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From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.
00:01:48:23 - 00:02:25:02
David Sirota
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Lever Time, the flagship podcast from The Lever, an independent investigative news outlet. I'm your host, David Sirota. On today's show, we've got a terrific interview that we're going to be sharing with you. I got to speak with writer, director, musician and activist, the one, the only Boots Riley. If you know anything about Boots, Riley, you know, he's one of the most exciting and innovative filmmakers working today, as well as an outspoken advocate for organized labor.
00:02:16:23 - 00:02:55:04
David Sirota
He has a big new TV show coming out this week, which follows his tremendous 2018 film. Sorry to bother you. I spoke with Boots Riley about why you should care about the ongoing writer's strike in Hollywood and how it's not just about Hollywood. It's about the future of the entire labor movement. And you don't have to take it from Boots, Riley.
00:02:40:20 - 00:03:15:18
David Sirota
You can take it from a top Apple executive, which I'll tell you about right before that interview. So stay tuned for that. I've been a huge fan of Boots for a while, and it was really great to get the chance to speak with him again. That's coming up in a little bit for our paid subscribers. We're also always dropping exclusive bonus episodes into our Lever Premium podcast feed.
00:03:01:00 - 00:03:28:08
David Sirota
Last week we republished my 2018 interview with famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg after news broke of his passing last week. Dan Ellsberg is best known for exposing the U.S. government's lies about the Vietnam War. When he leaked the Pentagon Papers. And coming up next week on the Clever premium podcast feed, we're going to have a deep dive into the campaign that ultimately forced New York to pass a landmark climate bill.
00:03:28:10 - 00:04:11:14
David Sirota
It's a big one. We spoke with one of the organizers behind the four year campaign to get that bill passed. And we look at how a small group of organizers managed to make it happen in a state that is owned and is the home of Wall Street. So stay tuned for that. In the premium podcast Feed. If you want to access our premium content, head over to Lever News.com and click the subscribe button in the top right to become a supporting subscriber.
00:03:54:15 - 00:04:36:11
David Sirota
That'll give you access to the lever Premium podcast feed, exclusive live events, and all of the in-depth reporting and investigative journalism that we do here at the Lever. The only way independent media grows and thrives is because of passionate supporters and by word of mouth. So we need all the help we can get to combat the inane bullshit that is corporate media.
00:04:14:02 - 00:04:36:11
David Sirota
So go subscribe it directly funds the work that we do. As always, I'm here today with Lever Times producer Frank Hart. Producer Frank, what's up? I'm riding high today, David. I saw the new Spider-Man.
00:04:24:06 - 00:04:36:11
Frank Cappello
Movie last night.
00:04:25:16 - 00:05:19:23
David Sirota
Spider-Man across the spider-verse. And I have to say that might be the most visually dynamic movie I have ever seen in my life. It was also good, a real trip. Yeah, highly, highly recommend it. I've watched. Is it TechEd? I forget a Now I'm going to get in trouble. Is it technically a marvel movie or is it? Or is it DC?
00:04:44:04 - 00:05:19:23
David Sirota
I get confused like the franchise has moved all over the place. No, it's a cooperation between Sony and Marvel because like Sony had bought the rights to Spider-Man years back, it's a whole gap. I ask this because my son and I have watched many, many, many of the Marvel movies, and I like some of them. I don't like all of them, but I watch them with my son.
00:05:04:18 - 00:05:19:23
David Sirota
It's kind of a dad son bonding experience. And so I'm sure within within the next day or so, my son is going to ask me to see the new Spider-Man movie. So I'm glad to hear that. It's a it's a good ride.
00:05:17:09 - 00:05:19:23
Frank Cappello
Yet he's probably he's probably a little too young.
00:05:19:12 - 00:06:06:03
David Sirota
To take mushrooms beforehand. But, you know, maybe maybe in like 15, 20 years or so that'll be the move for you guys. Yeah, he's definitely too young to take mushrooms, I think. I think he may be too young to even know what mushrooms are unless he's listening to this podcast right now. Before we get to our interview today, our interview with Boots Riley, which I am so psyched about, I first want to talk very quickly about something that has been bothering me since I heard it a few hours ago, something that has been deeply memory hold by the American public, and that is Barack Obama's role in a lot of what we're living through today.
00:06:00:14 - 00:06:47:17
David Sirota
Barack Obama back in the news with his new Netflix special about working. Some people have poked fun at that in the sense of, you know, he's sort of decrying the difficult working experiences for many Americans when he, in a lot of ways didn't do much to change the work experience for America after promising to change labor laws and the like.
00:06:25:11 - 00:08:03:01
David Sirota
So he's in the news a lot lately, and he popped up on his old political advisor, David Axelrod podcast called The AX Files, in which he said something that was both true and unbelievably aggravating and infuriating. He said something about the crisis of democracy right now and the rise of right wing populism. And I'm going to preface it again by saying, I think there's a lot that's accurate in here, but there's something in particular that is incredibly annoying, even beyond annoying, aggravating and infuriating.
00:07:08:22 - 00:08:03:01
David Sirota
Okay. Listen to what Barack Obama said on David Axelrod's podcast this week.
00:07:14:16 - 00:08:03:01
Boots Riley
The crisis in democracy that you're seeing, not just in the United States but around the world is not solely an issue of economics, but it is partially these huge economic disruptions, the speed with which wealth got concentrated, the speed with which people's lives were disrupted, made people worried and scared. And when people are worried and scared about not just their future but their kids futures, then the appeal of right wing populism, the appeal of sort of a more cynical view of the social order, and that's dog eat dog and you got to kind of choose up your tribe because it's a zero sum game.
00:07:55:03 - 00:08:03:01
Boots Riley
All that stuff accelerates and expresses itself in our politics.
00:07:58:10 - 00:08:40:05
David Sirota
So here's the thing. Obama is actually correct in my view. I did a whole podcast series, deep dive documentary podcast series, investigative podcast series about how we went from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. That podcast series is called Meltdown, and the premise of the series, as the reporting shows, is that Barack Obama came in promising to challenge wealth inequality and wealth concentration, promising to challenge the power of Wall Street that's been memory holed that whole campaign.
00:08:36:16 - 00:09:09:23
David Sirota
I mean, I remember being in Civic Center Park in Denver a couple of days before the election, seeing there was, I think it was 30 or 40,000 people out for that speech in which he talked all about cracking down on Wall Street, cracking down on the abuses of the wealthy. This is in the middle of the financial crisis.
00:08:54:11 - 00:09:57:01
David Sirota
And the premise of the Meltdown podcast ended up being that how you go from hope and change to Donald Trump is when you turn hope and change into more of the same. And when you take a look at what Barack Obama did and the choices that he made, the knowing choices that he made to take that bailout money and use it to prop up and enrich his Wall Street donors instead of using that money to help homeowners, that that is the kind of economic decision, the kind of economic disruption that is the thing that did lead to the backlash politics and the backlash conditions that fueled the ascent of Donald Trump.
00:09:52:01 - 00:10:28:09
David Sirota
So, yes, Barack Obama has diagnosed the problem correctly. That's exactly how right wing populism as we know it now, how that came to be a dominant paradigm in our politics today. What's annoying, aggravating and infuriating is that he's commenting on it as if he wasn't a participant in it, not just a participant. How about a driving force in creating the backlash conditions that he is decrying?
00:10:29:05 - 00:11:02:08
David Sirota
Like, it's great that he acknowledges what happened. How about saying I'm sorry? How about saying, Yeah, you know, we made some terrible decisions that did that, that we brushed aside the people who were warning us not to make those decisions for fear of creating the very right wing political authority, Aryan movement that came up as a, in my view, misguided but came up as a response to that.
00:10:58:23 - 00:11:31:17
David Sirota
There's no apology. There's no accountability, there's no taking responsibility for his role. And by the way, that that has always been Barack Obama's rhetorical little trick. He comments on things as if he's an innocent bystander as opposed to being a participant. I mean, he was the lead participant in this drama that unfolded in the first two years of his own administration.
00:11:26:03 - 00:12:03:06
David Sirota
Right. He was the one who chose to use the TARP money, the bailout money to bail out the banks instead of using it to rescue homeowners. And if you if you are as old as me and you can remember what happened back then, the bill was sold as a way to help homeowners and the money wasn't used to help homeowners.
00:11:46:01 - 00:12:36:06
David Sirota
So people are getting thrown out of their homes while watching on TV. Obama handing money to the richest people on the planet who happen to be the people who created the financial crisis in the first place. Yes, that's exactly what created the right wing backlash conditions for the ascent of Donald Trump. And it would be great if people like Barack Obama and David Axelrod could admit that they participated in that, that their decisions created that.
00:12:17:11 - 00:12:57:01
David Sirota
And the reason why you want that apology or that accountability is so that future Democrats know what not to do. And I wrote a piece about this in Rolling Stone with Alex Gibney, who was the co-executive producer of Meltdown. And that piece of Rolling Stone basically said this If the Democrats replay that playbook at a time of economic hardship, if they enrich the rich while the working class suffers, they should expect the same results.
00:12:51:08 - 00:13:23:12
David Sirota
And the Democratic president who understood how to avoid that was Franklin Roosevelt, who was not perfect but fundamentally understood. And there's a 1938 speech. It's very important that I hope you'll go back and look at Franklin Roosevelt, make clear that he understood that there was a moral reason for the New Deal. There was a macroeconomic reason for the New Deal, the New Deal being a program to actually use the government's resources to help the working class, not the rich.
00:13:20:17 - 00:13:54:03
David Sirota
But there was also a political reason, the political reason being that if you don't show that government serves the working class, then you will create the conditions for the rise of fascism. The New Deal was not only a macroeconomic and moral necessity, it was a weapon against at the time the rise of fascism in this country. And Obama did not take those lessons from history when he was president.
00:13:52:05 - 00:14:49:01
David Sirota
He is correct in diagnosing what led to the current political moment. Now, and it's just incredibly maddening that he comments on it as if he was a bystander as opposed to a driving force in creating the conditions that allowed for and fueled the rise of right wing authoritarianism and I think Biden just as an aside, I think Biden has done a little bit better, at least at the very beginning of his presidency, with the American rescue plan.
00:14:25:05 - 00:14:49:01
David Sirota
I've said that before. I'll say it again. That was probably the best piece of legislation I've ever seen in my entire in my entire life. It actually spent money, real resources on the working class of this country. So I think Biden has been a little better. But since then it hasn't been better since since that big thing. And that's not something small, but since then it has not been better.
00:14:46:01 - 00:15:21:08
David Sirota
And that's why heading into the 2024 election, I think it's anybody's guess how that's going to go and it would be a better situation for Democrats had they heeded the lesson of FDR. Had they? He did. I guess the recognition that Obama has, even though he's not apologizing, the recognition that if you sell out the working class, you create political problems for your own party.
00:15:12:11 - 00:15:57:11
David Sirota
Again, I want to just end it there. I'm I'm glad Obama has recognized the dynamics that created the moment we're in. It's super, super irritating that he will not acknowledge his own participation in that. Okay. We're going to stop there because we should get to our big interview with film maker Boots Riley and actually, it's a good segway to that interview because Boots and I talked about those political dynamics.
00:15:43:03 - 00:16:31:21
David Sirota
Now, the feeling of economic dislocation or the feelings right now of a working class under assault and the effort to fight back against that assault. We talk about it through the prism of the writers strike in Hollywood, which, again, some of you may roll your eyes and say, well, you don't care about a writers strike in Hollywood, but as you'll see, the writers strike in Hollywood is not just about Hollywood.
00:16:10:23 - 00:16:58:04
David Sirota
And you don't have to take it from from from me. You take from Boots Riley. You can take it from an Apple executive who basically admits that this battle is a battle about the entire economy and the entire American labor movement. That's coming up next after this quick break. Welcome back to Leisure Time. Last week, an executive at Apple, one of the largest corporations in the world, screened the quiet part out loud.
00:16:38:01 - 00:17:23:10
David Sirota
This executive admitted something about the stakes of the ongoing writer's strike in Hollywood. This Apple executive said that Apple and other major studios, maybe they could accept union demands for writers to be paid a fair share. But this executive said doing that could create a precedent. This executive said that giving in to such demands could, quote, encourage industries in some countries to unionize in order to make more money.
00:17:10:08 - 00:18:10:09
David Sirota
This executive went on to say that, quote, It's not so much the direct costs of a writer's deal. It's all of the fallout costs across the company. In other words, corporate America sees the writers strike in Hollywood as a battle against the entire potential future of the labor movement across every industry. If workers in one sector can demonstrate that they can actually wield real power by withholding their labor, then corporate America is.
00:17:46:11 - 00:18:30:10
David Sirota
Fear is that workers in other sectors will do the same. For today's big interview, I'm going to be speaking with a person on the front lines of this battle. Writer, director and musician. Boots Riley. If you know anything about Boots, Riley, you know that the multi-hyphenate is hard to define as any one thing. For some, you may know Boots Riley Best, as the lead vocalist of the Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club, both politically charged hip hop groups known for their critiques of societal issues for others.
00:18:20:21 - 00:19:00:06
David Sirota
You may know Boots from his 2018 feature film and directorial debut. Sorry to Bother you. An absurdist dark comedy about race and class politics. Set in the dark world of telemarketing. The through line for all of boots. Riley's work is one of deep political commitment to social justice and organized labor. Throughout his career, he's used his platform to address issues of race, inequality and systemic oppression.
00:18:47:04 - 00:19:44:05
David Sirota
As a member of the Writers Guild of America, the union that's currently on strike. Boots recently wrote an op ed for deadline.com about the importance of organized labor and solidarity. For all of these reasons. I've been wanting to talk with Boots Riley for a while now and was super psyched when we got the chance to chat. We talked about his upcoming new TV series I'm a Virgo, which premieres this Friday, June 23rd on Amazon Prime.
00:19:12:10 - 00:19:44:05
David Sirota
We also talked about his roots in political activism. We talked about the Bernie Sanders campaign and we talked about the ongoing writer's strike and how it really is part of the larger strike wave happening across the country and how it really is on the front lines of the future of the entire labor movement. Hey, Boots, how you doing?
00:19:33:21 - 00:19:44:05
Frank Cappello
All right. I'm doing good.
00:19:35:07 - 00:20:23:18
David Sirota
Real honored to talk to you. I'm a huge fan. And my first experience with with your work was I went to go see. Sorry to bother you. And I exercised my Colorado constitutional rights before the movie to use a little bit of marijuana. And three quarters of the way through the movie, I was like, Am I like, really, really gone here?
00:19:59:09 - 00:20:23:18
David Sirota
Or did something go just insane? And this movie, like, it, it just blew my mind, the entire movie. But certainly that turn at the end and I think we're we're past the point where we can do spoilers so we can talk about it like the, like, like the horse people like kind of kind of blew my mind. And it was such an amazing movie.
00:20:19:10 - 00:21:03:00
David Sirota
And I just want to like, first and foremost, thank you for making that movie like serious. Thank you for making that movie. And that's a good place to start because we got to talk a lot about Hollywood right now. I want to first start in asking you about that movie and in just to tell us how difficult a process it is to make movies that are about working class issues, that are about the class struggle just for people who don't know that industry.
00:20:49:05 - 00:21:03:00
David Sirota
I'd love to hear from you Why you think we see so few cultural products really from the sort of cultural industries that actually struggle with the class struggle.
00:21:00:09 - 00:22:01:18
Frank Cappello
Which is the first part in my experience, nobody disagreed with the movie. There was nobody along the line that disagreed with the movie. The thing that people had problems with were the horse dicks. And that's that's the that's the main thing. And even to this day, that tells you about the world, because to this day there have been no t except for maybe, you know, some national Review guy.
00:21:33:05 - 00:22:25:05
Frank Cappello
Right. That disagreed with the politics of it. Right. They disagreed with that that that the style and the turn at the end and I'm talking about people so many people reported to me like, oh, you know, I was surprised. My parents are Republicans and they blah, blah, blah, they loved it, you know, this and that. So some of those divisions, I think are surprising because as you probably know, much of what is thought of as progressive or the Democratic Party politic is so far away from class struggle.
00:22:12:18 - 00:22:55:19
Frank Cappello
Yeah, that yeah it it obfuscates what the actual problems are. And so a lot of people are confused and get suckered in to by their populist politics that is that that also is not talking about class struggle and is the opposite of that right. So you end up finding, you know, folks like the railroad workers being willing to take a more militant and radical stand around labor than some folks that would consider themselves to the left, right.
00:22:52:00 - 00:23:22:08
Frank Cappello
And some of that just has to do with the confusion that comes when you try to get away from the fact that, you know, the main problem under capitalism is the exploitation of labor. And so and that that's the driving force behind why there has to be racism and patriarchy under this system. Right. And that to get rid of those, it's a struggle that goes together.
00:23:21:14 - 00:23:51:00
Frank Cappello
Now, you know, some of the reason I didn't have that much problem getting the movie made, well, I'll say not that much problem. I had a lot of trouble getting. It took me seven years to get it made. But that for an indie movie is like, what happens, right? Sure, sure. But when we were when we were doing Occupy Oakland, there was a segment of us that started trying to do a fast food workers union out of it.
00:23:50:18 - 00:24:17:05
Frank Cappello
And we went. And it was at the time when they were like, Occupy Oakland is crazy. They shut down everything, right? And so we went and we handed out we're handing out fliers at fast food workers places saying, hey, you know, you don't have to be scared of the bus because if they fire you for organizing, this union will come occupy it and shut it down.
00:24:14:05 - 00:24:45:12
Frank Cappello
So people were getting hired in a couple places. Specifically, this one place went to McDonald's and the manager came over give me one of those and looked at and was the manager's like, Stop it, you know, and yelled at the whole McDonald's and said, this is what we need. We need a union. Right? And it's because this was 2012 and there hadn't been the the the SEIU push yet for the Fast food workers union.
00:24:44:19 - 00:25:40:02
Frank Cappello
There hadn't been all this talk, so there hadn't peop they hadn't even trained people to tell them what side they were on. And everybody thinks they're wrong, you know. So they people had this idea that, hey, I'm just a manager, I'm just a friend, or that manager is on my side and is just a friend. So there are a lot of people that until there's a conflict, they don't know what side they're on.
00:25:11:08 - 00:25:40:02
Frank Cappello
Right? And and they are moved by the actual logic of class struggle and agree with it but don't understand what, what what side they're Now you go back to that same McDonald's. I would bet that McDonald's has now trained all their managers in how to stop union organizing. They're right. And and they would never approach a flier in that same way.
00:25:40:00 - 00:26:11:02
Frank Cappello
And so in, you know, the entertainment industry there are a lot of executives that definitely agree with the politic of would even call themselves socialist. I've had some people you would not expect to call me and say that that's what they agree on. But the difference is that we haven't had a movement for people to make choices, have to make choices about and join or not join.
00:26:06:05 - 00:26:40:01
David Sirota
That's a good segue way to the strike that's happening now. Yeah, the writer, the writers strike. And I want to ask you this question that keeps coming up. You see some folks react to this writer's strike as why should I care about this? This is a bunch of like Hollywood writers who get paid really well. And by the way, you see this echoed any time.
00:26:30:11 - 00:26:40:01
David Sirota
For instance, there's like a potential nflx strike.
00:26:32:23 - 00:26:40:01
Frank Cappello
It's all about teachers, too.
00:26:34:12 - 00:27:00:10
David Sirota
Yeah, about they right now. You know, teachers are paid well, NBA players are paid, but never you know, writers are paid well. So what? So what do you say to folks who don't know much about any of it? And they say, you know, why should I care about this? What's really at stake here?
00:26:51:14 - 00:27:37:19
Frank Cappello
First of all, just to dispel that first myth, some of us do get paid. Well, you know, I'm I'm I'm totally fine pay wise. Right. However, this fight is not for those of us who are getting paid. Well, there are WGA writers who are putting out testimony on on social media right now. There's one writer who said that she'd been in three writer's rooms, three different writers rooms for three different shows over the last three years, and had sold a pilot of her own and was still on ABC.
00:27:29:02 - 00:28:08:13
Frank Cappello
Right. Food stamps. And there were two other writers that were writing for Netflix show who were saying, you know, because of, you know, you get paid a lot per week, but you don't get paid for every week of the year. You get paid. There's a bunch of downtime. So they had to steal. They were still working and not getting paid and having to steal food from the Netflix cafeteria to bring home for groceries for their family.
00:28:00:02 - 00:28:53:16
Frank Cappello
There's a lot of writers who are employed who get about 30,000 a year maybe. Yeah, I'm one of the lucky ones who has my own show, that sort of thing. And even that being said, those of us that are in my position are striking and sacrificing to bring the folks that aren't that are at that lower rung. So there's that.
00:28:29:01 - 00:28:53:16
Frank Cappello
And matter of fact, you know, that thing was being leveled like we should support teachers instead and they don't get paid as much. And some writers have responded back, Hey, I used I was a teacher a couple of years ago and I got paid a lot more back then. All right. So there's that. But they're separately right now.
00:28:49:10 - 00:29:51:18
Frank Cappello
If you go to a payday I-report.com strike tracker over the last three years, there have been 2918 strikes in the United States. We're in in the middle of the largest strike wave in the last 50 years. The larger one before this was in the seventies and then the one before that was the forties. And so there's there's there's a new thing happening in which the working class is becoming more class conscious, more aware of their own power and fighting.
00:29:26:19 - 00:30:31:08
Frank Cappello
And this is one of the most visible strikes that there is. And what happens with this strike is going to signal people as to whether they should fight or not. Around their issues. Separately, there's an existential crisis happening around a I. Usually technology gets rolled out to us and told we're going to monitor everything you tell. We're going to know your heart rate.
00:29:57:13 - 00:30:31:08
Frank Cappello
We're going to know, you know what you what where your eyeballs move on screens. We're going to know all this stuff about you. We're going to be able to track you and it's going to be for your whole life. And if you don't like it, you know, write a seek piece, whatever, but move on. That's the way it is.
00:30:15:20 - 00:31:04:01
Frank Cappello
And that's how we come to think of technology. Right. And the truth is, is that we all the power of the ruling class comes from us, comes from the exploitation of labor, and that's being able to withhold our labor is a way that we can affect the way the world works. And in this case, that's what's happening. One of the biggest issues for the WGA, the DGA and SAG.
00:30:42:16 - 00:31:25:08
Frank Cappello
So that's the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild is a I. And let's be clear, AI is not as powerful as they're saying it is. They're trying to get a lot of investors and stuff like that. A lot of stuff that we see the video of that's just plain old siege. What they can do right now is they could have a I write a script and have a human, you know, polish it up.
00:31:13:10 - 00:31:49:20
Frank Cappello
And that script is going to be derivative. It's going to be like nothing new and nothing creative. But obviously Hollywood is known often for making stuff that's not new or creative, but you're going to have 100 times more of that. They could do storyboards and pre-viz thing and figure out all the angles and tell a director, Hey, you got to execute these shots and this is what it is.
00:31:40:18 - 00:32:55:14
Frank Cappello
So therefore you've got corporate heads being able to decide the ideas via esthetic of everything that's that that's going out there and making just the world a lot more miserable. Now, the WGA has taken a stand on this and said, no, you cannot use a DGA is taking a similar stand. SAG is also doing that. And right now, when there is not a dollar value attached to it, it's probably strategically the time to be able to fight it and win.
00:32:20:08 - 00:32:55:14
Frank Cappello
And and productions are getting shut down. There is this extreme amount of solidarity that's happening, you know, that's connected to that wave that we're talking about. We've got IAC not crossing the picket line even when it's just two picketers, right? So whole productions are getting shut down. The Teamsters are like taking away taking keys out of trucks and throwing it away, making sure that nobody crosses these picket lines.
00:32:53:01 - 00:33:17:15
Frank Cappello
And this is not how it was in 2007 and 2008. And so this is in this is very important for the culture of, you know, just the fight is important because it's very visible and it will change the culture of what we're able to win, what people are willing to do in order to make things happen.
00:33:14:08 - 00:33:50:23
David Sirota
You and I are like roughly the same age and you became, I guess, politically active earlier. But but in the late eighties, early nineties, which was known as a not a not necessarily a depoliticized time, but certainly not a time of an ascendant left, you know, and then into the nineties, the sort of the at least the entertainment pop culture, you know, felt pretty depoliticized.
00:33:38:20 - 00:34:07:20
David Sirota
There was like a, you know, politics and there's, you know, culture and the two don't meet. That's how it was sort of presented to to, I guess, quote unquote mainstream America. Now, we're at the place that you just described. We're in the middle of the largest labor uprising, worker uprising in decades. And I wonder what you think is responsible for that trend.
00:34:04:05 - 00:34:07:20
David Sirota
I mean, it feels like the establishment had a pretty locked down for a while.
00:34:07:13 - 00:34:53:01
Frank Cappello
I got a theoretical timeline that I could tell you. We had the the Seattle demonstrate where people were like shutting down the WTO and whatever things didn't come from that people were like, if we could only just get more people out on the street and we raise our voices, things could happen. Then you had the war in Iraq, and we got millions and millions of people out on the street all over the world, you know, raising their voices as loud as possible.
00:34:44:14 - 00:35:19:00
Frank Cappello
Shit didn't happen. Right, right, right. So people started thinking, well, maybe there's not power. It may make maybe that maybe the world we're living in is not democratic. Like, because that was the idea that if you raise your voice because we're in a just world, that power will concede to that and that you know, it's it's about that.
00:35:06:15 - 00:35:55:07
Frank Cappello
So so those were the ideas that even the left was selling, that that's how power works. Well, I think we we got a gift in the Republicans telling the lie that Obama was a socialist because they called him a socialist and that's why people voted for him. I people don't understand that even if they weren't thinking of themselves as a socialist themselves, them calling Obama a socialist, it made people think maybe this dude is for the people.
00:35:39:23 - 00:36:27:13
David Sirota
Oh, and he and to be clear, and this has been memory hold, I feel like I'm one of the only people in who writes about politics even remembers this. I mean, the guy was campaigning across the country saying he's going to take on Wall Street. He's going to I mean, he's the campaign themes of 2008 were not the themes of 2010 and 2012.
00:35:56:20 - 00:36:27:13
David Sirota
They were like, you know, he was I mean, granted, he said, I'm like, screw a blank screen. People are projecting on to me. He actually admitted that. But but the point is, is that you know, it's not like he was campaigning as some centrist Republican.
00:36:08:01 - 00:37:06:15
Frank Cappello
So that that changed and then know then he sold that idea out, whether he was actually saying it or not. People felt that you had occupy all of a sudden. One of the first things putting out in a mass way of putting out a class line, the 99% against the 1% isn't exactly because it doesn't talk about function of class, but it was a closeness that we had and it was interpreted in that way by folks.
00:36:42:01 - 00:37:06:15
Frank Cappello
And it was in every fucking city in the United States, every town, little towns all over the place. And I saw some study and I'm going to misquoted. But it was in generally like this that before occupy the word capitalism on mainstream news had been said like two times in the last three.
00:37:07:23 - 00:37:34:16
David Sirota
I believe it.
00:37:09:15 - 00:38:06:03
Frank Cappello
I believe and it was said, you know, multiple times per day after that. And people having to, you know, make it seem like they were against capitalism that weren't right. And so I think that that happened. And then honestly, as you know, Bernie's campaign putting a lot of these things out into the forefront. And I have to make a couple things clear when I and you would know this more than I do, but I had never endorsed a candidate in my life.
00:37:44:07 - 00:38:31:10
Frank Cappello
And one of the things that changed that, that I was like, okay, look, he's not going to get Medicare for All. Congress is not going to vote for that. Right. And when I talked to I forget the guy's name, he was campaign manager guy. Right. And and, you know, this is what I'm saying happened in that conversation. I was like, it's not going to happen without strikes, without people forcing Congress folks to vote a certain way by having massive.
00:38:16:13 - 00:39:26:00
Frank Cappello
And I was told whether it's true or not, but I was told that, yeah, imagine somebody that the president calling for strikes in those places in order for that to happen. But the point is, is that the the idea of labor holding the power and by labor, I don't mean just the organized unions that exist, because a lot of these strikes, these two on 2918 strikes are in places that did not have a union and were doing it on their own.
00:38:55:15 - 00:39:26:00
Frank Cappello
Some of them were Wildcats going against leadership. What you're seeing right now is the membership of a lot of unions are much more militant and or radical than the leadership. A lot of the leadership has had to be there in times like you said, where there wasn't a movement happening and and and have taken on certain methods of survival that happened during those times.
00:39:23:16 - 00:40:19:13
Frank Cappello
And then obviously, the big thing, the mistake they made during COVID, they called everybody essential workers. And people were like, what the fuck? I'm essential. Okay, doing that actually told people a lot more about capitalism than many of the other things that had ever been done. Essential. What does that mean? What does it mean? You know, because they weren't just talking about nurses.
00:39:55:03 - 00:40:55:17
Frank Cappello
They weren't just talking about firefighters. They were talking about people that run the economy. What you saw happen right then was strikes for things that people need it right then and there. There were people calling me like. I post something about a safe way that went on strike. Somebody else that works at another place is like, Do you know how they did it?
00:40:20:10 - 00:40:55:17
Frank Cappello
We want to do that today, you know, that sort of thing.
00:40:23:12 - 00:40:55:17
David Sirota
Now, I mean, everybody learned what an essential worker was. And you mentioned Safeway. That is the first thing that came to my mind. I remember that realization. It's like, wow, the people who get in the food into the grocery stores, like essential workers. You're right. It's not just a first responder. It's like the people growing the food. I mean, it's all of it.
00:40:40:10 - 00:41:22:15
David Sirota
It's the whole it's the whole thing. Right? And so, so so then the question becomes, you've just laid all of this out. So this big this big worker uprising, people have realized what essential workers are. But it also feels like in the political arena, the the left, as it were. However, you however that's defined, feels in some ways more disempowered, where it seems right now more disempowered inside of the political world than it has been in the last five, arguably ten years.
00:41:15:00 - 00:41:30:19
David Sirota
Maybe that's maybe that's an overstatement, but it doesn't feel particularly empowered right now inside of the political arena, even though we're living through this righteous uprising. So how do you square that circle?
00:41:29:13 - 00:42:03:03
Frank Cappello
And honestly, I I'm not following electoral politics very much right now, so I know that.
00:41:37:21 - 00:42:03:03
David Sirota
But I mean, like, look, the you know, the Democrats crushed over a rail strike, you know, the debt deal.
00:41:42:02 - 00:42:31:10
Frank Cappello
Etc., etc.. Exactly. Well, put it like this. We knew Biden was in in some ways more right wing than Trump. I don't think that surprised a lot of a lot of people. Maybe it did. I don't know. But I think the the folks that are in office, many of them, and we know some notable exceptions, are not working for the working class.
00:42:08:13 - 00:43:19:02
Frank Cappello
Right. They're not. They're the and and some of them that aren't working for the working class, they think they're doing the right thing and they're not coming from a place that says power comes from the withholding of labor. So, for instance, whatever you want to get Joe Manchin to do, I bet you if those teachers went on strike in in his state and and other folks went on strike, they're going to get him to do make whatever policy they want him to make and they're going to have a lot more more chance of doing that.
00:42:44:17 - 00:43:19:02
Frank Cappello
But the thing is, is that there's power is not there in DC. Power, you know, is is what the ruling class and the ruling class gets their power from the wealth that's created from the labor that they exploit. So so we're not going to see, you know, with this new movement happening right now, we're not going to see that echo right away in the halls of Congress.
00:43:11:15 - 00:43:54:02
Frank Cappello
What we're going to see is it echoing in the responses to how to keep people from from doing.
00:43:19:19 - 00:43:54:02
David Sirota
This, to try to tamp it down.
00:43:22:12 - 00:43:54:02
Frank Cappello
Down or to try to and make laws that are concessions to these workers? Right. So you are having things like you see the Supreme Court ruling, those sorts of things that are going against bosses, being able to sue unions, things like that. What you're going to see is people scrambling as these strikes get bigger and bigger and more powerful is people scrambling to assuage the working class.
00:43:52:03 - 00:44:23:09
Frank Cappello
And that's when you start seeing some of those changes.
00:43:55:20 - 00:44:23:09
David Sirota
So I want to ask this question we just had on Professor Adolph Reed, who is has a new book about what he calls race reductionism. And I'm just paraphrasing his argument here, but his basic thrust of his argument is, is that boiling things down only to race is used as a weapon of the ruling class to try to divide the working class.
00:44:20:10 - 00:44:49:12
David Sirota
And there's been some pushback to that argument. I just wonder what your response to that, to that argument generally is. I'm not articulating it all that deeply.
00:44:30:11 - 00:45:15:08
Frank Cappello
But so what what I would say is that, yeah, you if you boil things down to just race and and I think there are very few people that are doing that. But if you were to boil things down to just race, then you're not having an analysis of, of how the world works. The idea of race was created to justify slavery to the white working class of Europe, to say, Hey, these folk, these are different, almost a different species of folks, these black folks, you don't have to worry about us putting you in chattel.
00:45:08:02 - 00:45:44:23
Frank Cappello
This is something different. That was when the idea came up. Now, racist ideas and racist oppression exists because it has a utility under capitalism. It exploits people in in in different values. So that can say to the white working class that, hey, these folks are poor and they are oppressed from their own doing. It is all, you know, their inefficiencies, it's all their culture, it's all of that.
00:45:43:02 - 00:46:39:03
Frank Cappello
And it has nothing to do with the way capitalism works. If you want to get rid of a racist oppression and racist ideology, you're going to have to get rid of capitalism first. However, you're not going to get rid of capitalism without the working class overthrowing the ruling class. You're not going to have the working class overthrowing the ruling class if you're not fighting racism at the same time.
00:46:12:09 - 00:46:39:03
Frank Cappello
Right. And so that is the problem when when things get reduced to being about race and racism, what they are doing is saying that exploitation has no place in this and that economic exploitation has no place in this, and that you could just have black CEOs and everything would be fine. You could have a black president and things would be fine.
00:46:38:12 - 00:47:19:23
Frank Cappello
You could have a program that allows us to have a gentler capitalism in which everybody is warm and fuzzy and things would be fine. What you can't get to that because they need racism and it will exist as long as we don't get rid of the ruling class. There's a reason why the great black revolutionaries were socialists or communists.
00:47:04:08 - 00:47:49:16
Frank Cappello
You know, A lot of times the history of the Black Panther Party is told without telling people that at one point they changed their name to the Black Panther Communist Party. There's a lot of stuff that's talked about W.E.B. Dubois without talking about the fact that he was a communist. There's a lot of stuff that's talked about Marcus Garvey, without talking about the fact that his cadre that led his organization was the Brotherhood of the African Blood Brotherhood, who were part of the Communist Party.
00:47:33:23 - 00:47:49:16
Frank Cappello
The idea that you could fight racism without fighting capitalism is one that allows capitalism and racism to continue to exist.
00:47:46:13 - 00:48:11:23
David Sirota
So let's see. Do you want to you want to talk about your your new show a little bit?
00:47:49:20 - 00:48:30:11
Frank Cappello
I do have a show coming out. It's about a 13 foot tall black man who can't wait to see it in California. It's called I'm a Virgo. Stars Jharrel Jerome, Mike Epps, Walton Goggins, Carmen Ejogo, Brett Gray, Olivia Washington, Cara Young. You know, I hadn't been doing press because originally the WGA said no doing press for the shows, but they then came back out and clarified that as long as it's on your own volition, you can, you can.
00:48:28:03 - 00:48:55:01
David Sirota
Be well, let me let me. And that's a good place to to actually to conclude you wrote about your own personal conflict in your own inside your own mind about, you know, the strike is my show's coming out. The strike is happening like, I want to be in solidarity with the strike. But it also sucks because, like, I've been working on the show for years to talk to us a little bit about that internal struggle.
00:48:50:05 - 00:49:32:14
David Sirota
Because it's a tough one, right? I mean, something you've been working on for a long time happening, right? It sort of coincides with it like. And talk to us about how you think about it for yourself personally, because we're all individual human beings, but also your obligation to the to the to the movement, to the collective.
00:49:08:23 - 00:50:07:00
Frank Cappello
What I write about are these kinds of struggles. So there was a part of me that knows what my decision is going to be around something like this. However, you know, knowing what that how that felt and as I said in the article, I've been being around strikes and and helping, you know, people keep out scabs, helping helping farmworkers organize things like that.
00:49:38:16 - 00:50:07:00
Frank Cappello
A lot of my life since that since the eighties. But this is and I've also been in years I've been a Teamster working for UPS. I've been in SAG in these things. Right. But this is the first time was on strike. And in all of these things, you're asking people to make a sacrifice, right? Don't cross this picket line.
00:50:00:23 - 00:50:29:18
Frank Cappello
Don't do these things. I think with something like this, there's a lot of talk like, Fuck, why are we doing this? I like I have a lot of friends that are longshoreman and you know, because they're friends, they'll tell me, like, why are we striking in solidarity with this? We got bills to pay, we got shit to do, you know?
00:50:19:10 - 00:51:02:08
Frank Cappello
And, you know, often trying to be the voice of reason. And so what I was saying in that article is I can imagine that since I felt disappointed and saddened and I've been in these struggles my whole life, imagine how hard it is for these other folks who have it and have shows that they've been working on for years and want to promote it.
00:50:44:01 - 00:51:22:04
Frank Cappello
And but then once that has happened, think about the sacrifice that those folks are still willing to make and the development that there has been to where, you know, for everything that you said about the stereotype of Hollywood writers and things like that and how, you know, people are making these immense sacrifices and some of them are in pretty good positions right there, but they're sacrificing those good positions for this ideal and for the the ideal that they are in unity with their workers that aren't in their position.
00:51:21:14 - 00:52:01:18
David Sirota
You know, I hope and I'm cautiously optimistic that all of what you've described is contagious, that what you've just outlined right there, what you've just articulated about a sense of being part of something bigger than yourself. I feel like over my lifetime, we have grown up inside of this sort of propaganda bubble that seeing yourself only as one sort of careerism, individualism that has been sold and packaged in so many different ways has led us to forget.
00:51:55:23 - 00:52:22:05
David Sirota
I mean, I use it again that the term the collective forget about like the ideal of actually sacrificing to be part of something bigger than oneself. My hope is, is that the that what everyone is seeing, seeing other people do that is something that is a contagious ethos that people learn to that.
00:52:18:18 - 00:53:07:19
Frank Cappello
Oh, I do definitely think it's contagious. And just from the people I'm talking to that are on strike, you know, this strike was enabled by the fact that I got see, the membership tried to go on strike two years ago and were disappointed that it turned out to be a delegate system that overrode that, that the massive vote that would have put them on strike so that that spirit was contagious.
00:52:51:08 - 00:53:30:14
Frank Cappello
All of these things that people have seen over these last few years is what's inspiring them. And, you know, you should see the number of people of writers and directors that are hyped about longshoremen shutting down the West Coast. It's yeah, it does spread.
00:53:11:04 - 00:53:30:11
David Sirota
Well, listen, man, I just want to I just want to express my own personal thanks to you for being somebody who uses your platform to promote the ideas of solidarity. It is way too rare. My buddy Adam McKay and I talk about this all the time. It's. It's just it's it's not really part of the ethos. It's not really part of the culture.
00:53:30:11 - 00:53:50:17
David Sirota
But I think like slowly but surely, people like you are helping make it more part of the culture. And I think it is going to change things. I feel I actually do. It's funny, I'm I'm a kind of pessimistic on a day to day basis, but in order, you know, Oh God, this sucks, this sucks, This is but order to be bothered by it, you have to be in some ways, you got to be an optimist that you can actually change it.
00:53:50:17 - 00:53:55:04
David Sirota
You got to feel inside. It's worth you know, it's worth it to keep trying to change it.
00:53:55:04 - 00:54:11:02
Frank Cappello
And part of that has to do with an analysis that my optimism comes from an analysis of how things works, the work that tells me that there is a way to change it. And sometimes it being mystified is what causes the pessimism.
00:54:11:05 - 00:54:25:23
David Sirota
Boots Riley Show is called I'm a Virgo. It comes out on prime video on June 23rd, 2023. Boots Riley, it's really an honor to talk to you. It's again, I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for taking the time and thank you so much for all the work that you do.
00:54:26:00 - 00:54:28:10
Frank Cappello
Thank you. Thanks for doing what you're doing.
00:54:28:15 - 00:54:56:15
David Sirota
Peace out. That's it for today's show. As a reminder, our paid subscribers who get leaver time premium, you get to hear next week's bonus episode, our deep dive into the four year campaign that ultimately forced New York to pass a landmark climate bill. So listen to leave your time premium just head over to News.com to become a supporting subscriber when you do you get access to all delivers premium content, including our weekly newsletters and our live events.
00:54:56:19 - 00:55:19:05
David Sirota
And that's all for just eight bucks a month or 70 bucks for the year. One last favor, Please be sure to like, subscribe and write a review for lever time on your favorite podcast app. The app you are listening to right now. Take 10 seconds and give us a positive review in that app and make sure to check out all of the incredible reporting our team has been doing over at Lever News.com.
00:55:19:14 - 00:55:34:05
David Sirota
Until next time. I'm David Sirota. Rock the Boat Every Time podcast is a production of The Lover and the Lover Podcast Network. It's hosted by me David Sirota, our producer is Frank Cappello, with help from the Levers lead producer Jared Kang, Mayor.