're going freaking backwards in this country. There's more hate, there's more vitual, there's more nastiness. We don't want to invest in anything where New Hampshire just lost funding so students like kiddos who like come out of foster care and don't have anything can go to school that come from low income families can go to school that that funding just got pulled by the FEDS to thank you Trump. The money that's supposed to be going to these rural hospitals we have in the North Country, we have in limited access areas are going to close because that money has now been cut off and people think it's only gone, it's not going to affect them, and by the time it.

1:00:25 Speaker 3: Does, it's going to be too little, too late. Then what But we're letting this happen. People are so.

1:00:29 Speaker 4: Angry and pissy and so nasty in their view they can't see through their own hate to realizing they're screwing themselves.

1:00:38 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, No, we're shooting ourselves in the foot here. Again. It's because we view these things as costs we view these things as a waste of tax payer money, and we're not really viewing them for what they are, which is an investment back into us. Like, you know, I always find a line of like why should I pay for the school district? You know, I don't have any kids in this school, But it's like did you go to school at any point in your life? Do you want? You know, in you know, a doctor that knows how to read when you go to the hospital.

1:01:07 Speaker 1: But again, I think a lot of this ties back into like we are so individualistic as a culture that we don't really see a lot of these like these publicly funded programs as like an investment of themselves. They view it as like, oh, we're giving money to somebody who doesn't deserve it. And you know, I've even seen this kind of line of thinking even that, like with local democrats here, like they think that these services will make us lazy and not want to work anymore, when in reality, it's like no one wants to work right now because you can't afford to live.

1:01:35 Speaker 4: You can't afford to work, Like I think a lot to be able to work one job and afford to live, but people are working two in three jobs and they still can't afford to live.

1:01:45 Speaker 3: And the way our society is now.

1:01:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, and I was gonna say, like, I'm a comfortable man without any kids right now, and I can't qualify for a mortgage anywhere in Manchester.

1:01:54 Speaker 4: The grocery bill has gone up like fifty bucks in the last few months and there's no sign of it going down. Like I'm even able to buy some stuff off at Amazon because it's cheaper than my local discounted grocery store, which is really bizarre.

1:02:08 Speaker 3: But yeah, everything is. The prices are insane. I can't I don't buy. I don't know anybody everybody I.

1:02:14 Speaker 4: Talked to who's not buying as much meat as they used to because they just can't afford it.

1:02:18 Speaker 3: They're cutting back, they're.

1:02:19 Speaker 4: Making pastas, they're making more giant meals that will last a little bit longer or stretch it a little father, Like you know, if you put a chili together, you can get away with a little less meat in it and more bean to kind of fill it up, and you know, ways to cut corners because it's.

1:02:38 Speaker 2: Just although in fairness, I mean, Trump did warn us that this was going to be happening. Remember he said that at Christmas time, instead of buying your daughter ten dollars, maybe you just buy her one or two dolls and that would be good enough.

1:02:51 Speaker 1: Oh my god, could you imagine who like Obama or Biden said that, you know, like like like how like you know, the entire right wing, like like you know, environment there would be like fropping at the mouths.

1:03:01 Speaker 3: Oh oh yeah if I did any of the things that he's doing.

1:03:06 Speaker 1: Yeah, Like That's one thing that frustrates me is that, like, you know, we had hyperinflation one maybe not hyper inflation. I don't know what the actual term is here, but like because of COVID right, like production was down, man demand was still pretty steady, that's conlation. But now we're seeing inflation that is completely man made. Like these are tarriffs, yeah, one by one tyrant here. I don't know why we even allow the president to impose tariffs that's not supposed to it's.

1:03:33 Speaker 4: It's nothing he's doing is supposed to be legal, but he's doing it anyway because he knows it's going to get tied up in court.

1:03:39 Speaker 3: He doesn't give two ships about the law.

1:03:42 Speaker 2: Trump has done so many things by executive order that that no one has ever attempted to do by it. He just does it. He just does it, and he gets away with it. He has a compliant Congress and a compliant Supreme Court.

1:03:54 Speaker 3: He's wanting to shut him down, nobody.

1:03:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, he really can act as a as a monarch.

1:03:59 Speaker 4: And when you are acting above the law, as the nation's number one law enforcement person in charge of everything, who's going to stop you? If Congress isn't willing to stand up to you and say no, if lawmakers not just lawmakers, but if if law enforcement is willing to go along to get along when you I mean, somebody posted in the chat room earlier that in Massachusetts they're just dangling money over people's heads.

1:04:27 Speaker 3: Hey you get a twenty five thousand dollars sign on bonus.

1:04:30 Speaker 2: I'll put that comment back up.

1:04:32 Speaker 4: Yeah, so we're people are people are apparently in American are very cheap with their to give up their morals or their values. You know, they'll sell their souls for a few extra bucks. You know, we we we in this country said it's illegal for law enforcement to profile, it's illegal for law enforcement to do quotas because we saw all the bad things that that happened, innocent people being captured to make those numbers. And now here we are, law enforcement is allowed and an't even encouraged to profile.

1:05:07 Speaker 4: They're encouraged to grab everybody. How many bodies did you get today? They want that three thousand body count of day. They don't care if you're legally legal or whatever. We watched how many American citizens have we seen beaten, being told they have no rights, being taken into custody, held for hours or even days. And there are American citizens.

1:05:33 Speaker 3: And this is happening.

1:05:35 Speaker 1: One thing I think a lot about, you know that meme, how like men think about the Roman Empire every day or I don't know if you've heard that or not. Well, I think about the Roman Republic more so. And one thing that's really interesting to me is that even after the republic fell and we started to see like you know, like like emperors didn't really comm emperors at the time, though, but they still kept a lot of the aesthetics of a republic. You know, they still had senators, they still had you know, like some like you know, like like elections to I think they were like the tribunals or whatever.

1:06:13 Speaker 1: I'm I'm a little rusty now on that. But I really fear that we are kind of in this state right now. I feel like we look like the republic, but we have really moved towards autocracy. And I have one fear in one hope and then maybe I can shut up here. Which is my one fear is that like, you know, maybe it's probably gonna be Democrats to take power, you know, maybe again soon, and that they're just gonna kind of forget that eight years of Trump happened, and then they're just going to be so.

1:06:41 Speaker 3: Well, my hope is that they won't do anything to prevent it.

1:06:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, and we really need, I we we need something to save this democracy here, Like we need radical reforms. We need to really curb the power of the executive. We really need to make sure that like we can't have federal agents going like completely masked up, no bad showing in, kidnapping people.

1:07:04 Speaker 4: Yeah, not having to identify themselves at all, Like that's never been It's always law enforcement is supposed to identify themselves. That's how you know they're really law enforcement. We've spent years and years and years pounding it into women's heads. If it doesn't look like it's a cop cock called nine one one and don't you know, and to be careful and people pretending and now they're just doing it.

1:07:29 Speaker 2: Well, law enforcement too tends to skew conservative. So for them, I mean, this is a great.

1:07:36 Speaker 3: Some law enforcement. This is great because yeah, they can do whatever they want and look at those accountable for the abuses that look at.

1:07:44 Speaker 2: The cops and conquered who let those They let the Nazis just get in their trucks and drive off.

1:07:48 Speaker 4: Oh no, no, they didn't drive off, No no, no, they climbed in the back of a uquaw, sat down and drove off. I'm sorry, I'm gonna say that. I'm gonna say the quiet pad out loud. If that color or the skin have been different, do you think they would have allowed them to pile in the back of a U haul and drive off, because that's what.

1:08:07 Speaker 2: Would have been beaten with clubs.

1:08:10 Speaker 1: Photop enhanceshur state troop or fiz pumping a proud boy like they are at the very least sympathetic to their causes.

1:08:17 Speaker 2: Yeah.

1:08:17 Speaker 1: And I think also too, as we're disinvesting in things like education, healthcare, housing, we're seeing an increase in law enforcement at a time when crime is at an historic low. It's spiked during COVID, but crimates have returned in the general trend that they were going. So like my fear is that like as schools are being defunded, you know, like we we are adding to police departments, and we see this in like the federal level too, like we're cutting education funding for more ice agents. We are, you know, we're getting more and more money into the into these systems and again like ice, like ice agents are making more money than teachers.

1:08:56 Speaker 4: And they're talking about taking special education students out of the public class room and putting them into an institution again, a special building just for them. I mean, centuries of progress is being undone in a matter of months, and it's getting and people are stepping back and allowing it to happen. And that is just mind boggling to me. Like I thought we wanted our kids to be better, right, have a better world than us.

1:09:24 Speaker 1: Well, going back, we need to demand that our leaders can express a bold vision of how they're going to reverse the damage that has been done. And like we can't just keep having and I say we I again, I'm not a Democrat anymore, but I acknowledge I'm in a reluctant coalition with Democrats right because I am on the left here. But like, we can't just be saying like, oh, Republicans are so terrible, like we're going to undo what Trump did, which is what they do need to do, but they also need to start stating, like what do you actually believe?

1:09:55 Speaker 1: Like what are your solutions on healthcare?

1:09:57 Speaker 3: Yeah?

1:09:57 Speaker 1: Like what are what are your solutions?

1:10:00 Speaker 3: Yet all the time in office? Why do you do something more for it?

1:10:03 Speaker 1: Yeah? Exactly. So I think that we need on the left really need to hold you know, the candidates that we support more accountable. Like we can't just have them, you know, voting and then receiving absolutely no feedback, no consequences from us. And I think that like, you know, we we we should be a little bit rude to them in my opinion when when called for Yeah, you know, like we can't just let we can't let the Democrats, you know, just return to the status quo. I think a lot of privilege, more wealthy, more white Democrats just kind of wish that we could return to two thousand and eight right now.

1:10:37 Speaker 1: Two thousand and eight wasn't working for a lot of Americans, right, you know, like the inability of this country to recover from the Great Recession is why we have Trump in the first place. And you know, like all these things that received bipartisan support, like NAFTA, I mean, those gutted industrial jobs and in those regions, that's where Trump really got his base of support right there, because both Democrats and Republicans sold out those union workers to ship those jobs to non union workers overseas, and Trump all he had to do is just occasionally refer to that fact.

1:11:11 Speaker 1: Now he he hasn't done anything really to rectify that at all. He really just kind of renamed after I forget what's even called at this point. But you know, like I think Americans are just like they're they're craving some sort of recognition of the harm that's going on. And I think they see that in Trump. I believe they saw that in Bernie, but they're not really seeing that like a whole lot of and a whole lot of other places. But do I say, like, we do have some good local candidates and even some people running for you know, CV one that like are talking about that.

1:11:39 Speaker 1: So like I don't want to be all doom in gloom like there there is hope. But you know, these folks, you know, are going to face a lot of opposition from the party itself. They have their chosen candidates that they want to win, who are.

1:11:53 Speaker 3: Not really that popular, and that's that's the problem.

1:11:58 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, good, you got to get these old people, not to be ageists, but no way to avoid it. You got to get these old people out of there, you know. I mean, you know, like like Chuck Schumer and you know, just just people who are who are past their uh. I mean, look what they did did with Diane Feinstein. I mean, she was she was non compassmentus. I mean, she was gone, and they wheeled her in. It was like weekend at Bernie's, right, They they wheeled her into vote. I mean, and it was elder abuse what they did to her.

1:12:28 Speaker 2: But I mean, but that's so emblematic of the Democratic Party, you know, and uh, you know, and Biden not to keep going back to that, but another example, there.

1:12:39 Speaker 4: Needs to be some new blood at the top to attract people, and especially here in New Hampshire.

1:12:46 Speaker 1: So so I was just talking to a member. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna, like you know, out them here but you know, they are part of a Democratic committee here in New Hampshire in like a red rural area, and like they were thinking, like how do we get like, you know, like younger families involved with the party. And somebody had the idea of like, oh, what if like we have somebody like we pay like somebody's daughter granddaughter to like watch over some like kids. We'll have like a little play area where like we'll be in the same room but we'll be having the meeting.

1:13:17 Speaker 1: And the State Party said, legally we cannot provide childcare. Uh, don't do it. It's like you want new people to come in. You want like if you're talking about younger people. I know people think of like eighteen and twenty year olds, but like think about the people like you.

1:13:31 Speaker 3: Get people to show up at church. There's a daycare at the church. They're just volunteers.

1:13:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, so here's the thing. Add add in like a few like thirty year old couples with kids to a Democratic Committee meeting and you will lower the average age. Right, You're bringing younger people in. But there seems to be like a resistance to change. Kah. I think again, it's because a lot of people that have power within the Democratic Party, are comfortable like they are wealthier, they are more white, and anything that's kind of like a threat to that power. I like to joke that progressives actually pose a bigger threat to the power of the Democratic Party than Republicans do, because if you're party chair of the hand your Democratic Party and you get absolutely wiped out by Republicans in the election, well, guess what, You're still party chair.

1:14:16 Speaker 1: You still get to put on all these fundraisers. Now if a progressive challenges you for your party seat right there, Oh, you don't have the access that you did. Right, So a lot of it is it's it's it's self preservation and an inability to change its obstinates.

1:14:31 Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, one hundred percent, I agree. I agree, Yeah, I agree. Well, I think on that note, we should we should start to wrap this one up. I think it's been a really good show, and of course we'll we'll do more of these, but anything else.

1:14:48 Speaker 3: Yes, check out the Union Leader tomorrow.

1:14:51 Speaker 4: There will be an op ed by yours truly regarding transportation issues.

1:14:56 Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, tomorrow and the Manchester Union Leader.

1:15:00 Speaker 1: Please send me a link once it's hosted.

1:15:04 Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely very good, very good. And of course Jenny, you can people can follow all of your everything that you're doing at Jen Coffee dot com, g.

1:15:14 Speaker 3: E N N C O F f e y dot com.

1:15:16 Speaker 4: Come check it out and see what kind of trouble I may or may not be getting into here or there or in DC or wherever.

1:15:24 Speaker 2: And of course people can follow me at my website. Matt Connorton dot com and Brandon for people who want to know, this has been wonderful, thank you for joining us, and for people for people who want to know how to follow you, where to find you, how to keep up with everything you're doing, uh, where should they go? And and any of the organizations that you work with that you want to mention, or events coming up, or anything at all that you want to make sure our listeners and viewers know about.

1:15:46 Speaker 1: Please Oh yeah, yeah, so you can follow me. I'm on Blue Sky, I'm currently well, I'm on a permanent Twitter embargo. I am LeMay Brandon, jay As and Juliet at leasy dot social. I am LeMay for tenants on TikTok, I've really posted in a while, but I'm going to make a commitment to do that. If you want to learn more, about the organization that I work for write some democracy. It is Radmovement dot org r a D as in Delta dot org. And I also just want to shout out an organization that I sometimes volunteer for, which is the Mutual Aid Relief Fund m A r F n H. They are on Instagram, you can find them on Facebook as well.

1:16:29 Speaker 1: They do great work providing you know, basic necessities to those who are housing insecure or you know, specifically at home with themselves. They put on free stores all over the state giving out supplies. I'd recommend if you don't know what to do, go go do some mutual aid help, your help, your fellow you know, your fellow person in your community.

1:16:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent, that sounds that sounds fantastic. Well, thank you Brandon and everyone who joined us on the live stream. Thank you, and of course everyone else who gets this in the podcast feed. Of course, you can find the show on all of your or any of your favorite podcast feeds of choice, or you can go to Matt Connerson dot com and find it there as well, or on the IPM Nation YouTube channel, et cetera, et cetera. So Brandon, thank you, and Jenny, thank you and we'll talk to y'all a little bit later.

1:17:15 Speaker 2: Bye everybody, Bye the Commander, don't thee Supreme Leader Magzi coming