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May 31, 2018 - Jimmy Dore Show
59:17
20180531_0531_TJDS_PODCAST
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Get ready for an outstanding entertainment program.
The Jimmy Dore Show.
Hey, look, we have Mel Gibson on the phone.
Hey, Mel.
Oh, hi, Jimmy.
How are you?
Really good to talk to you.
I heard you got a new project you're working on.
Oh, really?
I didn't hear anything about that.
Oh, come on, Mel.
Don't be coy.
Okay, all right, you got me.
We are in the early stages of development for my next project, like you said.
Which is a sequel to The Passion of the Christ, Passion of the Christ 2.
And it's totally real?
Totally real.
Not a joke.
I know it sounds like a joke or a sketch or something, but I guarantee you this is 100% real and really happening.
That's amazing, Mel.
What compelled you to make a sequel to this almost 15-year-old movie?
Well, as a devout Catholic, I felt that I could do more to tell the story of the life of Jesus Christ.
Or, I should say, as a devout Catholic with an anger management problem, the story of the life of Jesus Christ.
You've got a little bit of an anger thing yourself, don't you, Jimmy?
No, I do not.
Come on, I can hear the storms in you from here over the phone.
Okay, maybe.
I knew it.
I can always tell a fellow traveler.
What's your handle, booze?
Not really.
Just medical marijuana and sugar.
Candy bars cool me down sometimes.
Ah, candy boss.
Good choice.
What's your poison, Twix?
I like a good whatchamacallit, or a hundred grand.
Ah, deep cuts, very off the grid.
I buy them by the 12-pack, so I know I always have them around.
I'm going to mail you a giant shipment of candy bars, Jimmy, as a prank.
You don't have to do that.
Well, you're the one who told me about it.
So if you get shaped by a pack of Snickers, it'll be your fault.
Okay, so what can we expect with this sequel?
Well, we'll keep the elements from the original that everyone loved.
The violence, the fact that all the dialogue is in Aramaic and Latin and no one can understand it.
The portrayal of Jews as baby-eating five-ish finals.
But then a few new elements and surprises.
For example, we all know that Jesus was resurrected.
That's no surprise.
I mean, that's why I'm going to heaven no matter what I do.
But did you know that when he was resurrected and returned to Earth, that he was even more ripped than he was before?
I mean, he had abs before and pretty good definition.
But when he came back, he had all bleaks and everything.
It was amazing.
We're putting Jim Caviesel through the ringer as we speak.
These workouts are intense.
We got a CrossFit guy and an exorcist working on him.
Is this in the Bible?
I mean, do you base these movies on the Bible?
You know, it's interesting, Jimmy.
The Bible doesn't actually say much about Jesus.
That's why we'll have to put these pieces back together on our own.
I see.
We do get admittedly a little loose with the scriptures.
I mean, I'm a paleo-Catholic with a deep respect for the word, but I'm also a Hollywood guy with a deep respect for story and spectacle.
You know, the number one criticism of the original Passion of the Christ was that there weren't enough explosions.
At first, I dismissed that criticism as ridiculous, considering there were no explosives in the first century AD.
But in the past 15 years, I'm slowly going insane.
I've come around to see that point.
Okay.
There will be a lot more explosions in the second one.
Because keep in mind, he's resurrected now.
He just can do whatever he wants.
He can make explosions happen.
He can blow up bad guys.
He's basically a superhero now.
In fact, we are in talks to see if we can't include this project in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Have a teaser at the end with Iron Man.
Maybe set up future films with Guardians of the Galaxy.
Are you kidding me?
Jimmy, please tell me your theology isn't so rigid that you don't realize that just because the Guardians of the Galaxy are not explicitly mentioned in the Gospels, that doesn't mean the Gospels preclude the existence of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
I really don't think— Well, Mel, I'll be looking forward to this project.
Thanks, Jimmy, and I am too.
I look forward to this being a huge success.
Then me falling off the wagon, then me going on a racist tirade in the most obviously audio-taped environment imaginable.
Then we'll all come crashing down again and then make another movie about Jesus.
Sounds like you have sort of a regular cycle you can count on.
What can I say, Jimmy?
I love resurrections.
It's the Jimmy Dore Show.
The show for...
...the up-minded, lowly-lover blackbees...
The kind of people that are held maybe on tearing down our nation.
It's the show that makes Anderson Cooper save.
It's hard to talk to you guys.
And now, here's a guy who sounds a lot like me.
It's Jimmy Dore.
Hello everybody, welcome to this week's Jimmy Dore show.
We're in Norway at the Freedom Forum.
Quite a story to tell you about the Freedom Forum.
Turns out there's not much freedom at the Freedom Forum, and it turns out this is just a neocon bunch of neocon scammers who are using human rights to push an agenda.
Maybe you heard the news that Gary Kasparov asked after I asked a question at the opening press conference.
I asked a question about UNITESTA's human rights violations.
Gary Kasparov, yes, the chess champion, Gary Kasparov, who is kind of a co-chair of the Freedom Forum, went berserk, started screaming about gas attacks, called me a Putin puppet, insulting me.
I was called a useful idiot, a weirdo.
So this was all because I asked a question about human rights in the United States and their abuses.
You know, the United States supports 73% of the world's dictators and has killed millions of people, most recently in the Middle East.
So anyway, it took about two minutes for me to see right through this Freedom Forum in Oslo.
Gary Kasparov is an unhinged lunatic and a neocon, along with Thor Helverson, who was also the head of the Freedom Forum.
It is nothing but a BS front for right-wing neocons who want to overthrow governments that are lefty or that want the United States want to get rid of.
So I'm going to do a whole thing on it when I get back from Norway, and it'll be a next week's show.
So it was quite a dizzying experience.
Steph was here, Arno was here, and we have it all on, we have it all recorded.
So we're going to be sharing it when we get back.
We'll be back this next week.
Right now, let's get to this week's show where we're going to talk with exclusive interview with Eva Bartlett.
You know, Eva Bartlett.
She's lived for a few years in Gaza and she's spent a lot of time in Syria.
And she's here to debunk all the BS about the war in Syria.
Plus, we're going to talk with Gail McLaughlin.
She's running, she's a really fantastic progressive Who was the mayor of Richmond, California, and she beat big oil.
She took on Chevron and she won.
And now she's running for lieutenant governor in California.
She's a great woman.
We're going to talk to her.
Plus, remember, if you're in California, June 5th, June 5th, go vote for Gail McLaughlin and Allison Hartson running for Senate against Diane Feinstein.
That's this June 5th.
Those are the people we like the most.
And plus, we're going to have lots of our favorite recent phone calls.
Okay, let's get to the show, and we'll be back in studio next week.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the Jimmy Doer show.
We have a special guest with us, Eva Bartlett.
Now, she's a journalist with extensive experience.
Well, she lived in Gaza from 2008 to 2013.
We first became aware of her here at the Jimmy Dore show when she corrected some lies about Syria at the United Nations press conference.
And the biggest difference between her and the other journalists that she debunked at the press conference is that she's actually been to Syria.
She went back recently and she's here to give us an update.
Please welcome to the show, Eva Bartlett.
Hi, Eva.
Hi, Jimmy.
Thank you so much for having me back on.
So when I first became aware of you, I saw you at that press conference and I saw you school some journalists there who had never been there who just repeat what the government says.
And you kind of outed that these organizations that were bringing us the news about what's happening in Syria weren't actually even organizations.
Like the one organization is just one guy in London who has no idea what he's talking about and things of that nature.
Now, you recently went back to Syria.
And tell me, why did you go back and what did you find?
I went back for a number of reasons, but most immediately was to go to the area of the alleged chemical attack that Western media and Western leadership allege occurred this year.
And that area was Duma, Eastern Ghouta.
And since all of Eastern Ghouta is now liberated from Jaishel Islam and Fadak al-Rahman and the other terrorist factions that were there for years, it was possible to go to that area and to go to the field hospital in question.
If people have seen the videos by the white helmets and other people that were filming on the day of the alleged attack, they would have seen this one hospital room and they would have seen people being hosed down.
And, you know, these were allegedly victims of a gas attack.
When I went there, I spoke with a medical student who was working that day.
He was in a different ward, but he did come into the room shortly after.
And basically, what he summarized was that there was normal shelling.
The Syrian army was fighting terrorism.
Victims from shelling were coming in.
They were having breathing difficulties.
And then at some point, as doctors were treating them, he called them strange people.
In other words, people that weren't known to them at the hospital came in shouting about chemical attacks, freaking people out.
And so the doctors started hosing people down and eventually realized, wait a second, these people aren't exhibiting any of the signs of a gas attack.
Their pupils are not, let's see, I think they should have been constricted.
And they're not showing any of the other signs.
So they stopped treating them for a gas attack and continued treating them for normal shelling responses.
And then they were dispatched home.
And when I asked the medical student, Marwan Jabber, I said, were any of the doctors or nurses or staff on hand that day who were treating these alleged victims were told that these people were exposed to a deadly nerve agent, right?
And this is why we went ahead and bombed Syria.
This is what we're told.
But yet, none of the staff that were treating these alleged victims had any sort of symptoms, had any sort of ailments that you would have expected from staff who were treating alleged victims without protective clothing.
So this is one in a many of realities that debunk the blatant lies that there was a chemical attack in Duma.
So now what you're reporting is confirming is what other people have reported.
Robert Fisk reported the same thing.
He interviewed doctors who said that the people weren't suffering from a chemical attack.
What they were suffering from was hypoxia.
And that was because the shelling, they live underground or they're in these underground tunnels.
And when their shelling happens and the shelling created a lot of dust.
Yeah, and that's what they were being treated for.
And by the way, if you're being, if you're chemically tacked, you know, there's a lot of different things you would have to do to treat someone in a chemical attack.
Like you'd have to wear protective clothing, things like that.
Plus, they were not showing any of the signs.
You have to get rid of their clothes off them.
They didn't do any of this stuff that you would do in a real chemical attack.
So by the way, so Robert Fisk, who's an award-winning journalist, has debunked this.
Now you've been there.
You've debunked this.
One news network has also been there and has debunked this.
So as have others, but the CNN recently did an article where it said that this show peddles in conspiracy theories like the DOMA, like the gas attacks in Syria were hoaxes, which we didn't say.
We said they were false flags, which is a big difference.
So you're going to get smeared for saying this, Eva.
Now, why do you think that is?
Because they can't handle the truth, Jimmy.
I mean, was this not the same CNN that went to an area where alleged victims were and snipped a backpack?
There's a photo of her sniffing backpacks, you know, determining that a chemical agent had been used.
When I was in Douma, I also walked on one of the main streets and I interacted with civilians and I spoke to them and I asked them about life under the terrorists, but also did they think there was a chemical attack?
Because, hey, they live there.
They work there.
So they would have had an opinion and their opinion was no.
Their opinion was that it was, well, they thought, you know, they thought it was just a ruse of the terrorists to frighten them, frighten them from the Syrian government.
I think we would probably agree this was a ruse from the Western powers that are backing the terrorists and the Gulf powers that are backing the terrorists in order to yet again try to find some sort of pretext for regime change in Syria.
And I'm sure you've pointed it out on your show that this came like a week after Trump had announced that they would be withdrawing illegal American troops from Syria.
Correct.
So tell us, what else have you seen in Syria that the mainstream news media is not reporting or reporting incorrectly?
In Douma and also other eastern areas of Ghouta that I went to, like Kaprabatna and Sakba, terrorist headquarters were connected to one another and to other buildings in the area by tunnels.
Now some of these tunnels I went through and they were simply were literally just dug into the earth.
So no just basics, a simple tunnel to walk through.
But others, especially under the Duma Hospital, were elaborate and very well fortified.
And it seems, I'm not an expert and it certainly needs to be researched and investigated, but it seems like these terrorists, many of whom are not very well educated people that joined different terrorist brigades for power and money, it seems like perhaps they had outside help in constructing these tunnels.
And the tunnels effectively enabled them to remain below ground.
So they would go up above ground, fire their hell cannon-fired gas canister bombs and mortars and missiles on the civilians of Damascus, killing at least 11,000 civilians in Damascus over the years.
And then they would go back underground and evade being targeted by the Syrian or Russian forces.
So, I mean, I think that's pretty notable because they were also using civilians as hostages.
And when Ghouta was being liberated, we saw scenes of civilians protesting against the presence of the terrorists.
And the terrorists were told by civilians' testimonies that terrorists were firing upon them.
And when I went to a camp for internally displaced Syrians, the camp is in an area called Herjile, I talked with Syrians from these different areas, from Khuperbatna, from Hamouria, from other areas that when Ghouta was being liberated, these people were saying we tried to flee, but they prevented us.
And when I talked to them, they said the same thing.
They also spoke of executions in public squares, of people being assassinated point blank or having their head chopped off with a sword by the moderates that we are told should be ruling Syria.
Yes, so what people don't realize is that when the United States government refers to moderate rebels, first of all, that's like being a little bit pregnant.
They're not moderate, right?
They're literally trying to overthrow a government and they're terrorists, what they really are.
They're terrorists and what the United States, and it's been, you know, we revealed it many, many different ways that the United States has been, and the CIA has been propping up who we consider to be terrorists in Syria.
We consider Al-Nusra to be terrorists.
We consider ISIS to be terrorists, al-Qaeda.
And we've been funding and propping them up because they want to overthrow the government in Syria.
Now, there's a couple of different reasons why they want to do this.
One is there's a pipeline that they want to put through Syria so they can sell natural gas to Europe.
And that's why Russia doesn't want this to happen because they want to sell natural gas to Europe.
So they're friends with Syria.
Now, what did the Syrian people think why the United States wants to overthrow Assad?
Has anybody told you what they think it's about?
Many people have.
On my last visit in June 2017, I remember particularly a conversation in Homs one evening when I ran into a group of random Syrians sitting on the sidewalk drinking tea.
And they very clearly said essentially what you've just said, Jimmy.
They don't believe it was a popular uprising, and they don't believe that any of these Western governments have Syrian civilians' best wishes as their prime concern.
They know that this is a plot.
And I've encountered Syrians in other areas, in Aleppo, in Latakia, and in Damascus, of course.
Syrians are actually very well informed.
I should mention when I was in all these places, in addition to asking about the lives under terrorist rule, the Lives Force civilians under terrorist rule, I asked them specifically, did they know the White Helmets?
And this ties in because as the terrorists are backed by the West, so is this entity known as the White Helmets that we're meant to believe is intermixing with civilians and saving civilians.
And yet people either said, we don't know because they wouldn't let us near them, or they said flat out, well, they're Jaish al-Islam or they're Falakarman.
We see them one day in military uniforms and we see them also in their white helmets.
And in Sakba, there was a major white helmet center comprising two buildings.
One was for their communications and the other was for their vehicle storage.
And the vehicles included vehicles they had stolen from the Syrian government.
And now I refer to my friend and colleague Vanessa Bely, who took the testimony.
She was there some days prior to me.
And her testimony included an old man saying that the fire truck in that particular building, that firetruck had been stolen from the Syrian civil defense, the real Syrian civil defense, and the man had murdered the actual fire truck driver who was going out to put out a fire.
He murdered the actual Syrian civil defense person and then stole his fire truck.
And this is not the first time we've heard these things.
But also, they or the terrorists they lived in close proximity with or were, they burned the facility before they left because instead of staying with civilians in Ghouta, as you would expect neutral rescuers to do, they went with terrorists to Idlib.
And before leaving, they burned the building that was holding the different vehicles.
And the building that was holding the vehicles was connected to the communications building by a tunnel.
And that was connected to the terrorist bomb factory roughly 200 meters away by a tunnel also.
And in that factory, I could see just untold numbers, massive numbers of missiles, of mortars, and the actual hell cannon thing that is used to fire gas canisters that are modified into bombs onto civilian areas.
So it could not be clear the ties between the white helmets and, in this case, it would Falah Kharahman, the white helmets and the terrorists.
It couldn't be clearer.
So a lot of people have also reported about the white helmets that they are not who they claim to be, that they're working very, we had Carla Ortiz on our show who is a documentary filmmaker who was there.
And she has film evidence of how the white helmets, their headquarters would be right next to feet away from El Nusra headquarters, and that there was lots of commingling.
And you go into a white helmet's headquarters and they'd have terrorist flags on the walls and things like that.
And so, I mean, it's just any objective reporter who's been there talked or has an opinion about the white helmets always come down on the side of the white helmets are not who they are presented to be, but in fact, they're working with the terrorists to overthrow the Assad government.
They're not these neutral observers who are trying to help people, correct?
Correct.
And I also went back to Aleppo on a very brief visit, just interested to see how things had developed over a year and a half since it was liberated of these different terrorist factions.
And one of my interests was going to the citadel and seeing the life there.
But also, I went to the Ansari district of Aleppo, where there was a White Helmet Center.
And just like you're saying, Jimmy, it was a school formerly.
And now, thankfully, it's been restored to being a school.
But it was just next door to Al-Qaeda.
And then another terrorist brigade, all in the same area.
And I was with Syrian journalist Khaled Iskayf, who told me this is where they filmed The Last Men in Aleppo, which I admit I have not seen because I cannot bear the propaganda.
But also, he said, he pointed down the road and roughly 50 or maybe 30 meters down the road, he said, this is where they executed the Palestinian boy Abdullah Issa, Nouredi Mazinki, down the road from the White Helmet's headquarters.
So that was a, was it a 12-year-old boy they beheaded?
Yes.
Yeah, that was pretty gruesome.
So what else do you have to report from your trip to Syria that I'm not asking you about?
Oh, well, I went to Dara, which is south of Damascus.
And my reasoning going to Dara was that when events began in March 2011, Al Jazeera and all the, you know, all the corporate media were telling us that innocent unarmed protesters were being gunned down by savage Syrian security forces.
And I had already interviewed somebody who was serving as a soldier in Senta Dara in years past, but I wanted more corroboration of his story, which was that no, in fact, security forces had batons and they were being gunned down by protesters who had weapons.
So when I went, I spoke with a local priest in Dara who said he saw protesters firing on other protesters.
And I spoke with other civilians in Dara.
And I also went around the town because with all the concern we're told Western leadership and Western media have for hospitals and schools being attacked, I haven't heard them once report on the school in Dara that I saw that has been severely shelled.
And that when I was standing taking photos of the school and talking to a local explaining about the children that had been martyred in the over 50 mortar attacks on the school, this civilian, I was told, to step into the school walls because literally 150 meters down the lane was a sniper, the edge of the secure area where snipers were.
And to get to the state hospital, you have to go along two roads exposed to terrorist snipers 150 meters away.
And the hospital itself has been attacked by shelling and also by sniping.
So for example, the wards, the gynecology ward, the children's ward, the operations ward or the hospital are all off limits because of the snipers.
Wow.
Wow.
Well, that's, you know, that fits the mold of what we've been hearing.
And, you know, the terrorists, they take over hospitals, they take over schools.
And then they say, oh, look, Assad is bombing schools, right?
Isn't that what's happening?
That's what they say, yes.
Yeah.
And the reason most likely is that, well, the terrorists have taken over the school, right?
Absolutely.
If you refer, if you remember in Aleppo, the area that Banal Abed lived in, Bana the Child Wonder.
And actually, I think this is an important point to mention, and I forgot to do so.
Regarding the chemical weapons allegations, I believe it was 17 Syrians from Douma were taken to The Hague and given their testimony about what really occurred.
And one of those people was a boy named Hassan Diyab.
And the media afterwards, Western corporate media, basically said, well, his testimony is not credible.
He's being forced.
He's just a child.
He's being coerced.
And this is the same media that bought the story of then seven-year-old Ban al-Abid, who was apparently tweeting insane amounts from Eastern Aleppo under military siege about Russia and Syria committing Holocaust, et cetera, et cetera.
So they're happy to believe this little child propagandist and she's being exploited, but not a child that's actually saying, No, I wasn't gassed, and here's what happened.
Right.
But in Bana's area, her family was surrounded by al-Qaeda and other terrorist headquarters.
And they specifically did use schools because the schools were reinforced and they would use them as headquarters and underneath prisons for the civilians that they would try and execute or maim.
That seven-year-old girl who was tweeting was tweeting in perfect English and she had great internet service in the middle of a war zone, which was a couple of red flags, right?
Absolutely.
Okay.
And you just, I'm sorry, but you made me remember the day before I went to Dara, I interviewed a doctor, Dr. Amr Gantus, who was working in a military hospital roughly 40 kilometers from Dara in March 2011.
And his interview is amazing.
And I've got so many things to upload and many to get translated and subtitled.
But he said, and in English, he said, when things were happening, the hospital he was working in, the general there told staff, treat civilians first.
This is a command, because there might be civilian injuries.
And before soldiers get treatment, civilians get treatment.
He said there were so many doctors on staff that day, he was sitting in a room drinking coffee and watching TV, which happened to be Al Jazeera.
And he said that Al Jazeera was reporting the hospital refused to treat civilians.
This is not true.
And Al Jazeera was live streaming from the hospital somehow.
And so he believed it was one of the women in one of the hospital rooms live streaming from her phone.
Now, I'm not a tech person, but what kind of phone would one need to have to live stream from a rural area, southern Syria, in 2011?
You'd need some kind of a satellite phone, correct?
I would guess so, because I think I made the point recently, I've now finally upgraded to the modern world and got myself a Samsung 7.
So with that phone, I really don't think I could have live streamed using the Syrian mobile data.
So what was this woman or this person live streaming using, and how did she or he get it?
Okay.
What is your suspicion?
My suspicion is that, well, it's not just a suspicion.
I've had Syrians tell me that there was training ongoing before 2011 on how to take videos, say that they upload to YouTube, all these hashtags and things that most Syrians and myself even weren't familiar with in 2011.
I had one Syrian friend tell me specifically he was taken to training with a bunch of random Syrians and given this training for about a week.
I think it was held in Sweda, southeast of Damascus, before March 2011.
And given all that we know about this being a premeditated war on Syria and about Dara not being fully peaceful and about there being a weapons storage under the Omari Mosque prior to the protest, I think it's safe to assume that there were some people that were trained and there were some people that were given equipment that would enable them to live stream.
Okay.
Eva Bartlett reporting she's been there.
She's been to Syria.
She just got back from her second trip.
That was three.
We spent three weeks there.
Just under three weeks up.
And well, she's again confirming all the things we've been reporting here, which is nice to hear.
So Eva Bartlett, where can people find more of your stuff?
On my blog, ingaza.wordpress.com on Facebook, Eva Karine Bartlett, and on Twitter, Eva K. Bartlett.
And I do have a Patreon.
I keep all my content open, but if you want to support me, that is always welcome.
Okay, fantastic.
Everybody check out Eva Bartlett's work.
It's fantastic.
Thanks for being our guest and thanks for doing the courageous work you've been doing.
Thank you so much, Jimmy.
Hey, you know, we no longer have an Amazon link because we're not doing that.
We're not playing that game.
But here's another great way you can help support the show: you become a premium member.
We give you a couple of hours of premium bonus content every week, and it's a great way to help support the show.
You can do it by going to jimmydoorcompany.com, clicking on join premium.
It's the most affordable premium program in the business, and it's a great way to help put your thumb back in the eye of the bastards.
Thanks for everybody who was already a premium member.
And if you haven't, you're missing out.
We give you lots of bonus content.
Thanks for your support.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the Jimmy Door Show.
We have a special guest you remember, friend of the show, Gail McLaughlin.
She's a two-term mayor of Richmond, California.
And she led a successful grassroots movement to liberate the city from the grip of corporate giants like Chevron.
That's right.
She won.
She beat Chevron, and she's running for lieutenant governor.
And we're glad to have her back.
Progressive fighter and winner.
It's Gail McLaughlin.
Hi, how are you?
Hi, Jimmy.
It's so great to be back on the show.
Thanks for coming in.
And so now, your big thing is that you're a real deal progressive.
You're endorsed by our revolution.
Yes.
And you don't take any corporate money.
In fact, you have a great history of beating corporations because you beat Chevron in Richmond, California.
And now tell briefly what happened.
Yeah, so I have a track record of the work in Richmond beating big corporations like Chevron in particular.
I became mayor in 2006.
I was a council member in 2005.
I was elected mayor in 2006, re-elected in 2010, termed out as mayor, and ran again in 2014 for council to keep the work going.
And to give you an example of what we were up against, in 2014, Chevron, the big oil refinery in our city, spent $3.5 million to try and defeat me and other progressives running for city council that race.
And you know what?
We all won.
All the progressives won and all the Chevron-funded candidates lost.
So we showed it could be done in a city like Richmond, where we have this big money against us.
Right now, we have five corporate-free council members out of seven sitting on the city council, a supermajority.
So now, why did Chevron want to defeat you?
What was the issue?
Yeah, so, you know, Chevron, prior to an organization that I co-founded called the Richmond Progressive Alliance, we co-founded this in 2003.
And then I ran for council in 2004 as the first corporate-free elected official.
So this organization, the RPA, Richmond Progressive Alliance, really fought back against all the corporate domination of our city by Chevron.
And so it took a while for Chevron to realize that we weren't going away, you know, and they thought maybe it was a Yeah.
So in 2003, right before the RPA was founded, the whole city council was in Chevron's hands.
In fact, in the 90s, a Chevron representative had a desk outside the city manager's office.
That's how dominating Chevron was over City Hall.
So the city council members were in Chevron's hands.
The city was spiraling downward.
Nothing was being done to address the pollution in our city, the health aspects of our community.
So there was poverty, pollution from Chevron, and that's where you're fighting it going.
Well, we were fighting the pollution.
We were fighting the poverty and the crime.
You know, we had a reputation as a city with heavy crime, city with heavy pollution.
And, you know, the corporate model was defining the way forward in Richmond.
It was like, trickle down.
Things will eventually change, but they never change.
And so none of this downward spiral was being addressed in a positive way to reverse it.
And so when we came about, you know, we made it clear we were going to get on the city council and eventually we got in the mayor's seat without corporate control.
That was key.
And, you know, little by little, more and more people got elected.
And the emphasis of getting on a city council without corporate money is really key, changing the composition of the council.
But that wasn't the end goal.
The end goal is to change the quality of life for the people of Richmond.
And that's what we did over the course of a little over a decade.
We reversed crime.
We had a 75% reduction in homicides over the eight years I was mayor.
We got a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour.
We passed the first new rent control law in California in 30 years.
We limited Chevron's pollution and we got them to pay their fair or some of the fair share of taxes that we believe we should have gotten over $100 million in additional city taxes from Chevron.
So that's a big deal.
Yeah.
So no wonder they would be willing to spend five, six, seven million dollars to defeat you because if they didn't, they were going to have to pay $100 million in taxes.
That's right.
So they, you know, that's what it's all about.
They knew we were gaining momentum.
It wasn't just me and the council or me as mayor.
More and more elected officials were being elected through our progressive movement, and they were afraid of us.
They felt threatened by our movement.
So they were willing to throw this kind of money to try and stop us.
But it didn't work.
So we just kept winning.
And by 2016, we had this super majority on the council.
And, you know, that's where things are today.
And we're not turning back.
And that's what we encourage other cities to do as well.
So now you got a $15 minimum wage passed in Richmond.
Yes.
And so now I'm going to guess all the fast foods, they closed up, right?
No.
They hired robots.
No, no, no.
So they must all be losing money.
You know, they're not amazing.
Really?
So it turns out they can have a profitable restaurant business that serves fast food and pay in living.
And they could pay a decent wage to their workers.
Right.
And that was always the threat.
You know, oh, we're going to lose the businesses that we have.
No, that did not happen.
It didn't happen.
They pay what they have to pay.
But a Big Mac must cost $20, right?
No, the price of a Big Mac stayed the same.
Still the same.
It's an unbelievable thing.
I know.
You know, we just have to wake people up to recognizing that this false misinformation that these businesses are going to go away if we charge them their fair share of taxes.
You know, people get it now more and more, and we just have to keep spreading the message.
Yeah, there's no reason why the people who actually generate the billions in profit for fast food companies shouldn't share in the profits, right?
I mean, they're the ones generating it.
So it just makes this idea like, well, if you raise their pay to $15 an hour, they're just going to close up or something.
Like, it's just the craziest thing.
Yeah, no, the people who do the work are the people who are really providing this service, you know, whether it's fast food or whatever.
You know, workers have a right to get a fair share.
I mean, that's, I'm standing for worker-owned co-op.
So, I really like the idea of worker ownership where you have the workers making the decisions and sharing in the profits, you know, just a collective ownership.
But unions are important too, in these corporate entities that don't want to, but when they're forced to, they will pay the kind of money that our working class deserves.
Yeah, you know, people, we did a video a couple weeks ago.
Dr. Richard Wolfe was here, talked about the power of co-ops.
Yes, and they're like, you know, they're very successful.
And of course, the corporate media doesn't want you to know that, which is why you don't know it.
That's right.
Yeah, they don't.
I went to Mondragon Spain, which is really the world capital of worker co-ops.
They've been in existence since the 40s.
And they're 100,000 people involved in that co-op.
That's right.
And they have the sixth wealthiest business in Spain.
It's like a collective of 120 co-ops called the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, is what it's called.
And I learned so much.
And then I brought back that learning experience to Richmond, and we promoted the idea of co-ops.
One of the big issues with co-ops is seed money, you know, getting a group able to get going, you know, while they're, because you don't make a profit right away.
And so one of the things that I'm talking about in my lieutenant governor campaign is a public bank.
And one thing we could do with a public bank is provide seed money for worker co-ops, you know, and that's going to be something that will really help.
So we've been talking a little bit about this public banks.
This is a great, I'm glad you brought it up.
Why do you think that we don't have a public bank already?
And what are the great benefits of a public bank?
Now, one of the big benefits that it's like when you want to fund an infrastructure project for your state, you don't have to do bond measures, right?
You can just have the bank lend the money at a decent rate, and that saves a lot of money, correct?
Absolutely.
You know, having been a mayor of a city, I can tell you when you have infrastructure projects, you float a bond with the private banks who charge you, you know, twice as much as the cost of the infrastructure project in interest.
So you have to pay back twice as much.
You know, you're borrowing the money and you have twice as much to pay back.
And that's the citizens, the taxpayers' money that goes for that.
So when you have a public bank, you don't have that issue at play.
So it offers the advantage of not having to pay this huge interest that the private banks pay.
It also offers the advantage of us being able to put forward truly affordable public housing projects that maybe we could put forward very low interest loans to affordable housing developers rather than these big luxury housing developers that we see taking over our cities often.
And my thought is that we should create a high taxation for the luxury developers so that they are more inclined to go the affordable housing route and give these incentives to truly affordable housing projects.
Now, you also had a great idea during the housing crash on how to beat the banks.
You had an eminent domain.
You were going to seize the mortgages of these houses that were underwater.
And tell me about that.
Yeah, so in the midst of the foreclosure crisis, Richmond was hit really hard, you know, with predatory loans and such.
Our community had a large amount of underwater mortgages.
I think this was by around 2009, 2010, 2011.
I mean, the foreclosure crisis, as you know, went on for a while, and actually it's still going on.
But at a certain point, 50% of our mortgages in Richmond were underwater.
And we were seeking from the big banks, the private banks, to reduce the principles on these loans in line with the current home values.
Economists of all political stripes were saying that was the way to solve the housing crisis.
Lower those principles so you have it in line with the home value rather than the mortgage so high and the home value so low at that point.
And the big banks were saying, no, we can't do this.
We have investors all over the world.
We can't get them together to make a decision about how to do this modification.
So we said, well, if you can't do it, sell it to us, the city, and we will reduce the principles for our homeowners.
We'll keep the homeowner in the home, reduce the principals, and put an affordable mortgage back in the hands of the homeowner.
And if you won't voluntarily sell us these mortgages that are now, you know, pretty junk mortgages, we'll take them by eminent domain.
We'll still pay you a fair, the fair market price, but we'll use our city power of eminent domain to acquire these mortgages to help our homeowners, to help our neighborhoods stabilize.
And Wall Street was up in arms, believe me, they don't want government to take over the role of Wall Street, which, you know, market is the market economy, and they think they have the right to do whatever they want regardless of the harm to our communities.
We got a lot of traction on that.
You know, all over the nation, people thought it was quite innovative.
Other cities were saying, go Richmond.
They weren't quite ready to join us.
We were trying to get other cities to do the same and join in a joint powers authority of cities doing this together because Wall Street was getting to those cities as well.
And they were telling them, oh, we're going to redline you or we're going to make sure that your cities don't, your community doesn't get mortgage loans.
And that's illegal, by the way.
But anyway, we kept going until Wall Street got to Congress and they told Congress, you know, we know our congressional representatives are corporate dominated and financial industry dominated.
So Congress put forward a bill that said any public entity that acquires a mortgage by eminent domain will not get government insurance.
And we needed to insure the mortgages, you know, with government insurance.
So that kind of set the program aside, and you know, unfortunately.
But we put so much pressure on Wall Street that they were pressured into doing some of these principal reductions voluntarily.
So in that respect, we did gain some traction, some help for our homeowners, not as much as we wanted.
But with a different Congress someday, you know, we want to resurrect the program.
Yeah.
With a different Congress, we'd have to get rid of the Democrats.
We've got to get rid of all the corporate controlled elected officials that we have, that's for sure.
This interesting article in the San Francisco Chronicle is Gail McLaughlin.
She's running for lieutenant governor.
And nobody used to really pay attention to the lieutenant governor's race.
And then I see this article in the San Francisco Chronicle that says light gov no more.
That's what it used to call lieutenant governor.
And it says California candidates spending millions for a job that gets no respect.
And here's just a little bit.
So there are two former ambassadors running for lieutenant governor.
That's interesting.
As are a veteran state senator, a former Richmond mayor, that's you, a San Jose State University professor, and a wealthy Los Angeles businessman who has spent $2 million of his own money on the race and won the state Republican Party endorsement, even though he hasn't attended a single candidates forum.
That's the power of money, right?
That's the power of money.
Absolutely.
And so, first of all, let me just ask: who are the two ambassadors running for this seat?
So one of the ambassadors is the ambassador to Hungary, and the other one is the ambassador to Australia, I believe.
So in terms of Eleni Kunalakis, she has just mega bucks flowing in terms of her campaign.
Her father is one of the head of one of the major housing developers in the country.
And she herself was president of this development company.
So why do you think all these people are interested in the lieutenant governor's race?
Well, you know, it's hard to say, except that, you know, they maybe some are doing it as a stepping stone to governor.
Oh, it's because currently Gavin Newsom was our lieutenant governor.
Now he's running for governor.
And it was interesting that Gavin Newsom, when he was lieutenant governor, used to say that we should have the lieutenant governor and governor run on the same ticket.
You can't have them be.
And now that he's running for governor, you don't hear him say that anymore.
Isn't that interesting?
Yeah, it is interesting.
Yeah.
Historically, there has been the governor and the lieutenant governor have been either different parties or certainly different visions for this state.
And I think, you know, that's something that when I think about myself in the position of lieutenant governor, regardless of who will be governor, I will keep with my progressive vision.
And, you know, if there are any issues that we can line up on, great.
But when we don't line up, I will call the governor out on what position he's taking.
That needs to happen.
I look forward to that happening with you as lieutenant governor because I know it will happen.
Yep.
And I know, I mean, what I know is that the circumstance will arise for the governor who's going to go against progressive values.
And Gail will be there to call the governor out.
Now, who was the biggest, who was your biggest out of these people?
So two former ambassadors, a veteran state senator, and who would be your biggest competition?
You know, it seems like it's switched throughout the campaign.
But right now, it seems like Eleni Kunalakis and maybe Jeff Blake are the two frontrunners.
Ed Hernandez is the veteran state senator who's terming out.
He seems to be not having as much traction, but they're all corporate-funded Democrats, all three of these, you know, so-called frontrunners.
Ed Hernandez is financed by the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies, and he's a doctor, you know, so it's like he's just not what we need in office.
Eleni Kunilakis, like I said, her father is a big developer.
Her father put in $5 million into a super PAC for his daughter.
And, you know, I often say that some dads are thinking about wanting to buy their daughters a pony, you know, but this dad wants to buy his daughter an executive seat, the position of lieutenant governor.
I mean, it's outrageous.
And she herself put $2.5 million into her campaign.
That's $7.5 million just from her family alone.
For a lieutenant governor.
For a lieutenant governor's seat.
So she must have eyes on the prize.
That must be a stepping stone.
That's why she's doing it.
How much money have you raised?
So we've raised a couple of hundred thousand.
You know, it's about $200,000.
And that's grassroots money.
Grassroots money, yes.
What's your average donation?
Our average donation is anywhere.
A lot of people give that $27, just like Bernie Sanders' campaign.
And we're endorsed, like you said, by our revolution, Bernie Sanders, our revolution.
So people think of me in the same kind of a way, same vision and such.
But, you know, some people give more, and some people give $10 and $5.
We'll take whatever people can give.
It adds up.
But our way of winning isn't going to be obviously by money when we're up against $7.5 million.
It's by field teams.
You know, we have field teams up and down the state of California with our supporters, and they're reaching out in their areas, doing texting, social media, canvassing, farmers' markets, phone banking.
We have reached more voters than any other candidate.
We have more engagement on social media than any statewide candidate, more than all the gubernatorial candidates.
And that's an indicator that people are engaged with the issues because my campaign, we put out social media, Facebook and emails about the issues that are on people's mind, a people's agenda.
And so, you know, we feel strongly.
I mean, we've engaged and reached, I would say, a couple million people, a couple million voters.
So that goes to show you we've been working really hard, and we're not going to stop till the primary and hopefully beyond.
So tell people, if you can briefly, what you plan on doing as lieutenant governor and why it's important that we have a progressive as lieutenant governor.
Great.
So first of all, I often say my campaign has two wings.
One wing is to encourage communities up and down California to form progressive alliances like the Richmond Progressive Alliance.
Since I've been talking about this, 11 or 12 new progressive alliances have emerged.
That's great.
Yeah, and they're running candidates for office for local office without corporate money, just like we did in Richmond.
In fact, just last night, I was at the Pasadena Foothill Democratic Club, and somebody was there who talked about a San Gabriel Valley progressive alliance that's starting up.
So things are happening in terms of local political power building.
That's what I'm encouraging.
The second wing of my campaign is to get elected as lieutenant governor so I can keep encouraging this local political power building and connect the progressive groups, connect the progressive alliances, the OR groups, you know, DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, have endorsed me, connect their chapters with the ORs and the Green Party has endorsed me and Peace and Freedom Party.
All progressives need to come together and build a big progressive tent.
That's what I will help facilitate as lieutenant governor.
And with this, this big progressive tent, we can pressure the legislature and the various boards and commissions I'll sit on, like the UC Board of Regents and the State Lands Commission and the Economic Development Commission to get our statewide issues passed,
like single-payer Medicare for all, free public college, like reforming Prop 13, closing the corporate loophole, a millionaires tax, an oil severance tax, tax Those oil companies for the extraction, make it so high that it's not profitable for them to keep doing it so that we save our planet.
Also, ban fracking our immigration rights, move that movement forward and implement our sanctuary state, affordable housing, a public bank.
You know, let's resolve this homeless crisis by really putting in place inexpensive structures.
We have a refugee crisis in this state.
And if we use state land and city land to put in place the kind of structures that are needed to get give people a temporary place to recover and the services they need, mental health services, substance abuse programs, then we can get people on their feet.
You know, there's these tiny home villages that are a concept that we should utilize and then eventually get them into truly affordable homes.
I'm also standing for rent control and repealing Costa Hawkins so we could protect all renters.
Right now, Costa Hawkins is in place.
It's a state law.
So Costa Hawkins is a state law I think was passed in the 90s, which is effectively cut out rent control.
That's right.
So it limits it.
Yeah, severely limits it.
So there's a big movement to repeal that legislation, which is called Costa Hawkins.
And if we can get rid of that, we could then have some reasonable rent control again.
That's right.
Yeah.
You know, Costa Hawkins is a law that pretty much allows us only to protect half of renters.
It only allows us to protect renters in buildings that were built prior to 1995.
And in some cities that passed their rent control laws, like in the late 70s and early 80s, they can only protect renters in buildings from that point when their rent control law was passed.
So we repeal Costa Hawkins.
We're able to protect all renters.
And that's what's important in this crisis that we're facing.
And a huge rent control movement is building right now.
And people are standing up.
They know their skyrocketing rents are out of control.
And people need to realize that rent control, what they do is they ensure that the landlord makes a profit.
Rent control isn't about taking a profit away from a landlord.
It's about stabilizing neighborhoods and providing a profit to the landlord.
Absolutely.
It's not about punishing anybody.
It's about creating a better community.
And no one gets hurt, right?
Absolutely, yeah.
So rent control, our rent control law in Richmond, it allows for a CPI increase each year.
If there is a situation where a landlord has a hardship, he goes to the rent board.
He or she goes to the rent board and puts forward their case.
So it's truly a situation where the landlord can continue to make a profit, a fair return.
And that's what is fair.
But these windfall profits that some of these landlords are trying to get at the expense of our community is outrageous.
People are being pushed onto the street, being crowded into families, more than one family into one space.
It's just really something we have to take under control.
The market has not resolved this problem.
That's correct.
Yeah, the free market is not providing affordable housing for people.
And in California, I think, you're supposed to not spend more than a third of your income on your housing.
And in California, people spend a half.
Yeah, they spend a half and sometimes more, you know.
So we have to wake up to this and say and act.
And that's what this renters movement is all about because we just, you know, sit back and say, oh, the market economy is going to change things.
We know it hasn't.
You know, this kind of laissez-far, you know, market will fix it all thinking is not going to work.
It hasn't worked.
And so, you know, we in California have to wake up to that, you know, not sit around and wait till we're paying half or already we're paying half, as you say, paying three quarters of our income in rent and having to sacrifice other necessities.
You know, we have to, we have to get this under control.
Well, Gail McLaughlin, it's a pleasure to have you in here.
I really appreciate you coming in.
She's running for lieutenant governor, and she's a real progressive, endorsed by our revolution, the DSA, the Green Party, every progressive organization you can think of is behind Gail because she's a proven winner, and she's a proven winner in fighting the most powerful corporations in the world, fossil fuel companies.
And she's inspired lots of other progressive alliances up and down the state.
She's the real deal.
Gail, any last words you want to tell the people?
Yeah, I encourage people to go to my website, which is gailforcalifornia.org, G-A-Y-L-E-F-O-R, California.org.
Check out all the issues and volunteer if you can.
We really need all the support.
We feel we're doing great, but you can't let up at all.
So it's time for people to do what they can.
And I'm very grateful for all the support we have.
Wow, it's Harrison Ford on the line.
Hello.
Who's this?
This is Harrison Ford.
No, this is Jimmy Doer.
I know.
I don't mean, hey, am I talking to Harrison Ford?
I mean, hey, am I Harrison Ford?
Hey, you know, there's a lot more to that phone call, but we don't have time in today's podcast.
How do you hear the entire phone call?
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Today's show was written.
That's right.
It was written by Frank Connoff, Jim Earl, Ron Placone, Steph Semerano, and Mark Van Landowick.
All the voices today performed by the one and the only the inimitable Mike McRae who can be found at mikemcrae.com.
That's it for this week.
you be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me.
Don't freak out.
Do not, do not.
Do not freak.
Don't break out.
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