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'To Tell Stories of Communities That Are Authentic, You Have to Have a Conversation' Janine Jackson ([link removed])


Janine Jackson: Welcome to the Best of CounterSpin for 2020. I'm Janine Jackson.

As we start a new year, longtime listeners may know, we revisit a few of our weekly looks behind the headlines. We call it “the best of," but it's just a reflection of the sorts of conversations we hope offer some voice or context or information that you might not have heard elsewhere, or that might help you assess the news you are hearing. We're thankful to all of the activists, researchers, reporters and advocates who appear on the show to help us understand the world and how we can change it.

You're listening to the Best of CounterSpin for 2020.

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Janine Jackson: Just in time for 2019's holidays, the Trump administration proposed a rule change to make accessing Social Security Disability benefits harder. No justification was offered, but we were told billions of dollars would "somehow" be saved. Our talk ([link removed]) in January with Alex Lawson of Social Security Works ([link removed]) lifted two ideas that would prove thematic: that the cruelty is the point, and that Trump didn't invent it.
Alex Lawson

Alex Lawson: "Greedy liars on Wall Street can’t stand how well Social Security works."

Alex Lawson: We have incredibly stringent requirements ([link removed]) on the disability benefits that are part of Social Security. What this would do is make people who have received the benefits—they’ve proven their eligibility—reprove ([link removed]) themselves over and over and over again, sometimes as much as every six months. And this is an incredibly arduous process ([link removed]) . So, that’s what they do; but the goal of it is actually to get people to give up. That’s exactly what happened when Ronald Reagan did this ([link removed]) . And it led to tens of thousands of people dying.

And when they were kicked off their benefits, their benefits were ripped out of their hands—when that was looked at, around 60% of the people who had their benefits stolen from them were found to have wrongly had their benefits stolen from them, and were put back on ([link removed]) . But in the meantime, you had tens of thousands of people die.

Now if you’re being really generous, you could say that Ronald Reagan didn’t know what was going to happen when he did this. But now? That’s why Mick Mulvaney is pushing Donald Trump to do it. Mick Mulvaney is a student ([link removed]) of Ronald Reagan, and he’s the architect ([link removed]) of this policy in the Trump White House.

This is part of a decades-long campaign ([link removed]) to either steal, in so-called privatization, or to destroy the Social Security system, so that there’s no other alternative besides Wall Street. And that’s what it all comes down to: Greedy liars on Wall Street can’t stand how well Social Security works.

Less than one penny of every dollar that goes into the system pays ([link removed]) for administering the entire thing. So 99 cents of every dollar paid in comes back in the form of benefits. A Wall Street hedge funder, private equity guy, looks at that and says, “I would tack on another 25–30% as my fee, so that I could buy a golden yacht,” or another golden yacht, or whatever they do with their money. They see the efficiency of Social Security, and they want to destroy it.

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Janine Jackson: Public protest defined 2020, but not all protestors were treated the same—by police or the press. Chip Gibbons, policy director atDefending Rights & Dissent ([link removed]) , talked ([link removed]) about how the FBI justifies targeting peaceful groups, and uses informants to play the press and the public.
Chip Gibbons

Chip Gibbons: "Being angry about social injustice you experience is somehow a pretext that one might then use to go and engage in crime."

Chip Gibbons: We know from thefiles ([link removed]) released via theFreedom of Information Act ([link removed]) about thesurveillance ([link removed]) of Occupy Wall Street, the FBIacknowledged ([link removed]) they were nonviolent. We know about thefiles ([link removed]) released aboutSchool of the Americas Watch ([link removed]) , which is a pacifist antiwar group that protests a notorious military training facility, where it has been training death squads and dictators in Latin America, that they were a peaceful group with peaceful intentions. They try to rationalize this by saying that, at an unknown point in the future, an unknown actor could infiltrate these groups and act violently, or,
in the case of Occupy Wall Street, they said the group could be exploited by a lone offender. But what’s really insidious here is that they clearly think that certain types of speech, therefore, are somehow suspicious.

And you see this logic even more in play with the “Black Identity Extremism” intelligence assessment, which states ([link removed]) that if African Americans are concerned about police racism and social injustice, they’re more likely to engage in lethal retaliatory violence against law enforcement, and that’s a threat the FBI has to counter in the present. And what that’s saying is that being angry about social injustice you experience is somehow a pretext that one might then use to go and engage in crime. It’s a predetermining factor in criminality.

And you see that again: One of the FBI field offices had a report ([link removed]) on, because of anger at the horrible treatment of migrant children who are in concentration camps ([link removed]) in this country, that you’re more likely to see anarchists engage in violence against the government. So this treatment that certain types of speech lead to crime, and therefore are inherently suspicious.

And it’s good that you pointed out agent provocateurs, because the FBI has always used confidential informants to spy on dissent. But since 9/11, and especially in the Muslim community, those confidential informants have increasingly acted ([link removed]) as agents provocateurs, going to people who are not suspected of any crime—in one case, they met someone, a random person in a parking lot of a mosque—and then suggesting, and in many cases enticing them to agree to terror plots that exist only in the FBI’s minds. And then when they agree to partake in them, they’re then arrested, and the FBI does these big press releases, a big press conference saying, “Oh, we foiled terrorism, we foiled a terror plot.” And that further justifies more repression.

***

Janine Jackson: A US airstrike killing ([link removed]) —among others—Iranian Gen. Qasem Soelimani was just one incident that, as Greg Shupak ([link removed]) of the University of Guelph-Humber explained ([link removed]) , downplayed the US’s day-to-day violence against Iran and played up US exceptionalism.
Gregory Shupak

Gregory Shupak: "The United States and its partners are allowed to kill whomever they want, wherever they want, and no resistance to that is legitimate."

Gregory Shupak: We’re seeing this in this perverse way now, where, because there’s seemingly at least a temporary halt being placed on the potential of a full-scale military war, this is presented as, “Oh, OK. Well, it’s only sanctions, right?” The media coverage presents sanctions as though they’re somehow an alternative to war, rather than a part of war, and very often sort of the first phase, or an earlier phase, in a full-scale armed destruction of a country.

One of the recurring tropes in the coverage—I’ve seen it in multiple New York Timeseditorials ([link removed]) , the Washington Post has been publishing former US government officials, Leon Panetta ([link removed]) , as well as others from the Bush and Reagan administrations—and running throughout all of this material is this assertion, which is the murder of Soleimani was justified because he, and/or Iran more generally, are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of troops.

Well, for a minute, we can bracket the fact that there’s pretty thin evidence about that. And Gareth Porter, who you mentioned, documents this quite well in apiece ([link removed]) he did for Truthout in July, where he makes clear that he pressed US officials for evidence of this, or some sort of proof, and they simply admitted to him that they didn’t have any to provide.

But I want to point also to this assumption that killing American servicemembers in Iraq justifies carrying out assassinations of Iranian government leaders. This, I think, is one of the more central and deeper and troubling assumptions in imperialist media, that the United States and its partners are allowed to kill whomever they want, wherever they want, and no resistance to that is legitimate.

***

Janine Jackson: Carol Anderson, professor of African-American studies at Emory University, talked ([link removed]) about the hidden “bureaucratic violence ([link removed]) ” of voter ID laws, purges and poll closures—and the still more obscured, to the public, role of judges.
Carol Anderson

Carol Anderson: "These are judges who do not believe in civil rights. These are judges who do not believe in voting rights.”

Carol Anderson: One of the things that we’ve seen, for instance, is that the US Senate has been confirming these right-wing judges who cannot even get their mouths fixed to say that the Brown decision was appropriately decided. These are judges who do not believe in civil rights. These are judges who do not believe in voting rights. These are the judges who do not believe in environmental rights. These are the judges who do not believe in women’s rights.

And the Republicans in the Senate have been pushing these judges through, with no real vetting whatsoever. So several have gone through, more than ever before, that the American Bar Association hasruled ([link removed]) as being unqualified.

And so we have unqualified federal judges with lifetime appointments on the bench. And so what happens then is, as these cases—civil society, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, they have been suing the states for these voter suppression laws, and how discriminatory they are. But as these cases go up, they’re hitting these judges, these judges who do not believe in voting rights.

And that is why this election of 2020 is so crucial. Because if we have a federal judiciary just loaded down with those who do not believe in basic civil rights, do not believe in the rights guaranteed in the Constitution. Whew….

JJ: Yeah.

CA: Then we are going to be back to where we were after Reconstruction, when that Supreme Court basically gutted ([link removed]) the 14th and 15th Amendments, and skewered the 13th Amendment, that hasbadges of servitude ([link removed]) . And it took about 100 years and a civil rights movement to undo the damage coming out of Reconstruction with that Supreme Court. And that’s where we are headed again, unless we stop it.

***

Janine Jackson: As coronavirus cases in the US surpassed 1 million in April, media were bravely noting ([link removed]) that White House declarations of “a great success story” were "at variance with the facts.” The deeper lie—that we had to trade off lives for livelihoods—went largely unchallenged. We spoke ([link removed]) with FAIR's Jim Naureckas.
Jim Naureckas

Jim Naureckas: "The decision to not have a serious national strategy to combat the coronavirus, that was a choice."

Jim Naureckas: You do see a lot of coverage that assumes that the two choices are to sit in our homes and have people basically go bankrupt as they can’t work, or else to force them back into the workplace and have them take their chances with the coronavirus. And the idea that you could support people through this crisis, give people the resources they need, delay obligations like rent and debt repayment and so forth, that these things could be put off while we deal with the crisis—it’s not really being seriously considered as an option. The idea that the landlord must get paid seems to be a sacred cow that really can’t be trifled with.

JJ: In June, we asked ([link removed]) Jim about fears and facts in connection with the big stories of the day: protests and Covid-19.

JN: You do see a lot of people talking about how dangerous it is to protest, and how this is going to inevitably result in a spike in cases. And it really hasn’t ([link removed]) ; when you look at places like New York; like Minneapolis, Minnesota; the District of Columbia, where there have been a lot of protests, you have not seen a corresponding spike in infections. The places where you have seen big spikes are largely in the South and West, where places have declared it was time to resume normal business operations.

I really think that people underestimate the distinction between outdoor and indoor activities, and activities with masks and without masks; those really do make a huge difference in terms of the danger of spreading the disease.

And also the fact that the number of people involved in an activity makes a great deal of difference. If you’re talking about something that a few percent of the population is doing, it’s obviously going to have a much smaller impact on the trajectory of the infection than something that most of the population is doing.

But when you see people doing something that you don’t like, there’s a tendency to think, “Oh, well, that’s a thing that they shouldn’t be doing anyway. If there’s any risk at all, it’s too much risk.” And people really need to be thinking more probabilistically. Are you really increasing your chances of spreading the virus, compared to what you would be doing in your everyday life? And how many people are doing it?

The decision to not have a serious national strategy to combat the coronavirus, that was a choice. We decided that we were not going to do what it took to actually stop it, and instead, try to mitigate the spread of it, slow down the spread of it so it doesn’t overwhelm our healthcare system.

If you don’t stop the virus, it will eventually spread to virtually the entire population. People think that 70, 80% of people will get infected. The disease has something like a 0.5 to 1% fatality rate. When you do the math, you are talking about millions of people ([link removed]) , in the United States alone, dying from the coronavirus. That is the implication of a strategy that does not try to stop the virus. And I think we’ve never had an actual conversation about whether a seven-figure death toll is something that we’re willing to accept or not.

***

Janine Jackson: CNN was still issuingheadlines ([link removed]) like “Protesters Face Off With the Forces of Order,” even as its own reporters were being teargassed andwrongfully arrested ([link removed]) in demonstrations against the police murder of George Floyd. Why don't such experiences bring reporters into closer solidarity with overpoliced communities? CounterSpin talked ([link removed]) with Alicia Bell, organizing manager with the groupFree Press ([link removed]) .
Alicia Bell

Alicia Bell: "When we’re in conversation with people that we have relationships with, that we’ve established relationships with, there’s going to be so much more variety, so much more nuance."

Alicia Bell: There’s often conversations about the future of journalism and the future of news. And when we think about journalism and news as an institution, and an infrastructure in our community, then what we know is that when our communities are stronger and our communities are more powerful, institutions and infrastructure within our communities are also stronger and more powerful. And the same thing goes for news and for journalism.

But in order for journalists to really be accurately and adequately informing community needs and information needs, and in order for them to tell the stories of communities in ways that are authentic and genuine—you have to have a conversation; and you’re going to have a deeper conversation, you’re going to have a deeper reporting, when you’re in relationship with someone.

And the same thing goes with any kind of relationship, right? If we walk up to someone randomly on the street, and want to ask them about some of the most intimate moments, most important political moments of their lives, we’re less likely to get really rich, deep conversation.

But when we’re in conversation with people that we have relationships with, that we’ve established relationships with, there’s going to be so much more variety, so much more nuance. And the way that we build those relationships, the way that we are encouraging journalists to build those relationships, is really the same way that you build and sustain any relationship. If somebody only comes into your house and eats food out of your refrigerator and doesn’t say hello, doesn’t ask how you’re doing, doesn’t give anything back, you’re rightfully going to be frustrated.

So if journalists are only coming into communities, especially communities of color, Black and brown communities, who have often been marginalized by newsrooms, and are only taking information and taking quotes from people, instead of asking how they’re doing, being present in different community spaces, then the relationship is not going to happen.

So right now, in this immediate moment, those are some of the ways that journalists can be building relationships. They can also be asking different people on the ground, from various community institutions, organizations, non-organizations: “What do you need? What questions do you have right now? What can we get answers to that you might not get answers to?” And do the work of answering those questions and providing that information.

And I think it’s worth thinking about some of the things that folks are protesting right now. When folks are protesting policing and police violence and state-sponsored violence, it’s really a protest of extraction, of “how have you extracted people and power from my community?”

And so for journalists, I think it’s important to not continue that same habit of extraction—because that extraction, that puts you in solidarity and an alignment with folks who are perpetuating state-sponsored violence with the same kind of tactic, just in a different shape and a different form—but instead to think of, “How can this be generative for this community? What kind of followup can there be? How can I collaborate with journalists and newsrooms that are on the ground all the time? What does that look like?” That starts to shift that extraction to being really relational.

***

Janine Jackson: As Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin crushed the life out of George Floyd, one of his colleaguessaid ([link removed]) to those looking on, “Don’t do drugs, kids.” The police who killed Breonna Taylor claim ([link removed]) her murder was "drug-related.” 2020 saw some police reform legislation ([link removed]) in Congress. We talked ([link removed]) with Maritza Perez of theDrug Policy Alliance ([link removed]) about some key things missing.
Maritza Perez

Maritza Perez: "We just need to put an end to militarized policing."

Maritza Perez: Something else that we think is missing from the bill is the fact that this bill attempts to reform the Department of Defense’s1033 program ([link removed]) . The 1033 program is a program that’s been around for approximately 30 years at this point. It allows the Department of Defense to transfer military-grade equipment to local and state police departments.

I think the public really became aware of this program around the time of theMichael Brown protests ([link removed]) in Ferguson. I think people were really just astonished to see that local law enforcement had access to things like tanks, riot gear, the types of things that you think you would see in a war zone, not in a community or in a neighborhood.

But the reason that law enforcement has this is because over the years, this program has allowed billions—more than $7 billion ([link removed]) worth of equipment—to get transferred to local and state departments.

This program is also notorious for being mismanaged. In fact, a couple of years ago, the Government Accountability Officeconducted ([link removed]) a report and review of the program. And they actually created a fake law enforcement agency, and were able to getmilitary-grade equipment ([link removed]) from the program, pretending to be this nonexistent law enforcement agency. So that just kind of paints a picture of how little-managed and how little oversight there is of this program, which is scary because, again, it’s military equipment going into the hands of police officers, and who knows who else.

The bill does include reform around the program, but we don’t think reform is enough. We think that the program needs to be abolished. One reason that law enforcement can make a case for getting this equipment is saying that they are conducting counter-narcotics investigations. The bill would take that piece out, but law enforcement would still be able to get the equipment through other ways, including saying that they are conducting counterterrorism investigations; that could be another way to get this equipment.

Our concern is that the equipment would still go to them, and it would still be used against people, and that’s what we don’t want. And I do want to point out that military equipment, and no-knock warrants, are super tied. I mentioned before that no-knock warrants are often used in conjunction with SWAT raids. The police will often use quick-knock, no-knock warrants during SWAT deployments, specifically during drug investigations, disproportionately against people of color ([link removed]) in drug investigations. So we really think that reform won’t save the program; the program needs to be done away with. We just need to put an end to militarized policing.

And then lastly, what we think the bill fails to do is just really reimagine what public safety can look like. It’s still relying on federal funding to encourage police officers and law enforcement to do the right thing. It’s still saying, “Well, if you do these things, if you implement these policies, we won’t take away your funding.” But, ultimately, it’s still diverting resources to law enforcement. And, in fact, there are other areas within the bill that give law enforcement money to implement some of these rules. It’s not just being used as a stick, saying, “Well, we’ll take your money if you don’t do this.” It’s also like, “We’ll give you money so you can do X, Y and Z.”

And I think that Congress really needs to listen to people on the ground, who aresaying ([link removed]) now is the time where we need to divest from law enforcement and invest in our communities, invest in things that actually create public safety and create safe communities, things like quality education, things like jobs and living wages, things like safe and affordable housing, things like harm reduction.

If we’re talking about people who use drugs, I think a better investment would be in harm reduction services, and programs for people who really need them; that would save lives. That would reduce violence.

I think this bill really does fail to imagine what public safety could look like. That’s our biggest problem with it. They’re not listening to people on the ground. And we’re trying to just help Congress think through what people are actually asking. They’re not saying, “Fund police” right now. In fact, they’re saying the opposite. They’re saying, “Invest in our communities.” This bill doesn’t go far enough.

***

Janine Jackson: Finally, California ballot initiative, Proposition 22 ([link removed](2020)) , saw Uber et al. spend more than $200 million in the effort to lock workers out of basic labor rights, and to sell the public on the idea that those workers don't even want those silly rights anyway. Rey Fuentes of the Partnership for Working Families ([link removed]) broke down ([link removed]) that deception.
Rey Fuentes, Partnership for Working Families

Rey Fuentes: "This Proposition 22 fight has actually energized organizing in a way that I’ve really never seen before."

Rey Fuentes: Whenever each one of these companies started operating, they’ve decided that the workers were independent contractors ([link removed]) , but under any conceivable state law test, these workers have been employees for the purposes of state law, which means they should be getting the things like basic minimum wage protections and overtime. And AB 5 ([link removed]) just crystallized the conversation, and more important than anything else, AB 5 authorized public officials—like the attorney general, and city attorneys around California in large cities—to enforce these obligations.

The companies have designed a web of private arbitrations ([link removed]) which prevent workers from going to court, and really fairly adjudicating what are the results of their employee classification, or what wages they’re owed. And so, because these companies have evaded enforcement in the past, the fact that AB 5 authorized public officials to enforce, and the fact that they started to bring lawsuits against these companies, is what created the urgency to pass Proposition 22, and to really spread so much misinformation about what the proposition actually contains.

I think one of the things that is important to recognize is that this force by the company, their efforts to pass a ballot initiative like this, has not defeated workers, and in fact, has done quite the opposite: We’ve seen the most explosive and energetic worker organizing on the ground that has ever been present in the gig community, in workers who are working for Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash, who now recognize very clearly what is at stake, and have started to very articulately cut through the company’s messaging. A lot of workers who had started working for these companies, when they were first founded, were earning a pretty good wage and sufficient earnings for themselves to maintain a living. But the companies flooded the market, they started cutting rates, and now workers understand very clearly that the companies were holding them, really, hostage on the job, and leaving them without many alternatives.

And so this Proposition 22 fight has actually energized organizing in a way that I’ve really never seen before. That’s what’s an exciting component about this, is that workers are more engaged ([link removed]) , rather than less engaged. That’s one thing that is going to be absolutely critical in the fights ahead.

***

Janine Jackson: That was Rey Fuentes; before him you heard Maritza Perez, Alicia Bell, Jim Naureckas, Carol Anderson, Greg Shupak, Chip Gibbons and Alex Lawson. And that's it for the Best of CounterSpin for 2020.

CounterSpin is produced by FAIR, the media watch group based in New York. You can learn more about us on our website, FAIR.org ([link removed]) . Also the place to show support ([link removed]) for the show, if you’re so inclined. If you hear CounterSpin thanks to listener-supported radio, please support your station.

The show is engineered by Alex Noyes. I'm Janine Jackson. As ever, thanks for listening to CounterSpin.


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