it was a. very hard to take i. was against. the idea that her had sex with her right here. in the. audience. the easiest such. like yes. my next guest is someone who has shattered the two party monopoly after winning a seat on seattle's city council what makes her unique is that she's the first socialist to be elected to public office and decades her name is seanna so want and she continues to make headlines as a critical voice in the fight for fifteen movement

a campaign to raise the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour so i joined me earlier to talk about this campaign and her political career considering how running third party usually means a political death sentence i first asked her why she chose to do so. side and that has been ended on economic inequality on the injustices of the bailout of the big banks to the occupy movement people are looking for alternatives to the political dysfunction of the two parties big business looking for alternatives far distant demi failure that has generated enormous dougherty enormous social and economic injustice by the same time does big business and super wealthy are drawing low to your editors door equally high proportion and so. actually on the contrary this this not being a death sentence is actually a huge opening. for the left to build

a church forces to build mass movement and to recognize that people are ready and getting ready to move into struggles where your campaign is definitely proof that socialist ideals do resonate with people white because it's a concerted effort to shut down and demonize socialism by the corporate media putting its clear why the corporate media want to demonize you know there's been a whole decade of. stigmatizing the ideas of socialism and you know a lot of that has to do with the former soviet union that you are ships which you know certainly i'm not advocating for a socialist alternative advocating for democratic socialism meaning the society being run democratically in the interests of all working people on the planet all the children of everybody who has needs and all of that being done in an environmentally sustainable manner so whether somebody calls themselves socialist or not this is a rational need everybody recognizes my family needs economic security i need

a decent housing that's affordable i need good jobs my my partner needs good just my children need access to good education and then a broad swath of people recognize that the system is not providing for them and instead increasing the gap wealth gap advantage got obviously people are moving into thinking that you know this is not working we need something different what can that be and so then that sort of questioning starts to arise that's attractive to the ruling class that's a threat to big business to big corporations and to the two parties to other issues and so you know they are going to make attempts to shut it down or define someone across the occupy movement was the establishment federalized crackdown the minutes from the top down here pedal advocate for the fight for the. campaign a push to raise the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour but obama's proposal to increase. a minimum wage to just how many dollars an hour is generating

a lot of opposition from who said they would hurt small businesses and the economy how do you respond also the sun the fight for fifteen. so the fight for the state as you correctly said yes that is not the at the center of political struggle all around the united states and you know seattle is no you know showing the way and in fact i would mention that sea-tac the seat i can you should have to take is a neighboring city to seattle they've already passed a ballot initiative that voters voted for they voted in fifteen dollars an hour so clearly there is political momentum on the grassroots for this to happen. as for is obama's executive order for ten dollars and ten cents for future contract workers for federal federal contract companies i would say that any step forward is a welcome development whether ten dollars and ten cents is not a ticket out of poverty as i've said before and also for those who say that any increase in minimum wage is going to shut down small businesses i really have to be

bold and audacious in reminding people that in reality capitalism is not a system that favors small businesses small business businesses as somebody else has said our likes squirrel's done thing in the middle of a listen to the end you know corporations big corporations they dominate the economic landscape not small businesses so if people genuinely want to support small businesses they have to recognize that the interests of small businesses and working people often go hand in hand and their boat getting beaten down by the recession and increasing the minimum wage will actually be a step forward for small businesses and i would go even further i would say that the minimum wage legislation that we put forth in seattle and elsewhere they should include. clauses that make small businesses make it possible for them to pay fifteen dollars an hour to get employees and put the burden on corporations were nothing historically low taxes you're. no donations from big business big business

soley relied on small donors amazing amazing feat it's certainly an anomaly in a political system that's so dysfunctional and where money is speech do you think that what you've done can really be replicated across the country. you know if you look at seattle suddenly it has its own unique features but i would say their unique features for every city what is not unique and what is all encompassing nationally is the rapid decline in living standards for the majority of the people for the ninety nine percent you see a never ending race to the bottom you'd especially are looking into an abyss of low wage jobs student debt and just a really bleak future so everywhere there's a seeking of alternatives and in seattle socialist alternative has won the election for city council we also ran a campaign in minneapolis where time more ran as a candidate he's been a long time division and occupy homes campaign and he came very close to winning so i think the conditions for the left for alternatives to democrats and republicans

to build their forces exist the question is are we going to take advantage of that and i would say that we don't even need to speculate look at the evidence already oh you know go nobody was talking about fifteen dollars an hour people were making fun of us political pundits you know with the number of articles on how out of touch we were but look at and look at as no fifteen dollars an hour is at the top of the political agenda not just in seattle but nationally you have the white house talking about it why is that that's because they're facing the heat from the grassroots and that's why our primary task is not only to run independent candidates but also to build a mass movement and that's what we're doing in seattle you know we have launched a fifty now dot org campaign so i would urge all your viewers to check out one fight no doubt all argee and become a part of that so i like what you said about this is a reflection of reality because there really isn't even as we're going to service in the streets certainly knows that the best the left has

a congressional representation bring center no one i mean get the right seems to be fully represented what do you think is the root of the proportionality is it just that the left is bad at winning politically on that level. i think primarily that can be attribute it to the fact progressive liberals left you know whatever label people choose for themselves for decades have bought into this idea that you can build outside the democratic party and if you want to be successful in pushing for socially just causes for economic justice and you have to work within the democratic party as does richmond i would say the same thing about elizabeth warren i mean i really admire the woman but i seriously doubt what could be accomplished within the democratic party establishment because regardless of your own of commitment to social justice if you are serving the democratic party then you are serving the interests of big business look at goldman sachs look at the

historically high contributions obama got from them and from other big banks the same banks that were responsible for the financial collapse so the main task of the left is to recognize that that is not a channel for any social change and that's job for social change that requires requires electric was the labor movement to recognize that recons this is a failed strategy you know this is an abusive relationship that we've been stuck in for decades with the democratic party look at those among those money and the number of foot soldiers the labor movement provides for every election for the democratic party and what have we got out of that we've got a long term assault on labor unions there's no real wake up to this and the sooner we wake up to the fact that there's an openness to independent politics the better our results will be even though your campaign does resonate with many i think a lot of people still have this cold war mentality they think socialism equals communism equals parity i mean even though we import social concepts in this

country and across europe how do you get people to disarm from this now perspective i think that's true that you know these very sort of just coming out from under the wake of the cold war propaganda but in reality i would say that a lot of. people and i mean anywhere from their teens to early forty's you know a lot of people are actually waking up to the the just a complete failure of the capitalist system to solve even the basic problems of poverty and access to basic needs and so they are actually stepping outside of that whole realm and trying to see what else could be possible so in fact if you look at the recent pew research poll it shows that young people are more favorable to socialism done to capitalism and there is an openness to look at alternatives and i would say that there's another aspect to this openness and that's the question of the environment so i especially if you look at young people who

radicalizing our own environmentalists shoes it is becoming more and more clear to them that the democratic party and capitalism are the republican party you know that whole that whole system is it's completely dysfunctional not working and in fact. when you know when we made our so state of the union response a lot of people. gave us this feedback you know obama speech did not even mention keystone x.l. did not mention the question of striking and it's so empty it's empty rhetoric to be talking about climate change when you're overseeing an administration that is actually promoted fracking promoted the use of these destructive practices doesn't actually going to be. remotely leading us in a regressive way to our climate change and so i think that all those does all these economic and environmental and social questions are converging in people's minds and they're really crystallizing and blossoming into deep questioning of society

itself thomas one city council member city of seattle really appreciate you coming on thank you very much for having me. coming up i talk to porter. prize winning journalist chris hedges stick around. we speak your language i mean some of the will not be in. the news programs and documentaries and spanish what matters to you. there's a little tonnage of angola's kidneys stories. for you here. to try to call to spanish find out more visit actually died. at the tender age of ten facebook has by any estimation truly changed the world facebook also has demonstrated it can be used as

a weapon for political change and the social network today show itself to be a smart investment on the down side to their transparency issues and whether they can survive another generation. plays. breaking the set recently took a trip to pine ridge reservation in south dakota pine ridge is one of the poorest counties in the us and the conditions there are comparable to developing countries this is partly why pulitzer prize winning journalist and social critic chris hedges has referred to places like pine ridge as capitalism sacrifice sons however the systemic subjugation is as old as civilization itself earlier today chris joins me

to talk about the roots of institutionalized inequality and the reasons behind the collapse of complex societies i first asked him why places like pine ridge are so susceptible to such extreme poverty. of places where unfettered. capitalist forces backed by force. behalf of the railroad companies timber merchants. the people who profited from decimating the buffalo herds. mining concerns came in and seized the land of native americans and killed most of them and not only that but after herding them into what in essence were prisoner of war camps set out to destroy their culture their religion their language it's why indian children were taken from their parents and put in christian boarding schools where they were not allowed for instance and to speak.

and what's happening now with the late and of the industrial age and capitalism is that the reservation environment. native american people have endured and suffered under is being extended growing in greater and greater areas you know we're all being sacrificed as the residents of charleston west virginia were sacrificed when their water was poisoned by coal when it's still poisoned all they've been told to drink it people children are coming home from school sick this is not something that is unknown to native americans and i think that whole demented project of ceaseless exploitation expansion and violence the template of that was set. in the westward expansion you discuss how the world is globally integrated under an unsustainable form of capitalism but

america positions itself atop the totem pole justified by the notion of american exceptionalism how do you think that that notion plays into the global collapse. well corporations are preying on the united states in the way that they prey on whole nation states they are in this as an supra national no loyalty to any one nation and that's how you have seen the decimation of the american manufacturing base that is how you have seen the transference of capital overseas where it lies beyond the reach of taxation you have seen the rise of the decimation of the working class and the rise of tremendous numbers of poor whether they're listed as in poverty or a category called near poverty we're now talking about half the country and the myth of america still there the idea that if you work hard you can make

something of yourself the idea that we have a right to travel the globe and impose our virtues suppose adverse shoes on other countries by force which is what we are doing attempting to do throughout the middle east although it's not going very well for us but look imperialism has always been a mask for trade for business for control of natural resources that is true has been true since the united states began its imperialist expansion with the conquest of the philippines cuba. the control of the caribbean for sugar bananas. into the middle east for the control of oil so what we're seeing is a kind of clash between the myth that america once used to identify itself and

let's not forget that. many of the most fervent supporters of imperialist expansion came from labor unions. as was at the versailles treaty i mean all segment. of the society are complicit but these forces. which would in essence kind of cannibalize both the natural environment and exploit human labor and have been doing this on the outer reaches of empire for decades have are now being done internally just as it was done in the original conquest of the united states against native americans you talk about the impending environmental catastrophes and also the severe economic uncertainty on the horizon why do you think there's no sense of urgency on a large scale to address these troubling trends. well because they're not reported the commercial media is about bread and circus it's about spectacle it's about

celebrity gossip it's about the superbowl every week it's something new. and you know if we had a responsible media especially a broadcast media we would understand that climate change at this point is an emergence. that. at this point the effects of climate change are unstoppable. and if we don't radically reconfigure our relationship with the ecosystem very very quickly the human species itself is in jeopardy you can look at the world bank. report climate change turn up the heat the world bank can hardly be accused of being a radical organization and they speak of the end of that report in utterly apocalyptic terms. scientists. especially people who study climate change they know very well what's happening and yet we're not hearing their voices

we are mesmerized by electronic elucidations and that's of course how corporations want it when forty percent of the summer arctic sea ice melts companies corporations like shell oil look at the death throes of our planet as a business opportunity in their run up and drop billion dollar drill bits down into the arctic sea. i think what we have seen is. a kind of iron control of the systems of information by corporate power who are determined to exploit and exploit and exploit in till collapse and now we're of course about to see in all likelihood the president approve the northern leg of the keystone x.l. pipeline so. it's an uninformed public it's a public. which is been diverted their emotional and intellectual energy has

been invested in spectacle. coupled with a kind of ruthless corporate totalitarianism that thinks only in terms of quarterly profit and has absolutely no concern for the not only the common good but the very sustenance of. the ecosystem that might provide some kind of decent and acceptable living standards for future generations chris but on the flip side you've also said that as collapse becomes palpable humanity will retreat into what anthropologists call crisis cults what is a crisis called and why does our psychological hardwiring always revert back to these modes of group think. well when things become so desperate. retreat or human societies retreat into forms of magical thinking at the end of the. indian wars. in the latter part of the one nine hundred

centuries you saw the rise of the ghost dance. which swept through the remnants of native communities these communities believed that the great spirit the warriors would come back. the buffalo herds would come back. they would get their lands back the white colonizer would disappear that is replicated i mean anthropologists have studied throughout societies that collapse now we the way we express our crisis called is through the radical christian right again a form of magical thinking which denies evolution which believes in the rapture that those believers when jesus returns will be raptured up into heaven that's a classic example of a crisis cult so that when things become desperate you gather in a church you pray you carry out christian ritual you tend to lash out at a society to purge you see it in the rhetoric you know whether it's against

homosexuals whether it's against undocumented workers muslims a long list of contaminants that will somehow make the society right all of that has within it the makings of a crisis call but crisis cults are what societies do when despair reaches such a level and we're certainly headed in that direction when you're unable in any real way to affect the environment or the world around you then then you wrap yourself in these cocoons of fantasy in the article the myth of human progress you write in reference to truth that people quote get as close as they can be for the flames and drive them back into a lecture on moral honesty comes at the cost of those by the fire of reality become burnt children he wrote eternal empires of allusion chris if this is the way it's always worked and those who seek truth are constantly ostracized humanity is doomed to be subject to empires of illusion. well i'm quoting nietzsche they're.

looking down only artists and philosophers have the capacity to look into what he called the court of molten reality and when they come back out. they find that the wider populace which is unable to look can't deal with it and so i depart a little bit from nietzsche there nietzsche like plato says that you create illusions myth in order to explain reality or help people cope with the reality unfortunately the role of truth tellers in distraught or disturbed societies and we have our own examples of that whether it's noam chomsky or or ralph nader or cornel west all of them for getting up and speaking unpleasant truths been pushed to the fringes of society and on the liberal class is as guilty maybe even more guilty than that stations like m s n b c which are utterly subservient to the

democratic party and to the cult of brock obama have kept those voices from a so it's not just the right it's the left that are both trading in a kind of fultz reality and that's very dangerous because when you can't confront reality when your society shuts out those voices that seek to describe what reality is and how it works then you can talk about hope and you can talk about change because all hope and change is essentially redirected into a dead political process or redirected into fantasy i mean the idea that. barack obama's going to save us from wall street or from the drone wars or. from environmental degradation it's a bit like all those poor prisoners in the gulag are writing letters to uncle joe stalin and that is. symptomatic and i think the united states would be

probably. a good example of an empire in serious decay in decline these are qualities that are symptomatic of a society that can no longer no longer has the intellectual and moral health to face hard facts and readjust and carry out forms of self-criticism and self correction. post polls or prize winning journalist chris hedges be sure to tune in for part two of his interview tomorrow. and that's our show you guys thanks for watching. the nose of the playing. field in big spirit travels with the flame from its place

in greece. join james brown for an elemental and epic journey around russia and beyond. where i want to go. play. with creating these sustainable operations focused on making me different from what you are advocating my term self interests and so that is what you're talking about which is has always been the case and. businesses for hundreds of years without using the label. that i can work for god capitalism do was this notion that economists brought to it which was the idea of profit my

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end everybody's comfortable. athletes are comfortable fans are comfortable well that's what makes you so choose so unique. because why i took this perfect employees for the winter olympics. i mean were else do you have this different show . in march the building behind me will become the center of startup communities from around the world to come together to talk about the best way to new ideas. post time one of the most floats of the so one global financial posts will take place to

moscow. they promise to show they delivering the olympic flame is ready for its final sprint into the opening ceremony marking the beginning of the twenty second of winter olympic games. welcome to our source the winter olympics coverage here on the international i'm rule re sushi i live in moscow well they did promise it would be spectacular and they went all out to deliver the opening ceremony of the twenty fourteen olympics under way and living up to the billing that's. one of our correspondents in the lower cluster right near the venue.