eastern on c-span. we have more from the road to the white house on saturday with vermont senator bernie sanders. he held a campaign rally at the statehouse in montpelier. sunday, rolling thunder hold its final motorcycle procession. they will be traveling from the pentagon to the lincoln memorial and we will have a camera with rs. writers -- ridew live coverage begins sunday at noon eastern on c-span. , you can listen with the free c-span radio app. dayuncer: starting memorial , may 27 thomas c-span has coverage of the matt smith ceremonies taking place at colleges and universities across the country. features speakers include elijah ,ummings, patrick shanahan

stacey abrams, president trump and sonja sotomayor. our commencement coverage starts memorial day at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. listen on the free c-span radio app. >> for 40 years, he's been has been providing america are filtered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events from washington, d.c. and around the country so you can make up your own mind. created by cable in 1979, c-span is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. joining us from new york is

the national director for the democratic socialists of america. explain what your mission is. believe that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we people that produce that wealth should have a voice and how it is distributed. we all deserve a healthy quality of life for ourselves and children. our mission is to help build a movement of working people like you and me who can control our society instead of letting a small elite control our society for their own benefit. host: what are you seeing with this movement now? is participation rising and why? absolutely. dsa has rose significantly in and itt couple years started probably because bernie sanders ran for president. the reason we grew and the reason he was successful was the cause he spoke -- because he

spoke to people. we have had decades of a few greedy people rigging the economy and all of us have seen productivity increase but real wages have been stagnant. people are seeing investment from our community, so it has seen budget cuts. it has seen wages go down. he spoke to the fact we all want a life of dignity and that has helped us grow. we have ballooned in the last few years to an organization of almost 60,000 members. we have 300 chapters across the country. people building with their neighbors and coworkers in their community. people could get involved in politics, involved in workplace struggles so we get a fair share of what we great with our labor and get involved in communities. what is the appeal of

socialism to young people? what are you advocating for? can rune believe we society better than the capitalist class. this is a tiny elite that make choices which affect our everyday lives from the water we drink to what our workplaces are like and they are doing it for their own benefit and we believe if we control our workplaces, if we have an actual democratic political system, we can create a society where we do not have one in four children living in poverty. we will not be going on these foreign wars where it is working class folks who died here and abroad for the benefit of a wealthy few. we believe we have the power because we produce the wealth and we need folks to understand they have that power. host: your priorities are medicare for all, electoral college six, labor rights and protections. what are the details and how are they paid for?

politics is aal key place where we get involved because the decisions of politicians have a huge impact on the protections we have fought for over the last 100 years in this country have come from politicians enacting laws that we want to get folks elected at the local level all the way up to the federal level, osasio-cortez. we want to strengthen workplace organizing has even if we have folks in the political system that the power comes from our ability to stop working and so when people are organized in their workplaces, like what happened in west virginia, what happened in california, what is happening in all the states across the country, where teachers stand up and realize they can win for themselves and their students -- demonstrates

that getting involved in workplaces and the economic realm, not just in the formal political system is another way we can exert our powers of the working class. the third major priority for us now is medicare for all. the wealthiest country in the world, we have people dying from lack of health care. we have a huge proportion of gofundme accounts -- people facing major health crises they cannot afford because the private insurance industry is making money off of their back. we know that people care about this issue. we know people are dying and suffering. it is popular across political lines and we are fighting for medicare for all were all of us have health care and the way it is going to be paid for is the wealthy and the corporations are going to pay their fair share. how do you respond to need --ho say, you

socialism does not work because there are no incentives for people to accumulate wealth or to get wealth and therefore share it. do you think you have to eliminate capitalism altogether? there are a couple of premises to what you said that we need to look at. first of all, do people want to share their wealth? history has shown that is not the case. we have a tiny wealthy elites now which is a key moving more and more wealth off of the backs of the people that work for them and they are not reinvesting that. they are not creating jobs. what they are doing is buying a new yacht or buying a private island. people do not want to share their wealth and if you look at charitable giving, poor and working-class people give more than the very wealthy. we have little to give but we take care of each other and we

give a higher rates than the very wealthy. that brings me to my second point, which is that people in this system we live in now, the capitalist system are forced to compete with each other to survive. homelessness is on the rise. we have far to many hungry children and elderly in this country. people are forced in the capitalist system to work or survive. in a democratic socialist society, people would be motivated because of producing things and using their creativity and brains and we have access to education and trying new things instead of trying to go to some office drone job or going to work in a factory and have a form and tell us what to do all day every day. people will be motivated to work. people have many ideas which are suppressed in the capitalist economy, which will be unlocked when you have a democratic

socialist society. caller: good morning. i wanted to make a comment greta, and thanks for taking my call. showguest you have on your -- had on your show a few minutes ago. i cannot think of his name. he was implying that the reason we have a deficit now and that is so large is because of socialism. he failed to say anything about the tax breaks for the wealthy and i wanted to say the republicans are always that areg on people socialist and this and that. they said they do not want big government but they do. they want big government as long as it works for them. as long as they get the advantage of it and that is all i wanted to say. host: ok.

i could not say anything better. it is what it is. he will that claim they do not believe in big government -- what they actually say is they want big government for the military and police and to enforce the laws that benefit corporations and the wealthy. they do not want any kind of government the benefits the rest of us. if you look at the tax cuts that trump pushed through with the help of republicans, they were short-term tax cuts for some working people and i define working people as everyone who does not own factories are companies. so for middle-class and working-class people, there were some tax cuts. the vast majority went to corporations and the wealthy. the ones for middle-class and poor people, those tax cuts short-term. and corporations,

those are permanent. those are going to exacerbate the problem we have now. we have been cutting social programs and expanding programs that benefit the very wealthy. it is just going to make it difficult when we beat trump and have a democratic president -- it is going to make it that much more difficult to invest in programs that help the rest of us. it is a structural strategy of destroying the government for the benefit of a few private individuals and corporations. host: line for republicans, jacob in california. caller: yeah. , the -- isically impossible. of 400 milliony people. a government without free market education and,

retirement and everything else is just scale of management required is not, makes this whole thing impossible. -- people do not understand the soviet union fell because they tried to manage to many thanks. -- too many things. and by the way, if you take negative, you have to manage without free market. you have to decide without free market how much you are going to hospital -- the amount of make iss you have to impossible. host: let's get a reaction.

guest: sure. the first thing i want to say is yes. we can take medicare as an example and that is a federal love becausepeople it provides a benefit that improves their lives. when you look at sale and i want to take the example of the pharmaceutical industry, i think we can handle managing pharmaceuticals better than big pharma. with big pharma, what they do is charge people thousands of times what people in other countries pay for the same drugs. people are dying because they do not have medications. it is possible for the federal government to manage that much better than private industry. that areporations trying to make money off of their backs, while the government is something that is something that is a public good and we can control it. indiana,, shreveport

independents. caller: thank you for taking my call. i think what we are caught up in is two thanks. semantics and the class between the extreme left and extreme rights. socialismricatures of and caricatures of capitalism. whatw are headed towards the communists made a caricature of capitalism and when they came to capitalism, they tried to mimic that caricature and withlish a system oligarchs and putin at the head of it. very much like what they had in socialism. socialism isall

not well-defined. socialism i consider, when the government controls the means of production. we have social insurance, medicare, medicaid, social -- another form of social insurance, we have the government step in when we have major catastrophes and try to take care of people that have but hurt by acts of nature ,hat we really need i believe is to have a regulated capitalism with a floor of protection and the floor of insurance is social like social security and

actually the problem is, to get there from fight theave to not extreme left against the extreme right. we have to somehow get into the middle. we cannot get into the type of socialism that your guest is talking about. i am not sure it is a good idea because of the class between the extreme right and extreme left. host: let's take that. unpack.hat was a lot to i want to respond to a few things. first, the

we can create new medications. we do believe that there should be some things that are social insurance and public programs that are run by the government. the fossil fuel industry should we in private hands. is if you look at what is happening in our economy we are going over a climate cliff. corporations are looking at their quarterly profits and they are not taking into account the future of humanity. that is why young people are rising up in the streets, they know the time is running out.

they know that certain things require democratic oversight and need to be in the control of the government. we, the working class, working people, the to be running our work places. that is a means of production that we mean to be controlling. we should be able if we work in a bakery, not just get how met -- however much the owner wants , and pocket the rest. we want to be able to keep all of the fruits of our labor and run it cooperatively. everything mixes that way. i want to set the record straight on that. i forgot the second half of the question. youngstown ohio, barbara. i consider the smartest

who ever lived is albert einstein and he was a social us -- socialist. was a albert einstein socialist, martin luther king was a democratic socialist. people that control the education system and the mass media have erased their legacy and their ideas from history. pennsylvania. inler: i travel a lot scandinavian countries and europe. people should have the opportunity to visit there. this is their government, this is the way they were. education is taken care of, medicine is taken care of, the capitalists, the only thing

that they have a claim to fame example the bank failures in 2008 the economy on wound. which happens every 10 or 15 years. what they do is it is a huge transfer of wealth. all the poor people lose everything. everything goes down the tank. atn we start all over again the bottom and all of the money goes to the rich. one of the banks fell apart, the world economy on wound. money on all the capitalism and everything was fine. now is every -- everything is broke, who bailed them out? that's socialism. they live capitalism with the money was coming and now it is gone and they have no money. we pay for it about every 10 years.

just in recent history. take a look at it. from 1929 on. caller: guest: the way that the capitalist system works is that there is an inherent womb and , andcycle every few years the thing i want us to remember is the idea that the profits are privatized, so we all work hard and we get a tiny wage act. the owners get to keep everything. the profits are privatized, shareholders get the profits. the -- the people who provide the goods and services it very little. and the loss and the risk is socialized. -- bails had to bank out these banks.

that is the nature of this system. military,in the investing in wall street and not investing and real people. welcome to the conversation. socialism is a terrible idea that will not go away. try to put new names on it and make it sound different. your guest mentioned problems with the elite. in socialism, the government runs things and the richest counties in the u.s. are also groups of d.c.. can takenment everything corporations can take and they can do it with guns, corporations don't. you mention for morse, we were -- worldto what more

war i, we were dragged in. the scandinavian socialist country that denied it and the , made possible because they did not need to defend themselves and we pay for the difference. naïveism is a dangerously indoctrination. it does not work anywhere in the world. here and you will kill the american spirit and i don't want to be around here for that. so that's a lot to respond to. want to say is i fighting fascism in world war ii was a very important thing for the u.s. to do. we should have entered the war

earlier, millions of people were killed by the fascists. that's important. i would say that u.s. war sense than has been problematic. we have been lied to by politicians in every war. andietnam we were lied to we try to go to war with iran. we have to question the politicians. the main thing that i want to respond to is the idea that it's the politicians that are the problem. absolutely they are the problem. they are problem because somebody is buying and pay for them, and that is the wealthy. the capitalist class has a revolving door between industry and washington and politicians know that they can get campaign contributions and they will have a job once they leave. if they deliver what they are in office, they are set for life. that is disgusting and it is why

even people don't want to vote for even democrats and it is wonderful to participation is so low. we fight within the political system within the support for candidates at the local level, and why we support organizing unions and going out collectively to organize. we cannot just depend on the political system. we allgood sound to it, need to ask all the time is who is benefiting and in this case the politicians make the loss that are bought and paid for by the capitalist class. host: idaho, your question on socialism. caller: thank you for taking my call. first of all, socialism is dependent on a large number of dependent people.

i am a non-union schoolteacher not wealthy. am i am 61. i keep hearing this unequal distribution of wealth. since johnson's great society i have watched this country become overpopulated with nonproductive people who cannot keep up with the technology and be productive . , medicare, food stamps, housing, all of those programs have created this culture of we can go ahead and have as many kids as we want and the productive people will pay for them. it is a culture that others will support me and my kids. i think productive people are tired for pain for irresponsible people who have kids they cannot raise in support. would stop having these type of kids and develop

their own base of support before they have so many kids, we would not have the poverty that has led to this on it will distribution of wealth. -- unequal distribution of wealth. you need a union and teachers need to have a union. you play one of the most ,mportant roles in our society educating the next generation. you especially should have good working conditions. the reality is if you look at what has happened probably programs to support the people that have been blocked from the formal economy, which is a lot of poor people in this country is because the capitalist class needs a lot of people to not have work to her than they can turn to those that do have jobs and say you better work or less or i will hire someone else. a large that there is

pool of people that don't have work is a feature of the capitalist economy. you look at what we spend on social programs like welfare, which was gutted to the democrats, it's very little. it is little compared to things we waste money on like foreign wars and the military in general and contractors. if we look at how we spend money , it is not to support a mother that needs to feed her kids that has been blocked out of the formal economy, it is going to beat a defense contractor. that is a critical thing to understand, because people that like the system the way it is our trying to spin these stories. a point to the person in your community who pretends they represent the biggest investment of resources when the reality is

andvery wealthy corporations have been cutting how much they give to the government and redirected to other sources. a political magazine has a piece about bernie sanders with the headline reading the secret of bernie's millions. how did he amassed three houses and a net worth approaching at least 2 million. the conventional middle class climbing of a radical sounding socialist. what is your response to bernie sanders having this amount of wealth and also when people bring it up, this charge of a socialist who owns three homes? that i don't say know the details of bernie sanders accumulation of three homes but i know that a big part of his wealth comes from his book. the reason that was successful is that he speaks to millions of

people and the realities that we face. if you look at the kind of ,olicies he is fighting for they have been policies who -- that have -- will be benefiting working-class and the poor. it's the same way that i look at the kind of policies they are supporting, not the rhetoric. democratic socialist care about policy and results and that is what we focus on. host: tom in new jersey, democratic socialist. to, peopleanted don't seem to understand that in , we can still have

things the way they are, just have it -- it doesn't mean we have to get rid of money or -- we can have property, at the point to us as radicals who want to take away your cheeseburgers. want to say that. host: guest: i appreciate you saying that and i agree, there are miss that this is a vision of trying to control everyone and the reality is democratic socialism is promoting rita. -- is promoting freedom. being born into four more most of us into conditions where we

don't control that we have tutorial our lives, maybe go without health care or housing. maybe we are comfortable enough to have housing and health care wer we are working -- but are working 60 or 80 hours a week. we are trying to expand freedom and redirecting the debate is very important. host: archie in massachusetts, a democrat. caller: good morning. long-time fan of the show. i will be as brief as possible. i amup in a small town and a child of the 80's. in aally, i grew up society where no one cared if spacere -- the only safe you have was a janitor's closet. i want -- i understand you want to get a lot of people on your

side. my concern is, how do you wind up in a situation where you obviously want to be helping everyone, but a lot of the people on the other side will think if the walking dead happen there told what you dietary preference is? guest: as a child of the 80's as well as, thank you warrior question. -- for your question. people have a few basic needs. we want to be in community, we want to feel that we can be ourselves, time to spend on leisure and time with our families to do our hobbies. we focus on we do those things. we have a country that was founded on stolen land and

slavery and we have to recognize that. we continue to look at these restrictions on abortions. there are things that are happening in this country which are fundamental to the way our society is structured and we cannot ignore them because the impact working-class people of all races and genders. until we can address these problems we will not address all the problems for working-class people. the way we find a balance is we need to recognize what happened. at the same time we need to realize the system is set up to .enefit the elite they are pitting us against each other and using these ideas and -- as a division at keeping us attacking each other instead of realizing they are the source of the problem. country -- the

institutions of this country are racist. ban ont that there is a abortion is an issue that has to be addressed. we have more in common with each other than we have lengthy capitalist. i mean this tiny elite that that ownshe wealth all of our workplaces. you and i have more in common with each other than with them. whether youatter are a man or a different color or you live in a different place, we are still being screwed by the same people. we need to recognize our different conditions, we need to realize that fundamentally we are in a similar condition. that's why farmers and taxi drivers are committing suicide. catherine, michigan a

republican. caller: i just want to make a comment. i think we have been asleep at the wheel for years and i think that's how this democratic socialism started. when you talk about the leak, remember that we have to have the elite to provide jobs for us. -- the companies started, and these people acquired thehey companies, soe that we have the jobs. i guess they don't quite the young people today. they want everything right away. they don't want to work to acquire these same things. people years ago took years and years and years and families, generation after generation.

, you are philosophy educated and book learned but no common sense. there have to be common sense in this whole thing also. host: ok. and who am educated learned and i am very happy about that, but i think i have common sense. you just have to look what ford and gm are doing with their laying off of thousands of this iso realize that common sense also. the economy is structured that the people who own these and the shareholders make decisions that impact thousands of people and we have no voice. i grew up, both of my grant parents were union folks and my dad is a union person.

i grew up going to the firefighters union with other kids in the neighborhood and i grew up realizing that working people don't work together we will get screwed. that is what fundamentally at the root of the democratic socialist idea is that we produce the wealth of society and we should control it. it is just common sense. the other thing i want to talk about his millennials. i am part of the older millennial generation. most people that are right out of college have this vision. young people today have grown up in a society after the postwar. of relative prosperity when you that periodunions, of prosperity ended when the working-class decided so they

started unionbusting, cutting taxes, privatizing public services, and part of that was higher education. so we have productivity increasing but wages stagnating so we don't get the full benefit of what we produce. when our kids go to college if they can afford it at all, they have to take them tremendous personal debt rather than having the wealthy pay taxes to fund education the kiss it they think it is something that benefits society. think it is something that benefits society. people are working three jobs to start -- to try to get through school. there aren't enough jobs to go around so they graduate and they have these debts for the rest of their life.

young people have found higher education to be more expensive and there are no jobs for them. it is a cutthroat, competitive world where you have to compete or die. that is the reality with young people and on top of that they thatlimate change, democratic socialism is not just about young people. we have elderly people who are still working. is unconscionable. there are cuts to social security, the politicians from both parties are trying to push through. we live in a society and the very wealthy are hurting women

and people of color and older people and urban and rural folks. ,e have to come to our senses we are the one to make the society run and i think that is common sense. mills maryland, a democrat. you make a very good how you putwish -- the message out there. youris a direct from it to point with democratic socialism's, they republicans do it all the time. capitalism, you would make the point is still vital in our society. think about this, bring about freedom and this means a lot.

freedom, democrat. the socialism part has a negative connotation that unfortunately that's america. you are smart enough on your ,ide -- people on your side thater point the numbers are out there, the numbers show much theer versus how bailout the banks got. show the disparity in the numbers. we are branding and the name change they did that, too. freedom for democrats. i agree with you about the numbers because the numbers don't lie. branding. talk about

in my organization and many others have known there is something wrong with capitalism for a very long time. ago happens say 10 years when somebody tried to make arguments about -- and call it progressive or liberal they were called socialists. the right-wing wing will continue calling us socialists and they will say we are trying to hide something, but the truth is we are not trying to hide. it has a long history in the u.s.. i encourage you to read the book word.the "f"