 Hi, everyone. I'm here with Makayla Wilkes, running in Maryland's fifth congressional district against House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer. And she's here to talk about her campaign. Makayla, welcome back to the show. Hey, thanks for having me back on. It's a pleasure for sure. Really excited to have you on. So the primary campaign is, it's well underway, and the primary date is July 19th. And I thought it would be really excellent to talk to you because there's a lot of people who are vocalizing widespread anger with the Democratic Party establishment. So talk through why you decided to challenge one of the leaders of the Democratic Party, Steny Hoyer. Yes. So for people who don't know my story, I chose to challenge Majority Leader Hoyer because of my own life experiences and just seeing how policy affects our everyday lives. I was affected by policy by being thrown into the school to prison pipeline when I should have been given resources to deal with the mental health issues that I was dealing with after the loss of one of my family members. I was thrown into jail because I could not afford to pay court fees and traffic tickets, essentially being in traffic debt. And so I realized that poverty was criminalized and that there is an entire system that allows these injustices to happen over and over again to so many people in our communities. And I specifically chose to challenge Majority Leader Hoyer because he is the representative of my district. He's in a position of leadership in the House of Representatives on the Hill. And so he is in a position to do something about it. But instead he shows for his corporations, he refuses to put progressive legislation on the floor for a vote. And I always say people talk about Mitch McConnell's graveyard, but what about Steny Hoyer's graveyard and all of the policy that we could have voted on to enact fundamental change in communities across the country? Yeah. And that's great reasons to run. You've seen the struggle. You've lived the struggle. And that's one thing that really differentiates candidates like you from these corporate Democrats. I mean, I don't think Steny Hoyer has ever wondered a day in his life if he's going to be able to put food on the table or pay rent. So to have real people in Congress, that really does make all the difference. And one thing about leadership that I think that a lot of people are rightfully frustrated about, it's not just that they don't put forward progressive policies, but they actively campaign for the enemy. And the biggest example that everyone is pointing to is how Steny Hoyer, along with Nancy Pelosi and James Kyburn, are endorsing an anti-choice, pro-gun Democrat over a progressive woman. So can you talk through this widespread anger that people are feeling with the Democratic Party establishment, leadership in particular, and why you think it's justified? Yeah, absolutely. So with regards to Jessica Cisneros and Henry Cuellard and Steny Hoyer's decision, along with Nancy Pelosi and Kyburn, to still support him as a representative, and I know I myself was enraged when I read the story when Hoyer said that being pro-abortion or being pro-choice shouldn't be a litmus test for being a Democrat. And if you're just a regular person, okay. But when you are a person who has the authority to shape policy, who has the authority to impact people by legislation on a federal level, when you're someone whose opinions can affect my body and my choice to do what I want to do with it, then it absolutely has to be a litmus test. And that's just my opinion. And the reason why right now it is very, very, very detrimental and, you know, and why a lot of people are extra enraged at Democratic leadership's support of Henry Cuellard is because what we're seeing right now with regards to Roe v. Wade and people like Henry Cuellard and people that support people who are in office, whether you're Democrat or Republican, that support this pro-birth. This is the beginning. We're on the cusp of what is the worst to come. And so when you can't stand up for bodily autonomy, think about what's going to come next. Think about all the other decisions decided by the Supreme Court that could be overturned because Congress, after decades and decades, has not codified anything into law, has not protected it in any way. And so all of this is at risk. And so, of course, people are going to be enraged because we are back here in 2022, like we are in 1972 and 1973, once again, fighting for people's rights to their own privacy and to their own body. You didn't stand up for regular people during COVID to get the access to healthcare. You didn't stand up for people during COVID to end the eviction moratorium and went for unanimous consent knowing that it would inevitably fail. And now you're not standing up when it comes to people's rights, when it comes to people's privacy and reproductive rights. And so, everyone is definitely entitled to be mad as hell, not only at the not only a Democratic leadership, but the Democratic Party in itself. Yeah, yeah, well put. One thing that really is frustrating is how there's all these crises in this country. And you've talked about these on numerous occasions. This is all you talk about, essentially, as a very substantive candidate. But it seems like nothing can ever happen because of gridlock in Congress. Now you can attribute that to Republicans, the parliamentarian, the filibuster, either way. Nothing happens. But one thing that really put everything into perspective was, I think, how there were a couple of vigils in front of Supreme Court justices' homes. And then a couple of days later, like that, the Senate rushed through, basically, by unanimous consent, this law that would allow them to have protection 24-7. And nobody asked the question, how are we going to pay for that, like they do for progressive policies? But furthermore, there was no fight there. So when it comes to them, oh, they get things done immediately. But when it comes to protecting women's bodies, children in elementary schools, nothing happens. In fact, as we record this, Congress is on vacation currently. So can you kind of talk through this growing rift in the Democratic Party between the corporate wing and the progressive wing? Because I think that now, more than ever, it feels like we've all been proven, right? Like you've been at this for a couple of years. And I feel like after seeing Joe Biden's presidency for a year and a half, I kind of feel like we've all been vindicated. So talk through these differences, because mainstream media will pretend as if, oh, there's no differences. There's just policy disagreements. But the difference is night and day. Yeah, absolutely. The difference is definitely night. It's definitely night and day. And the mainstream media does absolutely act like everything is honky-dory. We're okay. We have the Democratic trifecta. We have the Senate. We have the House. We have the presidency. But nothing has fundamentally changed. We were promised a cancellation of student debt. We don't have that. But yet we're sending or trying to send billions of dollars over to Ukraine when we have black and brown people at the border being arrested. Just last summer or earlier this year, there were black Haitians being whipped by border patrol agents simply for seeking asylum, simply for seeking safety. The same thing that the Ukrainians are currently trying to do. And so I think it's completely irresponsible, for one, for the mainstream media to paint it that way. But it's also completely irresponsible for any elected officials, especially in Congress and the presidency to become lax. And shame on Congress for being on vacation when we had the mass unaliving of black people and the black communities by someone by white supremacists who traveled hundreds of miles to do this and that planned this on social media. And shame on them also for going on vacation after almost 20 children died at school at the hands of a mass shooter. And so the difference is absolutely night and day. The same problems that, but the thing is that the same issues that we're having now are the same issues we were having when Trump was president. There's no difference. There's absolutely no difference. And when we talk about the corporate Democrats and the progressive Democrats, I'm probably not going to be like for this, but I think that both could try harder. I appreciate the progressives that are in Congress that are doing what they need to do. They're fighting the good fight. I understand that there's pressure, but we need to fight harder. We already know the progressives that are in Congress. We ran. They ran off of calling people out by name, out of being bold. You know what I'm saying? And coming in and bowing to fight for us, which to an extent they are. But we can't stop calling them out by name. We have to continue to be bold. And we have to support candidates that are running in other races. And what I see a lot with a lot of the progressives is that they support primary challengers, but mainly kind of like the safe ones, like challengers who are running against other dams that are against abortion because that's problematic. But it's as equally problematic that there are people in leadership that have primary challengers that are progressive, that the incumbents don't support Medicare for all or environmental justice. All of these things are problematic, regardless of which may seem controversial or not. But nothing is ever going to change if we don't try to change it ourselves and if those are in the position to be able to do it to help others. And with regards to the corporatums, I mean, I'm pretty sure you and your viewers know the massive amounts of money that they take and how that translates into policy and how that translates into underserved communities, not getting the resources that they need because should we pass those policies that takes money away from the very people that funds the corporate campaigns? Yeah, I'm really glad that you brought that up about progressives in Congress because it feels really frustrating because they know how difficult it is to get their names out there. I've brought them on my programs before they were in Congress and tried desperately to help them with that. But you're right, they end up endorsing these candidates who are very likely to win because it's a high profile race. But they don't look at important races enough. Your race is one of the most important races because you're taking on Democratic Party leadership, which one, everybody is too afraid to do. And two, it's important because Democratic Party leadership is the problem currently. The reason why we're not doing well, why the Democratic Party is dying for lack of a better word. So it's really important that we have progressives who don't lose that will to fight once they get to Congress. And it seems like I don't want to say that the progressives in Congress are completely useless, not at all. But the problem is that it feels as if the desire to fight goes away once they're elected. Now, I don't know if there's like some sort of a magical spell or where you walk into the building, like you just changed immediately. I'd argue it's the environment, it's the culture, right? But I'm curious. So the Democratic Party is a huge issue, but you are somebody who I believe you've endorsed multi-party reform in the past. And so there's a piece of legislation that's kind of just been floating around Congress for years now. I've been screaming about it at the top of my lungs. It was previously HR4000, to my knowledge, it hasn't been reintroduced in this latest session. But basically it's called the Fair Representation Act. And what this would do is it would change our districts from single-member districts where everyone has one representative to three to five representatives, depending on the population. On top of that, it ends gerrymandering by making sure that all of these districts are drawn by independent commissions, which is something the Democrats did try to do to be fair. And basically it expands voting access, more broadly speaking. So in Congress, would you be a fighter for electoral reform to make sure that we don't have to keep voting for these same two parties? Because a lot of people feel so frustrated because it's like, okay, if I don't vote for Democrats, then that's one less vote for the person who stands between Congress and the fascist. So it's like this never-ending cycle where you just feel voters getting more and more frustrated and checking out. So would you support that type of legislation? Yes, I absolutely would. And to the point of single-member districts, no one person should have that much power. And no diversity comes from that. I don't understand. I mean, you know, I see how many constituents we have in our district, then I'm like, well, damn, like, that's a big job for one person. And it's like, you know, you want to have as much representation as you can for the people that are part of your constituencies. And so hell, yeah, that would definitely be something that I would support, along with like open primaries. I can't tell you how many people that I speak with that say, oh, I want to vote for you, but I'm an independent. So you're not going to be on my ballot. And it's just like, that's not fair. Not only for like the voters, but also the candidates. You know, I've met some pretty bomb as, you know, Green Party candidates, you know, one in our district, his name is Pat Elder. And, you know, the ballot access is limited, you have to get all these signatures before you even qualify. And so yeah, I think that anything that provides voters with more choice and anything that can diversify the way that we represent our communities is always going to be an A plus for me. And I would definitely. Yeah, that's why I love you and love your campaign because candidates like you, you always emphasize democracy, which is really important. And I think that people just assume, well, we're a democracy, and that's how democracy works. Sometimes you're annoyed. Sometimes you're happy. But no, actually, our democracy quite literally is incapable of fulfilling the needs of people, basic needs. I mean, we have an electoral college that makes it to that way. If you win the popular vote in the presidency, you might not get elected. That happened multiple times in our lifetimes. You know, we have this system where most of the policies that get passed into law are policies that were created by interest groups or business elites. So you have to expand democracy and not just accept that this is how it's always going to be. And there's too many Democrats like that who refuse to change. So real quick before we leave, can you just give us the quick rundown of your platform? Everyone who's watching this is probably familiar with you and already knows it's an incredible platform, more policy substance than anyone in the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. But that's kind of obvious. And on top of that, let us know what we can do to support you if, you know, we're in that district. Can we do canvassing? If we're not in that district, can we phone bank? Let us help you. So let us know what to do. Absolutely. But first, I want to start off by saying that I cannot take credit for the entire, our entire policy platform. We have a wonderful team and we're very diversified who have all put on our thinking, our thinking caps to put this platform together. So I would not feel right taking 100% credit for that. But to answer your question, we have a lot of policies. But I would say our main focal point is to invest in our communities and put people first over profits and not treat any human right as a commodity. You know, we believe in a universal healthcare system, you know, under Medicare for all, we believe in environmental justice and racial justice by enacting, you know, enacting a Green New Deal, which is which isn't even a bill. It's a resolution that they don't want to put on the floor. And so, you know, we want to invest in public schools, and especially from what we just saw specifically the infrastructure of public schools, and to reimagine what public school safety means, it doesn't mean more police in schools. But it means actually providing the resources that these communities need. And if we focus on infrastructure, you know, they like to use the example, well, what about if a mass shooter comes into the building? Well, what if we can prevent them from even being able to access the building? So we want to dismantle the school to prison pipeline in that matter as well. We want to in homelessness, fully function, fully fund the section eight program to deal with the housing insecurity crisis that we have so many food deserts. One of the things that our campaign wants to do, you know, when I am elected, if the universe allows, is that we have local locally owned grocery stores funded by government grants that employ, you know, the residents in that area that have the same quality food as whole foods, but at a much cheaper rate to get rid of food deserts and provide more healthy food options within our communities. But those are just a few of the things that our campaign is highlighting a few of the top issues. But I would definitely encourage those inquiring minds to check out our website, which is just mckaylowilks.com. And if anyone would is interested, you know, after seeing this interview and helping out the campaign, our primary is on July the 19th. And early voting starts on July 7th. If you're in the area, we campus every Saturday and Sunday. We phone bank every Monday and Wednesday. And if you're not in the area, phone banking is something that you can do remotely. So yeah, I would definitely encourage, you know, folks who want to be a part of a movement that wants to create fundamental change, but maybe, you know, don't know where to start, our campaign is a great place to start. Well, Micaela, thank you so much. We're rooting for you. Obviously viewers, you heard the website, check her out, chip in a buck or two. And if you have time, please sign up to phone bank. And if you're in that area, absolutely vote for Micaela Wilks. It's not even a question, easiest decision you'll ever make. Micaela, thank you so much for coming on the program. Thank you. Appreciate you.