(gentle music)
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- Preserve, protect and defend.
- The Constitution of the United States.
- So help me God. - So help me God.
- Congratulations Mr. Trump.
- Problems of our democracy predate Donald Trump,
and they will go on long after he's gone
from the political state.
- They want everybody to vote.
I don't want everybody to vote.
Elections are not won by a majority of people.
They never have been from the beginning of our country,
and they are not now
As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections,
quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
- The base of the Republican party now
does not believe in elections or democracy.
- That we are in the process
of the Second American Revolution,
which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.
- Why is it that we are running our government
on a constitution that is like 200 plus years old?
and it's truly possible for us to demand something better?
And I think that is my dream for one day,
my friends to understand that we do not have to be content
with the systems that we have now.
We can fight right now to ensure
that we protect our current freedoms
and that we can fix the current flaws in our democracy,
but also we can reimagine something better.
- We have problems obviously,
there would not be so many discontented people
in the country if we didn't have problems,
but they're not being articulated as problems in a way
that would allow us to solve them.
- [Announcer] America is a beautiful country
from sea to shining sea, the farmlands, the mountains,
the cities, and especially its people.
(gentle music)
But what exactly is democracy and how do we define it?
- I think of democracy as a collective experience
and responsibility that people in society have.
And I think of it as an expression
of we and we consciousness.
How can we come together to serve the common good?
- Democracy, I think is related to the idea,
to the belief that human beings are of infinite value.
And that the best circumstances for the sacredness
of the human person to be acknowledged
and to be expressed by them
is a situation in which people are equal and free.
- I see democracy as a political, social, economic goal
that we have not accomplished,
but we're in America, we're evolving towards it,
and hopefully the world is evolving towards it.
And is guided by a philosophical and spiritual principle,
which I would of use the South African word abuntu,
which is where I am a person, because you are a person
and it's about equality.
And we're aiming towards equality where people,
we respect each other and everybody has a voice
in how we organize ourselves.
- Democracy is a system where each of us
are able to develop our lives
with as much freedom as possible
and with as much satisfaction as possible.
- A true democratic system is one in which
we should be able constantly to make our own decisions
and to refine those decisions through an endless process
of engagement not once every four years or for that matter,
once every two years, but every day if we want to.
- So we define a just democracy for all as a democracy
where we truly have a just electoral process,
a just electoral system where no one's right to vote
is being taken away.
Where there aren't archaic rules in place
making it harder for young people,
for people of color to exercise their rights.
And we believe a truly just democracy is a democracy
where it's people first and not billionaires
and not corporate money, you know,
flooding our electoral system.
- [Announcer] This is where US democracy began.
Independence Hall in Philadelphia,
the founding fathers gather in this room
where they wrote a document,
the Declaration of Independence, which had the immortal
and radical words, all men are created equal.
These words were crafted by this man, Thomas Jefferson.
This was a time of high ideals
where the framers felt they were creating
a new form of government.
(gentle music)
And from these ideals came the US Constitution
based on liberty for all.
(gentle music)
An ideal that still captivates the world.
Yet the framers borrow these ideas
from another group of people.
(ritual music)
- Roots of modern democracy are indigenous,
and in fact they come, the roots of democracy
lead you directly to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
The Haudenosaunee are a confederacy of six nations,
and our territories span from as far as Montreal, Quebec.
And over to Green Bay, Wisconsin.
The world that George Washington, Ben Franklin,
Thomas Jefferson, the world they lived in
and interacted with was incredibly indigenous.
Ben Franklin spent a considerable amount of time
studying the form of governance of the Haudenosaunee,
of other indigenous nations in recognizing the relationship
that the founding fathers had with the Haudenosaunee.
I think in some cases there were friendships
that were formed, and in some cases there was real respect
because they were able to see that the voices
of multiple nations, multiple groups
that we call clan families, we're all represented,
that they could come together and make decisions
and come to a consensus and be able to represent the voice
and interests of all various groups of people
from different nations.
And that really, really just struck them
because they were able to do it peacefully.
And that was something that they wanted, right?
So right within the preamble of the Constitution,
you can see that there's a lot of this discussion
about the nature of human beings
and the rights of human beings, natural rights.
And this is what they saw among the Haudenosaunee.
- If the founding fathers were inspired
to create a democracy by the Haudenosaunee,
the people with the oldest democracy on earth,
where did things go wrong for the American people?
- America was not really conceived in this notion
that I just talked about of representative democracy.
It was a group of aristocrats who wanted
to sort of keep democracy pinned down a little bit.
They used various structures to make sure that for example,
only white landowners would be able to vote.
They wanted to keep an excess of democracy
away from the decisions that were made by the government.
- What democracy is supposed to be obviously
is ruled by the people.
That's what it means.
But what we see in the systems that are described
as democracy is something very different
because these systems weren't designed for democracy.
Centralized, hierarchical political systems
are not well suited to rule by the people.
And in fact, even in post-revolutionary systems,
like in the US, we see how elite powers
really retained their modes of governance
and gave as little away as they could.
They allowed people to vote every four years
or in my country every five years.
But having voted you are then dispensed with.
That's it, you've done your job as a democratic citizen.
Now leave it to us.
- What did the founding Fathers leave out, right?
Well, they left out women, they left out
all people of color, and they left out life
and future generations.
None of those other beings of life
were included in the US Constitution.
In fact, the US Constitution privileged
one group of people, and that is white men.
White men who are landowners.
And so by privileging one group
that left out the voices of all people.
So there truly is not representation of the people
in the formation of the US Constitution.
- [Presenter] Another issue for the United States
in the first half of the 19th century
was the problem of slavery, of human bondage.
- There's a principle that everyone in society
can equally participate in whatever are the rules,
regulations, benefits, privileges of that society
in an equal manner.
And then there's a manifestation of democracy,
which means how does that aspiration become real life
to the everyday person?
That's where the problem lies.
Because democracy manifested is not equal,
does not ensure that everybody has equal chances
to move up society's level, to do whatever it is
that their heart or spirit desires.
So there's always going to be that conflict
between all men are created equal.
When folks like me say, yeah, right, you know?
That that's not the case on the real world.
- [Presenter] In 1860, the US fought a civil war
over the problem of slavery.
The Civil War ended in 1865 with the slaves becoming free.
This began the period of reconstruction
commencing with the reconstruction amendments.
- The reconstruction amendments were those amendments
enacted after the Civil War,
and they formerly abolished slavery.
They put equal protection regardless of race
into the constitution.
They put an entitlement to due process
into the constitution.
They specified that people should not experience
racial discrimination when they try to vote.
All of these constitutional commitments to equality,
to a multiracial, functioning, inclusive democracy.
None of that was actually in the Constitution before.
And so the reconstruction amendments effectuated
a sweeping fundamental change.
And I think that the purpose of the constitution
and the purpose of our constitutional interpretation
should be to implement that change.
- Union wins the war, we going to reconstruction.
But here's the flip side of that.
As people were free, they went kind of from slavery
to a sharecropping system that tied them back to the land.
That laws were passed so that if you did something
that was an infraction, you went on the chain gang.
Where did you go to work?
The same plantations that you used to work at beforehand.
(quirky music)
(quirky music continues)
(dramatic music)
- [Reporter] The world's richest
and supposedly soundest economy perished
and small business was strangled by the Great Depression.
The unemployed numbered 15 million.
There were bread lines, soup kitchens,
and street corner apple sellers.
The rhythm of Ragtime had become a funeral dirge.
The corpse of prosperity was abroad in the land.
In 1932, America sought new leadership
as the panacea for all its tropes.
Franklin Roosevelt promised a new deal
for the American people.
- It's preeminently the time to speak the truth,
the whole truth, frankly and boldly.
Nor need we shrink
from honestly facing conditions in our country today.
This great nation will endure as it has endured,
will revive and will prosper.
Restoration calls however, not for changes in ethics alone,
this nation is asking for action and action now.
- Franklin Roosevelt ushered in a number of reforms
after the new deal, increasing taxes on the wealthy
and corporations putting in safeguards to over speculation,
inventing the Securities and Exchange Commissions
so that Wall Street fraud would be tamped down and you know,
and also increased antitrust enforcement to make sure
that monopolies weren't running rampant
in the United States.
And after the war, after the (indistinct) spending
of World War II, this produced really salutary situation
in the United States.
So we had rising living standards for the middle class
and without runaway compensation and benefits
for the upper class, for the CEO class.
The ratio between CEO pay and worker pay actually shrunk
in that period.
And this is from about 1946 to 1973.
And we had a thriving middle class in this country.
There was a cleavage that incurred starting in 1979,
and that has never gotten back to parody.
Since 1979 we've seen productivity go way, way up,
and worker pay has largely stagnated.
(upbeat music)
- For years.
For years I've asked that we stop pushing onto our children,
the excesses of our government.
- I remember Reagan's election brings about
massive tax cuts, huge deregulation, a dissolution
or the beginnings of an erosion of the separation
of church and state.
And you have an economic and social backlash
to the New Deal, great society
and the kind of social changes of the '60's.
And so that's really when it starts,
Democrats certainly enabled it with, you know,
what has been, you know, now known as neoliberalism.
And so you have Clinton coming in
and really scoring a major political victory.
And that seemed like a winning strategy for Democrats.
And so Democrats kind of started taking it
very far to really accelerate deregulation,
particularly of Wall Street and financial regulation
because, you know, they were starting to get donations
from wealthy Wall Street figures
who had been historically funding Republicans.
(upbeat music)
(singer singing in Spanish)
(singer singing in Spanish continues)
- But after World War II, and actually during the war
and after the war, the gap between the wealthiest
and the average person was rather narrow.
After 1980 or so, that balance was destroyed.
And the key element of destruction was the deregulation
of Wall Street.
Basically, Wall Street was tightly, tightly controlled
from 1933 all the way to 1980.
And once that deregulation started,
that's when we saw a massive increase
in inequality in this country.
There were 13 billionaires in 1980,
and now they're 783.
So there was an explosion of money rushing to the top,
and at the same time, the standard of living
of the average worker stalled
and actually went down a little bit.
So the gap became obscene.
With money rushing to the top, it's inevitable
that both political parties would scramble
to get that money.
And they started competing against each other
about who's gonna placate Wall Street better,
who's gonna give them more, who's gonna deregulate the more.
- It was a value assigned to altruism that has been
displaced by the value that was assigned to greed,
you know, that was assigned to gilding and,
you know, building a tower in the middle of a city
and all the rest of it, you know.
People actually persuaded themselves that greed is good,
that it adds wealth.
In fact, it adds distortion, you know?
I think we've been sold even the idea
that we're competing for money, you know?
And I think that part of the dislocation in the culture
is that there's some people that are prospering
and other people who feel that they're less prosperous.
- So Bill Clinton made his final sort of gestures
to the American legacy and, you know, the economic legacy
he would leave behind in America, you know,
he got with the banks, under pressure by Citibank
and really all his friends on Wall Street
who he had never gone against
and had only pretty much faithfully supported
throughout his presidency.
He gave a final gift by repealing,
by signing the act to repeal Glass-Steagall
and allow banks to begin the process of investing
and risking the public's, the people's money
in ways that they have been outlawed and forbidden
from doing for decades.
He allowed the financiers to really essentially
put in motion the takeover of the American economic system
by the economic elite, by the 1%.
Glass-Steagall was one part of that
that led to the housing boom when the house of cards
came crashing down and the casino went bust
and the housing market went boom and bust
and the people lost their homes and pensions and savings,
millions and millions of people
and an entire generation really wrecked.
- How the hell it happened
that we could have the greatest financial cataclysm
since the Great Depression and uncover plenty of wrongdoing
and no top banker from any
of the major financial institutions
that were involved in it'd go to prison.
How could that possibly be?
And again, that was a catastrophic mistake
because what we ended up doing is teaching elites,
wealthy elites that they could blow up the global economy.
Immiserate millions, have millions of people thrown out
of their homes and their jobs
and really pay no consequences.
And that's a terrible lesson for average Americans.
And it's, I think at one of the key elements
for why people are so angry about American society today.
- Nobody went to jail, not a single high level executive.
And when the public saw the billions
that they got in the bailouts to the banks and no bailout
to the people it initiated and brought to...
It crystallized the public anger
that we had been, that we, the 99% of Americans
had been feeling since the financial crash.
And with that slogan, the 99% was born the Occupy movement,
which was a direct response to the Obama bailouts
of the banks.
Occupy was rather a spontaneous uprising.
It was, it's incredible looking back on it now
because we're in such a different political environment,
occupy erupted overnight and it had a global visibility
and it really, I think blew the public away at its outset,
which is why it was so popular immediately.
Activists had gotten out in front of politicians.
Activists, people in the street, young people, students,
the unemployed, regular workers,
union workers had bellowed the alarm
had said there is inequality and there is injustice
in this degree of inequality.
- And what does that do to a public
that sees this sort of lack of accountability in society?
It pushes people toward other solutions.
They don't see that the normal way
in which government operates is working for them.
And so they are much more attracted to demagogues
to people who say, I can fix this.
I am the one who knows how to get around these ideas.
- The big question is why would working class people
given their economic instability, given the things
that Roosevelt said about what people need,
why would they gravitate towards authoritarians?
I think mostly they're not gravitating
towards authoritarians, they're gravitating away
from the political system and they're making room
for authoritarians.
That figure of only 16% of people trusting the government.
That's the result of, you know, a generation or two
of incredible job instability, mass layoffs
and Wall Street ripoffs.
I mean, if government can't protect you
and doesn't wanna protect you,
and it looks like all the politicians except for a few
are in it for themselves, you withdraw.
There's almost like an industry
blame the white working class for the ills of society.
Mike Luxe, who's a pollster, does a lot of work
for the Democratic Party,
did an excellent study called Factory Town.
And his conclusion was,
these working class folks in these rural areas
wouldn't care all that much about this woke stuff
if the Democrats only gave a damn about the economy.
- And then you had Trump, who here was someone
who was perceived as a truth teller,
a guy who was gonna tell it like it is.
We all know that that's complete bullshit.
But he did wanna blow things up
and people wanted to blow things up
and people were really furious.
- And what neoliberalism has done
is to hollow out politics even further
to ensure that our political decisions count
for even less than they did before,
until the whole system feels pointless.
And when parties converge around their positions
and when they are not solving your problems
and offering very little,
then there's a very strong temptation
to kick the whole cart over.
And so when someone like Donald Trump comes along and says,
I'm gonna kick the cart over, people say, yeah,
he's going to destroy that system
from which we are excluded.
That's why we're gonna vote for him.
- Our movement is about replacing he failed
and corrupt political establishment
with a new government controlled by you,
the American people.
The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake
in this election.
For those who control the levers of power in Washington
and for the global special interest,
they partner with these people that don't have your good
in mind.
The political establishment that is trying to stop us
is the same group responsible for our disastrous
trade deals, massive illegal immigration
and economic and foreign policies
that have bled our country dry.
The political establishment has brought about
the destruction of our factories
and our jobs as they flee to Mexico, China,
and other countries all around the world.
It's a global power structure that is responsible
for the economic decisions
that have robbed our working class,
stripped our country of its wealth,
and put that money into the pockets
of a handful of large corporations and political entities.
The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you.
The only force strong enough to save our country is us.
The only people brave enough to vote out
this corrupt establishment is you the American people.
(crowd cheers)
I'm doing this for the people and for the movement.
And we will take back this country for you
and we will make America great again.
(crowd cheers)
I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message.
- Economic inequality reads massive political inequality
and that threatens the ability for us
to lead fulfilling lives.
From what's really going on,
which is this vast amount of inequality
and the way that inequality is created,
it's created on the backs of workers.
And one of the best ways to understand it
is through stock buybacks.
A stock buyback is when a corporation takes its own funds,
goes into the marketplace, buys back its own shares,
and by doing so, the price of the shares go up.
It's a blatant form of stock manipulation
and that's what it was called before 1982.
There was a cap, you couldn't do this with more than 2%
of a corporation's profits.
They took the lid off of that.
So now up to 70% of corporate profits go to stock buybacks.
By some estimates.
And there are hundreds of corporations
that spend more than a 100% of their profits
on stock buybacks, they borrow money
and then use it for stock buybacks.
Well, why?
Well CEOs now get about 85% of their income
in stock incentives.
That didn't happen before deregulation in the 1980s.
How do you pay for stock buybacks?
In almost every case a mass layoff proceeds
or follows a stock buyback, but the workers suffer.
And we've just let this game go on totally at will
at Wall Street will and workers keep suffering
on the one hand,
wall Street keeps getting richer on the other hand,
and you're getting a working class revolt against the system
that can't protect them.
It's really Wall Street versus working people.
- The idea that what the success will have
that distinguishes them is money.
And the fact at the thought that the unsuccessful, you know,
are distinguished by the lack of money, you know,
this makes money the fulcrum on which everything turns.
And I think that people feel that it's arid, pointless.
People have souls, people are deeper than that, you know,
and they're given these little tokens to play with
that they can build resentments around or whatever.
But you know, we've been had basically,
you know, this is not what human lives are for.
This is certainly not what freedom or democracy are for,
you know, people need more time,
people need more respect, simple respect, you know?
- We estimate that between 1996 and today,
30 million of us have gone through a mass layoff
defined as 50 or more workers lost at one time.
And being out of work and not being able
to get their job back for at least a month, 30 million.
You add in their families.
And instead of talking about the prosperity of America,
now we're talking about probably half the American families
have suffered the devastation of mass layoffs.
It's ranked as the seventh most devastating event.
One can go through.
More devastating than a severe loss of hearing,
eyesight or divorce.
It's a devastating event.
And this is the tragedy, it's become normalized
and that I see is the biggest threat to democracy.
People have turned off to government
again long before Trump.
Because government has done nothing for job instability
other than to say we're gonna grow the economy.
Which of course means even more job instability.
More deregulation is more job instability
because they've done nothing concrete for the actual worker
that's been laid off.
People are turning off to politics.
I vote for the guy, he says he's gonna do
all this great stuff and then another plant goes down.
Think about what it means in rural Pennsylvania.
If a factory of 500 people go down,
now you and 500 of your neighbors are gonna be scrambling
for the last few jobs at the Dollar Store and at Walmart.
I mean, it's really a tough life to feel good about
politicians after that happens to you
and they say, oh, we're gonna bring new jobs to the area.
Doesn't happen or maybe it's a prison
or maybe it's a healthcare facility, that's about it.
So they've turned off the government,
1964, 77% of the Americans felt trusted,
the federal government.
Now it's 16%.
So there's this withdrawal from believing
that what we call democracy now
actually works for them, which of course opens the field,
actually creates a Petri dish for conspiracy theories,
for, you know, blind attacks on the good things
the government does.
It creates the opportunity for opportunists to grab power.
- Together we will make America powerful again.
Make America wealthy again.
Make America healthy again.
Make America strong again.
Make America proud again.
Make America safe again.
Make America free again.
We will make America great again.
Thank you very much Nevada.
- And when they grab power, they're unabashed about using it
to feather their ownness in the name of whomever.
But basically that's the danger to democracy.
This vast increase of inequality
was produced by this absolute carnage of mass layoffs.
The victims of mass layoffs look for some sort of stability,
can't find it and end up withdrawing from government.
And in fact then supporting the train wreckers
to drain the swamp people because they no longer feel
that government works for them.
That's the threat and it's a serious threat.
- I think the US has been in sort of a bad cycle,
which means that people don't really trust the government.
The government policies aren't funded properly,
then they work even less well and people trust them less
and so on and so on.
And this becomes a huge problem
of people not trusting each other
and certainly not trusting the government
or trusting the government to be able to provide
any good services.
In the Nordics, I think overall it's been the opposite.
The government services have worked well
and I think they have certainly supported
the sense of trust in a society that is working well,
that is as much as any society in the world trying
or working to provide good life for everyone
in that country.
So there is more social trust overall
in the Nordic countries according to surveys as well.
- The base of the Republican party now does not believe
in elections or democracy.
They think elections...
They think their democracy has been stolen
and they don't believe that democracy
can restore the democracy.
And that's a very ominous development
for American society.
And you can't really have a functioning democracy
if people just don't believe in elections
because then they'll inevitably take other means
to push through their views.
(upbeat music)
- Trouble with our electoral system today
is that at so many levels we have baked in minority rule,
we have made it largely impossible in many states
as well as in our bigger institutions
such as the House of Representatives
and the structure of the US Senate
and have a majority of Americans changed the course
of the country.
Donald Trump did not create our anti-democratic nation.
Donald Trump swept up the pieces that were left for him
by the Republican establishment
that wanted to find a way to keep winning elections
in a multiracial nation.
Decided that the way to do that was not by appealing
to a multiracial electorate, but by turning back the clock
and trying to create a different electorate,
the one that they wanted instead of the one
that actually exists in America.
And they startlingly effective at this.
Donald Trump did not create this,
and it will not go away when Donald Trump leaves the scene.
This is the new normal of American a democracy.
Our system has been broken.
It's not that the system simply is broken,
it's that it has been broken intentionally
by those who wish to seek and hold power
with a minority of votes.
(upbeat music)
- I spent close to 30 years if not more,
helping to build the conservative legal movement.
And at some point or another,
you know, I just said to myself,
well if this can work for law, why can't it work
for lots of other areas of American culture
and American life where things
are really messed up right now.
Wokeism in the corporate environment
and the educational environment, one-sided journalism,
entertainment that's really corrupting our youth.
Why can't we build talent pipelines and networks
that can positively affect those areas as well.
- Leonard Leo is the top of guy at the Federalist Society
who is responsible for coordinating a network
of funds and people.
So yes, there is a person you can look to,
but it is much broader than that.
The Federalist Society has a very extensive network
where they cultivated ideas and people in law schools
and placed them into positions of power,
whether they be preparing them to be judges
or preparing them to be attorneys general
or to work in the Department of Justice
to implement their own reactionary radical vision
of power and limited democracy.
I think the end game is to keep power concentrated
within the hands of a few.
And to subject their own vision of what the country
should be like over everyone else.
And this vision is typically
like a minoritarian vision that prioritizes a handful
of the white, the wealthy,
the particular brand of Christian.
Like not even Christianity writ large,
but people who believe and look and act in the same way
as they do should have complete say
over the direction of the country.
- So we either find a way to reform the court
or we live in the world that Leonard Leo and his allies
wish to create.
(upbeat music)
- Originalism is an idea developed
by the conservative legal movement that says
the meaning of the constitution is fixed in time.
There is a single solitary objective discoverable meaning,
Originalists will tell you
and whatever the constitution meant 200 years ago,
it means that today as well.
So whatever the purported original public meaning was
remains authoritative today.
So basically from the very start,
originalism serves to dress up
your standard reactionary politics,
but give it that veneer of professional legalism.
- Jefferson always believed that each generation
ought to write his unconstitutional
because to live under a constitution
written by essentially long dead white men.
Our current situation, is another form of tyranny.
They reflected a particular way of life,
a particular view of democracy,
a particular view of republicanism,
and we're living under that system.
And Jefferson was like, that's just tyranny.
There's no difference between that
and living under a colonial power across the Atlantic.
So he wanted each generation to write his own constitution.
- Now yeah, originalism is like dream logic
in that it makes sense for a moment while you're sleeping,
but once you wake up you can recognize it as nonsense.
Originalism makes sense for basically all of a minute
if you're thinking about it, you can maybe say
for a hot second, it is kind of farcical to say
that there is a single meaning of a document
that was the product of compromises hammered out
by dozens of people to put together a document
that would function as a framework
to govern the country over time.
Originalism absolutely will keep making things worse.
I think we are regularly seeing threats
for further rollbacks of our rights
because originalism instructs the courts to turn back time.
- What I love about thinking about Jefferson
is he was right, you know, at the end of the day
we would be in a...
I dare say we'd be in a better place
if periodically throughout American history
we had rewritten the Constitution and that was part
of our political culture is to rewrite the constitution.
- Originalism is essentially make America great again
with a law degree because by definition
they too are saying we need to turn back time,
we need to reset things to the way they were
when they were better, better for who?
They don't say they leave that part out.0
But they insist that this idea of the original
public meaning should govern.
And so I think originalists discovered
that if you can freeze the meaning of the constitution
in time, you can probably freeze the country in time too.
So that's why it really is a purely reactionary measure.
The conservative legal movement really insists
that not everyone is capable or welcome to interpret
the Constitution.
It is only for this very elite set of people
and they have a designated way by which they must do it.
And that's by holding a jurisprudential seance
and communicating with the spirits
of these dead slave holders.
And saying, what do I think Johnny Slaveholder
would want me to do today?
And I don't think that's a good way to run a country.
(upbeat music)
- Hey there. Who are you?
- Oh, just the most important document
in our country's history.
- You mean the Constitution?
- Nope.
- The Declaration of Independence?
- Guess again.
- The Federalist Papers.
- The Federalist what?
No, even more important than whatever you just said.
Now sit right here and I'll tell you all about me.
♪ I'm just a little paper for the ages ♪
♪ A way to set the government straight ♪
♪ A short 887 pages on how to make America great again ♪
♪ By forcing through the president's agenda, ♪
♪ Removing all of those who disagree ♪
♪ Replacing with our loyal party members ♪
♪ and reclaim our great country in some ♪
♪ Give power to the president ♪
♪ To authorize the government to legislate morality ♪
♪ And wrestle back normality from Marxist ideologies ♪
♪ That infiltrate our policies ♪
♪ Like gender, race, or anything woke ♪
♪ We're going to abolish the Department of Education. ♪
♪ Turn the swearing in into a coronation. ♪
♪ America's great salvation will arrive, Project 2025 ♪
- We often talk about state governments as a laboratory
of democracy right now in so many states across the nation,
really they've become meth labs of non-democracy.
It is hard to call some of these states
functioning democracies.
When you look at Wisconsin or North Carolina or Ohio.
In these states, voters are still allowed to cast ballots.
It's just that the outcome of elections
have been preordained by how those states
have been wildly gerrymandered
to ensure that the most extreme wing of the Republican party
is in control no matter what voters want.
And the secret here is what happened in the 2010 election.
Republicans recognized that they could change the nation,
not necessarily by convincing people to come to their side,
but by redrawing districts in such a way that they could win
with fewer votes.
But all of this starts in state legislatures.
They're the ones in almost three quarters of states
that control the process of drawing these lines.
So Republicans set out in 2010 to win
as many state legislatures as they could
in order to have the most control over this process
that they could possibly have.
Republicans invested $30 million in a plan
called the Red Map short.
for the redistricting a majority project.
They flipped those districts, they took control
of redistricting, they remapped those states
the following year.
They drew themselves huge advantages in the fight
for state legislatures as well as for Congress.
And in most of those states, those technology driven
wild extreme gerrymanders have endured for a decade or more,
twisting not only the politics in those states,
but our politics nationally.
When you look at the two mortal sins
that have really broken our politics over the last decade,
it's the redistricting that follows the 2010 election.
And it's the decision by the Roberts Court in 2013
in Shelby County versus Holder.
That effectively eviscerated the Voting Rights Act
by ending its most crucial mechanism of enforcement,
which was known as pre-clearance.
- 10 years ago the Supreme Court issued its decision
in Shelby County verse Holder.
The case took aim at the Federal Voting Rights Act,
which protected and expanded the freedom to vote
for black Americans and voters of color
who historically faced intentional barriers to voting.
The court struck down the act's pre-clearance formula,
which had required states with a history
of racial discrimination at the ballot box
to get permission from the Justice Department
before enacting new voting laws.
Now 10 years after Shelby County,
we've seen a torrential downpour of anti-voter laws
that disproportionately impact voters of color.
From the closure of polling places in black communities
to racial vote dilution in voting maps.
To laws that make it harder for everyday Americans to vote.
In dissenting opinion in Shelby County versus Holder,
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said,
"Throwing out pre-clearance when it has worked
and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes.
It's like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm
because you're not getting wet."
In the absence of legislation to restore the federal VRA,
more states are passing their own voting rights acts.
These state VRAs protect and expand the freedom to vote
and make it easier to challenge discriminatory election laws
and voting maps in court.
But the freedom to vote should be accessible
for every voter, not just ones who live
in voter friendly states.
Congress must enact legislation
to stop the torrential downpour of anti-voter laws
depriving many Americans of their fundamental freedom
to vote.
- The states that had the worst history
of civil rights abuses
needed to go to the federal government
or to a district court in Washington DC,
and show that any change that they made
to an election law was neutral and not intended
to infringe upon the votes of minority groups.
And the Roberts Court in 2013 in a decision
that I think will go down with the very worst
that the court, not only the Roberts Court,
but any US Supreme Court has ever delivered,
said things have changed in the South.
They ended pre-clearance.
Things had changed so little in the South
that the very afternoon that the Roberts Court
handed this decision down,
the state of Texas enact a voter ID bill,
that the state itself had already admitted
would keep more than 600,000 Latinos from the polls
because they knew that those voters, eligible voters,
US citizens lacked the ID that the state
had surgically determined would be required
to now cast a ballot.
Once the guards were removed,
the inmates in all of these wildly gerrymandered states
in these legislatures ran out.
What the redistricting in 2011 did was create an America
where political power flowed disproportionately
to older, whiter, more conservative,
more rural populations.
And by doing that
it created an entirely different country.
The kinds of people who we sent to Washington
changed with the kinds of districts
that we draw after 2010.
And it changed the incentives
and it changed the willingness to compromise
and it helped break how these institutions work.
- Black people in Mississippi had to pay $2 to vote.
The white folks didn't pay nothing.
Reporter
- That was 1960.
- [Reporter] 1960.
- In 1961 to go on the Freedom Rides.
We chose that day.
When we came here on August 28th, 1963
for the march on Washington, it was joyful.
We met with a young president,
president John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
When we came here on August 6th, 1965,
at the signing of the Voting Rights Act, we were excited,
hopeful, you see something that is not right,
not just not fair, you have a moral obligation
to say something, to do something.
Our children and their children will ask us,
what did you do?
What did you say?
For some this vote may be hard, but we have a mission
and a mandate to be on the right side of history.
- Part of our movement is educating the young folks
of how decisions like Citizens United
and Shelby County beholder have systematically
weakened our democracy.
And that is up to us to pressure our leaders
like in Congress to, you know,
pass things like the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act
to ensure that we fight back against the damage
that we saw in those Supreme Court decisions.
You know, my team, we actually put our bodies on the line
for that very fight when we were involved
and helped organize a national hunger strike
for democracy in early 2022, which was the last
kind of major push that we saw on the national level
that brought together hundreds of organizations
and advocates demanding that our representatives
in Congress pass the Freedom to Vote Act
and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
And we as young people firmly believe that
by putting our bodies on the line with a hunger strike,
it demonstrated that young people cared about the fight
for democracy and that we saw it as a crisis.
And unfortunately we did not win that fight.
And so there's a lot more work to be done.
- Three years before the Supreme Court
eviscerated the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County,
they effectively unleashed legions of dark money
onto our democracy by upending the campaign finance laws
in the Citizens United case.
The Citizens United decision
really freed the Koch brothers
and all kinds of extreme conservative billionaires
to spend unlimited money on their pet projects
and to do so in a way that was very difficult for the public
to trace and see.
When you put together the Republican edge
in the electoral college,
the structural advantage that white rural,
small state interests have in the US Senate,
the enduring power of gerrymandering
and redistricting in state legislatures
and the US House,
combine that with the Leo project on the judiciary
and state courts.
Add into that the way that presidents
who have lost the popular vote have appointed
five of the nine justices on the US Supreme Court,
who have then been ratified by that same Senate
is advantaged a population that is not the majority of us.
Donald Trump could leave the scene.
All of those other structural advantages,
all of the fruits of these decade long projects
will still exist
♪ Once that we started the transition ♪
♪ and no one's left the tennis to wait. ♪
♪ We'll go through every policy position ♪
♪ Get rid of all the language that we hate ♪
♪ Like civil rights diversity in unions ♪
♪ And pronouns to mention but a few ♪
♪ Defunding any liberal institutions ♪
♪ That dare question what we do, ♪
- I'm pretty sure the Supreme Court.
- Oh the Supreme Court, that's a good one.
Now, where was I?
♪ Abortion will be pretty much illegal ♪
♪ And reproductive rights will be gone ♪
♪ We'll get back to the biblical ideal ♪
♪ That a family means a daddy and a mom with kids ♪
♪ Repeal the crazy climate regulations ♪
♪ That get in the economy's way ♪
♪ With everyone reporting to the nations ♪
♪ On Inauguration day. ♪
♪ When we power to the President ♪
to authorize the government to legislate
(bright music)
- That when the US Constitution was created,
it left majority of people out.
Right from the beginning, it was flawed.
However, there is hope in the sense that US citizens,
if they trace the roots of democracy and recognize
what is the system that the founding fathers looked to
in order to create the constitution that they,
that there they can find answers, right?
And that is about true inclusivity, equity, fairness,
kindness, compassion, and a caring culture.
A lot of what this country and much of the world
is dealing with is a lot of grief.
And we see a lot of issues such as,
whether you wanna call it, I don't like saying illness,
but what's another word for mental, mental health, right?
Issues in mental health and emotional wellness.
And the result being traumas, right?
People feel disconnected from family, from relationship
to the earth, from their place in the world.
- I think that without a sense of the sacred,
which inspires reverence and forbids transgression
against others, you know, it forbids harm, forbids insult,
forbids deprivation.
Without a sense of the sacred in the human.
We can't sustain a democracy.
We treat each other like digits, you know, like, you know,
beans to be counted and so on.
That just is not consistent with any humane government.
- So what I find interesting today
in watching the US in grappling
with what does democracy mean to them today?
That it's failing and finding the system very troubling.
If citizens would look to the roots
of their form of democracy,
they would discover this caring culture
that would care for people during times of grief.
Times when people were down.
And it would also find a culture that cares for each other
to make sure that all people are fed,
to make sure that all people have a place to live.
Everybody is included in the circle.
Everybody's voice is represented
inside of that true form of democracy.
- If people gauge their worth as human beings
on the amount of money they have,
they're going to be stingy.
If wealth is their identity,
they're going to be very careful of their wealth, you know?
I think that, you know,
I mean it's all this, you know,
the people that are always being so intent on cutting taxes
and so on are very wealthy people.
- [Elon] You have to reduce spending
to live within our means.
And yeah that necessarily involves
some temporary hardship,
but it will ensure long-term prosperity.
- And the reason, I mean taxes are distributive.
Taxes keep the public school going and so on.
And they don't want distribution.
They want concentration, which is true even despite the fact
that the, you know, how many yachts can the ocean hold?
You know, I mean we've gotten everything ridiculous
at this point.
It's the classic pattern.
King Midas, you know, you get so fascinated with coal,
but you destroy your one child, you know.
The, you know, a miser means a miserable person, you know,
even though miser is associated with wealth.
- And most people don't realize that they've been lied to,
that they don't understand that this government,
the United States government that was created
left people out and it chose profit over people, right?
And the result is that people feel that on a deep level
and so many people are not cared for in this country.
You see homelessness, you see the rise of mental health
and wellness issues and it's really sad.
- There has to be an understanding that far too many people
are afraid, they are fearful.
And until we readily understand that
and begin to address those types of feelings
to make them feel that you are not being left aside,
you're not being pushed away,
we will not get at the making the aspirational democracy
a real life thing.
A lot of it is fear.
I mean, most of us, we don't like the unknown,
we don't like the unexpected.
We don't like knowing when I walk through this door
that I want to know what's on the other side.
I think fear is learned. I don't think it is...
We're born with it.
Once we stop teaching children to be fearful
and we do certain things in the educational system,
we're beginning to develop a different type of society.
- You know, what is acceptable in our culture?
Is poverty acceptable?
You know, if we see people sleeping on the on the sidewalk,
is that acceptable?
Not for me and probably not for most people.
And there are choices that can be made collectively
to make sure that changes, you know, and improves.
- The homeless problem is one of the areas
that Finland has been held up as an example
to other countries because we have handled it very well.
Finland has a policy of housing first
for people who are in danger of becoming homeless.
Years ago, the policy was changed and explicitly said that,
well, everybody should have their home first
and then we can start dealing with the other problems.
And so this policy has been very successful
and you don't really see homeless people on the streets
at all in Finland, the way you see in the US.
- There is an e epidemic of loneliness that's happening.
When people get older.
Elders that that happens with them, right?
When people get sick that that happens.
But it's also really important for people
who at an any age to be able to connect with others
and talk about what's going on.
(upbeat music)
- Well, I've been looking in my research
at the progressive era, and this was an era
that was similar to our time.
We had fast wealth and quality.
We had Robber barons who wielded disproportionate power.
It was much harder to express yourself politically
if you were an average person in the country.
Black people were almost entirely disenfranchised.
Women couldn't vote.
And yet there were great reforms.
We passed the income tax,
we passed direct election of senators.
We started building the social welfare state.
We created the five day work week
and the eight hour work day.
Huge reform amid an era of enormous inequality
and injustice.
So if they could do it, I think we could do it.
(upbeat music)
- Economic proofs have become accepted as self evident.
A second bill of rights under which a new basis
of security and prosperity can be established for all
regardless of station or race or creed.
Among these are the right to a useful and remunerative job.
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food
and clothing and recreation.
The right of every family to a decent home,
the right to adequate medical care
and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
The right to adequate protection
from the economic fears of old age, sickness,
accident, and unemployment.
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security.
And after this war is won, we must be prepared
to move forward in the implementation of these rights,
new goals of human happiness and wellbeing.
(upbeat music)
- [Announcer] Working together with the aid
of the Marshall Plan.
The nations of Europe have come a long way toward recovery,
recovery for peace.
(gentle music)
This is the Marshall Plan.
Men and machines at work producing clothes,
shoes, food, houses, machines, all over Europe.
Recovery was leading to new hope.
- When the United States as it is prone to do
attacks other nations and overthrows their government
and installs a new government,
they do not install the government that we have here.
They usually put in a parliamentary democracy
with a presidential figurehead.
They do not put in this presidential system
with an electoral college.
They do not put in a system where the head of state
and the head of the legislative body
can be different parties so that gridlock
and dysfunction can ensue.
They do not put in our system of government.
In Germany, in Japan, in Iraq, it just doesn't happen.
And it shows you that there's an insight there
that the leaders of this government know
that we don't want our government exported anywhere
because it just won't work.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music continues)
- One of the strongest social democracies
in the world is Finland.
Anu Partanen is a Finnish writer living in Helsinki.
- And there's a sort of a typical Nordic welfare state
where most of the government policies are universal
in terms of universal healthcare
and universal public education system,
universal access to subsidized affordable daycare,
and so on and so on.
So most of the government policies
are based on the idea of equality of opportunity
and universal policies that help everyone in the country.
I used to live in New York City,
I didn't make that much money.
I was, I think, well maybe lower middle class
while I was living there.
And my tax rate on my income was exactly the same
as it had been in Finland because I paid federal and city
and state tax there.
And then on top of that, in the US I paid health insurance
and if I had had a child, I would've paid for daycare
and so on, which in Finland is provided
or subsidized with taxes.
So for someone like me,
lower middle class living in New York City,
my income taxes were about the same,
but I got much less in return.
Overall, Finland does not have as high tax rates
on income as Americans tend to think.
I mean, typically if you make middle class
or upper middle class, your tax rate is maybe 30%
Finnish people get for their taxes
a lot of the services that unfortunately the Americans
have to pay really high rates for on top of their taxes.
- I don't think we can go on much longer
with the system that we have.
It is rapidly folding in on itself
in a way that is really dysfunctional and dangerous.
So I hope that the powers that be see it the way
that I see it and will work
to make these structural changes.
(upbeat music)
- And when I travel the country talking to voters
about their frustrations about democracy,
although people are fed up with the current state
of politics, people still believe in something better.
And I think to me that is what kind of keeps me going
and always reminding myself
that if we are to be in this fight
for a truly just democracy,
we need to understand what does that actually look like
and build that future for ourselves.
And that looks like starting with addressing the flaws
of our democratic institutions
and understanding how that will impact every single issue
that I care about, and my generation cares about.
I mean, you have so many amazing examples
throughout the world of everyday people
trying to figure out ways to incorporate democracy
in decision making over things that impact their lives.
And so for me, I think it's important for us
to always kind of get out of that American only
America first mindset and to realize that
if we want to truly be this democracy
that America espouses to be, we need to keep up
with the rest of the world.
And we also need to redefine what democracy looks like
for a different generation
which hopefully we are going to do.
(upbeat music)
- If it was up to me,
the Senate would be made into a House of Lords
where they don't have much impact
on the national conversation whatsoever.
And that we would increase and create
proportional representation in the various states
for the House of Representatives.
So that if you know there's an election
and 55% say we want the Democrats
and 45% we say we want the Republicans,
then that's the ratio that goes to Congress.
- How would I change the Senate?
You can go any number of ways that make it more democratic.
One way you could go is just give those states
with certain populations, five senators as opposed to two,
give the Wyomings of the world one Senator
and do disproportionate that way.
Or a more radical idea is let's just take power away
from the Senate and make the House of Representatives,
which is a much more democratic institution,
a much more representative institution,
a much more institution in the mold
of what Madison originally intended.
Make it so much more powerful.
First of all, you need more people.
So let's say a thousand people
in the House of Representatives,
but take the set power of the Senate away.
Just give them confirmation power, you know,
confirmed treaties and things like that.
- We can come together and fix this.
We could fix much of what ails the US Senate
through statute.
It wouldn't even require a constitutional amendment
in some cases.
- How about a six year term for the president
with a two year retention election?
So you get one six year term
and if you're good, the people vote either up or down
for an additional two years.
If you're bad, you're out after six years.
If you're good, eight is the limit,
but you're not running against anybody.
(upbeat music)
- [Announcer] Politics is tearing us apart
and it's because elections aren't working for most of us.
Here's why.
In the US each of us can vote for the candidate
we like the most.
But whenever more than two candidates are running
to win one seat, it's possible for most voters
to hate whoever wins.
Because of the split vote, politicians can ignore the will
of most voters and still win.
Ranked choice voting gives you the freedom
to select a backup choice to prevent that from happening.
Let's say a group uses ranked choice voting
to decide what to eat for dinner tonight.
Each voter selects their favorite dish,
but also has the option to choose backup dishes.
If one food receives more than half the votes,
it wins just like in any other election.
But let's get to dessert
where the competition is more fierce.
What if no ice cream flavor has more than 50% of the vote?
Under a normal race,
vanilla would win even though a majority of voters
didn't pick it.
With ranked choice voting,
the flavor with the fewest votes is eliminated.
And voters who chose that flavor is number one,
will have their votes count for their next choice.
Everyone gets a say, no one wastes their vote,
and the winner is the flavor
that the largest number of people agreed upon.
That's ranked choice voting,
it's as easy as one, two, three.
You get more voice and more choice
and that makes elections better for all of us.
- So if you end single member winner take all
and replace it with a system of multi-member districts,
larger districts are represented by three, four,
or five members using rank choice voting.
What you begin to see is that every single district
is represented by a Democrat by a Republican,
maybe by an independent,
you begin to actually get districts
that reflect the ideological variance
and complexity of a state.
And it makes a huge difference.
When you use multi-member districts,
you create a more proportional Congress,
suddenly everybody is reflected.
Suddenly every vote actually matters.
Suddenly every district is competitive
and a swing district, this is a transformative plan
that would remake the very nature of our politics.
It would fix so much of what is broken,
and it would bring us in line really
with what modern democracies around the world do.
We are not as polarized as our politics
would lead us to believe.
It's simply that the structures of our system elect
the most polarizing extreme members
and then incentivize them to behave in the most extreme
and polarizing ways.
If we could change those incentives,
we could have a politics that all of us
actually believed in again,
and that more importantly, actually reflected
all of our beliefs.
When you look at polls, it doesn't matter how controversial
the issue is, almost every hot button issue,
there's a path forward.
Our politics can't get there
because of the way we elect people.
- A lot of the frustrations that young people
are facing right now do kind of stem
from this archaic two party system
that the United States have,
which is an outlier in modern democracies.
And where as a result of that frustration,
we're seeing increasingly a trend of young people and Gen Z
and millennial voters not affiliate
with parties when they register to vote.
We're especially seeing that in places like the southwest,
Arizona, Texas, Nevada,
where more and more young people,
almost half of young voters are not registering with a party
because they are fed up with the two party political system
and are eager for alternatives.
(upbeat music)
- The size of the Supreme Court
has changed throughout history.
It is not a constitutionally number.
So we can absolutely constitutionally change
the size of the court.
I think we should also change the terms of the court
right now Justices get to serve
for the rest of their natural lives
unless they choose to retire.
There's no other position in American democracy
that operates like that.
And it's pretty ridiculous that we have this handful
of people ruling forever basically over a country.
What hundreds of millions of people.
(upbeat music)
- No conflict or policy puzzle is intractable
if you engage citizens.
And that concept can be extended beyond polling.
Look at Ireland as foreign policy notes.
Many think that the historic referendum
that legalized abortion last year
would not have been possible
had the government not convened an assembly of 99 citizens
to debate the matter two years earlier.
The assembly ended up recommending
unrestricted access to abortion.
Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed
citizens assemblies to fix the dilemma that is Brexit.
Environmental groups think that they could help solve
policy gridlock over the climate crisis.
If such assemblies are really empowered,
they might prove what Fishman's polling suggests.
Anything is possible when people start engaging
with each other and with their government.
- So deliberative democracy is where we all get together
and we work through our problems
and find solutions together.
Rather than saying that person we voted for,
they've gotta sort it out.
How can we find a common decision
which is actually gonna be good for all of us?
And by sitting down and working it through,
through deliberation, that provides a much stronger basis
for careful nuanced clever decision making
than these stupid binaries which are imposed on us
by the current political system.
Where people are allowed to behave as democratic citizens.
It has a transformative effect on them.
It turns them into intelligent citizens.
And what we see consistently with participatory democracy
is that the people make decisions which are much fairer,
much greener, much longer term than their so-called
representatives do.
And people are not idiots.
They very quickly work these things out
when they're given the responsibility.
It's this process of radical trust.
If you trust in the people,
the people make trustworthy decisions.
(upbeat music)
- Today, an oligarch is taking shape in America
of extreme wealth, power, and influence
that literally threatens our entire democracy,
our basic rights and freedoms
and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.
- Like that, they're not going to give up their money
and influence and power easily.
You know, there needs to be a countervailing
political push against it.
There was in the progressive era, there was in the New Deal,
you know, FDR embraced their hatred.
- [Franklin] We had to struggle
with the old enemies of peace,
business and financial monopoly,
speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism,
sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the government
of the United States as a mere appendage
to their own affairs.
And we know now that government by organized money
is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.
(crowd cheers)
Never before in all our history have these forces
been so united against one candidate as they stand today,
they are unanimous in their hate for me.
And I welcome their hatred.
(crowd cheers)
I should like to have it said of my first administration
that in it, the cause of selfishness and of lust for power
met their match.
I should like to have it said, wait a minute,
I should like to have it said of my second administration,
that in it, these forces met their master.
(crows cheers)
- And so it is politically, you can do it.
They are a tiny sliver of the American population
and even combined, their power is disproportionate,
but it's not inevitable and it's not unassailable,
but it requires leadership
and it requires democratic champions,
you know, champions of democracy and of equity.
(singer singing in Spanish)
- Banks were under such pressure, you know,
and a lot of banks and the truth is were unwilling to fight
with their regulators because they would just come
and punish you more.
So in this great country of ours,
you know, you're unwilling to speak up
because they'll come after you.
I've been told by people at the Fed,
you know that because of what you have said
and what you wrote about,
you know, they're coming after you.
It could be supervisory, it's gross.
Time to fight back.
And so now you have the FSF, which is the big banks,
the ABA, which is you guys, BPI, all coordinated about
how we're gonna attack these problems.
What's fair, what's not fair.
We don't want to get involved in litigation
just to make a point.
But I think, you know, if you're in a knife fight,
you better damn well bring a knife
and you know, that's where we are.
And it's about time, including the big box retailers.
It's time to fight back.
I've had it with these (beep), like, you know, and.
(audience applauds)
And we bank a lot of these guys and I just...
It isn't my preferred way of dealing with the problem,
but we have no choice.
- [Interviewer] If you had some capability
to do something about Wall Street, about this.
What would you dictate to that?
- Oh, do something about Wall Street.
Nationalize all the big banks.
Put a limit on private equity companies that they can,
you know, that they can play with no more than $10 billion
rather than 10 trillion.
You know, they're the shadow banking industry.
I would clamp down on them full bore
and I would just nationalize the large banks.
I don't understand why something that important
to the US economy should be in the hands of a few.
Whose primary goal in life is to enrich themselves.
(singer singing in Spanish)
- And what has happened in that 50 years
is according to the Rand Corporation,
there has been a 50 trillion, trillion with the T,
redistribution of wealth from the bottom 90% of the top 1%.
You've got CEOs today making 300 times more
than their workers.
You've got three people on top owning more wealth
then the bottom half of American society.
So that's why people are angry
and they're worried that their kids may have
a lower standard of living than they
in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.
So there's a lot of anger out there,
and I think we tap some of that anger in a constructive way,
essentially saying, you know what?
We don't need so few to have so much in wealth and power.
Let's distribute it more fairly in America.
(singer singing in Spanish)
- So something needs to change here.
I mean, 10 years ago, the World Economic Forum
asked the question,
what must industry do to prevent a broad social backlash?
The answer's very simple.
Just stop talking about philanthropy
and start talking about taxes.
Taxes, taxes. We need to...
I mean just two days ago
there was a billionaire in here, what's his name?
Michael Dell.
And he asked a question like,
name me one country where a top marginal tax rate
of 70% has actually worked.
And you know, I'm a historian.
The United States, that's where it has actually worked.
In the 1950s during Republican President Eisenhower,
you know, the war veteran?
The top marginal tax rate in the US was 91%.
For people like Michael Dell, you know, the top state tax
for people like Michael Dell was more than 70%.
I mean, this is not rocket science.
I mean, we can talk for a very long time about
all these stupid philanthropy schemes.
We can invite Bono once more.
Come on, we gotta be talking about taxes. That's it.
Taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes.
All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.
- [Host] Thank you.
(audience applauds)
(upbeat music)
- Well, look, the reason why people consent
to our grossly unfair and highly destructive economic system
is that they think that one day they will be the winners.
You know, we all believe we're temporarily
embarrassed millionaires, and one day it will be us.
Of course it won't be because some people are supremely rich
because they exploit everyone else.
But we can all aspire to public luxury,
to magnificent public tennis courts and swimming pools
and art galleries and museums and parks and wonderful things
that we can all enjoy together
without taking them away from other people.
And there's plenty of ecological space for that
because we are sharing those resources.
So the economic system I want to see
would be built on what I call private sufficiency.
You have your own modest domain, your own home
with your own things in it, that you meet your needs.
That's totally fine.
But public luxury, if you want to spread your wings
and have luxury in your life, then let's have luxury
that everyone can share in the public domain.
And that can either be owned by the community,
which would be ideal from my point of view.
You know, we should own our local resources
and have commons that we could all enjoy,
or it can be owned by the city or by the state,
or in some cases by the federal government.
It doesn't really matter as long as we can share it.
(upbeat music)
- I think that we are seeing so much backlash right now
because we are closer than we've been
to making that actual real functioning democracy.
I think that part of why we had the attack on the capitol
on January 6th was because multiracial America
rejected the reelection campaign of a white demagogue.
And so I think we are seeing...
This is why I believe we're on the cusp,
because we are close.
There's also this aggressive resistance to it from people
who are displeased with the way it's going.
But I think that we have also seen
lots of agitation for progress.
We've seen so many waves of protests,
whether fighting for better wages or working conditions
or fighting against police brutality.
That I think that people are eager
for a more just egalitarian democracy.
And so I think we are very close
and we just need to keep fighting.
- So many young people in our generation feel disillusioned
with our institutions that they feel like these institutions
do not reflect them and their families.
And so when I hear that, I tell them I understand,
and you're right, you have every right to feel that way.
And the reason why you may be feeling that way
is because these institutions in our democracy,
were not built to include people that look like me,
that look like you.
And so when you acknowledge that that frustration
is super real and don't just, you know,
wave it off as ugh, you know,
vote, no matter what, people feel heard
and then they realize, huh,
there is a reason why I'm feeling this way
and maybe there's something that I can do about it.
And so at GenVote, what we tell our young folks
is that sure, our institutions were not built
to include people that look like us because they were,
you know, the founding documents of this country
were written by white slave property owners.
But there's still this idea of what does it mean
to actually achieve a democracy?
And so our generation I think understands
that there is still that potential to fight for something,
to fight for truly just society.
And as a result, that's why you see so many young people
out involved in political movements
because we are fighting for that better future.
And so at GenVote, we kind of connect that frustration
with our democracy, with this hopeful, I think sentiment
that so many young folks do have in our generation
that something though can be better
and helping define what could that better world look like.
- The rise of Bernie Sanders is probably
the touchstone moment that will be remembered as giving life
to the occupy message for those who will dare
to remember occupy in the later future.
Bernie, over the next couple of years, he found a way
to take that message of populism, of economic left populism
and the 99% and the willingness and the courage
to take on the billionaire class, as he called it.
And he kind of trademarked that language.
He created the populist movement
that challenged the populist movement of the right.
The Bernie Revolution was driven
by the really the millennial and you know,
soon to come in and become Gen Z population.
- More often than not, young people do tend to skew
progressive and liberal on social issues
and national polls and studies show that.
And whether it be on issues like addressing gun violence
or addressing the climate crisis,
or, you know, young people demanding things
like student loan forgiveness, you know,
across I think the country, there's an understanding
that our generation values freedom and dignity
for all people.
And as a result, we do tend to lean progressive
and liberal on many issues, including democracy.
♪ Once upon a time they said never ♪
♪ Never, never will you be free ♪
♪ Then we join our arms tightly together ♪
♪ Together we took to the stream ♪
♪ You made it happen through our own action ♪
♪ We made it come to right ♪
♪ We made it happen in our own action ♪
♪ We fashion in all our might ♪
- And you get to 3.5% of your overall population.
I think the argument is that the weight
and the momentum of that power, public populist power
is too great for any government, any government anywhere,
I believe is the argument to withstand that pressure.
If you imagine 10 million Americans holding sit-ins
and stopping the daily course of business in America
and occupying squares and shutting down our various forms
of corporations, shutting down government,
making it difficult for in the way that occupy protesters
tried to stop the status quo,
stop people from simply allowing the 1%,
the system to operate as is and force a change.
When you have your 10 million,
I think that that is the number and probably far below that
you could probably market all the way down to 1 million
done in the right way.
But I do, I believe there is a tipping point
and we clearly have yet to see that in America.
I think activism and a new movement
that finds that percentage of the population
that's willing to come along and demand change,
I think that that's really one of our great hopes
as human beings, you know, life will go on.
But our hope for change hinges quite a bit on individuals
and collective cultures collective our society to stand up
and say this is what we wan as people.
Movements have always driven change.
Change doesn't happen.
Dictators haven't fallen, laws aren't reformed,
governments aren't improved without people
like from the civil rights era
without the Martin Luther Kings,
without the Gandhis, without the people who who lead
and others follow and who are righteous in message
and are firm in their principle.
I think we're awaiting that.
We're awaiting our future leaders.
We have had an era that is sorely lacking in leadership,
but I do feel like every generation has its rebellion.
And this one's time is coming.
(gentle music)
(dramatic music)
- It is now official,
CNN projects that Donald Trump has been elected president,
defeating vice president Kamala Harris and making.
(gentle music)
- But what that man named Donald Trump did do,
is he said, I feel your pain.
I know that you are hurting, and I have an explanation.
Well, his explanation was bogus, you know,
is millions of people coming across the water's illegal?
We have to strengthen the waters.
That goes without saying,
but that is not the cause of the problem.
The cause of the problem right now
is to have a small number of people on top
who have enormous economic and political power.
How for example, how for example can the Democrats not say,
look, we gotta get rid of the citizens unit
in this campaign,
in the Republican party, Democratic party,
billionaires exerted their power.
(gentle music)
- So here are a few thoughts
that I have at the outset about the conversation
we need to be having.
First of all, we are not listening
to the people we claim to represent.
We claim to be the party of the working class,
the party of poor people.
And yet we let interest groups
and think tanks tell us what those people need.
That's why we end up with these relatively
small ball solutions.
Not saying they don't matter, but more roads and bridges.
Bulk negotiation of prescription drug prices,
a little bit bigger tax credit for families with kids.
That's not meeting the moment
because Americans are exhausted
by a neoliberal economic order that has consolidated power
in the hands of the few.
That has forced them to become global citizens.
Instead of having some unique local identity
or a true sense of being an American citizen.
Democrats need to understand that Republicans start
by examining the way that people are actually feeling
and then matching policies to the way
that they're feeling.
Democrats need to start doing the same thing.
If we did that, we would pick bigger fights,
we would be a more populist party.
We would name the corporations and the billionaires
that are screwing people and we would take it to them.
Now, that's something that the Harris campaign did not do,
and frankly, when leaders in our party
like Bernie Sanders do it, they largely get shamed
or shunned as dangerous populace.
Maybe that's because if we actually
were fighting billionaires, if we were actually engaging
in true populist economic ideas,
it would hurt our coalition,
which these days tends to be higher income people
who don't want the status quo fundamentally upset.
(gentle music)
- Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations,
not because the people of those nations disliked democracy,
but because they had grown tired of unemployment
and insecurity, of government confusion.
Government weakness, finally in desperation
they chose to sacrifice liberty
in the hope of getting something to eat.
We in America know that our own democratic institutions
can be preserved and made to work,
but in order to preserve them, we need to act together
to meet the problems of the nation boldly
and to prove that the practical operation
of democratic government is equal to the task
of protecting the security of the people.
History proves that dictatorships do not grow
out of strong and successful governments,
but out of weak and helpless ones.
We are a rich nation.
We can afford to pay for security and prosperity
without having to sacrifice our liberties into the bargain.
(gentle music)
(gentle music continues)
- [Woody] People ain't been living right, ain't been there,
beaten (indistinct) and robbing each other
in different ways, with fountain pens, guns,
and having wars and killing each other and shooting round.
killing each other and shooting around.
(gentle music)
(gentle music continues)
- [Announcer] Currently, America is at a crossroads
and can either reach for more democracy or less.
Jane Adams, the first American woman
to win the Nobel Peace Prize,
said, "The cure for the ails of democracy
is more democracy."
Yet right now, America, according to the democracy index,
is a flawed democracy.
Maybe we need to go back to the roots of American democracy,
to learn from the people who gave the gift
of democracy to America.
- My recommendation for US citizens is to trace the roots
of democracy and find the original teachings
that bring about peace, that bring about balance,
and having a true relationship with the earth and with life,
because it's all contained there,
all of it, it's there.
And the people who are the originators of this democracy
still exist.
We are still here and we are still living under peace.
That's worth looking into.
When you understand government by representation
and you go back to the indigenous,
to the Haudenosaunee roots of the US Constitution,
you'll see that that representation is of a clan family,
and all members in that clan family
may not even actually be blood related,
but they are part of a family that is responsible
to each other and making sure that we are all fed,
we are all taken care of.
- Despite everything.
I do have some degree of hope
because I think that the country has been through
such dark times before.
So I think that there is just demonstrable evidence
that even if things are bad now that doesn't mean
that they will always be bad.
It doesn't mean that things will remain that way.
There are dozens of amendments that show us
that the Constitution can be changed.
And I think that I have faith in the power
of mass movements.
I believe in people.
So even though I don't have much hope for the laws
currently exercised, I have hope in our ability
to change the way it's exercised.
I think that that's something people
have always been capable of.
And people have done much more with much less,
they have succeeded in darker times than these.
And so if they could do that,
then there's no reason we can't either.
(gentle music)
♪ There's a heat wave coming ♪
♪ And I don't know if I should leave. ♪
♪ There are cracks and the ground that nobody can believe ♪
♪ Why does everybody bury their heads and hide ♪
♪ By the coastal water they facing a rising tide ♪
♪ And they want to know what's going move us forward ♪
♪ What's gonna move us back ♪
♪ What's gonna move us over the hills to safety ♪
♪ I'm asking what's gonna take us forward ♪
♪ What's gonna take us back ♪
♪ What's going to give us everything we need ♪
♪ There are people running but nobody knows to wave ♪
♪ Swimming through the ravines and flying through the air ♪
♪ Still we hush and listen to hear what they had to say ♪
♪ Though the words are empty for listening anyway ♪
♪ Because we want to know what's going to take us forward ♪
♪ What's going to take us back ♪
♪ What's gonna take us over the hill to safety ♪
♪ We wanna know what's going move us forward ♪
♪ What's gonna move us back? ♪
♪ What's going to give us everything we need ♪
(uplifting music)