| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
With Colorado Governor Jared Polis, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and businessman Mark Cuban, focused on the governor's year-long education drive as chair of the National Governors Association. | |
| Watch the NGA meeting live at 4.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Cox. | ||
| When connection is needed most, Cox is there to help. | ||
| Bringing affordable internet to families in need, new tech to boys and girls clubs, and support to veterans. | ||
| Whenever and wherever it matters most, we'll be there. | ||
| Cox supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| We're joined now by Ashik Sadiq, Democratic Socialists of America co-chair. | ||
| Ashik, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much for having me. | |
| Can you explain what is democratic socialism and what are the most important issues to the party? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so Democratic Socialists of America is an organization of over 80,000 members all over the country in the United States. | |
| We believe that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we should all have a say in how that wealth is distributed. | ||
| We think all of us deserve to have a healthy quality of life for ourselves, our families, our communities. | ||
| And our mission is to build the movement of everyday people who can organize together in all parts of our lives and build a movement that's strong enough to win the role that we all deserve. | ||
| So is it part of the Democratic Party or is it a separate party completely? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we are an independent organization. | |
| We run people for elected office all over the country, mostly running as Democrats in primaries. | ||
| So Zorhan Mamdani in New York City is a great example. | ||
| He just won the Democratic primary for mayor, and electoral work is one part of what we do. | ||
| We also help people organize in their workplaces, as tenants, in their communities, and we're building the kind of independent working class organization that hasn't really existed in the United States in many years. | ||
| We have formally a two-party system with Republicans and Democrats, but there aren't really many opportunities for people to shape how those parties operate. | ||
| So in other countries, political parties mean you can participate, you can make decisions together and shape what the political system looks like. | ||
| We don't really have that in the United States. | ||
| So this is something we're trying to expand democracy in all parts of people's lives. | ||
| Well, let's talk about Zoran Momdani. | ||
| He made big news. | ||
| He's one of your candidates, as you mentioned, when he won the mayoral primary in New York City for the Democratic Party. | ||
| What do you think propelled him to victory? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Zoron's win in New York City, and there are so many other examples too. | |
| Like just in the past week, Omar Fateh in Minneapolis is on track to be the Democratic candidate for mayor of Minneapolis. | ||
| So we are helping run people all over the country who stand for working class people who have clear platforms. | ||
| Zoron communicated very effectively on just a very simple set of core demands to address cost of living in New York City, the wealthiest city in the world, one of the largest cities in the world. | ||
| And it's also one of the most unequal cities in the country. | ||
| So he campaigned very clearly on demands like fast and free buses, on a rent freeze to control the cost of housing, on municipal grocery stores to help manage the cost of food that's going up all over the city. | ||
| So these are very simple demands. | ||
| They're addressing needs that people haven't been hearing from people in the political system for years. | ||
| And people see, you know, Eric Adams, who's been mayor of New York City for years now. | ||
| They see somebody like Andrew Cuomo, who's been tarred by all sorts of scandal. | ||
| They see the corruption of people in government who are just not meeting people's needs and who are complicit in just making people's lives worse. | ||
| So the federal government under the Trump administration has just been enacting things like the so-called One Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| That's the largest upward transfer of wealth in one law in American history. | ||
| So people saw Zoron campaigning on clear cost of living needs. | ||
| They saw his record in state government with a block of people who are socialists in office in New York State who've been building a record of credibility from the ground up. | ||
| And they're not just legislators in office, they're also organizers. | ||
| They're working directly with labor unions, with workers organizing for their rights. | ||
| They're showing up on the streets in protests. | ||
| And people can see that they're with the people. | ||
| People like Zoron hear directly from us when they're in office. | ||
| They're able to stand on principle inside the halls of power because they're following the lead of so many people organizing on the outside. | ||
| Your party said in a statement after Momdani's win that his victory was, quote, a rejection of the Democratic Party political establishment. | ||
| What part of that was a rejection? | ||
| Are you rejecting the corruption that you mentioned, or are there specific policies that you reject from the Democratic establishment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, we really see it as the Democratic Party establishment for many years has been rejecting a lot of what millions of people in this country have been voting for, have been counting on them to, you know, do things like raise the minimum wage. | |
| DSA has been standing up for actually organizing to win a minimum wage. | ||
| We just helped win the highest minimum wage in the country outside Seattle. | ||
| Meanwhile, in the first few months of the Biden administration, they gave up on raising the minimum wage just to $15 an hour. | ||
| So Democrats often, when they're in government, like Andrew Cuomo, when he was governor of New York State, blocked climate action. | ||
| And DSA, with the block of socialists in office, including Zoron, helped win the Build Public Renewables Act that used the power of the Public Energy Commission to expand renewable energy and get hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to create more green jobs, good union jobs that helps clean our air and lower our bills. | ||
| We have helped win protection for tenants from exorbitant rent heights and evictions. | ||
| We helped win universal preschool in Portland, Oregon. | ||
| That's free and public for all children, paid for by taxing the rich a bit more. | ||
| These are things that the Democratic Party, you know, historically has stood for. | ||
| There have been champions of it in the Democratic Party. | ||
| But in recent years, people just haven't felt that. | ||
| And this is a reason that Kamala Harris in the presidential election last year lost millions of people who had been loyal Democratic voters. | ||
| And this is why Zoron resonated so much. | ||
| Right after the election in November last year, he talked to people on the streets of New York in working class immigrant and black neighborhoods and Queens and the Bronx. | ||
| He talked to people who either didn't vote for president or even voted for Trump. | ||
| In a city like New York City, which has a reputation for being liberal or progressive, many people actually swung toward Trump or just didn't vote at all. | ||
| Well, Ashik, let's go ahead and play a portion of what President Trump said about Mr. Mamdani earlier this month, and then I'll get your response. | ||
| I think he's terrible. | ||
| He's a communist. | ||
| The last thing we need is a communist. | ||
| I said there will never be socialism in the United States. | ||
| Don't we have a communist? | ||
| I think he's bad news. | ||
| And I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with him watching him because he has to come right through this building to get his money. | ||
| And don't worry, he's not going to run away with anything. | ||
| I think he's a, frankly, I've heard he's a total nutjob. | ||
| I think the people of New York are crazy. | ||
| If they go this route, I think they're crazy. | ||
| We will have a communist in the, for the first time, really, a pure, true communist. | ||
| He wants to operate the grocery stores, the department stores. | ||
| What about the people that are there? | ||
| I think it's crazy. | ||
| Ashik, what do you make of his characterization of Mr. Mamdani as a communist? | ||
| And how would you delineate the difference between the Democratic Socialist Party and communism? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, Trump, I think, should feel threatened by what Zorana presents. | |
| Zorana presents, you know, millions of people in this country. | ||
| Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers voted for him in one of the highest turnout primaries in New York history. | ||
| I think Zorano won more total votes in a primary in New York than any other mayoral candidate in New York history. | ||
| And that's because people are so motivated. | ||
| Hundreds of thousands of people showed up to vote in that primary across differences of race and ethnicity. | ||
| He has a strong base of young people, but also diverse working-class immigrant communities that have lived in New York for generations. | ||
| And socialist politicians in the U.S. are popular. | ||
| Bernie Sanders, when he ran for president twice, activated so many people. | ||
| Many of them joined DSA. | ||
| DSA grew very quickly over the past decade, in part inspired by Bernie's presidential runs. | ||
| But what we represent, like the socialism we're talking about, is democratic. | ||
| It has a deep history in the United States. | ||
| People like Martin Luther King Jr. talked about the distribution of wealth in this country is so unequal and so it promotes a lot of evil in our society. | ||
| People like Donald Trump being a billionaire who's exploited the wealth and labor of so many workers in New York City. | ||
| There are so many stories about workers who were stiffed by him for decades before he became a politician. | ||
| And that base of people, working class New Yorkers, like want an alternative. | ||
| So Martin Luther King, like I mentioned, he had a quote, call it democracy or call it democratic socialism, but there has to be a better distribution of wealth within this country. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And if you'd like to join a conversation with Ashik Sadiq, you can go ahead and call in now. | ||
| He is co-chair of Democratic Socialists of America. | ||
| The lines are Democrats 202748-8000, Republicans 202748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| Ashik, I want to play a portion of Mr. Bomadani's interview on Meet the Press last month when he was asked to condemn the phrase, globalize the intifada. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| Do you condemn that phrase, globalize the intifada? | ||
| That's not language that I use. | ||
| The language that I use and the language that I will continue to use to lead this city is that which speaks clearly to my intent, which is an intent grounded in a belief in universal human rights. | ||
| And ultimately, that's what is the foundation of so much of my politics, the belief that freedom and justice and safety are things that to have meaning have to be applied to all people. | ||
| And that includes Israelis and Palestinians as lives. | ||
| But do you actually condemn it? | ||
| I think that's the question and the outstanding issue that a number of people, both of the Jewish faith and beyond, have. | ||
| Do you condemn that phase, globalize the intifada, which a lot of people hear is a call to violence against Jews? | ||
| I've heard from many Jewish New Yorkers who have shared their concerns with me, especially in light of the horrific attacks that we saw in Washington, D.C. and In Boulder, Colorado, about this moment of anti-Semitism in our country and in our city. | ||
| And I've heard those fears and I've had those conversations, and ultimately, they are part and parcel of why, in my campaign, I've put forward a commitment to increase funding for anti-hate crime programming by 800%. | ||
| I don't believe that the role of the mayor is to police speech in the manner, especially of that of Donald Trump, who has put one New Yorker in jail who's just returned to his family, Mahmoud Khalil, for that very supposed crime of speech. | ||
| Ultimately, what I think I need to show is the ability to not only talk about something, but to tackle it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're going to leave this for a moment, take you live to Scotland as President Trump has arrived aboard Air Force One. | |
| Yes, I'll be meeting with the EU on Sunday and we'll be working on a deal. | ||
| We'll see if we make a deal. | ||
| Ursula will be here, highly respected woman. | ||
| So we look forward to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That'll be good. | |
| Mr. President, we are on Gas Master. | ||
| We'll have numerous executives that we're meeting with. | ||
| We're going to be meeting with a lot of people. | ||
| A lot of people will be staying at Turnbury, and then we're going to Aberdeen, which is the oil capital of Europe, actually. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, can you add why what is missing in the UK deal that you have to work out? | |
| Nothing. | ||
| We just, I think it's more of a celebration than a workout. | ||
| It's a great deal for both. | ||
| And we're going to have a meeting on other things other than the deal. | ||
| The deal is concluded. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So from Gaza, French, Frenchman, Middle English, and Recognizing Palestine State West of Covenants. | |
| Well, that's what he does. | ||
| I mean, you know, he that's fine if he does that. | ||
| That's up to him. | ||
| It's not up to me. | ||
| I'm with the United States. | ||
| I'm not with France. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the secretariat situation in Gadra, we hear very dio warnings about. | |
| I think it's terrible what happened with Hamas. | ||
| They tapped everybody along, and we'll see what happens. | ||
| We'll see what response Israel has to that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's getting to be that time Of the deal what is left to work out? | |
| What are the final sticking points? | ||
| I don't know with With the European Union, I think we have a good 50-50 chance. | ||
| That's a lot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What are the sticking points? | |
| Well, I don't want to tell you what the sticking points are, but the sticking points are having to do with maybe 20 different things. | ||
| You don't want to listen to all of them. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What if I think in a half-carl Prime Minister about free speech? | |
| Very important people here. | ||
| Well, it is, but I like your Prime Minister. | ||
| He's slightly more liberal than I am, as you've probably heard. | ||
| But he's a good man. | ||
| He got a trade deal done. | ||
| And, you know, they've been working on this deal for 12 years. | ||
| He got it done. | ||
| It's a good deal. | ||
| It's a good deal for the UK. | ||
| So, no, I'll be seeing him tomorrow, I guess, tomorrow evening. | ||
| And this is our wonderful ambassador, as you know. | ||
| He's doing a good job. | ||
| He's a very, very successful man. | ||
| He'll be doing a good job. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Royal and Ancient says he's going to have to improve infrastructure at Turnbury to bring the Open back. | |
| Is that something you're going to have to do? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| The best course, the best course anywhere in the world is Turnbury. | ||
| The players all want to be a Turnbury. | ||
| Everybody wants to be a Turnberry, so we'll see how that works out. | ||
| The infrastructure needs to be the infrastructure in the course is good. | ||
| In fact, the Royal and Ancient, I don't know if you're aware of this, they spent a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, or probably into the millions of dollars, and they've laid all the wire for television and for electricity under the holes of Turnbury so that when the open gets there, they have it all done. | ||
| They paid for that. | ||
| But we talk about Broadway extra railway station. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| See, I don't know what you can do. | ||
| All I can tell you is that it would be the best place anywhere in your country to have. | ||
| There's no place like it. | ||
| There's no place like Turnbury. | ||
| It's the best, probably the best course in the world. | ||
| And I would say Aberdeen is right up there also. | ||
| Aberdeen's great. | ||
| And while we're here, I'll be with my son, and he's going to cut a ribbon for the second course at Aberdeen, which is just about equal to the first. | ||
| I mean, it's going to be a battle. | ||
| You know, it's, as you know, they're very highly rated. | ||
| And the second course is great. | ||
| Sean Connery helped get me the permits. | ||
| If it weren't for Sean Connery, we wouldn't have those great courses. | ||
| No, I was never, never breakdown. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you ask Halch, what are you hoping Todd Land interviewing Lane Maxwell? | |
| What do you think they get off of that? | ||
| I really have no, really nothing to say about it. | ||
| She is being talked to by a very smart man, by a very good man, Todd Blanche. | ||
| And I don't know anything about the conversation. | ||
| I haven't really been following it. | ||
| A lot of people are asking me about pardons. | ||
| Obviously, this is no time to be talking about pardons. | ||
| But a lot of people have asked about pardon. | ||
| This is just not a time to be talking about pardons. | ||
| Todd will come back with whatever he's got. | ||
| You make it a very big thing over something that's not a big thing. | ||
| You should be talking about, if you're going to talk about that, talk about Clinton, talk about the former president of Harvard, talk about all of his friends, talk about the hedge fund guys that were with him all the time. | ||
| Don't talk about Trump. | ||
| What you should be talking about is the fact that we have the greatest six months in the history of a presidency, according to a lot of people. | ||
| And we had an amazing six months. | ||
| And this is sort of an example of it. | ||
| Now we're meeting with the European Union, having we're also meeting with, as you know, the head of UK, Prime Minister, and I look forward to that. | ||
| But we're meeting in terms of a deal. | ||
| We're meeting with the European Union. | ||
| And that would be actually the biggest deal of them all if we make it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you ask Hal's Republican leaders to not vote on the resolution about the United States? | |
| I was never involved in that. | ||
| I'm focused on making deals. | ||
| I'm not focused on conspiracy theories that you are. | ||
| I mean, I watch you people. | ||
| It's so sad. | ||
| You ought to talk about the success of our country instead of this nonsense you have to talk about over and over again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You've done an amazing job on illegal migration in America. | |
| I have people very worried about the situation. | ||
| Well, I say two things to Europe. | ||
| Stop the windmills. | ||
| You're ruining your countries. | ||
| I really mean it. | ||
| It's so sad. | ||
| You fly over and you see these windmills all over the place, ruining your beautiful fields and valleys and killing your birds. | ||
| And if they're stuck in the ocean, ruining your oceans. | ||
| Stop the windmills. | ||
| And I also, I mean, there's a couple of things I could say, but on immigration, you better get your act together. | ||
| You're not going to have Europe anymore. | ||
| You've got to get your act together. | ||
| And we, you know, as you know, last month we had nobody entering our country. | ||
| Nobody. | ||
| Shut it down. | ||
| And we took out a lot of bad people that got there with Biden. | ||
| Biden was a total stiff. | ||
| And what he allowed to happen, but you're allowing it to happen to your countries. | ||
| And you've got to stop this horrible invasion that's happening to Europe, many countries in Europe. | ||
| Some people, some leaders have not let it happen. | ||
| And they're not getting the proper credit. | ||
| I could name them to you right now, but I'm not going to embarrass the other ones. | ||
| But stop. | ||
| This immigration is killing Europe. | ||
| And the other thing, stop the windmills killing the beauty of your countries. | ||
| Thank you very much, everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
President Trump there just landing in Scotland for a five-day visit. | |
| The Telegraph reporting he'll spend the weekend at his Turnbury golf course before meeting with British Prime Minister Kier Starmer on Monday, with UK officials describing it as a low-key visit, that the two are unlikely to announce any policy breakthroughs. | ||
| The president will then travel to Aberdeenshire to open a new 18-hole golf course named after his mother, Mary Ann McLeod, who was born in Scotland. | ||
| These people in this country who pay next to nothing, with even more tax cuts incoming now as a result of the big, beautiful bill, which is the largest upward transfer of wealth in one law in U.S. history. | ||
| So, you know, I think that working people in the United States don't get to keep enough of the wages they get. | ||
| And, you know, everybody deserves to keep a bigger share of the work that they put in. | ||
| But so many people today are working multiple jobs. | ||
| More, you know, gig work is increasing. | ||
| People don't have basic job protections that everybody deserves. | ||
| So, you know, working Americans are working harder than they have in decades. | ||
| Productivity is going up, but that productivity going up used to mean that workers could benefit from that, like have more time off from work, more, you know, more wages. | ||
| That's not happening because billionaires are running our government right now and they keep getting more tax cuts. | ||
| You know, trillions of dollars in tax cuts are going to the already richest people in the country. | ||
| So, you know, the gentleman who just spoke, you know, like you're not getting to see what you're earning versus people like Donald Trump, like Elon Musk, like Jeff Bezos, they are getting to keep all the profits. | ||
| Ashik, we've got a question for you from Barb in Illinois who asked you this on text. | ||
| Does Mr. Sadiq have information regarding funding for the Democratic Socialist platform in New York City that proposes a quote everything-free agenda? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, funding? | |
| You mean how to pay for it or how my organization is funded? | ||
| Because I can answer both. | ||
| Sure, you can answer both. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so DSA is an organization that does not take funding from very wealthy people. | |
| Like there are a lot of organizations like all these think tanks that are getting millions and even billions of dollars from very wealthy people. | ||
| Democratic Socialists of America is funded entirely based on member dues by people giving what they can, just a few dollars a month. | ||
| And that adds up to working class power. | ||
| Like we have 80,000 members all over the country just giving a little bit of what they can. | ||
| And that's, you know, that's we're funded by and for our own members, like everyday working class people. | ||
| And, you know, as far as how we pay for things at the level of government, like the free buses that Zoran is talking about, free childcare, these are things that, you know, we're just talking about fair taxes, which means like the people who are currently getting away with barely paying anything, that's a very basic way to pay for things. | ||
| Zoran talks about how in New York City, if they just raise taxes to match what New Jersey is doing right across the river, that's what would pay for his programs. | ||
| This is pretty well sourced. | ||
| And at the level of the federal government, look, we're talking about, like, I'm talking about all the tax cuts that should be revenue for the federal government, but just look at the military budget. | ||
| That's now on track to reach $1 trillion per year. | ||
| And, you know, meanwhile, all these services are being cut that millions of people depend on. | ||
| Things like Medicare, you know, things like Medicaid, education, all these things that are things that all people can benefit from and depend on are being slashed. | ||
| Meanwhile, what is this war budget going for? | ||
| You know, people see what's happening in places like Gaza. | ||
| People see, you know, these never-ending wars all over the world. | ||
| And they don't make us safe. | ||
| They're making the whole world less safe. | ||
| And, you know, people see their own, the infrastructure falling apart in their own communities, like bridges collapsing. | ||
| You know, like these are things that our government should be paying for. | ||
| All right, let's take a call. | ||
| Ann Lynn in Bar Harbor, Maine. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you. | |
| So I am a Democrat, and I am also an American Jew and Zionist, and I would like to speak from both those perspectives. | ||
| As a Democrat, I campaign and vote for Jared Golden here in Maine, who's probably the most conservative Democrat in Congress. | ||
| If I still lived in New York, I would totally be from Amdani. | ||
| We need a big tent, and Democrats should be embracing him as the personification of a platform that Democrats used to run on and Democrats' best achievements, such as the New Deal and the Great Society programs. | ||
| That's what he's talking about, and that's what he would want to do. | ||
| Now, as an American Jew and Zionist, I totally agree that without justice for Palestinians, there is no justice or security for Israelis. | ||
| And many Israelis believe that too. | ||
| I have been opposed to the Netanyahu regime, APAC, and KUFI forever. | ||
| And it absolutely breaks my heart to say this, but the Netanyahu regime, my people with my country are committing genocide in Gaza. | ||
| And, you know, the slip of the tongue suicide, really committing genocide, you know, this idea that instead of saying never again, many Jews are saying this time my turn, it is suicide for the Jewish nation. | ||
| And it breaks my heart to say it, but I think the cries of anti-Semitism used as a political cuisine is just, you know, deplorable. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
| Go ahead, Ashik Sandik. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for saying that. | |
| I really appreciate that kind of reflection. | ||
| And it's really important. | ||
| You know, this is an awakening for so many, you know, especially Jewish Americans. | ||
| Like people I'm close to have really struggled to have very frank conversations in their own families. | ||
| Like I have many Jewish friends who grew up with their parents just being really raised with a strong sense of identification with Israel. | ||
| And it's been really heartbreaking for a lot of people to see what the state of Israel has been doing. | ||
| And I think about like my own experience growing up in public schools. | ||
| I grew up in New York City. | ||
| I learned about the Holocaust at a very early age and really identified with what Jews went through because my family came from Bangladesh, which experienced a genocide in my parents' lifetime. | ||
| So when I grew up hearing, you know, never again about the Holocaust, like I really understood that in my own family's experience. | ||
| So I think many people are really waking up now to understanding that genocide is horrific anywhere, anywhere it happens in any society. | ||
| And we need to prevent anything like that from nobody should have to live through atrocities like this. | ||
| And this is something that applies to all people. | ||
| So this is something that many Americans are reckoning with, and we have to reckon with it, you know, like creating the kind of society that does not tolerate mass atrocities like what's happening right now. | ||
| Malik in Missouri City, Texas Independent, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing this morning? | |
| First of all, I can say I support some of the Democratic Socialist platform and as far as going after corporate landlords to improve the cost of housing because the real cost of housing increase is the rise of corporate landlords. | ||
| Secondly, I also believe that Madani in New York is trying to create a public supermarket or public grocery store based on the funds that were given for subsidies to private grocery stores. | ||
| And thirdly, I'd just like to say that this platform is not going to go anywhere if you continue to insult American-born workers, if you continue to insist of having an open border policy. | ||
| Every nation has a border policy and the immigration policy. | ||
| And I myself, I have noticed a rise of Hispanic and Latino workers in this country who do the job that any basic American can do. | ||
| In fact, at my job now, as an English-speaking person, I am in the vast minority, never mind, as an African-American. | ||
| And yet you're here as almost as a platform for a replacement of American workers, as if this country hasn't been surviving and producing and creating things for themselves for the past 400 years without immigration. | ||
| And I cringe when people say immigrants built this country. | ||
| Immigrants didn't build this country. | ||
| Whatever they built in this country, they built for themselves as far as a housing or a family or a better life for themselves. | ||
| They didn't build Wall Street. | ||
| They didn't build the infrastructure. | ||
| They weren't even here during the Civil War. | ||
| The overwhelming majority of immigrants, that's including white Europeans as well, came here well after the Civil War. | ||
| And what gets lost in that argument is that the plight of African American people, foundational black American people, who actually built this country, everything from tobacco to ships gets lost in this sort of politically correct phrase of immigrants built this country. | ||
| All right, Malik, let's go ahead and get a response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, there's a lot there that I would have loved to spend more time talking about. | |
| First of all, thank you for studying what Zoran is talking about in New York. | ||
| I agree with you. | ||
| The policies he's talking about are well established. | ||
| It's clear how we can pay for them. | ||
| There are models for all of them. | ||
| So we've seen examples of how they can work. | ||
| And I, you know, like in looking at American history and what built this country, I don't believe we need to pit people against each other. | ||
| This is America was built. | ||
| I mean, immigrants helped build it. | ||
| Slave labor helped build it. | ||
| And, you know, immigrants have been coming to the United States for many years. | ||
| And, you know, from the foundation, this is not what threatens American workers. | ||
| It's corporations. | ||
| It's people who control how that labor is enacted, whether it was slaveholders for a lot of America's history, like forcing people to do labor without wages, without any kind of freedoms or protections at all. | ||
| Lots of immigrants came as indentured servants from the foundation before the Civil War, from before America even became a country. | ||
| The United States was founded based on the labor of people who came from other places. | ||
| There were indigenous people in the country. | ||
| So we have to reckon with the history of the United States and the very unequal work conditions that helped build it. | ||
| And we want protections for everybody. | ||
| We want unions for everybody. | ||
| It's corporations, CEOs who benefit from underpaying workers, sometimes not even paying workers, and taking jobs across borders. | ||
| So it's billionaires, not migrants, who are the real threat to the working class. | ||
| Ashik, I just wanted to ask about something on your website that your party supports defunding the police slash refunding communities. | ||
| Can you explain that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think the way that Dora Amdani has been talking about it in New York City after a whole term of Eric Adams being mayor, increasing police budgets, but it's not clear at all that it's made people safer. | |
| People see things like the heavy police presence on the trains, going after people for jumping a turnstile, like attacking kids who skipped a fare. | ||
| Meanwhile, there are types of violent crime that are not really being addressed. | ||
| So there are real things that we can do for public safety. | ||
| And that starts with just making sure that the floor of the economy is helping working class people. | ||
| So a lot of the causes of crime are from people not being able to make enough at work or just the things that make communities really safe. | ||
| Like Zoran is talking about, for example, expanding services like mental health or just making it so that first response doesn't have to be the police. | ||
| Like he's addressing what many police officers say in cities like New York City, that they don't want to be the first responders for everything. | ||
| Like there are all sorts of mental health situations or just things where why isn't there more funding for emergency health services or mental health especially. | ||
| So by addressing those kinds of needs, we think that the police can't be a solution for everything. | ||
| And right now, that's just the first resort to fund increasingly militarized police, especially. | ||
| So we think that weapons of war should not be on the streets of our cities. | ||
| And that's something that's been happening for many years, where the surplus from wars, like all these weapons from our wars in the Middle East, are now coming back to communities in the United States. | ||
| And we think that's not necessary and it's actually harmful and makes people less safe. | ||
| Let's talk to Joe in Mana Hawkin, New Jersey. | ||
| Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Joe. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I just want to say that I feel like one of the only things that Democrats and Republicans have in common right now is our distrust of the government, regardless of what administration is in power. | ||
| It sounds like the DSA's platform is exclusively the expansion of government services. | ||
| And I think it's concerning given how well things like Medicaid and Social Security have been administered. | ||
| I don't think that anyone wants to be more dependent on the government than we already are. | ||
| And lowering the cost of food and housing is possible without an explicitly authoritarian third party. | ||
| I appreciate the ideas and everything, but I don't think that system is compatible with the way Americans want to live. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Ashik, your response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, I'll say, you know, our political system is presented to us as Republicans versus Democrats, but actually, you know, a huge portion of our society doesn't even vote. | |
| You know, people who are not registered voters or just, you know, I forget it, something like a quarter to a third just don't vote, who are eligible because they don't identify with either party in power. | ||
| I think, you know, Democratic Socialists, we don't simply want the government to do more things. | ||
| We don't want a big top-down government. | ||
| We want more democracy in all parts of our society. | ||
| We, like right now, our government, you know, led by both parties, is really serving the wealthiest few versus the rest of us. | ||
| So, you know, whatever you identify as, whether it's left or right or middle, everyone deserves a living wage. | ||
| Everyone deserves affordable housing. | ||
| Everyone deserves good health care, good schools, safe neighborhoods. | ||
| And we think a society, you know, should have resources for children to grow up in free of hunger or, you know, like unclean water. | ||
| These are things that everybody deserves. | ||
| So we're not talking about just the government doing things or controlling you. | ||
| We actually want a government that serves just very basic needs for everybody and that actually expands freedom for all of us to just have more free time, to just hang out, not having to work more than 40 hours a week. | ||
| We think it's possible to have good universal public goods to meet everyone's basic needs, and then everybody has the ability to live and thrive on top of that. | ||
| On the independent line in Philadelphia, this is Fred. | ||
| Good morning, Fred. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, Sadiq. | ||
| The first two callers had questions that he already answered, but my question is this. | ||
| First of all, I want to ask him, what do you think about our constitutional republic? | ||
| And can you work with that? | ||
| And the other thing is nobody really talks about teaching, especially the generations that's coming up, how to be productive citizens. | ||
| We all talk about all these, you know, keeping people divided and all the things that's going on. | ||
| And that was my two questions. | ||
| And the other one is that I grew up, I've been around since the late 50s. | ||
| That's how old I am. | ||
| And even through high school there, my high school history teacher always talked about our government and just to keep an eye on the government and just watch what's going on. | ||
| For me, during the 50s and the 60s, the Democrats and the Republicans, we saw where they actually talked together and they crossed the aisle and the whole bit. | ||
| As I was growing up, it was a gentleman a little bit older than I was, and he wound up, I didn't know at the time, that he was a communist. | ||
| And he mentioned it, and he was on the Communist Party ticket with Gus Hall. | ||
| His name is Jarvis Tyner. | ||
| Look him up. | ||
| And we kind of talked about things even back there then. | ||
| And the other issue is like the one lady said, Sarah, you've given us a lot to work with there. | ||
| Ashik, your response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I. | |
| So he talked about like the Constitutional Republic, and he talked about, you know, encouraging people to be productive citizens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you. | |
| So, you know, there's we believe, you know, rules need to apply equally to all people, and we think there are really important things in the Constitution that we all should benefit from. | ||
| Just basic things about freedom of speech and expression. | ||
| Let's start there with the First Amendment. | ||
| These are things that, you know, our rights in many ways have been rolled back on this front. | ||
| The Trump administration has been going after students just for protesting, for exercising the right for free speech. | ||
| Mahmoud Khalil was just released after being illegally detained by ICE just for standing up against war and genocide. | ||
| So there are things that we think are really important, constitutional protections, that need to be really protected and expanded. | ||
| And there are a lot of basic rights that Franklin Delano Roosevelt talked about during the New Deal. | ||
| The four freedoms, like freedom of speech and expression was one, freedom from want, freedom from fear. | ||
| We think these are things that our rights need to keep expanding and keep, you know, we need to be vigilant, like I think you said, against government overreach, against, you know, infringement of our rights and our freedoms. | ||
| We want expansion of freedoms for individuals, not just for the wealthiest people to keep profiting and limit what the rest of us can do. | ||
| We want people to really be equal, to really, you know, be able to just live their best lives. | ||
| Like, that's what it's about for us. | ||
| All right, and here is Jill, Columbia, Maryland, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Jill, you're on with Ashik Sadiq. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I vigorously object to the word democratic as the beginning of the title of his organization. | |
| It inappropriately implies that what he's saying is adopted by the Democratic Party, no matter what they intend, to have it written like that, that's what it sounds like. | ||
| And it's hurtful because controversial, the socialism idea is controversial. | ||
| If the Democratic Party wants to adopt some of the things he's saying, let them do that. | ||
| Find another name for that. | ||
| Because what it's going to do is send people running to the Republican Party and they're not going to do any of that. | ||
| So it is a misappropriation. | ||
| It's not appropriate. | ||
| And it's misleading to have Democratic as a beginning of the title of his organization. | ||
| It implies something that doesn't exist that is not a plank necessarily of what the Democratic Party is promoting. | ||
| If they want to adopt some of that, they can. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We got that point. | ||
| Jill. | ||
| Go ahead, Ashik. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The word democratic, small D democracy, is so important to us. | |
| It's something that's a core value. | ||
| It's not copyrighted by anybody. | ||
| And unfortunately, the Democratic Party, Big D Democrat, has not really been expanding democracy in the ways that we need. | ||
| We need to talk about how, you know, democracy is something that needs to apply to all parts of our lives. | ||
| In our government, we don't have nearly enough democracy in this country right now. | ||
| It's actually been diminishing in some important ways. | ||
| Voting rights are being rolled back. | ||
| And this is something that we need to help people enact democracy in all parts of our lives. | ||
| And that means more democratic participation from our population in government. | ||
| We need more democracy in our own workplaces. | ||
| Unions are so important because they help workers, wherever they work, have more say in what happens at work. | ||
| So democracy is something that, you know, it's about people making decisions together and talking through things and deciding how things happen, whether it's at work, in our government. | ||
| And these are things that have been really rolled back in our country. | ||
| And, you know, the Big D Democratic Party should be standing up for it more. | ||
| But, you know, ultimately, this is something, democracy is something that has to be put into practice by everyday people. | ||
| So this is something that DSA as an organization is, you know, we make decisions in our organization based on what our members want to do, but we also want it to expand to all parts of our society. | ||
| We are the Democratic socialists. | ||
| We're not the Democrat socialists. | ||
| All right, let's fit in one more call. | ||
| Rob in Philadelphia, Independent Line. | ||
| Go ahead, Rob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thank you, C-SPAN, for giving voice to real independent leaders. | ||
| Mr. Siddique, I was wondering, during Democratic primaries, oftentimes DSA-backed candidates are tarnished with this idea that, oh, DSA socialism, that's just for white people. | ||
| And now, if they win a primary, then it becomes, oh, DSA is, you know, for immigrants and people of color. | ||
| So you have this Schrödinger socialist kind of situation. | ||
| I was just wondering what kind of work DSA has planned to demonstrate the universality of some of the ideas and principles that the organization is about. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a great question. | |
| I mean, I think people should really look at the coalition that Zoron organized to, you know, to now be on track to become mayor of New York City. | ||
| It's such a diverse group of people, hundreds of thousands of people who have turned out to vote for Zoron across differences of race and identity. | ||
| And, you know, lots of young people that includes like, you know, white people. | ||
| It includes plenty of immigrants. | ||
| You know, my own family being from Bangladesh, there's a really large Bangladeshi immigrant community in New York City. | ||
| And, you know, they're part of the working class of New York City. | ||
| It's a very diverse city, it's one of the most diverse cities in the world. | ||
| And what Zoran is talking about, like the message that he's been promoting, deeply resonates because it's about meeting people's needs across all kinds of differences. | ||
| And people hear that. | ||
| So, you know. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, Ashik Sadiq, co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. | ||
| They're at DSAUSA.org. | ||
| Thanks so much, Ashik, for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much for having me. | |
| Today, a look at education with Colorado Governor Jared Polis, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and businessman Mark Cuban, focused on the governor's year-long education drive as chair of the National Governors Association. | ||
| Watch the NGA meeting live at 4:30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country. | ||
| Coming up Saturday morning, R Street Institute fellow Caroline Malier will talk about bipartisan efforts in Congress to combat financial fraud and scams. | ||
| Then the executive director of the National Energy Assistance Association, Mark Wolf, on the current state and future of low-income home energy assistance programs. |