Upstream - Breaking Up with Capitalism w/ Malaika Jabali

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

As socialists in the United States one of our most important tasks—at least under our current material conditions—is to raise class consciousness among the mass of people: the basic work of tuning people in to the existence of structures and systems that define and limit our lives.  As much as we on the left might take these things for granted, it’s always important to remember that many, many folks out there don’t think of the world in terms of socialism, capitalism, Marx, Engels—certainly not the relations of production under monopoly capitalism. But that doesn’t mean they don’t get it. If you live under capitalism, you get it. If not theoretically or in terms of political analysis, you get it because you might hate your boss, or your landlord, or you might wish you could spend more of your day watching your kids grow up, or you might have had to skip a pill here or there because you couldn’t afford refills from the pharmacy. Most people get it. They just might not have an ideological framework within which to situate their frustration, their anger, their sadness, their hopelessness.   So, in light of this, sometimes it’s helpful for us to frame issues of anti-capitalism and socialism in ways that are easily relatable and accessible. This is what our guest in today’s episode has accomplished in her latest book, which uses relationship analogies to provide you with everything you need to know about what a healthy relationship with our political economy could actually look like, issue by issue—from healthcare and housing to the whole concept of American democracy. Malaika Jabali is an award-winning journalist, policy attorney, life-long socialist, and author of the book, It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On. In this conversation we have a wide-ranging discussion about raising class consciousness, Malaika’s organizing work in the midwest and the deep south, what different visions of socialism look like, and why it’s not too late to break up with your toxic partner and begin a new, thriving relationship with your new boo: socialism. Further resources: It's Not You, It's Capitalism by Malaika Jabali Malaika Jabali Related episodes: Upstream: Worker Co-ops Pt. 1: Widening Spheres of Democracy Upstream: Worker Co-ops Pt 2: Islands Within a Sea of Capitalism Intermission music: "Cost of Living" by Mom Friend Cover artwork: Kayla E. This episode of Upstream is brought to you in part by Alluvium Gatherings. Alluvium Gatherings designs, plans, and produces events for social and environmental justice movements that allow people to come together to solve the challenges of our time. Learn more at alluviumgatherings.com Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This episode of Upstream is brought to you in part by Alluvium Gatherings. Alluvium Gatherings designs, plans, and produces events for social and environmental justice movements that allow people to come together to solve the challenges of our time. Learn more at alluviumgatherings.com. That's A-L-L-U-V-I-U-M, gatherings.com. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] You know, what exactly is capitalism? When I have friends who say, oh, I'm a capitalist, I can't do that. I'm a capitalist. You know, I wouldn't want another system. What do you mean by that? Do you mean you just want to live well? Does it mean that you have a great

job with benefits and a 401k? Does it mean that you want to be able to afford a house? You affording a house is not the definition of capitalism. You having a retirement plan and savings doesn't make you a capitalist. You buying nice things even, you being in the Delta Sky Club, does not make you a capitalist. You are a consumer, I think we should be mindful

of how we consume in this capitalist system when so much of it is produced, so many of our products and goods are produced unethically. But you merely being a consumer doesn't make you a capitalist. You can actually have nice things. And in fact, Marx and Engels wouldn't be mad at you. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream.

Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Della Duncan. As socialists in the United States, one of our most important tasks, at least under our current material conditions, is to raise class consciousness among the mass of people.

The basic work of tuning people in to the existence of the structures and systems that define and limit our lives. As much as we on the left might take these things for granted, it's always important to remember that many, many folks out there don't think of the world in terms of socialism, capitalism, Marx, Engels, certainly not the relations of production under monopoly capitalism. But that doesn't mean that they don't get it. If you live under capitalism, you get it. If not theoretically or in terms of political analysis, you get it because you might hate your boss, or your landlord, or you might wish you could spend

more of your day watching your kids grow up, or you might have had to skip a pill here or there because you couldn't afford refills from the pharmacy. Most people do get it. They just might not have an ideological framework within which to situate their frustration, their anger, their sadness, their hopelessness. So in light of this, sometimes it's helpful for us to frame issues of anti-capitalism and socialism in ways that are easily relatable and accessible. This is what our guest in today's episode has accomplished in her latest book, which

uses relationship analogies to provide you with everything you need to know about what a healthy relationship to our political economy could actually look like. Issue by issue. From healthcare to housing to the whole concept of democracy. Malaika Jabali is an award-winning journalist, policy attorney, lifelong socialist, and author of the book, It's Not You, It's Capitalism. Why it's time to break up and how to move on. In this conversation, we have a wide-ranging discussion about raising class consciousness,

about Malaika's organizing work in the Midwest and the Deep South, about what different visions of socialism look like, and why it's not too late to break up with your toxic partner and begin a new, thriving relationship with your new boo, socialism. And just before we get started, Upstream is almost entirely listener funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways in which you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bonus episodes, at least one a month, but usually more, along with our entire back catalog

of Patreon episodes at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast. You can also make a tax deductible recurring donation or a one time donation on our website upstream podcast dot org forward slash support. Through your support, you'll be helping us to keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going. Socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Della, in conversation with Malaika Jabali. Welcome, welcome.

It's not you, it's capitalism. Why it's time to break up and how to move on. So excited for this conversation and welcome to Upstream. We love to start with an introduction from you. So if you could introduce yourself for our listeners, that would be awesome. Hi, Della. I'm Malaika Jabali and I'm a journalist and author. And my debut book, which you just heard, came out last fall. And if you can guess from the title, I'm a socialist as well. Excellent. Thank you. Yes. And let's talk about your upbringing.

Tell us about growing up and what inspired you to become a socialist, but also to have these thoughts and feelings that led you to write the book about breaking up with capitalism. Yeah, I grew up as a movement baby, which evolved into a movement adult. I consider myself to be somewhat of a movement baby, which evolved into a movement adult, I consider myself to be somewhat of a movement journalist. So I like to cover grassroots organizers, left thinkers and scholars. And I think we've got a big void of that in mainstream media. And so that was a lot of what I wanted to do.

I was the senior news and politics editor at Essence just before this. I just resigned about two weeks ago because I'm working on a second book. And so a big part of my undertaking was to incorporate the things that were normal to me in my environment into mainstream media, which is severely lacking. I think especially depictions of black people and what our ideology can look like because I feel like, especially in dominant narratives, it really operates on this liberal conservative framework and it's broader than that. I grew up in left organizations. My parents were activists in Los Angeles when they met,

and that's where I was born. And they were into anti-apartheid work. That's largely what they were doing, because South Africa was still under an apartheid system at the time. So they were doing some of that work. And the groups that they were a part of, these were Black organizations that were debating,

you know, Marxism and Leninism and talking about the working class and centering the working class. It wasn't just this bougie liberal ideology. And I was raised in Atlanta where that is the dominating idea and aspiration is to be a bougie Black person. So I kind of had these competing things going on at the same time.

I grew up in an organization called the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. They were in LA and then a number of those members came out to Atlanta. And they were based on a group called the New African People's Organization, the Republic of New Africa, that came out of the Midwest. So you've got a lot of this Black radical left movement and thinking that then evolved in the South and relocated in some ways to the deep South. So I've had interactions with Malcolm X Grassroots Movement folks in Jackson, obviously folks from LA

that I grew up with. We all had African names. So we really considered ourselves to, in a way, counter the Western ideology and ideals of individualism. And the only way that you can be a complete person is if you become a CEO in this system, or if you're just really aspiring and thriving to be an owner of a corporation. Those are the kinds of things that you see in Atlanta. I had this high achieving mentality because, of course, I want to do well. My parents were both educators, they're public school teachers. They really valued education. But at the same time, I knew the limits of what those limited roles would be of

just trying to survive and thrive under capitalism without actually trying to change it. Nicole Zwaard Thank you so much for sharing about your upbringing and the influences and also that challenge of being part of this community while being in this larger culture, trying to encourage this one form of success or development. And that's awesome that your connection with the Malcolm X grassroots movement. And I'm wondering, could you just share a little bit more

about that movement, maybe as it is today, for folks who maybe know about Malcolm X, but what is the movement and where is it at now? Give us a little update. Well, it is specifically a nonprofit organization and they've got multiple chapters in different states. The one that I grew up with is in Atlanta, there is a chapter in Jackson that is like a sister organization to all of the chapters really but particularly Atlanta because it's so close and they developed this idea and a plan called the Jackson Plan. So from that plan it's been years decades really in the making. I think it really got revived, I would say after Hurricane Katrina,

where a number of Black people realized, I mean, most of us have known, but I think it was easier to rally more Black people, the masses of Black people, when we see a government that fundamentally doesn't care about us. So in Hurricane Katrina, when you saw in these Gulf states where so many black people were left to die, and then on top of that, the people who were trying to just take care of their basic needs were pigeonholed as criminals in a sense.

A lot of black people were like, I guess we really do need to question our status as Americans here. And so I think they were able to build on that momentum to amplify the Jackson plan and having like workplace democracies, having these sort of public democratic systems. And so in order to implement that work was like, well, we need to get involved in the electoral process. And so they campaigned behind

a man named Chokwe Lumumba, who ended up becoming the mayor of Jackson. And so he was a revolutionary socialist. He wanted to incorporate that in the city of Jackson, which is predominantly vastly black, like not just majority, but it's something like 70%, something like that. Don't quote me on it, but it is very high. And so he wanted to incorporate that in the in the city's governance. So being able to, you know, introduce community land trusts, for instance. So that plan is still kind of around. It has, I would say, transformed in different ways, because Chokwe died not long after he was inaugurated, very early into his administration, but then his son ended up becoming his successor.

And his son is now the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. But he's got all these other things to deal with when you're contending with a majority Black city in a majority White state like Mississippi, the same things that we have to deal with in Atlanta. So I'm not sure if I completely answered your question, but that's part of it. That was really helpful. Thank you. It's great to hear about the inspirations. And we've had Kali Okuno on to talk about Jackson Rising. So, yeah, thank you for that. And one thing I really appreciate about your work, as you mentioned, is that you've really, you know, worked in mainstream media, trying to transform things from within and shift

perspectives and also be critical of capitalism. And also your book is a very much a very, well, I found it to be a very helpful and easy to understand what is capitalism, why it's not serving us and then how to break up with it. So I'm wondering for those of us who are maybe still trying to figure out the words to phrase this, how would you describe capitalism in its most helpful frame for folks to really try it on and say it in their own language too. So how would you describe capitalism and why it's problematic? I consider it an economic system where the primary focus is to make money off of other people's labor. And that primary focus means that you don't really care about providing people a fair wage. If you decide to uproot and go overseas or to write to Work State or to Mexico, you don't care what happens to that community and how that

community may fold because you're making a management decision. That is the logic of capitalism. You want to make as much money as possible and often you're sacrificing the livelihood of other people to do it. And the people who benefit from that, from that kind of decision-making, from maximizing profit isn't the workers. The people who benefit are the owners and the owners have ultimate decision-making power. They own all the resources and they get most of the benefits from that kind of relationship. And so the idea behind making this like a relationship book

is that we have sometimes experienced that in relationships where we're giving and giving, we're doing the work, we're doing the emotional labor, we're doing the physical labor, we're doing the chores, and somebody else is siphoning their energy vampires and they're benefiting from all of that. They're benefiting from our kindness, they're benefiting from us clocking in and being on time and showing up, but we're not getting that in return. They're not reciprocating the same energy. So why are we giving all this energy to a system that's not giving it back to us? Absolutely.

Yes. And I love too this playful way of looking at it, this it's not you, it's capitalism, right? And I'm wondering what are the ways that we internalize capitalism and that we actually or we internalize the operating principles, the worldviews, the values in ways that we could actually blame capitalism instead. Yeah, I think a big one is that we're just not hustling hard enough. And we shouldn't have to hustle that hard just to afford basic necessities. There shouldn't be a reason why we're spending 40% of our income on rent.

And it may not even be rent in a great place. It could be housing that's unsafe or inadequate. And for us to spend so much time blaming ourselves for something that should be very basic in a system, just have enough wages to be able to have a roof over your head, that shouldn't be hard. So we should have a system where it covers most of our needs, if not all of our basic needs, and some of our wants too. And I don't think that we are stuck,

we don't have to be stuck in this really bad shitty relationship. I think that there's so much more for us out there. And I think part of the problem is that not only do we have runaway costs for things, but we have runaway, well, I should say runaway CEO pay, but not wages that are covering the increases in all of those costs. I think the GM CEO last year when all the auto strike stuff was happening he makes like 352 times or

362 times what the median employee makes at GM. Like that is astonishing. You know so we have the system that tells us well you're just not working hard enough if you did work hard then you would be incentivized, but the GMCO is not the one who's putting these car frames together. They're not painting, they're not doing the auto bodywork, they're not even doing the science for the research. They're doing some amount of strategy, but is that really worth 362 times more what the median employee makes? I don't think so.

You know, and so they say we don't have enough money. You know, we've got inflation and so construction costs are high. That's why housing is so much. We've got all these shipping issues, so that's why groceries are so high. So then what justifies giving people millions and millions of dollars at the top and none of that trickling down to the bottom. Shouldn't all of us be sacrificing under capitalism if that's the case? Like, why aren't we all just tightening our belts? But CEOs aren't tightening

their belts. Owners aren't tightening their belts. Landlords certainly aren't tightening their belts. All the sacrifices are coming on our end. Absolutely. And you're reminding me of this playful idea that somebody posted recently about how, what if rent was one third of the minimum wage income? So it's like you take minimum wage income for a year, and you take a third of that.

Rent can be no more than that, right? Because this idea that, you know, ideally rent is no more than one third of your income. Well, for so many who are especially on minimum wage, that's really not that much. And what if we kind of had some sort of a pairing in that way? And I really hear you on the idea of like recession or inflation and who it's really harming and then who is really benefiting from it, right? And that, like you said, a runaway, just total gain from the capitalist class is so painful and obvious. And also what is inflation? I love how you're really interrogating that and saying, you know, inflation is not so

much these natural causes that we can't control, but really it's this decision that the capitalist class of raising all the prices because they can and calling it inflation as if it was this natural economic phenomenon. So yeah, thank you for bringing those in. And I'm wondering, you know, as you have been in more mainstream media spaces and critiquing capitalism and bringing in these comments and views, what has been the response both from the general public, but from maybe colleagues? Like, what do people respond when you critique capitalism in this way?

I think a lot of it is so straightforward and plain spoken and logical. And to be fair, I'm in a lot of leftist spaces, or at least people who are not that antagonistic to them. So I think people are pretty accepting of the ideas especially if you just if you just make it plain. You know what exactly is capitalism when I have friends who say oh I'm a capitalist I can't do that I'm a capitalist you know I wouldn't want another system. What do you mean by that? Do you mean you just want to live well? Does it mean that you have a great job you just want to live well? Does it mean that you have a great job with benefits and a 401k? Does it mean that you want to be able to afford a house? You affording a house is not the definition of capitalism. You having a retirement

plan and savings doesn't make you a capitalist. You buying nice things even, you being in the Delta Sky Club, it does not make you a capitalist. You are a consumer. I think we should be mindful of how we consume in this capitalist system when so much of it is produced, so many of our products and goods are produced unethically. But you merely being a consumer doesn't make you a capitalist. You can actually have nice things and in fact Marx and Engels wouldn't be mad at you. What their argument was, you can actually have nice things. And in fact, Marx and Engels wouldn't be mad at you. What their argument was, you know,

just thinking of debunking certain myths that you can't even own property, they didn't say anything about you not having your own home. Their issue was that we have an ownership class that has property that produces our goods and services and they own that. That's called the means of production. When they're saying we need to get rid of bourgeois property, that's what they're referring to. They're not talking about you having

an apartment and you having a condo. The idea was because capitalism is so unfair, the logical conclusion that you probably won't be able to own a home anyway. So they're abolishing private property. We're not saying that you probably won't be able to own a home anyway. So they're abolishing private property. We're not saying that you can't have it on your own and come to find out the way that things have turned, have evolved or devolved. A lot of us can't afford our own home. And if you do, like myself, I was finally able to save up.

I got a home, I sold it a year later because then you've got to think about interest rates. You got to think about if anything happens, you've got a gutter that needs to replace, you got a roof that needs to be replaced. The costs are ridiculous. So a lot of us aren't able to be comfortable in the system that we have right now. So this is about creating comfort for everybody who wants it. Yeah. Thank you for that. I love that way of when folks say that to just ask them what they mean. And then even in the examples that you gave, I could really see both the way that you're responding to it, that socialism is really about comfort and about all of us to actually be able to have what we need equitably.

But also this idea that so many of the examples you gave are actually even better under socialism, right? You said like retirement, for example, or being able to have our needs met. So it's actually, I love that playful way of exploring that. And I'm wondering, yeah, can you share a little bit more about, you know, how to communicate with folks who may not understand or agree that we need to break up with capitalism? I think going back to what you said, I think it's looking at how an alternative could benefit them. There might be people who are fine. I would ask anybody in their relationship, not to break up any households, but I would ask anybody in their relationship, okay, you

might be fine, but can you be great? Can we do a little bit better than that? You might have a small business. How stressful is that for you? How much do you have to think about, you know, people leaving because they have to work multiple jobs just to be able to afford their rent. So they're not really committed to being a cashier at your spot because they got to be a cashier at some someplace else. So if they can get a job where their wages are high enough and they can be committed and they have a say, they have a vote in the way management decisions are made, you might get better workers, you might get more inspired workers, you all have a stake in it. If you want to be able to

afford, you know, attract the best talent, you're a small business owner, having health care might do that. Well, what if we had a government that provided that? That's one less administrative task for you. So I think thinking about what those very tangible material benefits, it's you know, maybe people don't care about equality at all. I come from a justice background, I care about that, but maybe you don't. So maybe the fact that you'll actually save money under this system, you'll get better workers, you'll get you know better products, you'll get a better service because people feel heard. People are getting paid fairly because they vote

in a workplace democracy where they're making sure they're getting paid fairly. Where people's needs back home, they're getting childcare so they don't have to leave early or be, you know, wishy washy or whatever because they got to deal with a kid that, you know, they don't have childcare covered. So what if we had a government? What if we invested in that so that we can all just be, we could be more productive or some people can be less productive. Some people might want to be able to go to the park more some people might want to be able to think about their art more you're a business owner

do you want to do this forever maybe you want to be able to retire early and we have an adequate safety net for you to do that everybody doesn't want to hustle all their lives so I think speaking directly to what people need and want and seeing how a socialist system can get them there materially works wonders. I do love thinking about, you know, what would be the role of entrepreneurship or people who really do have a passion for business

or for, you know, even marketing in the post-capitalist economy or in the socialist economy that, you know, we can still have that. And that's why I love the, the post capitalist economy or in the socialist economy that, you know, we can still have that. And that's why I love the the post profit model, Jennifer Hinton and Donnie McCurkin, this this idea of not for profit businesses where you have a business that generates profit, but the profit goes to mission driven work or like a, you know, a social or an ecological cause. It's like saying, yeah, people who are entrepreneurial, who are business minded. Awesome. What do you care about? And what do you want your profit,

your effort, your labor to serve? Awesome. I love that. I love that idea. Before I decided to be a journalist, and then before that, I was a lawyer, a public interest lawyer. I thought I was going to be an entrepreneur. I envisioned myself having a, you call it a B corporation, this socially responsible distribution music company. So record labels, they're notorious for underpaying their artists. I was like, I'm gonna have a business where the artists will get paid fairly, you know, they'll actually be able to own their royalties and their masters and all this stuff. And so I'd always had this entrepreneurial mind. And so I think if there was a model, a nonprofit model where people can exercise that,

they can exercise that muscle and that ingenuity towards something productive, that's an alternative to this for-profit model that we have. I think that would be awesome. You're listening to an Upstream Conversation with Malaika Jabali. We'll be right back. When I get the estimate I'll cry in my car Embarrassment at the price of my big heart I'll be paying this bill until I die With your granted forgiveness for every lie

I'll be leaving the and with your grief More than a man could ever need More than a man could ever need Could you even have a soul to lose? Then I thought about my friend suffering and sick Oh, they worry till the end about how to pay for it You have all the power to make this right But you get your pager From our blood

How do you live with your greed? More than man could ever need More than man could ever be. More than man could ever knew did you even have a soul to lose. How do you live with your greed? I'll be living your dream I'll be living your dream I'll be paying this bill until I die That was Cost of Living by the Atlanta-based band Momfriend. Now back to our conversation with Malaika Jabali. And so, you know, first part of the, you know, the idea is that we need to break up

with capitalism. And then there's the how do we do that? So, you know, what would you say and what did you write about in your book around, around like how do we actually get out of this extractive exploitative relationship this abusive relationship that we're in Yeah, it's kind of interesting Talking about the book because it again is framed as a relationship guy, which is very personal it's very individual, but I'm talking about a systemic problem and personal, it's very individual. But I'm talking about a systemic problem. And in a way, it sort of undermines the work as a socialist to say, you got to bootstrap it, you have to change your own mindset, you know, you have to empower yourself. But I do think so much of it is a individual

cultural shift. I think we've gotten so accustomed in particularly American versions of capitalism to blame ourselves and only want to get out of problems ourselves and then blaming other people for our problems. Not a system, not corporate owners, not politicians, but other people who are in our same station in life or lower. corporate owners, not politicians, but other people who are in our same station in life or lower. You know, so if you're middle class, you're blaming these other folks who are coming in the neighborhood and messing it up, who are messing up property values. You're blaming people who are getting violent welfare while you're working hard. You're blaming Sarah and Jimmy for getting student loan

forgiveness while you worked really, you worked your butt off to pay off their student loans if you even had them. Mind you tuition was probably $2,000 a year when you were in college but that doesn't matter you worked hard and you paid that off. So there is a lot of antagonism among these classes among you know our middle class and you know the working poor and the working class and the unemployed. So there's so much intrapersonal antagonism, gender antagonism, like the rate at which we've seen these gender wars has been mind-boggling to me. I think some of these ideas and conflict is even invented. Like why are we creating scenarios to get mad at the other gender for?

And nobody is thinking about, or hardly anybody, not enough people, are thinking about the systemic issues that are heightening these problems. You know, so much of it, I know I'm listing all the problems, but so much of the solution is unlearning a lot of that. It's unlearning the sexism, it's unlearning the racism, and redirecting that energy so that we can have a class-based struggle. And also acknowledging that there's enough sexism

and racism that also has to be dispelled and unlearned. So it's a class struggle, but we can't ignore the other identities that exaggerate those class-based issues without blaming somebody else. A lot of it is changing our value system. So that's a part of it, recognizing, hey, we're in this together. I think that involves working,

being in community with other people, that involves working, being in community with other people, being in movements, being in organizations, being a part of political organizations. So that's one step is our value system. I think the second is very practical politics. It is hard for me to envision a system that will fundamentally change

without having electoral power, without more socialists, without more socialists, without more leftists in general, having the electoral decision-making power where they're determining budgets, where they're thinking about executive orders and making decisions that are going to benefit the masses. I think we need a mass influx of resources and capital. You can do that, for instance, in New York. They've got a multi-billion dollar budget. The last I checked a few years ago was like 60 or 70. I'm sure it's much higher than that now. But

imagine having billions of dollars at your disposal as a city and you say, hey, let's put more of this money into funding the research and the development of community land trusts. Let's put more of this money into our healthcare system. Let's put more of this money into public education and our teachers and students. So having some sort of budget decision-making power and land use power, I think that is incredibly crucial as leftists. So either we are campaigning for those people or we are becoming those elected officials ourselves. them, right? And I really hear you on this isn't only at the level of the individual, right? A decision or an effort, really, it is that collective, it is on that systems

level. And so I do hear you on maybe the limitations of the metaphor, and yet I really hear the practical ways we could all work with it, right? Thinking about how do I value myself? How do I think of myself worth, right? How do we think of the worth of different jobs or different roles? You know, is one person's hour infinitely worth another person's hour, for example? But also, what are we guaranteed to? Or like, what do we have a right to or, you know, entrusted with? There's that too. What are our definitions of success? Like, what does progress mean? What is success?

And thinking about it not as this atomized individual, but as the collective, right? That solidaristic approach to success and development, like community wealth, not individual wealth. So I really hear you on a lot of unlearning that must happen. And then from that unlearning, unlearning together, that political organizing and that organizing together and transforming systems. And thank you for naming a few of the things like land trusts, worker cooperatives, participatory

budgeting that are very useful in making this transition possible. I'm wondering, that's the kind of the through-topia, the kind of how we get there. I'm wondering about, you know, this visioning of socialism for you. You know, how would you describe what it would look and feel like? Because we're really, for the podcast, we've been really working with imagination and like being able to imagine the world that we want to see as helpful for us living into it and even participating in it now. And you had a quote in your book, Nathan Robinson, you don't measure against what is or what has been, you measure against what could be.

So I'd love to hear what is your what could be, what is the possibility or this vision that you hold in your work and in your efforts? Socialism to me looks like freedom, and that is maybe the most patriotic American answer. But we don't have real freedom. We don't have this idealized version of America yet. And that's because we've connected freedom to the free market. And I think freedom means being able to live where and how you want. Freedom means not having to work two or three jobs just to put a roof over your head. Freedom means having the time to think and be creative. And

to think and be creative. And for the average person in America, I would say that is not the case. Like you are stuck in a job that you probably don't like a whole lot because you've got basic things that you have to do. You might have chosen a career path, a major that you thought would just be able to make you financially comfortable? And if you are financially comfortable, what are the sacrifices you had to make to get there? Do you still have a lot of student loan debt? Are you still a debt slave? You know, how much time did you have to take off of your life to be able to pay back these financial interests, these banks, are you even doing work that you enjoy, even though you're financially comfortable? And if you're not financially comfortable,

what are the ways that we can still enjoy life, even if we're not a big CEO and we've got a C-suite office? And so socialism looks like being able to do what you want, how you want, in a way that is fair to other people and the environment. You know, it doesn't mean you're just going out here and you're, you know, mining anywhere in the world that you want to and, hey, I'm free to do that. No, we still have to be sustainable, ethical, and moral in those ways. And I'm going to also borrow an idea from someone else that I spoke to for the book.

And so I asked a variety of socialists and leftists what socialism looked like for them because I wanted some concrete examples and other examples besides my own. And so I talked to Thea Riafrancos and she's been doing a lot of work on let's say the green economy and eco-socialism and for her it looks more green and so when she told me that it was a an aha moment because I was like you're absolutely right if we are not trying to maximize every inch of land that we have for a luxury condo or an office that people are barely gonna be in or some large suburban retail development that requires a bunch of emissions, socialism could look greener and healthier

because we've got more parks, we've got green space. We're not trying to make every space that we that we're in be productive to the ownership class in some way where it's all about you know retail and consuming. We've got more clean air and clean energy. It means being able to have time to go to a park. It means being able to have time to go to a park. It means being able to have time to go cook and enjoy yourself and have a picnic. I live in Milwaukee now. I was here for a couple of years

actually writing the first book and I came back to work on the second one because I'm looking at the lives of black Midwesterners. And I've benefited from the fact that socialists wanted to have more green space. So for instance, Milwaukee had a string of socialist mayors, more than anywhere else in the country, probably surprisingly to most people. Wisconsin was a very progressive state at one point.

They elected the very first socialist congressman, Victor Berger. A lot of socialist economists ended up working for the New Deal administration. They shaped a lot of the public policy that we have, the social welfare net that we have, didn't just come out of thin air. It came from socialists and specifically socialists in Wisconsin. And so a number of mayors back to back their administrations wanted to just increase the park system. And so I get to enjoy a trail that's right in the middle of the city. And there's so many trails that people can enjoy

that are public spaces that don't require you to bring out your wallet and pay for something. That's what I want for other people. Thank you for sharing that. That's beautiful. And yeah, it sounds like writing this second book is really alive for you. So I'm wondering if you could share more about the journey from the first book to this one and what it is that you're exploring

What's your active inquiry and maybe some insights so far? They're definitely different Tones and so the first one I feel is reflective of my personality. It's fun It's a little sarcastic. I would say it's a little bit witty and it's very straightforward and it's illustrated. This one, I don't know what it's ultimately going to look like because I'm following working class Black people in the Midwest and I'm just sharing and amplifying their stories. And I'm amplifying them specifically because so many of them have been disillusioned by our political system, by both Democrats and Republicans. And I think it follows a trend

of a lot of people feeling that way. So you've got a rise in independents who have seen that Republicans aren't actually addressing their needs as workers, and Democrats say that they are, but it's not actually happening. And so you had so much deindustrialization in the Midwest, it disproportionately affected Black workers. A lot of people don't think about that because the archetype of the Midwestern worker tends to be

like a white blue collar guy named Joe, you know, down at a factory. But a number of those, a disproportionate amount of those workers were actually Black men. So I want to highlight their lives and just kind of show the hypocrisy of our political system that claims to be about democracy. Democrats claim to be focusing and highlighting and listening to Black men and women. But in in practice they've been doing a lot of triangulation and appealing to conservatives through their third-way politics. So it looks at sort of the track of that, the history of that, along with the deindustrialization that's affected black people in the region. Wow, wonderful work. It definitely sounds really exciting and particularly right now at this time as we are in an election year.

And so, yeah, really looking at that, we've done some work to explore the two party system and critique it and explore the alternatives. I'm wondering if you can share maybe one person's story who you've met or worked with so far just to give us a little bit more information as to what's an example of this? Sure. I met a woman, actually we spoke, we've been speaking on the phone and this project started several years ago and then I had to pause it to work on the first book. But her family came from the deep south. So it's looking at really the children and grandchildren of the great migration. So a lot of Black families, they came from places like Mississippi and Alabama and Tennessee and in Milwaukee, many of them had ancestors from Arkansas. So they saw the

exploitation of workers in the south, but when they came up north, a lot of that repeated, you know, so they just experienced a different type of exploitation. She was one of the lucky ones where her family sort of saw the writings on the wall and when factories closed, I would say her immediate family, when factories closed, they just pivoted and they found other ways to make a living. Unfortunately, a lot of her uncles didn't. And she saw so many of her male family members work for a company called A.O. Smith. They had a factory right in the middle of the city. She saw so many of them working there.

She thought it was a black owned company. That's how disproportionate it was. That's how so many of them depended on A.O. Smith to make a living. And then when they folded, they cycled between employment and unemployment or trying to find gig work or other people who get into kind of this underground and gig economy.

So a lot of her work has been, I would say, kind of in the middle, kind of, I wouldn't say the periphery, but she's had to balance certain things because as a community organizer and as somebody who's relatively well off, she's been able to survive and her family was, but so many of the people in her immediate circle have not. And so she got back into organizing after police officers killed a young man, Dontre Hamilton, at a park here. And then that repeated itself with a lot of these police shootings of black men.

And so what's undergirding a lot of the frustration in Milwaukee looks like it's a police issue, but a lot of it is a disillusionment and an unemployment issue. Many of them don't have economic opportunity. So I'm following her and her family along, and I'm still working to find other people's stories. Thank you for sharing that story. And yeah, I really hear that you're following these leads, following an inquiry, and also how related this dissatisfaction with the work economy in the US, but also in the political system is related to capitalism,

right? That both main parties, mainstream parties are really corporate capitalists at their heart, so not really serving the interest of others. Yeah, yeah. And I think what led me to the Midwest to begin with is back in the day, I was organizing for Barack Obama and I was in Ohio, and there was a very clear class consciousness. Like there's a strong labor movement here, there's a strong progressive movement

all over the Midwest. People are committed to union organizing more in the South, and it's one of the most robust labor movements that we have in the country. And it actually caught me by surprise. And I realized that there was very little that I really knew about the Midwest through that organizing because you had people of different races

who were living next to each other, kind of a different vision that I saw growing up in the deep South where communities are much more segregated. So you had Arab Americans living next to, Black Americans living next to your average white American. And there was almost a universal disdain for Mitt Romney in the places that we went. And these aren't super lefty whatever

environments these are just regular people who are saying hey I've heard this guy's quote I've heard what he said about you know our average American his company Bain Capital went right to Indiana which is not that far from Ohio and they had all these workers come and build this stage and this stage ended up being where you have these corporate bosses announced that they were laying all of us off and it pissed people off. So there is a class consciousness that is sort of under the surface here. And it's something that I wanted to tap into. And that work is kind of what led to this whole world of really kind of possibility and stories. Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, you're reminding me of this one group. It was

called Redneck Revolt. And it was they were folks who were doing similar work, but in the south around really politicizing people and really exploring like what are the root causes. And you mentioned that earlier, what is it that people blame for their challenges and their problems? And so instead of immigrants or other people or whatever that is, it's like the root causes are capitalism and our bipartisan system that's not serving people.

So yeah, thank you for following those threads and we're really looking forward to hearing those stories. It sounds like a beautiful project. And yeah, I'm wondering, you know, just to kind of close, what invitations do you have for folks listening as they're hearing? Maybe it's around recognizing how toxic our relationship is with capitalism. Maybe it's around how we break up with capitalism at the individual or the collective level, or maybe it's something around these storytelling moments or this listening to others or really unlearning things around the bipartisan system and corporate capitalism.

So what would be your kind of going forth invitations for folks listening? I think it's largely to be in community with others. I think that unlearning process isn't entirely individual. I do think that obviously it's up to you as a person to say, hey I'm making a conscious choice to unlearn these things, but I think that unlearning is very helpful when you're doing it with other people. For a few reasons, I think one, we're all experimenting and

figuring things out. We don't have a perfect model in the world, but we've got bits and pieces. We've seen things in American history. We've seen things in Latin America. We've seen things in Asia. We've seen things in Africa. If you want to include Europe as well with some of their liberal democracies and the way that we have a social safety net. But there is no one ideal that exists. And so what does that look like? And so I think that comes through conversation. I've worked with an organization for many years called Operation Power, and we have vision exercises and we have these kinds of conversations where we

think very theoretically but also practically. How do we get other people in the fold? How do we get other people, how do we get voters to vote for a socialist even? If people aren't even willing to vote for a socialist, how do we implement these ideas? And so I think working with other people gives you the environment and the space to make mistakes, experiment, and also to strategize because none of this can be done alone. I think there needs to be a mass movement at some point. And if we have enough groups thinking about this, then I think you've got enough movement,

a critical mass to be able to change something in a positive direction. And so through that, again, through that group work, there's individual work that needs to be done. What are my goals and aspirations? What are my values? I might think this is all good in theory, but maybe I want to have a multi-gazillion dollar house that's 20,000 square feet. So how do you reconcile some of those feelings and why

do you feel that way? I think that also being honest with yourself about where those aspirations come from and what you'll do about that is also good to deal with. and author of the book, It's Not You, It's Capitalism. Why it's time to break up and how to move on. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to Mom Friend for the intermission music and to Kayla E for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by me, Robbie. This episode of Upstream was brought to you in part

by Alluvium Gatherings. Alluvium Gatherings designs, plans, and produces events for social and environmental justice movements that allow people to come together to solve the challenges of our time. Learn more at alluviumgatherings.com. That's A-L-L-U-V-I-U-M, Gatherings.com. Upstream is almost entirely listener funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways in which you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber,

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