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tv   Washington Journal Maria Svart  CSPAN  August 1, 2018 12:14pm-12:58pm EDT

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>> coming up later this afternoon, a white house briefing with press secretary sarah sanders set to start at 1:00 p.m. eastern. you will be able to watch it live here on c-span. after that, the associate nasa administrator for the agency's science mission directorate is among witnesses at a senate commerce and science committee hearing on nasa priorities at 2:30 eastern live on c-span. supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh continues to meet with senators on capitol hill. follow the confirmation process on c-span leading up to the confirmation hearing and vote. , watchive on c-span anytime on c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. the national director of the
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democratic socialist america. she will be here taking your calls until the bottom of the hour. what does it mean to be a democratic socialist? >> we believe we should all live a life of dignity and comfort and that in the richest country in the history of the world, it is possible. we know that working people are the ones that make this economy , butand make society work the current economic system and political system we have in place because of our economic system are not working for the 99%. so we believe we need a society that we run democratically. it is our belief that there is an elite tiny minority of people who have rigged to the economy and political system for their benefit so we need to work together, working with poor people, to take back the economy and politics and create a
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transform society. we are an organization with chapters in all 50 states working towards that with everything from direct access to legislative work to electing democratic socialist candidates and more. host: how did you become a democratic socialist? guest: i come out of the union family. and my dad were union members. a lot of my extended family. fair ande world is not i was an activist. i went to college and i was an activist and then one day there was an event about socialist feminism and that appealed to me because i felt the mainstream feminist movement was not speaking to the needs of people like my mother, who people discriminated against because she is latina and people like my grandmother who was a poor housewife, the wife of a miner and struggle to make ends meet.
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i had a moment when i heard there was an economic system that was structured to deliberately by people that currently have power to keep their power and that was when i had an epiphany and realized i was a socialist. host: how did you become the national director of the dsa? guest: i became active when i was a student. active in our young democratic socialists of america chapter and after college i went into organizing and becoming a union organizer for a number of years. i organize hospital workers and there i realized the bosses do not listen unless working people stand together. earnrned in order to better working conditions and wages people have to demand it and we have to not let people -- not let ourselves be divided. i learned about how to pressure the decision-maker and then when the prior director retired, i
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thought it was time to step up so i applied and here we are. host: we are taking your calls and questions. special lines for those who identify as democratic socialist. 202-748-8003. republicans, 202-748-8000 --202-748-8001, democrats 202-748-8000, independents 202-748-8002. to focus on your relationship with the democratic party establishment. democratic socialists of america is not a political party, but an activist organization. explain the difference. guest: we are not a political party, but we are trying to intervene in politics. our understanding of the world is that politicians and the government have a huge influence on our lives. at the same time the reason they are enacting policies that benefit the very wealthy is
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because the very wealthy own them. we do not want to become a political party, we need to maintain our connection with the grassroots, working with poor people. we build an organization going door to door talking about issues that matter. and organizing into a mass organization with many members so we can maintain our independence from politicians. we hope to elect those whose politics we like but we want to -- maintain a system so that we can hold them accountable. we want to support when they do the right thing but be independent when they don't. host: you mentioned democratic socialists of america have chapters in all 50 states. eventually become the majority of the democratic party? guest: i think the democratic ,arty has millions of members but parties in the united states
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are not quite the same as other parties, so someday we would love to see a movement strong enough to actually become another party, but we are so far from that now because of the way the two parties have worked together to set the system up, it is very difficult for any other party to become one of the two main parties. ,here are many other parties but the two main parties maintain their power. there are structural barriers they set up to make it difficult for additional parties to grow in influence. our analysis is that it's more strategic to be independent and try to grow and popularize the idea of democratic socialism and there is an alternative to capitalism. eventually we hope to grow big enough to either become another party or become one of the dominant parties or just change the system itself. host: as you go about your work in this election in 2018, what is your relationship like with the dnc?
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we are pretty frustrated with the dnc. we do not spend a lot of time looking at interparty conflicts toause we believe the way change possibility is to organize people at the grassroots. ,n the last election presidential election, 46% of people did not vote. partly because of racist barriers to voting in place in a lot of states, part of it because there are a lot of barriers to all working and poor people voting and that is a class barrier. partly because people don't like their alternatives. they do not like the wall street democrats and what we have seen is the dnc consistently will elevate and tip their thumbs on the scales to support neoliberal democrats, wall street democrats and they will try to prevent the rise of more left-wing democrats. our belief is that the best use of our time is to organize
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communities in all 50 states like we are doing now to build a base of organize politically aware people that are ready to fight back and elect our own candidate starting at the very local level. all the way up to congress and the senate. host: you mentioned bernie sanders. do you think he will run in 2020? guest: i hope he does. i don't know where our members will be in 2020 in the organization where we make decisions about how we spend resources. i think he has transformed the political system in the country. he recognized after the that the country was ready for a change and he articulated that in the language that was excessively to millions of people and he totally changed american politics. we thank him and continue building on that and building an institution with chapters everywhere so that people go help other
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through the experience i went through when i was a student where i found an event about socialist feminism in my case and i entered into a community where i could talk about what was happening to us in the world. all these decisions that affected me that i had no voice in. they were decisions being made by the very wealthy. we want to create an organization in communities across the country so we can create political change but also support change in between elections. that's why we work most of the labor movement and political system and in communities working on issues like rent control, affordable housing, health care, we are pushing for medicare for all, and other issues people care about. host: we want to your what viewers care about in this conversation. taking calls on lines, a special line for democratic socialist, 202-748-8003.
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democratsrepublicans, -- republicans 202-748-8001, democrats 202-748-8000, independents 202-748-8002. oscar is up first. democrat. i'm a former social security claims specialist. i have seen firsthand how government, especially social has helped not just well, healthy retirees but also disabled people. i wonder is a socialist what is your take on government --. do you find government is a tool to help your feminist movement or your progressive thoughts? the we consider all programs we would like to do, government will always be there,
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yet we always have this antigovernment feeling when we see the democratic socialists speaking, they feel it's grassroots only. can you comment on that? guest: absolutely. is incredibly important because at the scale we are talking about, a country with millions of people, there is no way if we don't have control of the government that ofcannot improve the lives millions of people. i understand the impulse for folks, occupy wall street for example, to be against government. i understand that people my age and younger have really never seen government respond when people of the grassroots demand things. in the past the government set a medicare, the government set up social security, these are programs that are there to ensure that nobody has to die starving in the streets as an elderly person, people can
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retire with dignity, or somebody disabled can have access to care through medicaid. government programs are incredibly important because if we did not have programs like that, i imagine how corporate america would treat people. we are seeing it in the way they are trying to cut programs towards the homeless. how affordable housing stock is being cut. we have seen the fact that one in four children go hungry. in the richest country in the world, we cannot rely on the very wealthy, the capitalist class, people that own all of the companies that we work for every day and labor for and then get a small amount back, we cannot rely on these private corporations to take care of us. we need to come together and we talk about a grassroots movement because it will take all of us standing up together demanding change. we cannot do it alone. we have to take back our government and that is why we fight both inside government and
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in the political system to elect politicians that share our politics and values. we are also independent so we can switch them between election -- push them between elections. we are organizing against corporations whether it's we are pressuring companies making money from separating families or whether it is our tenant organizing or are medicare for all campaign where we are targeting the profiteers making money off of working people and taking advantage. government plays an incredibly important role in enforcing a just society. what we want to do is take back the government and use it to have a truly democratic society. host: do you think you're a polish ice campaign is working? -- abolish ice campaign is working? guest: i think we have helped move the debate. when we first started out campaign about a month ago, our
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national immigrant rights tomittee decided we needed launch the campaign because we are seeing horrific images from the border of children being ripped from the arms of their parents, so we thought this was barbaric. we also knew it was part of a larger economic system and we felt the economic analysis is missing. what is missing is the fact that u.s. foreign-policy, both military and economic, created conditions were people need to migrate to survive to come to the united states. we got a situation where corporations can find jobs overseas and corporations can move money and factories across borders, but working people cannot. it was wall street democrats and republicans that helped pass free-trade agreements that devastated the economies in other countries. people are being restricted and the reason they are is because the bosses, the capitalist class , benefit when they have a
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workforce that is afraid. in the united states, american citizen workers lose out when their undocumented coworkers are living in fear of an ice raid and we know employers like to divide people. i'm a union organizer, i saw it all the time. employers like to divide people and it makes it easier. fulllieve ice and the immigration system is designed to benefit the ruling class and we need to have solidarity with each other as working-class people and our campaign is meant to get at the root of the problem and doubt the larger forces at play. the arms of their parents and being kept in inhumane conditions at the border is just the tip of the iceberg and there is a much bigger reason that this is happening and we need to highlight that because nobody else is.
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in inhumane conditions at the border is just the tip of the iceberg and there is a much bigger reason that this is happening and we need to highlight that because nobody else's. an independent in indianapolis. good morning. i find it interesting, everybody is a victim. that is the cornerstone of your thought. take a step back and look at the soviet union -- you think you know economics. but you know nothing but false degreesur in feminism, it is not so much -- you are not trying to do good, you just do not understand. up working when you end up with a dictator like stalin, your system of economic development is built on
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venezuela. maybe you will think of your success one rerun -- when we run out of toilet paper. guest: our vision of democratic socialism is profoundly different. i would like to quote the famous socialist and union organizer, eugene v debs who said, "i would not be a moses to lead you into the promised land because then someone else would lead you back out." we profoundly believe that working people know how to run society because we not to do the work. our vision of socialism is bottom-up and democratic. what we do know is capitalism is not working. are drinkinglint poison water, one in four children are in poverty in the richest country of the world -- it is clearly not working for
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everyone and we are channeling millions of people every day who go through the day was sore teeth because they do not have dental care, the millions of people who have the wes to bed hungry, so believe working people know how to run our society and we need to realize we have the power. host: willie is from michigan on the line for republicans. good morning. caller: yes, i am calling because i have been hearing a lot of stuff about the misplaced kids from different countries, but the government in the united states misplaced a lot of kids that they have taken out of their houses and trying to figure out what is going on with that as far as getting them reunited with their family and
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changing some of the laws. host: do you want to take that up? guest: absolutely. i want to reiterate that the capitalist system as we have it now and the government that is run by capitalists is profoundly dangerous and violent towards american citizens, not just people who are not american citizens. uniteoblem is we need to with working people from other countries, we need to unite across our differences herein united states, people from different backgrounds and genders -- we need to unite together because i agree. mistreats ourtes own citizens and that is not going to change until we stand up and make a change. organizer, the question i ask you boys who is benefiting from the situation we have now -- the question i ask
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people is to is benefiting from the situation we have now? that is how we are building a movement. host: robert is a democrat in new york. caller: good morning. , i just want to let you know that i am on your side and i have an idea that i want to run through you in order to make your point valid. i want you to make a video that shows two tables, one table has $50,000 on its which is what the average of what americans make, and i want you to put out 22% federal and 5% local taxes and show what a great percentage of that pay is. why do you want to do that? caller: i wanted to add on but she is speaking. she is not speaking yet.
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on the second table, i want you to put a billion dollars down and i want you to show at the highest rates was an 5% and to show what a small amount of money that is and that the a l can pay a hell of theore in order to make idea that america is a place that people should not be living in. guest: thank you. i completely agree. the very wealthiest of this country, the .01% have set up workplaces in the economic system and to they can make out like bandits. the tax reform of the in decemberpassed had a really small tax cut for americans and a huge tax cut for the wealthy and the tax cut for the average americans expires and the tax cut for the very wealthy does not expire.
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we know that trump is trying to pass a potentially illegal tax cut on capital gains that would put almost $100 billion back into the pockets of mostly of the very wealthy, and this is money that they make off of our backs. working people go to work every day, we work hard, then we get a little bit back for what we have contributed with our labor. boss gets most of the profits. when they accumulate that and then they reinvest in the casino economy, they accrue a billion dollars so they not only have a lot more money but they can paying the higher rates but they have made that money by taking it out of our pockets. we can decide where our tax dollars go and it should not go to subsidize their expensive lifestyle. host: tom is a republican in l.a.. caller: good morning.
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i was listening to your program, but i have a quote from abraham lincoln. i will be brief. "therecertain truths, are certain truths that are true no matter how much the world may question or denied them. , youe economic world cannot legislate the port to freedom by legislating though wealthy out of it. peopleents cannot get to -- give to people what they do not first take away from people. and that which one man receives without working for another man must work for without receiving it. nothing can kill the initiative of a people quicker than having to give the idea that they need not work because the other will feed them. ideather half to get the
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it does no good to work, does not see the rewards to your labors. maria? myst: my response to that is response to many things which is just think about who is benefiting from the system we have now. do you think employers want everybody to have a job? what happens of everybody has a job? people can say, actually, i do not want to keep only 25% of the wealth that i produce for you, i want to keep 50% or 75% to because i am doing the labor. the only thing you own is the workplace or the factory. employers benefit when there are a lot of people that do not have work. peopley benefit to the or inraid of each other, competition with each other, so not only did they want a large
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reserve army of labor -- the people who cannot find work because the people who are working car easily exploited, but they also want to be able to pit people against each other. that the people is more lazy or they do not work as hard as you do. pit us against each other because it makes it easier to exploit all of us. i disagree that people do not want to work. most people want to live in dignity, they want jobs, and it tothe employer that wants benefits. they do not want us all to have jobs. host: about 20 minutes left with maria. special line for democratic ,ocialists, (202) 748-8003 before we get to some other calls, i wanted to ask you about
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the story from earlier. the incident at the mexican restaurant in washington dc where it homeland security chief christian nilsson -- kristjen neilsen were shouting at her during card dinner. there are members of the democratic socialists of america . is that the kind of tactic you support? guest: absolutely. doingur government is at the border is barbaric. what the government is doing to the children of flint is barbaric, and if we do not stand up, it is going to get worse. we believe that people have resorted to this kind of tactic because the institutions that middle-class people have been told will protect us like the supreme court, congress, the white house come are very clearly not doing that and clearly being weaponized to b e used against poor people.
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the whole debate about civility misses the point which is that when they uncivil feel that their voices are not being heard. what sort of boundaries do you put on that when you talk about using it among the different groups? guest: we are nonviolent organization. we believe in civil disobedience and public pressure campaigns as one of the tools we use in addition to things like mass strikes. we really supported the strikes and west virginia because it was working people, public employees, and teachers withholding labor and saying we are going to stop right now until you give us what we need. welobby elected officials, do public education events, and one of the things we do our going door to door and talking to people about their health
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care. we support medicare for all and when you knock on people's doors , our experience is that they are either not calm or the rare "healthts because our care system" is so dysfunctional and does not serve anyone's needs. we are nonviolent organization that we do not put all of our eggs in one basket. host: william is a democrat in knoxville, tennessee. caller: good morning. thank you very much for this program and thank you for all of your comments. i am a member of the democratic national committee. 50 years ago, i was saying the same things your guest was saying this morning. it is the same arguments. i happen to disagree on the democratic national committee is not addressing some of these
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problems, we are addressing it. the country and the entire world would be much have hillary clinton be elected had folks gone out and voted for them. i wish they had have. the democratic party platform calls for medicare for all. we are calling for a $15 minimum wage, $15 an hour. the democratic party platform was the most liberal platform in the history of any major political party, soap only, i iink -- so personally, think the democratic party is the vehicle that we hope people to and help us win some of these elections in this midterm and change the course of america.
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i would appreciate your comments. host: thanks for the call. guest: i want to say that many are democrats, the majority are registered democrats. vast majoritye would have preferred hillary clinton presidency and many voted, especially in swing states. that hillarys clinton was not able to inspire the kind of people and turn out that that we needed in that election and we have to ask ourselves why. many people in this country have not been listened to, have been by peopleidiculed inside the beltway including clinton and everyone who was running her campaign. that is what we are fighting against. the democratic party might have a better platform now but we also see right now, bernie sanders is introducing a medicare for all bill in the
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senate and there is a medicare for all bill in congress for lots of sponsors. we also see other democrats half measures and claiming it is medicare for all and muddying the water. and saying that medicare extra is the same thing is medicare for all. that is simply not true. policy,rganizing around we want everybody and for health care system and we want nobody out. we have seen what happened with obamacare when some people got coverage and others did not. people still get care rationed based on their ability to pay, it means the trump administration is able to undermine access, it means the private industry and pharma is able to make money off of denying people care, and the only alternative is real medicare for all. many of our members are in the
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democratic party. many of our members want to push the democratic party to the and many do not trust the party at all. we have one foot in and one foot out. we do not trust the institution. host: who are some of the specific members of the democratic party that you do not trust and that you think are introducing half measures and claiming victory? guest: i think there are multiple bills floating around now. i just heard the representative from new mexico talking about is medicare buy-in plan and he called it medicare for all. that is in a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters. we saw paul krugman wrote times"for the "new york writing this idea that the medicare for all means expanded care and that is not true.
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universal program that everybody is in, we need a program weather is not an insurance executive between you and your doctor, and we need a program that takes health care out of the private marketplace. the problem is this is 20% of the economy and we take it away, there's going to be a huge fights and all of the democrats that are getting money from the insurance industry are big pharma are not going to support us. that is why we have to build a movement. we are building a grassroots army of people. we are building the grassroots politicized base that bernie sanders talked about in the last election. we are talking to people who have not been voting. we are talking to poor people, working-class people, who feel the system is completely ignoring them. toare organizing tenants stand up to their landlords, we
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are out in communities talking to folks and people are really ready for a change and they are not organized. when we talk to people on their doors, even people who have health insurance now are the satisfied because it is really expensive, there are lots of gs thatand gotcha thin the insurance companies do to you to make it difficult, and if we had a medicare for all system that was truly universal, it would be simple, efficient, high quality, and everybody would get the care that they need. are totallyterests poisoning our political system and that is why part of our job aboutialists is to talk the difference between fake medicare for all and real medicare for all. host: one of those members of your movement is tim, in maryland. caller: good morning, how are you all doing today? host: doing well.
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guest: i love your energy and your passion. -- caller: i love your energy and your passion. point are talking about a to where abolish isa and how do you do that and how does the point is you want to win and you want to get your candidates to win, change around to reshape ice and then bring people into the movement to can then market and package that and change it around so that -- because you are trying to get at that root cause. you are trying to get at that cause to where the problem is not the people on the ground who away, itng to be taken is the people who are controlling that. it means to be reshaped and the needs to be done in a way that is more considerate and passionate because we do need to control our borders, but the way that we are doing it now, has to be done in a different way. win, instead of
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abolish, reshape. host: thanks for the call. guest: will completely agree with you, the messaging is really important. many people in this country are concerned about jobs in the united states, but we are a democratic socialist calling out capitalisticof the system and ice and the whole immigration apparatus is the problem. if we're really talking about the root of the problem, and we are willing to say the capital system is totally indif ensible, we also need to say that about the immigrations and customs enforcement. it is really related to ions of ourand eros civil liberties, it is not just about ripping children from their parents hands. theoke earlier about
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broader picture around the immigration system about how the global capitalist class benefits about having a system with borders open to money, but not people. we need to bring that message to more people because i believe pretty fundamentally that working people know that we have are fundamentally different from the owning class and we are taught to be afraid of each other, economic nationalism and anti-immigrant ideas are pretty american as apple pie. when it gets right down to it, we all know we are trying to get by and that is why you saw those images of children at the border, it's really resonated with what you saw with democratic politicians with ice. we have created a whole set of systems to control people and if we are willing to challenge capitalism itself, we also need
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to a challenge -- to challenge the idea of ice. ice is just part of the whole prison industrial system. in jail andgrants the we have this whole segment of society that does not have jobs and the bosses benefit from that -- it is the same system. we have people who are locked away and if they do ever get out of jail, they are not allowed to vote. it is all a part of a system where the very wealthy want to keep us divided, afraid, and if neede willing and if we to challenge the economic system, when to talk about these bigger forces at play. i appreciate what you are saying , but a chapter had a protest outside of a company that is toufacturing surveillance
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that is ane, and agency being used against immigrants but could be used against any of us in the future so we have a common interest and supporting them in solidarity. host: michael has been waiting, tennessee, republican. go ahead. caller: good morning. i want to know two things for clarification. i know during the democratic primary, there is lots of conflict between the burning supporters and hillary supporters in regards to the to social issues and economic issues. how much of them are determined by poverty and i was wondering if you could clarify that? , in regardsd thing to social benefits and open borders, bernie sanders himself that openvox article
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borders would lead it to the press to wages are too much pressure on a generous welfare system. was wondering how you would address that and make sure that a generous welfare system would not be overloaded. guest: the first question is contrasting noneconomic systems of domination in our m,ciety, like sexism and racis and how it relates to economic exploitation where bosses can organize people in workplaces f your labor and you cannot control that. i believe they are directly related to each other and employers divide people based on any category they can think of. ender, but ageor g
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and and anything else, and they go after the weakest people and break down the bonds of solidarity. i will point out that this country was founded on genocide,d and and then we build our economic system on the back of slave labor that forcibly were imported from africa. into the baked capitalist system and as a woman, sexism plays a huge part. i'mexpected to clean house, expected to bear children and take care of children and my parents when i get older, and those are all things that and a democratic socialist society, we could actually say that not only should women not to bear the burden of that, but we should not have to bear the burden of taking care of our younger, elderly, and sick.
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france, theres in are social programs where the wealthy pay taxes, and then people get things like time off of work to take care of newborns, and a paid sick time, so we believe we need to take into account different kinds of oppression and how capitalism interacts with them and thinking about the public policy we are promoting. the question about open borders. that our analysis is the very wealthy, the people who own the means of production, they benefits when they can pit people against each other. the reason that we have very bad social services is because it has been systematically defunded by the right winged -- by the right wing for the last 40 years.
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taxes for the very wealthy have been cut for the last 40 years. working people are working carter and harder, productivity is going up, but the employers are keeping all of the benefits. they are not taking that money they are taking in to create new jobs because they want there to be a lot of unemployed people and come position between unemployed people. they are not using that to pay for the kind of services we need as a society. they are not using it to pay for the kind of thing like more health care, better infrastructure, better roads, more teachers pay an adequate wage -- they are not investing money. another thing i heard bernie sanders say, he pointed out that it is not the immigrant workers that are deciding to move factories overseas, it is the

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