 The people of the Third District, from Sandy to Gresham, Estacada to Portland, deserve true representation. From a leader who knows our lived experience, to know what it is to make the rent, to be sensitive to the price of milk and dependable child care, to want to fix the endless war, endless traffic, homelessness, and the destruction of our planet. If we want folks who will fight for us, they got to know who it is they're fighting for. My name is Albert Lee. I know the struggle. I know it's beyond blue and red. I'm standing up as one of us to represent all of us. Join us now for a stronger, smarter, and more beautiful America. Help us bring a new generation of leadership from the Third District to Congress, representing the people. It's our time. Go forward together. My name is Albert Lee, and I approve this message. Hello, everyone. I am here with a fantastic candidate from my home state. He's from Portland, Oregon. His name is Albert Lee, and he is running in the Third Congressional District of Oregon against an incumbent that has been there since 1996. Albert, thank you so much for coming on the program. Hey, thanks, Mike. Happy to be here. I'm happy to have you here. You're the first candidate from Portland that I'm talking to, so it feels really nice to know someone who's familiar with my area where I grew up. And this is fantastic. Let's go through some of the really exciting things about your campaign. You were just endorsed by Brand New Congress. You were endorsed by Portland DSA, and you just made a really exciting endorsement. You endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. So for those who missed it on Twitter, we're going to play you the clip of Albert Lee's My Bernie Story. So in 2015, Bernie Sanders activated me, and he did so simply by speaking the truth and having a vision for a better America for all of us. Now, before 2015, I didn't contribute to campaigns. I did in Canvas and I did in Phone Bank. By 2016, I had done all three multiple times. Now, after 2016 and a little bit of mourning, I continued forward to engaging and working within my community by the inspiration of Bernie. I started working on housing issues, transit, police accountability, and social justice. I became an active member of the Democratic Party, both at the local level and at the state level. I became an active member of the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socials of America. And I was happy to know that I was contributing to changing the status quo. Now, in 2016, I supported Bernie. And in 2020, I endorsed Bernie because Bernie has vision. Bernie has integrity. And Bernie was the one who came up with very big ideas like Medicare for All, free college tuition, helping people on planet over profits, and just being playing decent human beings. So I look forward to seeing Bernie Sanders in the White House. I look forward to celebrating. Go Bernie. All right, so getting to your campaign, I wanted to ask you a question about why you decided to run for Congress because Earl Blumenauer, a lot of people don't really know him nationally, but those who are familiar, they kind of just view him as someone who's progressive, right? He advocates for legalization of cannabis. And, you know, he just, he usually takes the right side. So what made you want to run against him? Well, first of all, it's not about Earl. It's about our future. And the way I see it is we've faced a series of crises here in this district across the country and around the world that really require bold action now, and not just inspirational and aspirational words, which is typically what I've heard out of Earl's mouth. I mean, typically what we've seen is a lot of, oh, yes, resist, oh, yes, protest, but not a whole lot of bold action. And when I first moved here in 2005, the first thing that I noticed was the homelessness crisis. And back then it was a crisis. And today it is blown up exponentially. And it's been a whole lot of silence over this last two decades. Recently he has put out a paper on homelessness or something, but I think of it as being too little too late. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And it's weird because, you know, I went to school, you know, university in downtown Portland. And when I first started, I noticed that homelessness was particularly an issue down there. But by the time I graduated, it was a huge issue to the point where it almost seemed as if this is a crisis. This is an emergency. Why isn't there action that's being taken? Why is the issue getting worse? So it's nice to see someone, a fresh voice, step up. And I want to go over your platform because when you look at everything that you're supporting, anyone who is in Portland who's progressive, the choice is crystal clear. So you support Medicare for all single payer. Housing for all. You want to decriminalize sex work. Not enough people talk about this. So credit to you for that. Free Palestine. So important. Free public transit. If you live in Portland, everyone knows how crucial this is. Also abolish ICE. Green New Deal. Taxing the rich. Free college. You're putting out a bunch of tweets saying, should we tax the rich? And you pull people with one of the options being hell yes. You're speaking to my heart. So let me ask you this. In the event you're elected, what do you think you'd focus on? Because you check all the boxes politically if you're progressive, if you're a Democratic socialist such as myself. But what do you think, if best case scenario, we get a Bernie Sanders president and a blue house and Senate, what do you think we could achieve and what would you push for? Yeah. So there's two big things, first of all. Number one is the climate emergency. We've got to do something about that. We've got seven, eight to 11 years to do something to stop before we have irreversible climate change. That's something that the United Nations has talked about. That's something that scientists all around the world have talked about. And simply we've got to do something. And right now we are in a situation where there's so much inaction with our federal government. Our state governments are stepping up. California, Oregon, Washington and the like are trying to step up. But we need something on a federal level because if we don't save this planet for, it's not the planet that's going to go away. It's us that are going to go away. But if we don't take care of that issue, then really none of the other issues are going to matter. So that's number one. But behind that, underlying that, is the money in politics. I mean, we've got to get the money out of politics. That's how come we have so many perverse things going on, like having federal fossil fuel subsidies when we should be doing everything we can to curtail the use of fossil fuels. Now when you have ExxonMobil and Royal Self and British Petroleum and all of those folks giving money not only to the right side of the aisle, but also to the left side of the aisle, you're not going to get the change that's desperately needed in order to save our only home. Now, when it comes to Earl, you've said it. He's a corporate neoliberal centrist. He has been branded as a progressive. He has developed a brand as being a progressive over these last 23 years because number one, he's never faced any legitimate challenge. In fact, we've raised over more money than all of the challengers that he's ever faced combined in the primary. And that's not a whole lot of money. To tell you, last cycle, there were three primary challengers, and I think that they raised in total $200. That's not a challenge. And we are in a heavily Democratic district. I think the Cook Partisan Voting Index puts us at a D plus 24. So that indicates that you cannot have a Republican challenger or a third party challenger that has anywhere near a chance to defeat a sitting Democrat. So that means you have to have primary challengers. But the thing about primary challengers is it's political suicide if you are a career politician. Career politicians are not going to stand up because they don't have the backbone, much like I'm going to have to say most of the Democratic Party. You're going to have to have somebody that's going to be a fighter that's going to stand up and say, hey, there's a different way. We have to get this money out of politics because if we don't, then these folks aren't going to work for us. They're going to work for the people that are paying them. Yeah. And that's perfectly put. And it's interesting, speaking of Earl Blumenauer, I always was kind of misguided in my stance towards Earl because I always did kind of perceive him to be someone who is more progressive, maybe not the most vocal, but nonetheless, I felt like he was a good representative. Although a personal story, he actually came to speak at Portland State University. I attended one of his talks and I met with him afterwards. This was in 2016 early, like it was January. And I asked him, hey, why haven't you endorsed Bernie Sanders? You know, it's odd to me that ideologically speaking, you are seemingly more aligned with Bernie Sanders, but you haven't made an endorsement. So it just seems like it would make sense. Bernie doesn't have much support in Congress. Back then we were really worried about, you know, super delegates. So I thought, hey, you know, you could help tip the scales. And as my representative, you know, he represents everything that I would want you to represent. So why not endorse him? And his answer was incredibly discouraging to me. Basically he said, look, I have worked with both of them, but Hillary Clinton, I just think she'd be more effective. I think that she's going to be the one to win. Turns out he was wrong. And at that point I kind of realized, look, there is a really fundamental difference with these career politicians and just normal Americans. They are afraid to challenge power. You don't want to go against the grain and upset someone who may be the president because who knows how that's going to affect you. Maybe, you know, Hillary Clinton had a great relationship with Nancy Pelosi and then she doesn't give you as many committee assignments as you had. It's just they're afraid to challenge power. So it's nice to see a lot of progressives such as yourself kind of like speak up and say, you know what, you're not doing good enough and you aren't as progressive as you've been leading us to believe because when we expected you to fight for us, you haven't been. So it's nice to see you really bring attention to these issues that I don't feel as if Earl has addressed at all. Like he has this pet set of issues, but... Bicycle and weeds. Exactly, exactly. He has this bicycle pin and he has his bows and you know, I get it. We all care about different things, but he's not addressing real needs in the community and one of the things that I think is so important, especially with regard to your district, is housing for all. So I grew up in St. John's in Portland, Oregon. This is in North Portland and going back there, it's unrecognizable. It's gentrified. So many people that I know, people of color have been priced out of that community. They can't find housing there. It's a crisis at this point and it's only getting worse and you know, that's just a microcosm of a national issue. So you talk about housing and your platform specifically and what you would do to address this crisis because this is certainly something that I think people in Portland are going to care deeply about. Yeah, sure. First of all, we've got to talk about the history of this. You know, we start off with the brown out of cities where white flight meant that there was the development of the suburbs and the ex-herbs and then people got tired of the commute. They got tired of the traffic and they started coming back into the city. We had the gentrification and all of a sudden the folks that were left in those blighted areas were getting forced out. Now, this is not just in Portland but this is all over the country and it's sort of following, I guess, the model in Europe. You know, when you talk about a city like Paris, all of the more expensive areas are down in the city center. The Erron-Dies Monts on the outside are where the ghettos are. So we're pushing folks back out to Gresham, to Troutdale, to Camus, Washington, to Vancouver and the like and we're creating these areas where no one can live except for the 1% really. Now, you've got a whole bunch of real estate developers that are looking, you know, let's buy houses for cash. There have been a lot of folks that I've talked to throughout the district in St. John's in Inner North and Northeast who said they constantly have people knocking on their doors asking them to buy their houses and really taking a look at them not as the residents and the owners that they are there but as, you know, someone to make a buck off of. Now, when it comes to developing these new apartments and everything, we've got what, 16,000 vacant luxury apartments, one and two bedroom apartments, we're not developing and building for families. We need to be building some high density, inner, urban, core and resound the whole area so that we can have the housing necessary for families. You know, when you're constantly building one and two bedroom and studio apartments, what you're doing or condos is what you're doing is you're building investment properties for the wealthy. We've got to get out of that mindset. We've got to do something that's going to make our city more compact, take a look at the single family housing zoning and make it so that you can build multi-units in those neighborhoods. And I understand that some people don't like that idea. You know, some people are saying, we want to preserve the neighborhood as it was or as it is. And, you know, for the efficiency of the land, for taking care of the people, for reducing our waste and the use of our resources, we need to do things differently. So I'm definitely proponent in trying to take care of all those things and reducing the expense of housing because it's killing folks the combination of the stagnation of living wages or minimum wage, not even a living wage. And the ever increasing cost of housing is putting too many of us in the struggling class. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that just your concern for like specific needs, very specific needs of people is really what separates you from someone like Earl Blumenauer, who is an incumbent, who again, he's been there since 1996. So, you know, maybe- Well, you got to say it the right way. I mean, he's been in the federal office for 23 years. Yeah. But he's been a career politician for 45 years. The man has only held one job, one W-2 job. And that was straight out of college. He was the assistant to the president of Portland State University. Aside from that, he's been an elected official all of his life. I don't understand how he understands the struggles of everyday people when he's never actually had to live like the rest of us. Yeah. And how often is he down in Portland holding town halls, talking to all of us? I mean, the problem with DC is that it's very far away and there's this bubble. So, you kind of get insulated. You get comfortable. You feel as if incumbency, you know, makes you unstoppable. So, you don't really feel the need to be as responsive and maybe just with time, you become more complacent. And we're seeing that with Earl Blumenauer. I think it's time for some new blood. And I feel like you're just the perfect candidate to challenge him because you're speaking to all of these really important issues. One thing that I want to touch on is foreign policy. So, you talk a little bit about this in your ad. You have a very robust foreign policy platform. And what's so important is that you say things that you know will get you attacked if you will become elected. But it's so bold and important that it matters. So, free Palestine is part of your platform. Talk overall about your foreign policy ideals and how you would help shift the Democratic Party back to the left because, you know, I think it's easy to see they're moving further and further to the right. And we don't really have a true anti-war party at this point. And that's really terrifying. So, what would you do differently if you're elected? Well, first of all, we've got to address the elephant in the room. And that is that our foreign policy has been a white supremacist foreign policy forever. And it has been focused on providing benefits to a very small privileged few. One of the examples that I always like to bring up is because Donald Trump likes to talk about the Guatemalans and the Hondurans that are on our border seeking asylum. And he says, you know, go back to your country and you go fix your country. What he neglects to talk about is why their countries are in disarray, okay? So, back in the 50s, we had an American company that was trying to take care of their, you know, harvesting bananas. And they didn't like the idea of their laborers coming up and protesting and wanting to have better wages, living wages and decent working conditions. So they petitioned the government and said, hey, we've got an issue down here. Can you fix this? And so our government through the CIA, through I think it was Operation PB Success, sent the CIA down to destabilize the country, a democratically elected country, install right wing dictator, okay? Then we had a series of right wing dictators over the course of years, culminating in a civil war. And the complete destabilization of the country and then those folks flee and they go to where? The place that they think they're going to get the most comfort, consolation care. And they're at the border and they're being turned away. And this was all so that some company could make a bigger profit on bananas. And that's typically the way our foreign policy has been held. When we look at Iran, the British and the Americans went in and destabilized that country for oil. The story repeats over and over again. We're supporting an undemocratic country in Israel right now that is basically in a apartheid state. And it is to the detriment of an entire people. I don't see how we can stand for any of these things. And I think that we have to have, if not a vocal majority, at least a vocal minority, that's going to stand up and say, this is not right. Yeah, and take positions that aren't necessarily politically expedient. If we truly are going to live by this philosophy that we care about human rights, which I don't believe the U.S. government does based on our actions. But I mean, if we are going to be attentive to the needs of humans, then we have to speak out on Israel-Palestine. We have to stand up for Palestinians who are being oppressed. Stand up for Kashmiris. Stand up for individuals in the western Sahara who are being oppressed by the Moroccan government. I mean, there's all of these atrocities around the world. And we just kind of turn a blind eye because either the government there is doing our bidding or we have further interests and we never talk about human rights. And there's no moral leadership in Congress or it's few. So when it comes to foreign policy, we need to just put morality back into the equation and actually follow through. And I just don't see that. Well, and there's another part to that. And that is the amount of wasted money that we spend on our military. I mean, our military is the number one blooter in the world. We have it around the world. And that money could be better used in reinvesting in America. It could be better used in reinvesting in our education, reinvesting in our crumbling infrastructure and taking care of the people with Medicare Medicare for all, for instance. For instance, you know, I hear on the debate, how are you going to pay for it? How are you going to pay for it? There's a really easy way to pay for it. And that's to tackle that military industrial complex and our incredibly bizarre foreign policy. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think people realize how much money we're spending. What is it? Like 59% give or take of our discretionary budget. That's a lot. Yes. I mean, it's the combination of, I guess, countries combined, military expenditures, some of which are allies. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Completely wasteful, completely unnecessary. And on top of that, tax the rich. And we can already reinvest so much back into our economy. So I know that people are enthusiastic about your campaign. Tell us what we can do to help you help us and get you elected. No, absolutely. So it takes money, number one. And the reason why it takes money is because mainstream media is not reaching out. They're not going to talk about us. In fact, you know, they're going to do as much as they can to ignore us, as is the incumbent. Quite frankly, I think the incumbent is chicken. You know, he has not been, he talks about being the guy that's going to stand up against Trump. He can't even stand up against me. How is he going to stand up against Trump? You know, he will not come to an open debate. So I would say call, call center or your representative, representative Blumenauer call and say, hey, you know, you should debate this guy. I want to hear where you stand versus where he stands. That's number one. Number two, we are not taking any corporate contributions. We're only taking money from the people. 100% of our contributions have come from the people. So we need that to continue forward. You know, I had to step down from my day job as the dean over at the Portland Community College. It's a state government control of state government employment. So basically it was either be the dean or be the candidate. And I think that is very important that we have someone who knows the struggle, someone who's going to be a citizen representative representing us instead of someone that's part of the 1%. And that's the thing that people don't realize is that our representative is one of the 1%. You know, when he first got into office, I think he had a net worth of about $500,000. Today's net worth is somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 to $16 million, depending on who you talk to. And I don't know how you add that up with a salary of $174,000 a year without having, I guess I'm not that good at math. But at any rate, I think that when you are so far removed from the people, you cannot represent the people. And I don't want to attack our entire federal delegation, but the simple fact of the matter is, they're all over the age of 62. They're all multimillionaires. They're all landowners. And most of them come from elite privileged backgrounds. And that is not the makeup of the state. You know, less than 1.4% of the state are millionaires, let alone multimillionaires. And I don't think that if you have all of your representatives cut from the same cloth, from the same background, you're not going to have the diversity of ideas, opinions to get to the workable solutions that are necessary to get us to where we need to go. You really need people from different perspectives from other lived experiences to really represent us here, especially in the most diverse district of our state. Absolutely. And look, I would be more than happy to host a debate between you and Representative Blumenauer. He could do it from his cushy place in D.C. if he wants to via Skype. I'd be more than happy because this is my city. I'm very interested in making sure we get a representative. That's fantastic, but I'll be fair and objective. Yeah. Well, we're doing this from a working man's living room slash office slash my kids play area. See the dog. My dog's bed. You know, this is not a mansion. This is a little two bedroom house. You know, I know the struggle quite frankly. You know, I am a first generation college grad, first generation law school grad. My family faced homelessness when I was in high school due to domestic violence. We bounced around in a couple of different shelters till a kind family took us in. And so I understand and appreciate what it feels like to be homeless. I know that side of the story. I know that people don't want to be there. You know, too many times we hear all the homeless are lazy or they're mentally ill or they're drug addicted. And that's not how folks get started. It's one car accident, one medical bill, one eviction, one bout of domestic violence in my case. And you find yourself in a situation that is very hard to get out of unless you get some help from someone out from other folks. And I think that, you know, for us, we were lucky that we had some kind of strangers that came in and helped us, but you know, the federal government and the government in general should be the ones that are helping out, providing that housing first so that you can stabilize folks so they can get back on their feet. Yeah, and thank you for saying that because I've made this point before that it seems like nobody really cares about homelessness who are elected because they're not like considered a real constituency. Like they don't have addresses. So you can't send them campaign mailers, right? You can't, it's difficult to canvas when somebody doesn't have a home. So they just tend to get brushed aside and ignored, but it's gotten to this point in Portland where you just, you see it everywhere and it's so heartbreaking and somebody's got to do something. And the fact that Earl is not stepping up to propose some type of nationwide rent control plan at a minimum. It's just, we need change. So I'm absolutely going to be following this campaign. I'm going to be rooting for you, Albert, because I think you're doing everything right and your campaign is so inspiring. Thank you. I appreciate that. Go ahead. I was going to say the website is albertlea2020.com and let me make an additional pitch for Albert. If you don't live in our home state, Albert is still going to benefit you. It doesn't matter if you're in Texas, Ohio, the policies that he passes will have a national impact. And I use this example now about 552 times, but Ilhan Omar isn't in my state. But if she passes her bill, which would cancel student debt, that has a very direct concrete impact on my life, probably your life as well. I'm assuming. So we need to make sure that we recognize that this is a national movement. And even if you can chip in a buck, that's one extra dollar that will help Albert Lee. Anything else you want to add to that? Yeah, no, I'm glad you brought up Ilhan Omar. You know, in all of the squad, they're in their first term, their first two years. And I think that they've done so much more than our representative has done in 23 years. So one of the questions that I ask those folks that say, you know, I like Earl, you know, I kind of like him. I ask, what has he done for this district? What has he done for this country? For me, I've looked through the records and I really haven't seen much of anything. You know, I understand he's a proponent for weed. Weeds great. Yeah. Bicycles are great, but we have some really serious problems that need to be addressed besides bicycles and weed. Yeah. Yeah, it's not enough to just have a few pet issues. We need you to talk to people, find out what their concerns are, what their needs are, and respond accordingly with policy. He's not doing that. So I'm sorry, Earl. You've got to go. So, you know, for us, we talked to everybody. I spend four hours a day on the phone talking to constituents here. We have people coming into our campaign office. We had folks coming to our campaign. We had regular middle, middle class homeowners come into our office. We talked to some wealthy folks on the phone that have given money as well. Look, we are looking to try to represent the entirety of this district. It's not just the people in the Mac Club. It's not just the small subsection of the super wealthy. We've got to take care of this entire district. And one of the things is if we don't take care of everyone in this district on the front end, you end up paying so much more on the back end because either way, you pay. Yeah. That's a great point. So we'll leave that there. Albert Lee 2020. He's running in Oregon's third congressional district. Oregon is a closed primary state. So if you want to vote for Albert, you do have to be a registered Democrat. Get that done on the website. I see that you have provided a link to assist people. Very important. Yeah. I mean, without a doubt, I mean, here it is. We're in the most heavily Democratic, one of the most heavily Democratic districts. The decision is not made in November. The decision is made in the Democratic primary May 19th 2020. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Albert. Thank you.