momentum is kind of going back other way. well, in terms of the government not being helpful i'm an i'm an anarchist who have a lot of thoughts about that. but i will probably spare most of you, most them, i would say. i'm not surprised. get away with it. i don't think there's ever any use in being surprised when the powers be decide that we are worth investing in because we know what they want, invest in their selves and they've done that well very, very, very handsomely over. the past couple them, you know, centuries. but i'm glad you mentioned warrior matt because i think i'm not sure how many folks know about the currently running strike in america. it's in rural alabama in tuscaloosa, where over a thousand coal miners were members of the united mine workers of america, umw have been on strike since april first of last year.

so 18 months and counting which is a very long time to be on. and they've been out on unfair labor practices strike basically. they've been trying to get a decent contract out of this company that they that they work for and there's there's a lot of back story but like the cliff notes version is a company named jim alter resources to own this mine for years and years they had decent relationship with the workers decent union contract as good as you're going to get for that specific context. and then they went under and room at coal this wall street back to venture capital fair and entity came in and they bought up the mine and they rehired most of the people that were laid off but they told them hey you know we were just a poor wall street backed billion company. we need a little time to get our feet. so. and you want those, right? because it's either this or wal-mart because you live in brookwood, alabama. so how about you just take this pay cut? we take away your personal data. we institute this draconian strike system and we'll just in

five years, we'll get you back. you need to be well, negotiate a nice new contract for you. and you're like, well, okay and five years later, they the language in the contract they were offered was basically identical. and they're like well, hang on, that's not fair. and they went out they voted down a potential contract that wasn't good enough. and they went on strike. and they've been out ever since. and one of the aspects of this strike that keeps me coming down is i've been covering it very closely since the jump really was is the people and the women i've gotten really close to who run the women's auxiliary and have created this out of nothing, this incredible mutual aid network, the strike pantry, they feed hundreds of striking every week with donated they collect hygiene items and, baby items, because they're strike babies. there are children who have never known other life than being on this strike. it's incredible. and there are a lot of historical precedents for like

as much as coal mining is coded as this very hyper masculine whatever kind of job like women have always been there. and i'm sure other genders have been there too. we just don't know as much about them. but women have always been there and, they've kept it going and that's what's happening in in in this war room. might strike right now. and it's honestly at a point where i think it's going necessitate federal intervention because it's just is this david and goliath fight and those folks those workers not going to give up. they are dug in and so are the bosses who have said on record before that have the money to pay them more they could get them anything they want but they don't want they want to starve them out, which sounds if you've ever seen harley county usa, you know about the mine wars. there's a real long history of bosses trying to starve out coal miners, and it never goes very well for either side. so this is a strike. this meant a lot to me because i started i started covering it while i was supposed be writing this book. so whenever i tired of doing

homework, i would fly alabama and see what was going on in the strike. so that's kind of my my come here, though. i've covered stories where they show up in front of. yeah. they'll come in a nice connection and i, i'd see out there and it is a moment sarah nelson came. oh sarah was always there. yes. and for us to have like a local connection. yeah. because blackrock's headquarters is just in midtown. they've come up a couple of times and, you know, shot emily. hello. well, what do you do? hello? we would like some acknowledgment and like you to step back in the book about. the challenge they have from a marketing standpoint that we're in this kind of fuel that's there's some great passages in here that talk about that. could you kind of talk about that? yeah, it's complicated. like unless you're a person who follows labor or the connection to the area or follows me on twitter, you probably don't know that much about this strike because it hasn't gotten a ton of attention. the new york times showed up a year end and talked to like one guy, they're like, cool, we're done. the real news has sent me down a

couple of times and given me a platform to talk to them and do mini documentaries and really just dig into the story. but it's been hard to sell it as a journalist because to is the most fascinating story in the world. this multiracial, multi gender group of blue collar workers in the deep south, outside the civil rights capital of alabama, who are on to make things better for themselves and their coworkers going up against wall street capital. they're a politically diverse and ideologically diverse group, but they mined coal and that's complicated people because the world on fire is that and it's a little hard to find the kind of sympathy for that group of workers that it's a easier talking about teachers or health care or the kind of labor perform is environmentally complex, weighted, politically complicated, but still people and there's still workers are being paid 20 bucks an hour to go down thousand feet into the deepest underground coal mine in

north america, which is full of methane gas, where there have been explosions where i know people who have gotten black lung, who have gotten injured, who have died, and they deserve to be okay. they deserve a decent life, too. and no republicans showed up for them because in a union, pretty much no democrats have showed up for them because they dig coal and because it is a majority conservative, it is a religious white group of workers and the democrats, oh, they're not going to vote for us, so who cares? so who do they have? turns they have the local socialist groups. they have the labor movement and they have the sarah nelsons and they have the mark peron's have all they have. and is working people very much news. and then me, i just keep showing bothering them so it's it's been interesting seeing the to believe politically speaking some of the workers who when i first met them say oh i'm a conservative vote for trump all this but over the past 18 months after seeing who showed up, who

didn't show up, who ignore them, who donated who sent money. suddenly these guys are out here on twitter posting eugene debs quotes like and i think that matters. and if i was a political type person, i would perhaps pay attention to that. but all those type of people are not paying attention. so maybe i'll just put it to you guys. if you know anybody who's up in politics would like to figure out how to get people who don't necessarily like democrats, give them another look, maybe do something so wanted to ask matt because real news came up and it was spontaneous who not as a plug but as part of the talk about that right now there is kind of a revisiting labor and there is a kind of tacit there stories are getting in. what is it like to be operating a organization in this period of time where you are driving, this narrative this is at odds with with the dominant theme, which is always putting capitalism

first. i mean, you're up against these things where msnbc is supported by pharma and viking cruise and mercedes. i mean, so where is the space for people to see their. there is not we have to make it and i think that's we're trying to do and you know just to be perfectly honest it's not easy is it profitable? you know, if i was a better editor in chief, i'd be choosing stories that got way more traction than hour long interviews, human, humane know mini documentaries with coal miners. but it's important. it's important to me. it's important to kim. it's important to everyone on our staff and. we hope that we are communicating why it's important effectively to people, but it is always an uphill struggle. i mean, you know, same goes for the book, right no one's bought this book. there hasn't been a single of it. but i knew that kind of going in. i've been interviewing workers for years years.

there's just not a big market for it. it's the kind of work that i think everyone to know is out there. but very few people support and it's very hard to get visibility, which is why i wanted to circle back to the heroic efforts of kim, who has. i mean, she's being modest no. one in the country has covered that strike more than she has no one not not by a long shot. and she has almost single handedly lifted that story into public over the past year and a half and she's a little freelancer running around. right a lot of times she's she's trying to find someone to send down there. so if we ever have the chance, i'm like, yeah get get your -- down there. and see what we get. but again on the on the other side of it, trying get lift and visibility and trying get people to care and also trying to. people to care for a sustained amount of time that something that i want to impress upon all

of us. we all have a role to play if we're asking about what the state of the labor movement is, where things are going to go, that question is as much up to as it is to the people that are reporting on and the stories that we are focusing on right because this is what the bosses at places warrior med know. they know exactly what mitch -- mcconnell knows, which is you wait long enough, people will forget, right? but the people walking the picket line, babies that have been born during strike, the women running the strike pantry, they haven't forgotten. right. but i think that a lot of us have forgotten them. and applies across the board because digital media ecosystem has rewired our brains to the point where we all have the long term memory goldfish and we need to fight against that because the moment looks like public attention, like the eye of sauron is moving away. that's when bosses come down hard. that is why starbucks is firing union organizers left and right, because they're like, oh, people have moved on to the next store.

that's to unionize. they don't give a -- about what's going on in buffalo. so we're going to keep firing people. so i ask you, what have done about that? what have any of us about that? whatever it is i include myself in this. it's not enough, right? we need to show to picket lines. we need to donate to strike funds. we need to keep sharing updates and keep reminding people working, people that we are there for them because the mainstream media is not right. and so that's also what makes this really exciting, right? because, again, mainstream doesn't doesn't care about this. they may do one, one off story about it and then move on, but which gives us the ability to kind of drive the narrative if we are all doing it together. right. and so i think that is one of the exciting parts about the past two years, right? it's been very bleak two years. and i remember kim and i discussing this after the amazon union drive in bessemer, alabama, because that's where a lot of this kind kicked off.

right. all eyes were on bessemer. kim and i were down there and it was she was in bessemer that she took a little jaunt down to brookwood and these miners. and then here you go. you know, she's been covering it, you know, endlessly since since then. but i think lot of people had their eyes on bessemer, though the union election failed, it really started to galvanize lot of people. then we had starbucks, then we had amazon union here in staten island. since then, we've had trader joe's, we've had chipotle right there. there have been folks, the gaming industry folks in the media industry, 60% increase in the number labor petitions filed the first six months of this fiscal year the year before. so there are over and the be for the first time in a very long is starting to at least let unions make their so they're not being because for years entire apparatus of labor was in the hands of scalia's son people like that they were driving the

train so people would go to try to get redress in the system. i to ask you one of the things is a common you talked about. i feel remiss whenever in a room this with so many people that have clearly progressive values and interests. one of the things it's curious to me is that here we are going into this election 2022 and everything is on. and i'm looking through here. health care shows up and the of people's health black there's a lot in here about your book about the chronic issue and i was feeling analogous with my work as a chief leader my book stagnation about the world trade and how that has gone on and on and on and it's treated as a provincial story. so when you go and interview people, the site, if they're from london, they have no idea that people are continuing to die and that we've lost more people from the epas. why? that there safe to breathe. then we died the day of attack.

the media successfully created discrete event that is memorialized in the militaristic history as people died on that attack when, we're attacked and the reality that the occupational system failed first responders and that we're going to see many, many more people die from government lying about the conditions in the air because they wanted to open up wall street and so imagine i'm covering congress and now in the back better bill remember that build back better we were ambitious we know 3 trillion to 1 trillion it just shrunk one of the sickest things of all was the black lung restoration bill. and restoration of the world trade center health fund, which needs to have to 2090. why? because we ordered tens of thousands of schoolkids back into dozens of schools that they had no business being in and the middle of the reproductive years are getting illnesses. that's why. and so as we speak right now mansions mass you get the black lung refunded backed up but

still are with the banking cop for the 911 world trade center health program. so i just it seems to me that in a pandemic that we should be talking universal health care like why don't even see any about this at all like it's been agreed. we're going to have a few issues. we're going talk about reproductive rights and donald trump and anything else we're a simple minded people have been used to death. i mean, you can talk about that disconnect between which your reporting about the searchlights of working people and the national political debate. there's a disconnect that seems to be growing, oh, boy, well, 5 minutes or less. and it was a little above my pay grade, honestly. oh, i mean. well, i mean, honestly, everyone have health care. i think a lot of people are talking about it agitating for. it doesn't get necessarily the headlines. it did at one point when the government for a second was like maybe no. and honestly, when it came to my

book, i didn't even really write about health care workers. and because it's such a huge, sprawling universe, a galaxy of complications that, i was like, i am not equipped for this, but i can write about black lung. so wrote a lot about black lung and i guess i can speak to that a little bit just because i don't want to. i'm not going to -- you guys, but i can talk about black lung. and since you mentioned it and you mentioned that in the black i did get reauthorized and it is permanently thank god. i just want to mention as are talking about health and talking about people who are forgotten and about things that aren't part of the discourse, black lung, which i think a lot of people think back and think of like coal miners with their little like little smudges or little pickaxes, like back in the 1900s. oh, they got the black lung, that whole thing is not funny. is thing. and is that a 25 year high? i have friends who are only a few years older than me they have black lung and is a vicious, horrible, cruel disease that leaves you gasping like a

fish. as one man who has it described to me, and it's kind of just been left in the shadows because it impacts a smaller of workers like said is like a circumstantial occupational thing. and it's a disease that does not need exist is purely because occupation purely because of the coal dust and the silica and the lack of regulations and the mine who don't care and the ill fitting respirators. so there's a million reasons why it's still a problem is becoming more of a problem and actually my way to appalachia and a couple days weeks pretty soon to do some reporting on this for a new a new reporting project but in terms of the health care debate, mean it shouldn't be a debate. health care is a human right. the fact that our government has not recognized that is an indictment on that. and the social structures that have allowed that to happen. but honestly, i feel like this is more of a max question really, since you spend so much time reporting on covid specific things like during covid, i was mostly just in my little office and in the library writing my book 300 years of labor history, and then going alabama to bother the coal miners.

but max is like in it in it. well, okay. we got a lot thoughts in here. i'm going to try to focus them because i know we got like we got a couple of minutes here and then i know we want to get to q&a. so. i'll spoil one of the interviews in the book which is an interview with norman, a retired silver miner in idaho who when the pandemic hit was himself in a two plus year strike at the luckey mine strike, silver mine in idaho, which they lost. and rick retired soon after that, the middle of covid and. it's one of i mean, it's hard to pick a favorite interview. i love all of them and i'm so tremendously honored that all the folks that spoke with me for, the book shared so much of themselves with me, even though many of them had never met in person. rick included but we spend 95%

of the interview you never mentioned covid. we just talk his life growing up in idaho all the different parts of what they up he grew up in the different types of mine work he's done over the course of his career. and i remember my my editors saying like, should we keep this? because it doesn't really mention i was like, no, because the last page is so because he finally starts talking about kobe's like, yeah, you know, it's it hasn't been that bad here because they're kind in a small mining town, but coeur d'alene, you know, it's a little worse. and what he says is he's like, honestly he silicosis is a much concern here. people are dying from silicosis way more often than they are of covid. and then interview ends. right. and like what? i mean when i say the problems that existed before covid got here, you know, like a lot of that has factored to the kind of growing labor consciousness and a lot of that, you know, stems from problems that are very systemic and run very deep in this country.

and here's the thing right? know, i think we need to get angry this because i grew up conservative conservative were fox news was on the time once it came about in the nineties every election year i remember republican you know politicians going to coal country right i. look, you know right wing media loves talking about the humble coal miner or any type of miner around election season. but for a year and a half, these miners, deep red alabama, have been on strike. right wing media has not said --. fox news has done more stories on a dumb fluff story of a couple of coal miners like pushing a hybrid car that had stalled out because. it was like a culture war narrative they could paint. they've done stories on that than they've done on the warrior coal strike. i would say what my you know, one of my favorite podcasters, a david parsons of the nostalgia trap, would say they do not give

a -- about you. that is the enduring lesson from covid they do the politicians people on wall street, they do not give a about any of us pardon my french. it needs to be said as plainly as possible. they will drop us like a bad habit. the second it is not profitable for them. the second it is not beneficial for them. that is what we have seen borne out the past two and a half years. you mentioned hero pay. there is a very specific reason that companies like amazon chose to call it hero pay and not hazard pay. they call it hazard pay. you have to keep paying it as long as the hazard persists. if you if you call it hero pay, then it's just out of the goodness of your own heart and you can rip it away weeks later without anyone having to do about it. and this the other thing that i would say in answer to your question, i remember interviewing the great labor organizer, cooper caraway out in sioux falls, south dakota, a year ago when workers at the smithfield pork processing plant in sioux falls were prepared to go on, voted overwhelmingly in

favor of going on strike. why were? they prepared to go on strike. and i remember hearing that name and cooper reaffirmed this in the interview, he said this pork plant was the had the largest civilian outbreak, covid anywhere in the country. a lot of people died. hundreds of people died. over a thousand people got infected. and these are not just numbers, right? these are fellow workers. these are t-ball coaches. these are people in the pews of your church who are no longer there. right. every year, my family. it's a wonderful life at christmas. and the entire message of that movie, one of the most enduring and celebrated movies in american culture is that you cannot measure the worth of one person's life. now, magnify that by the millions lost. we have not reckoned with that. i don't think and the political establishment the economic establishment is trying to just, you know, drive full steam past it and put all those lives in the rearview mirror and what cooper said to me, this is a time the then i'll shut up is

workers at that plant who had suffered immeasurably to keep the supply running to keep people fed, who got sick. and a lot of people died it at contract. negotiations were up and managers were trying to take more from them. they were trying to eliminate one of their breaks. so how can you have that? how can you have people sacrificing this much for a company that that made so much money during the pandemic and that company is trying to take more just like warrior met tried to take more like the railroad companies now are trying to squeeze more blood from the stones that are their workers. the stones have no more blood left to give. they want their blood back. workers at smithfield were prepared to go on strike over it. and when i asked cooper, i was like, what is management even thinking? and said, here's what you have to understand. the bosses are coming out of covid feeling like they are the victims, feeling they had to provide ppe. they had to cut into their profit margins to keep workers marginally safe. they feel like the aggrieved

party is coming back to take what has been stolen from them. that's what we're up against. i would say one of the things and we're going to open up just just want to make this point what i from covering it when i was the chief leader the tick tock of because it was primarily we did private but civil service it was very frustrating to cover nurses and their press conferences in the beginning when they were told to violate or ignore their clinical training, remove an n95 mask after clinical encounter and told there was a national imperative to manage and that they needed to adopt it as a pet in their lunch and bring it back and forth for a week. and they said things will happen. we die, our families will become infected, and the hospitals will become a vector for the disease. exhibit.

a elmhurst that's exact what happened consistently when workers have addressed this issue. i've covered it granularly similarly in may, when the cdc said we're going to reward you with taking your mask off, you're vaccinated. only 40% of people were vaccinated. retail people, transit workers, flight attendants all begged them not to. they said not enough people been vaccinated. you're put us in the position of having to administer the vaccine threshold tollbooth and you'll have variance off helo delta. so what i'm trying to say at every step of the way, we're care workers, trans workers. i asked mayor de blasio in the beginning of the pandemic in the blue room about transit workers who read the newspaper like the financial times and the wall street journal and knew that there was an infectious disease and they were wearing masks. they were threatened with being written up because it didn't match the uniform. and they were scaring the population. and mayor de blasio said to me

in a press conference, we're following the cdc guidance. let's keep masks for people that need them. so the whole thing has been run by scarcity t that is what they the health care system in this country, profit driven is about as much as possible. and if people get well, that is a happy accident. well, then we'll just just start. i realized didn't answer your question about health care workers. and this is the last thing i'll say, because i do interviews and cortez set you up. yeah, well, i'll have panels, guys. you all you are know deep down what i'm about to say. but again, it bears repeating is like we are not prepared for the crisis this in the health care industry that is health. if you talk swing a dead cat and you will find a health care worker who burned the hell out. all of them are burned out. people quitting in record numbers, leaving profession. there are folks are staying and

fighting the longest nurses strike in massachusetts history happened during the pandemic at st vincent's hospital in, worcester, massachusetts. what were they fighting? they were fighting against the investor owned company that owns the hospital. and they're in texas, trying to push nurses to have a worse nurse to patient ratios, basically doing what every other employer is doing. i mentioned the railroads, the railroad workers are driving these three mile long trains and the railroads to get it down to one person running those trains and they are burned the hell out. they are also quitting in record numbers because the great brain genius idea that the capitalists have had over the over, you know, these past decades is let's cut costs and force workers to do more with less scarcity. that is that is the that is the modus operandi. that is that is that is what people are giving themselves? fat bonuses over? that is what is happening in health. nurses are telling me over and

over we cannot provide the care that we've been trained to give when are juggling so many patients, just like educators are saying, we cannot provide the education that kids need. when we have 35 of them in a poorly ventilated class, just like railroaders are telling me, we do everything that we need to. when there's only one person on this massive vehicle. this is a crisis that happening across industries. and i think the hopeful thing is that workers are starting to see the connections of their plights and struggles and they are reaching out to each other and they are building solidarity with one another. so let's hear from you all. is there a microphone there. yes. in the back of the room. yes. hi. i wanted to ask him if she's got an anecdote from labor that she feels like is applicable to this moment. just something really fascinating. she found a book, but research

for her amazing book, fight like hell. hi, tall. thank you. yeah. funny hear you guys because my book is very a history book. there's current it's it's history it's present passed it's kind of all melded together. and the one thing i didn't really write about was covid. so. one thing, the one thing that i love to talk about when i do these of things is just something that shows how much has changed. but how little the most potent tools we have it. so in 1946, in hawaii in the hawaiian islands, which at that point were owned that agricultural economy was controlled by white colonies dues in the mainland. and it was worked by a mix of asian native hawaiians, puerto rican folks and black workers. just a whole hodgepodge of different cultures and language hung. they are indeed asian. yes.

so, so this. yes. okay. so this is the context there. there's a. right. so this is what was happening at that and that place at that point in time, the were making all the value the bosses were all the profits. the classic case. and those workers were organizing of the ilwu international longshore warehouse workers union and throughout the course of that that history like there would be strikes, there would be work actions. there be attempts to to change their conditions. but something that happened quite often the bosses would pit different of workers against one another's. for example, filipino workers being in the brought japanese workers strikes, korean workers breaking japanese chinese worker strikes things like that their their differences were used as a wedge to keep them apart, heat them from building community in solidarity. so in 1946, when it came time to strike, the organizers, their union realized, okay, well, we can't we can't let that happen. we can't give in to that this time. and they they won basically by

very just very simply making sure that everyone could understand what was going on. they had translators every meeting had different people that spoke to different languages, whether it was ilocano or japanese or korean what. they made sure everyone felt, heard and understood, appreciated. they built street kitchens, which is a very a time tested, a very useful tactic in which different groups of workers would cook for one another and share recipes and build community way. and they built such a strong sense of solidarity that the bosses couldn't break them and they won 70,000 people were out on that strike and they got the biggest raise they got in 20 years. at the end of they won because they embraced multiple multi gender, multilingual organizing. and that's something that's such a simple tactic. but the labor movement has not always gotten it right throughout the past 300 years of our organized and i love thinking about that example because we're in new york. we're all out here being excited

about the amazon labor union and staten island, and they use some of those same tactics because there was another multiracial multilingual multicultural group of workers and they made sure the people spoke different languages and were able to communicate they had barbecues and had jollof rice and you know, shared other libations out by the bus. they built community, made it very clear this is our union, this is us against them. and it they happened. the bosses were unable to break that. and i just love pulling up that example that just shows how much stronger we are when we work together, embrace our differences and refuse. let the bosses use these manufactured divisions to pull us apart. because one thing that is always important to remember is that there are way more of us than there are of them. and don't like when we realize that because that just shows how powerful we are and how vulnerable they are in the back back. yes, yes, yes, sure. yeah so two quick questions.

one is, do you think that the workers are starting to see through the culture battle and? the second one is, what do you make of fact that some of the striking a number of the striking right have gotten jobs at the amazon locally in alabama? and will that have any impact on strike on union in alabama? and i think some of them are even deciding to leave coalmining completely because they got of getting well that i don't know about people who are getting ready to leave the industry but you're right there have been some workers who are on strike or met have gotten jobs at the amazon warehouse down, the road in bessemer that max mentioned, this historic site of struggle and not only are they, you know, they're picking up a shift because the uaw is like they they furnished strike checks, but 80% of the people involved in the strike are parents like they have bills. they have medical situations like you need money. so pick up a shift there and. they've got some of them have gotten really involved with ongoing amazon organizing effort the amazon union that's not they lost a couple elections but

elections don't make break a union you're still a union whether or not you get, you know, the rubber from the government. so that is something that's happening and a lot of the other workers have up other side jobs because they have to support families. and they've been on strike for so long but yeah, it is very interesting. look at this one of the many fascinating little, little aspects of this strike like amazon and warrior met like these different types of workers are coming together and they're seeing this common enemy. and to speak a little bit to this idea, the whole culture war thing, i think that's a that's a i want to hear what max has to say to that. i think it depends on the person and what they value and where they're coming from like i come there and i look like this and. i have a guillotine tattoo. i'm a -- like i clearly do not see world the same way as a lot of the folks i've talking to and getting to know. and they've had really deep conversations with some of the with a lot of folks, mostly the women who are coming from a very

conservative, like very world than the one i occupy. but we're friends like we're we've developed deep friendships and. there's even we've had hard conversations around things like abortion, which like at this point, some them see that very differently, but not in a that is hurting anybody. you know, like one of my friends down there, i talk to her about it she was like, oh, this is what i think, christian. i don't really i don't really agree with abortion, but i don't think the government should be able to control our bodies. it's like, you know. i can't give me a second. and i was like, you know, i can work with that. you don't have the power to oppress people in the way that people above us have the power. so, okay, we can we can meet in the middle. we can figure out the common ground have and we can build and talk to that. and i think that's been one of the most interesting kind of productive things about this strike, is finding that common ground and building off of that and seeing ways that we can see eye to eye and working on the ways we can't, but also not ever accepting racism, bigotry.

like there's some things you cannot excuse us, but there are other conversations you can. now, what were you saying? no, i'm saying that we have only 3 minutes because we have to be considerate. the oppressor is time. did you want to comment on that? well, real quick, i mean. i think you have a minute, kim. kim put that beautifully. i would say what i said earlier. in a lot of ways, the answer to this question depends on us. right? because, you know, working are not dumb. right i mean, i think that's like one of the like through lines our work is that we're trying to constantly convince like workers have voices and thoughts and opinions and experience ideas that deserve to be heard and considered and listened to attentively what would say from that? is that know, what would we do and kim, as an actual organizer so it's like she she brings that organizing ethos to journalism and in a of ways that's what i do as well the kinds of conversations that i have with workers every week are just the kinds of conversations that a

million different organizers never get their names on articles or books do every single day, which is a down talk to people listen to what they have to say without, you know, pushing an agenda on them. that is how you get people to start thinking differently about the narratives that are getting blasted at them on tv and radio and so on and so forth. if you want to combat the culture war from the ground up workers, whether they're at a coal in alabama, whether they're on the railroads, whether they're at amazon, whether they are at a dollar store in louisiana, the way to get through to them is to to them and talk to them and actually show that you care about them and keep showing up because then you build those relationships. they start to see, oh, well, if this person who i like, who cares about me thinks differently from me, maybe like we can actually have a conversation about this. that happens a lot on shows. but again, like we're talking off people, we need all of us doing that work. we need all of us to keep showing up for each other and keep talking to each other with

grace. right. and i think that there that way lies the path to salvation. there we go with grace. thank you very much. the books are for sale outside. welcome welcome. welcome. i'm here with two of my brilliant colleagues and a fantastic and fierce post-covid action lawyer and i am so excited to dive into texts and to start this conversation. please note that all the books are available for sale through a greenlight bookstore here at the law school. so from the u.s. supreme court to the presidential administration from a local criminal courts, state election bureaus, americans of all political leanings are increasingly voicing skepticism about the legitimacy of our laws and our legal institutions.

we have today authors william araiza to my immediate right wilfred codrington to in the middle, and then chris fabricant on the far. i guess you're left to discuss the current struggles to contend with, the legitimacy of our constitution, of our courts, and our legal institutions in this highly politically time. i want to spend just a few moments introducing, our authors and giving a quick snapshot of their books, and then we can dive into the conversation. professor arisa is the a august professor of law here, brooklyn law school after law school. he clerked for the ninth circuit and also souter of the u.s. supreme court. he's the author of numerous scholarly articles and books on constitutional and administrative law today. he's sharing with us his text, rebuilding expertise, creating effective and trustworthy regulation in our age of doubt was published just this year at the nyu press. professor codrington, an

assistant professor of law at brooklyn law school, he's also a fellow at, the brennan center of justice, and he is the coauthor of the people's 200 years 27 amendments and the promise of a more perfect union. it was published last year by the new press. the book aligns very much with his teaching here at the law school, which is on constitution, law, constitutional theory and, also election law. he's a first time book author but has published numerous articles in law review articles in journals, in law review articles, and has served as a legal contributor to various media outlets. on my far right your far left, we have chris fabricant is a new york city native and author of junk and the american criminal justice system. he serves as the innocence projects director of strategic litigation and a former life. when i was a post-conviction capital lawyer, i had the privilege of meeting chris and his fabulous work when he was helping a case in tennessee.

he is one of the nation's leading experts on forensic science and the criminal justice system. chris is featured in the netflix the innocence files, and his public commentary has published in virtually every major media outlet chris brings to his writing. over two decades of experience as a criminal defense post-conviction lawyer. so first, to give us a snapshot of rebuilding expertise as arises book it explains how government functions, including regulatory systems administrative law. he provides a history of the weakening faith in government time and encourages to rebuild our faith in by cultivating administrate of expertise. next, we have the people's constitution. this is by wilfred codrington arrington. it details the evolution american democracy. it explains the amendment process and identify eyes reoccurring cycles that result

it in constitutional change and. these are things that have happened reoccurring over time, such as discontent over u.s. supreme court decisions we might be experiencing some of that right now, dramatic political polarization again right now. so i'm excited to visit some of those themes. and then chris fabricant book junk science profiles three extremely compelling of prosecutors who relied on junk science to resolve convict individuals. these were three men that the innocence later helped secure their release. and chris chris profiles reveals the structural and procedural barriers that can prevent wrongfully convicted people from obtaining post-conviction relief. i'd like to start off with professor. your book reveals, deep seated problems with government functioning. you describe public's loss in faith, government pointing to several reasons.

most recently, the problematic response that the government had to the covid pandemic. earlier, u.s. involvement in vietnam, stagflation in the 1970s. you argue that relying on government regulatory system specifically can actually help restore faith. so why? sure. so before i start, me add my thanks to all of you for showing up on such a lousy. it is really heartening to see such a big crowd on such a day and in fact to talk about these topics that my colleagues and i be discussing. so there to to address alexis's question and maybe kind of take the idea more generally, we need expertise we need expertise for the very simple reason that the problems that we confront as a nation and as a society and as a world are simply too complex to be addressed in any other way. the old systems and by old i mean, systems that were in place 50 or 60 or 80 or 100 years ago,

simply not work. there has to be a strong, robust competent and also trusted corps of bureaucrats. and i use that word without irony whatsoever because that's what they are bureaucrats, but a core of bureaucrats who know what they're doing and have the resources, including the trust resources to address these really serious problems. now, alexis asked about democracy, how democracy and expertise can coexist and maybe even potentially reinforce each other. i try in the book to make the argument that expertise and democracy can, in end up reinforcing each and the way simply do that is to insist that bureaucrat gets that the regulatory system more generally be responsive to the public's needs at the time that system needs to incorporate the preferences and the and the

literally the expertise of the general public. i give one example in the book of the faa thinking about, you know, what, what sorts of regulatory issues it should prioritize that really something that i think it should go to the public and ask because it is that kind of foundational democratic sort of value choice issue. it's on that kind of issue that the public itself has its own expertise. at the same time, by engaging the public in, these, you know, in this decision making process at that stage where it's most appropriate rather than at a what you might call the more stage where it gets really technical, the public feels like it really has nothing to say. engaging the public at that stage really can in both increase the agency's, if we define that term broadly, but also increase its or improve its democratic accountability credentials. so i think we can actually square the circle and the book

makes an argument for how we can do that. in a very approachable way, i might add. likewise, chris, in your text, you profile specific failings of the criminal adjudication system detailing prosecutors use of junk science and the procedural rules that failed to exclude such such evidence which then leads to wrongfully convicted defendants. can we rely on the rules of evidence? can we rely the rules, existing rules of criminal procedure to protect people accused of crime? no. see, these are the two classes i teach. so i'm very in that. you know, one of the themes that i explore in the book is what i call the poor people's. and you know what i mean by is that we have to look at when you're talking about rules or, you know, are not kind of core constitutional issues that are being the same way that my other panelists are. but they really rely on your fundamental to be convicted on reliable evidence and.

that is, as we know from wrongful conviction has been again and again and again nearly half of all wrongful convictions are attributable, at least in part to the use of junk science. and we've this for a long, long time. and when i was writing the book, i wanted to go back and, take a look at various efforts that have been made to weed out unreliable so-called scientific evidence in the system broadly, because science is science, right? we have to look at both civil side and the criminal to see the way the courts have been handling use of scientific evidence, which of course, gets increasingly more and more part of our legal system every year. so what have been going on? if you look at late in the seventies and the eighties, the legal system in this country exploded on the civil side was resolved, personal injury litigation towards product liability that became a whole industry and a cottage sprang up to support this type of litigation of experts that no longer actually working in their own fields, but became professional expert witnesses. and the only thing they did was

support litigation that had never gone on before. and on the criminal side, after had the end of jim crow era and, the ratcheting up of the war drugs to that led mass incarceration of disproportionately black and brown people. what we was explosion of the legal system on the criminal side at the same time and also an increasing use of so-called scientific evidence evidence that had been used nearly a century. things like fingerprints and you know, probably you would call it ballistics evidence and tire treads and shoe prints and, all the rest of this stuff. corporate america, though, had getting sued successfully by a lot of unreliable evidence that had been being used. civil litigation and plaintiffs were using a lot of speculative that was being passed off as scientific evidence. and the corporate bar was getting tired of it. and so they teed up a case called daubert to the states supreme court. it was a product liability case. and they what wanted was the supreme court to impose upon the

courts their own duty to act as so-called gatekeepers. in other words, the courts were going to have to eat their broccoli. they were going to have to learn a little bit of science and apply a basic principles before they're going to introduce evidence into court. and they. they got a whole new standard that no longer were judges going to defer to the so-called relevant scientific community, but they're going to have to look at things like peer reviews and error rates and testable and basic fundamentals of science. so the criminal bar was very quiet during this litigation. you know, kind of like over the moon. maybe we'll get a good rule about science. that would be good because our clients are getting convicted on junk science every day. so what happened is that the rule was phenomenally successful for civil litigators. my one of my bosses, peter neufeld, co-founder of the innocence project, did a study about ten years after the this case, and it showed that nearly 40% more exclusions of so-called expert or so-called scientific

testimony on the civil side. but nothing had on the criminal side, nothing. prosecutors are always successful in getting whatever they wanted. defense attorneys almost never successfully able to get in their own expert witnesses. fast forward to 2018. i did a study with professor brandon garrett at duke law school and empirical study to look at what has changed because we now have, you know 30 years of work by the innocence project showing just how unreliable this evidence is and still nothing had and that prosecutors were virtually always successful in introducing forensic techniques known to lead to wrongful that the national academy sciences the most important scientific entity in the country, has found to be, oh, paraphrase for them, junk science, right? they wouldn't say that. but i did. and nothing still changed. so it really boils down to who we care about and what we care about. and what we care about is money and life and liberty issues are secondary. and that's particularly those

that are processed through our legal system. so no, you can't trust it. thank you wilfred. in some ways, your book deals with similar themes that the problems you identify can be fixed. but. but here your answer is little different by existing structural framework. so i think falls close into the camp of professor arise that we can rely on the existing structure more specifically you argue that there were problematic of the constitution as written and as a fix. subsequent framers gradually over time improved upon it by drafting and later adopting new constitutional amendments, amendments that allow people, like us, to vote. can we continue to rely on the amendment process to advance progressive legal change? well, thank you for the question, and thank everyone

here. brooklyn book festival, brooklyn law school for participating today. so i want to reframe your question a little bit and say, can we afford not to rely on progressive legal change? and the answer is no. look, my book really about amending the constitution, how we've taken this document that really half of the who crafted were slaveholders. right. so we have a very different conception about democracy, equality rights than the framers of the constitution and for mostly informed, we've amended the constitution to make it more progressive, more inclusive, more protective of democracy. and so the broader sort of arc of constitutional change has a progressive one. and i think we've gotten to this point where people feel like it's unachievable, fruitless there's other ways we might go about this. and the fact of the matter is, those are definitely problems. but there are also problems that

people faced in the past, past waves before they amended constitutions. so right now i've had professor who raised the idea of political polarization what we political polarization in previous periods right before we've amended the constitution we saw it in the progressive era and there was sort of like a split in both of the political parties and a sort of recalibration that allowed for us to amend the constitution to get for progressive amendments. we saw this in the civil rights era, right? it was southern democrats that were thwarting progressive change at the time and republicans who are helping to push forward constitute changes. now, the fact of the matter is, these are the ways we formally amend the constitution going through this enormous structure requires us to get two thirds of the house of representatives, both to sign on to this draft a proposal, and then three quarters of the state legislators ratify that. but when we're not the constitution by these formal means, we're still amending the constitution through informal

means. right. and most notably through the supreme court in canonical or anti canonical cases, seminal cases that change the structure of the constitution and the whole terrain. and so we can think about we talked about. dobbs right. say what you want it. that really just reframed the way we think about constitution law. say what you want about citizens, pro or con that changed the way we think about the political and participating in our democracy through speech, other forms of forms of action. and so the constitution is going to change. it's just going to change right now with a really conservative supermajority on the supreme court. it's going to change in a in a conservative way, which is unlike how it's changed in the past, at least formally. and so if we don't do anything about it, that's what we're really going to get. and just to tie this in with the idea of expertise, one of the problems we get with informal constitutional change is we

don't get the deliberation that is required and necessary of constitutional change when we change our constitution we really want this to be thoughtful thought through, sort of well vetted and sort of studied, but we're not looking to do that. and instead what we're getting is a supreme court, a super legislator. some would call it, doing these changes without sort of engaging the entire country in democracy as it requires. so really, alexis, i don't think we have an option, but in a time of a need. so the fact that the us supreme court that nowhere in the constitution is there a right to access. and so what do we do in the short term? do we then turn to sort of state constitutions think it's really easy to forget that? you know, we actually 51 constitutions in this country and i and want to toss this question also to professor risa and to this idea that you know

if the federal sort of standard bearer i know not every state has same standard can we rely on some states to provide greater protections to criminal? is there a state sort of regulatory regulatory system that we can rely on to offer the protections that we're not seeing at the federal level? so i'll. yeah. so i think. when we think about constitutionalism, we often get fixated on the idea of a national charter. and as alexis just said, there's 51 charters in this country. 52, i guess if we going to count the district of columbia and then but as i actually start to list those and we think about more of the reasons we need to be amending the constitution to some of these people, we've been excluded for so long. even all those territories. exactly. exactly. so, yeah, i think state constitu are an alternative. one thing that's going on and something that's near and dear to my heart is getting rid of the electoral college, write the electoral. this thing that has existed since the beginning. it's failed early on.

it fails again in different ways, which is to give presidents who don't win popular from the voters. and in in a job that is increasingly and the framers couldn't imagine how complex and complicated it would be. so one thing i'd like to do is get rid of that. there is a movement in the states right now. it's called national popular vote compact, and they are basically states are changing their laws, their own constitutions, to think about how they award their electors. so the constitution currently, as it's written, allows state legislators to allocate their electors as they see fit. now, most of them do it or all of them do it in some way or another, where based on the popular vote within state, some have a like a little different play it. but the idea behind the compact that they're going to use their state laws to decide pre commit themselves to awarding their electors to winner of the national popular vote irrespective of who wins their state popular vote. now that's one way where you can get people to pre commit to change things of a

constitutional. but there are other ways we can that too. but my, my, my one problem is and my caution here, these are inadequate because impermanent. right. so way or another, we're other. we think about to change the constitution through mega super statutes. well, the voting rights act was considered to be one of these massive constitutional. and now in this, the current supreme court term, we're going to see the third case in a trilogy that's been hacking at the voting rights act. so that we thought was a cure and things that we might think secure, including on the states or super statutes, as you might call them. they're not permanent. so we do need to get to the hard work of amending the constitution to enshrine protections in our in our in our document so as a constitutional law matter. i tend like federalism. i know that's a very broad statement. and it's easy, you know, find examples of situations where i wouldn't necessarily like like reliance on states but as a as a regulatory law matter i tend to

be less optimistic or hopeful about states. and i guess for a few reasons. first of all, frankly, a lot of the issues that have to be dealt with are, in fact, nationally scoped issues. you just can't have climate change regulation at the state level. you just can't have aviation regulation. take a an everyday example at a state level. these are national problems. second of all, this is going to sound snobbish, i guess. i think a lot of these problems are just so difficult that they require a concentrated core of knowledge rather than a dispersed core of knowledge. 51 different jurisdictions, 51 different state, epa is 51 different. state department of securities regulation. i just don't see the kind of robust being able, you know, being in wyoming or north carolina or any particular event on these sorry, i said 51 egos, 51 egos.

yes. and also, i think. but but but i think maybe the perhaps the most important reason that i'm not optimistic about states as in in terms of regulation, is politics forward reason. and i can speculate about about the reasons. but for whatever reason at the federal level, there has been at least some pushback attempts to denigrate or de-emphasize expertise or demonstrate procedural how to take, you know, an example has been pretty surprisingly resistant to amendment and. that's, i think, a really good thing at the state level. state epas are amended, i think a fair amount if they're not there are other statutes that state legislatures that really undermine the basic of administrative expertise. i'll give you one example and then just anything else to add. i'll just to i'll do it quickly. so, you know, there is a doctrine called the chevron doctrine that deals