 I wasn't born into wealth or privilege. My dad from Jamaica, who came here seeking a better life. My mother from Mississippi, the daughter of a sharecropper. I never pictured myself running for Congress. I'm a husband, an activist, an organizer, and a disabled veteran. My name is Isaiah Ezekiel James. My entire life has been in the service of others. I serve my country in the streets of Iraq and in the mountains of Afghanistan. I serve my community, organizing for tenants' rights against predatory landlords. And at the end of the day, my commitment to public service is why I truly understand that we are all tied together. I've never fought for some. I fight for all. Regardless of race or religion, creed or sexual orientation, we are all Americans. The needs of one are the needs of all. What central Brooklyn needs is a representative that puts the needs of hard-working New Yorkers above the greed of the wealthy and the well-connected, someone who will truly fight for affordable housing, tuition-free college, universal health care, ending mass incarceration, and a green new deal. I'm fighting for a Brooklyn that says that no one should have to choose between buying life-saving medicines and making ends meet. An America that acknowledges workers in this country deserve a living wage of at least $15 an hour. A country that says we will no longer let fossil fuel companies dictate how we treat our environment. These things are possible now is the time. The 1% dictatorship will be defeated. For too long, we've been told that the status quo is unbreakable, that corporate money is unbeatable, that we must sit back and wait our turn. To those who say these things are impossible, watch us. I'm Isaiah James, and I approve this message. Hello, everyone. I am here with Isaiah James. He is a 2020 congressional candidate running in New York's 9th Congressional District against incumbent Yvette Clark. And he's here to talk about his progressive political campaign. Isaiah, thank you for coming on the program. Thank you so much for having me. It's really exciting to see all of these candidates running. And what I've noticed after talking to numerous candidates so far is you each kind of have your one issue that you focus on the most, which is important, because one of my issues is trying to figure out what to focus on, because there's so many things in our system that's broken. So it's nice that each person kind of brings something unique. So your big thing is housing. Now, to give viewers a little bit of background, so you're a veteran. You served two terms in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. You're also a community organizer, and Tenants Rights has kind of been your go-to. So let me ask you this, what made you want to run for Congress and how do you think you can affect housing rights nationally in terms of both getting things done and just the conversation, which I think needs to be included? Well, what made me want to run for Congress was part of my activism work. I'm involved in a lot of local activist groups here in Brooklyn, and I had a meeting with my current representative, Eva Clark, as a part of my work. And I was sitting across the table from Congresswoman Clark, talking to her about housing and corporate donations, rejecting them, and inviting Amazon to New York City as part of the Congressional delegation. And there was some contention back and forth, and I understood that moment that she just didn't get it. She didn't really truly understand the dynamic on the ground and in our communities every day. And I came home that night and I told my lovely wife about it, and I was very, very upset. And she said, well, you know what? Why don't you run and change it? So I was like, you know what? The next day I googled how to run for Congress and I figured it out and I threw my hat in the ring. And I love that you said that because whenever we hear about all these incumbents, it's always like they followed some type of trajectory where it was like, well, I was a mayor first and then I worked here and I got the recommendation from another local leader, but you just basically, you did what a normal person would do. And this is what I like, normal people running for Congress. If you watch Fox News and whatnot, they like to criticize progressives. They make fun of AOC for being a bartender. But I think that that gives people more credibility than being like a consultant or going through one of these Ivy League schools because we need people in Congress to represent normal people because normal people, they're the ones who are affected the most by policy. So I'm glad that you brought that up because with Yvette Clark, she's someone who doesn't necessarily have the most national name recognition and I wasn't really sure about her. She cosponsors Medicare for all, but at the same time, she does take the corporate money. So in terms of the difference between you two, what do you think you would bring as just a community organizer and just an average citizen who's not rich, you don't have the backing of corporate America in comparison with her and how that relates to your community? Absolutely. Well, the thing that I would bring first and foremost is integrity. As you said, I was a member of the military and say I was pulling guard at night on a mountain top at Afghanistan. When it's my turn to go to sleep, I have to be able to trust the person next to me that they're gonna have the integrity to do what they say and stay awake. My life is on the line. I put it in somebody else's hands. And when I get to Congress, I'll bring that integrity. It's the hard right over the easy wrong. It's not accepting that corporate money and giving those corporations a seat at the table because yes, she does raise her hand and say I'm for Medicare for all, but then she takes money from all the big pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies and then ask yourself why Medicare for all hasn't been brought to the floor for an up or down vote? Nancy Pelosi could do it tomorrow if she wanted to. Why are these companies being able to block this legislation, true meaningful progressive legislation that would affect the lives of millions of people in this country? It's because they have access to our politicians. Our politicians are bought and paid for. And this seat in particular is Shirley Chisholm's old congressional seat. And her model was unbought and unbossed. I don't know if Congresswoman Clark is bossed, but she is 100% bought and paid for. This is a D plus 37 seat. There is absolutely no chance a Republican would ever win this seat in the heart of Brooklyn. Why is it that 97% of her donations are giant corporate donations and large contributions from outside the district, from as far away as Florida and Georgia by big sugar and big gas. It's because she is bought by those corporations. That's why we have yet to move any meaningful progressive legislation forward. Her biggest accomplishment she says is helping to pass the ACA. Well, one, that was 10 years ago, almost 11 years ago. If your biggest accomplishment was helping to pass the ACA over a decade ago and you've been in office and haven't done anything since, then it's time for you to go because people's lives are literally on the line. There are people who are rationing insulin right now. There are people who are homeless, who are couch surfing, who are sleeping in the New York City shelter system because they can't afford the exorbitant rents because our housing has become a commodity that so many can't afford. Why does it take a 32 year old disabled veteran to bring these issues to the forefront when we have a sitting member of Congress who has been there for over a decade? Absolutely, and I think that this all kind of relates to something that you said in your announcement video. You used the term 1% dictatorship and that really like struck a chord with me because that's exactly what this is. Like we supposedly live in a democracy but then when you look at political science studies, the Princeton University won from Gillens and Page in particular, it shows that when you look at policy outcomes, they're dictated by elites. So they get the policy outcomes that they want when normal Americans, they don't get that. So to use that type of rhetoric, not only is it important, but it really puts in the perspective the way that our democracy functions. It doesn't operate for normal people. So I wanted to talk to you about a couple of things. The first thing is housing because you are coming with a very solid housing background, you fought for this. This is kind of your bread and butter. And of course you check all the other progressive boxes but I want people to know what policy specifics you would bring in terms of housing because this is something that I just don't think gets talked about enough and there's been a number of candidates like you who have really elevated this to a really, something that progressives are focusing on more so and I think rightfully so. So what policies do you think we could implement to actually get rent control and basically ameliorate homelessness and allow people to just be able to live? Absolutely. Well, there's a lot of things on my platform. One thing that I would bring forth is eliminating AMI which is something called Area Median Income. So basically it works like this. When housing developers build homes, they have to make them affordable for the neighborhoods and which they built them in. But what they do is they take into account, I live in a low income community, a lot of parts of it is they take into account the low income part of the community but they also factor in the more affluent parts of the community and the city as a whole which raises the rent for the homes in the community they just built. So here in Central Brooklyn you have affordable units for two bedrooms, well for $3,000 a month. And then the average median income in my district is a little over 45,000. So if 36,000 of that is just housing and everybody knows New York is a very expensive city. So eliminating AMI to where it affects people in my community and communities all across the country. Another thing we can do is have a federally funded community land trust program which says that homeowners when they sell those homes they have to keep them affordable for the next people buying those homes. So that way speculators can't come in, buy up the property, razz it, flip it, turn it into a giant development, use the AMI which is already rigged to make affordable units. And now that one home they set on that plot that was a woman's home for 50 years is now a luxury condo and every unit in there is $36,000 a year to own it. Another thing we can do is as a veteran we have something called a guaranteed VA home loan which is little to no interest and it's backed by Uncle Sam. It's not a bank. It's Uncle Sam that gives you the home loan. So if we were to do that, not just for veterans but for hardworking people in this country who are making less than $80,000 a year because one of the largest avenues to move from poor to middle class to upper class is property ownership, home ownership. And because of redlining that has gone on for decades we still have a whole entire swap of this country that does not have access to the rungs on the ladder of upward mobility. So decommodifying housing and taking it out of the commodities market and letting the government give you the loan so you can pay it back over time nobody's gonna take your house will be a huge step, a huge step in getting people into home ownership. Not only that, we need to put forth a bill which we're working on right now to protect renters rights because a lot of people in this country especially our generation aren't homeowners right now. So just because if you're 26, 27 you might be a renter for the next 10 years until you get ready to buy your home. We can't leave those people out of the protections just because they're not home owners. So we need a national universal rent control bill in this country that guarantees that housing will be affordable because now there are a lot of commodities in this country. When it comes to a T-shirt, that's okay. But when you're talking about something like housing when you're talking about education when you're talking about healthcare these are things that people need to survive. And when you take something as essential as housing or healthcare and you commodify it automatically you're saying that a certain population segment of the population will not be able to participate in it. And that is just wrong when we're talking about something that is basic for people to live. And I love that you use that term the commodification of things. It really reminds me. I don't know if you are familiar with Wendy Brown. She talks about like the commodification of every aspect of American society. Things that shouldn't be commodified like basic necessities all the way up to democracy to where now our democracy is literally commodified. So this all kind of the lowest common denominator is always money. And so it's really nice to see candidates actually bring up these structural problems and how the commodification of basically everything has devastated communities, poor communities, communities of color. So it's really nice to see you really bring this issue to the forefront and elevated because I don't think enough people are talking about it. So that's one issue. I wanted to ask you because you're a veteran and this is super important. When it comes to foreign policy what you would do differently because it seems as if the Democratic party they've shifted to the right like we can go back to you and I are the same age. So we were relatively young during the Iraq war but growing up and voting for the first time for Barack Obama saying he's gonna end the Iraq war. The Democratic party then it seemed like they were actually resisting for lack of a better term, Republicans. But now you see Chris Coons going on Fox News for example talking about how maybe we are justified in taking action militarily against Iran if they did in fact bomb the Saudi oil tanker. So what would you do as a veteran to move the party back to the left or at least a little bit further to the left when it comes to US imperialism? This is something that I take very, very seriously. So let's look at it like this. I'm not just a veteran, I'm a combat veteran. So there's a difference and veterans in the community know the difference between a veteran and a combat veteran. I was an infantryman, 11 Bravo, two Oscar, Bravo for ASI. Anybody who was a veteran would know what I'm talking about. I deployed to Iraq my first time when I was 18 years old. I spent 15 months there. We lost 35 brothers and sisters. I deployed to Iraq again 11 months later. I spent a year there. We lost seven brothers and sisters. I then deployed to Afghanistan four months after that for a year and we lost 20 brothers and sisters. I don't take this stuff lightly. Anybody, anybody who has seen the ravages and the horrors of war will be the first to tell you that diplomacy must always be our first, second, third and fourth, fifth. We have to exhaust diplomacy. War is the worst of human behavior. And I'm getting goosebumps just talking about this because I don't think I can impress upon people enough because you have people like Chris Coons and the rest of these people who've never served or who they did serve, they were in an office somewhere who do not understand what it is like to see somebody blown to pieces. I will never forget at 22 years old picking up children's body parts after an IED explosion killed 55 people in our sector. I will never forget holding my buddy's neck as the life force spurted out of him and he was screaming for his mother. Those were his last words. I will never forget these things. And anybody who is just so quick to send American men and women to war just does not understand. I am literally a veteran for peace. I know the other side of it and it's not good. Far too often the drums of war are followed by the bugles of taps and it's not going to be rich children that are going. It's going to be poor black and brown children, poor kids from rural communities as it has always been. It's the reason I joined the military because I came from an impoverished neighborhood and there was nothing for me, there was no prospects for me. So the military was my way out. Having been there and done that, I am telling you that I would never vote to send America to war unless it was the absolute last possible thing. And I know when I say last, I mean like the enemy is at the gates, not because Iran and Saudi Arabia, listen, we can solve that diplomatically. But once the first shot is fired, once the first American soldier is killed, now we've opened up a Pandora's box and we see what happened. We've been in Afghanistan for 18 years. We spent almost a decade in Iraq. It's not, America has to understand this. We spent 10 years in Vietnam of which my father is a veteran. We lost 58,000 people and what was the outcome? We have to understand. We cannot bomb our way out of situations. We cannot shoot our way out of situations. We must talk our way out of situations. And I think that your voice is so important. Like when veterans talk about like veterans for peace, specifically when they talk about these anecdotes where you're holding your buddy's neck when it's bleeding. I think that that is so important because the way that we view war is in this really abstract situation. And politicians are no different. They send people off to die and they don't think about the consequences and they don't see the consequences. And then people who haven't served such as myself, we have this skewed perception of war where it's been glorified in media and television and whatnot. So to get these real world examples from people like you, it's so important in shifting the overton window because people don't realize that this is death and destruction on a mass scale. And we've been at war for how long now? I mean, 18 years in Afghanistan to where it's easy to kind of live our daily lives and not even think about it. But for you to bring that here and explain to people, this is really what's happening. It's so important. So let me ask you this because there's dozens of policies that you and I both advocate for. But realistically speaking, let's consider the best case scenario. We get a progressive president. Bernie Sanders is elected. We retake all of Congress. What do you think realistically you would be able to accomplish in the House if you have like three priorities that you would really want to focus on? What do you think that would be within the first year if you were elected? Well, let's say one thing before I answer that question. First, we can have Bernie Sanders in the presidency. I'm a Bernie supporter, everybody knows that. But the House is the most important branch. You have to send it in the House. The House is the most important because every dollar originates from the House. So until we get an actual critical mass of progressives who swear off all corporate PAC money, we're never gonna be able to move anything forward. So let me just say that. That's why I'm running. So the first thing that I would put forth is my housing bill. That is one of the most important things. And the second thing I would put forth, which is already out there, AOC, and I forget the other senators who work with AOC, brought forth the Green New Deal. We need to start enacting that right now. The Green New Deal, as Nancy Pelosi put it, like the commission on the Green New Deal, it has no subpoena power. It can't call fossil fuel executives to account. It can't hold anybody to account. So the Green New Deal needs teeth. That's one, that's two. And the third thing would be Medicare for All. And when I say Medicare for All, I don't mean Medicare for those who wanted or Medicare with a public option. I mean single payer, Medicare for All, the elimination of private insurance companies. Because again, when you commodify something is essential, is healthcare, that's wrong. My wife, lover to death, she has a pre-existing condition. My wife's a teacher, UFT member. Over the summer, she lost her job. We did not know what we were going to do. They offered her Cobra insurance for $1,400 a month. That is the same amount as our rent. And my wife, every month, she has, we have an in-home nurse that comes in and administers her treatment. Takes like four hours. She's hooked up to the IV machines and all that stuff. And my wife was literally crying. And I'm sitting here on the couch, like as the husband, like what the hell am I going to do? I had to fight with the VA to get her on my insurance. But thank God, we got her on my insurance. And because of that, her pre-existing condition, the medication she needs, which is $5,000 a month by the way, it's ridiculous, it's covered now. So that little brief two week scare, for me, I literally was up at night not knowing what the hell I was going to do. Now imagine somebody whose child is born with cancer or whose parent is dying in the hospital and there's a procedure that can be done to save them. But oh, it's $200,000 and we can't afford that. That's why the third thing I would do would be Medicare for all single payer and just eliminate insurance. Nobody likes their insurance. They like their doctor. They like the benefits they receive. Nobody's like, damn, I really like my humana. I really love my Aetna. I love my Affleck. They don't, they like the doctors. So elimination of private insurance through Medicare for all is the third thing I would do. And I love that. And you know, it's kind of sad that we have to actually differentiate ourselves by saying Medicare for all single payer, eliminate private because it's become so popular that I think that the more centrist, neoliberal wing of the party, they've co-opted that term. So that's why they have to use, oh, you know, I support Medicare for America or Medicare for all who wants it because they really want you to think that they support some type of universal system because they know it's popular, but at the same time, their donors, as you said, the entire industry has been commodified. So they don't want to upset the industry because even if you don't take the corporate money from the health insurance industry, many of them do, they can still come after you and bankroll your opponent. So people are afraid. So, you know, the point of differentiating yourself now in 2019, we shouldn't have to do it, but that's not the reality. But thank you for differentiating yourself because now, like when I look up candidates, I can't just say, oh, well, they say Medicare for all. That can now mean, well, you know, access to healthcare. So- A path to access to move us toward. You don't need that, that right there, that's coded industry speak. Because I have access to a Ferrari. I would never be able to own a Ferrari. I have access to a mansion. I'm never gonna own one of those. So we need to be clear as night and day on this, elimination of private insurance, single payer healthcare for all in this country. If we can afford to spend $790 billion on defense, which my opponent just voted for, she votes for it every year, if we can afford to spend that much money shooting bombs at people and bullets at people, you're telling me we can't afford to provide healthcare? We have spent $6.5 trillion on war. Since I was a child, can you imagine where we would be in this country if we spent that on housing or education or infrastructure or healthcare or cancer research, what could we have accomplished? But we have literally shot our money out the end of a barrel and we're using it to kill other brown people across the world. I can't stand for that. I cannot stand for that. Yeah, I'm with you. And I love that you are running for Congress and you are bringing this progressive message. So anyone who's watching, I think that you've already convinced them. So we're preaching to the choir at this point, but let me give you the opportunity to make a pitch. You are not financed by corporations or special interests. This is 100% fully grassroots funded. So explain to people why it's crucial that they send even a dollar if they have it and where they can go if they wanna sign up to volunteer because that's also really important. You need a ground game and just basically give us your pitch and tell us what we can do to get involved. Okay, so to get involved, you can go to my website, Isaiahforcongress.com, I-S-I-A-H, forcongress.com. You can sign up to host the rally, to canvas, to phone bank, to knock doors. You can just sign up to literally grab a cup of coffee with me, meet me. If you're in my district, if you wanna grab a cup of coffee and sit down and talk about the issues, I would love to do that. The reason grassroots funding is so important is because like you said, we're not taking a dime of corporate pack money. And this includes because my last, my last, the guy who challenged Yvette Clark last time, he found a loophole. He said on his website, he said, I'm not taking corporate pack money, which he didn't. But all of his big donors were Wall Street financiers. All of his big donors were hedge fund managers. All of his big donors were big corporate landlords. So that's the loophole he found. I'm not taking money from any of those people. I already told him, if you donate it to my campaign, it's going to Black Lives Matter. So if you don't wanna send it to them, don't give it to me, because I don't want it anyway. So it's so important for everybody out there, if you can contribute a dollar, $2, doesn't matter, just this campaign means it because it's sad and unfortunate that our elections have become commodities and it's big business. So my opponent's taken thousands of dollars from these various industries. We're not taking any of that. We need that every dollar you donate is a palm card we can hand out to a voter or constituent. It's another volunteer that we can actually turn into a unionized staff member. It's providing childcare for some of our volunteers who come over to help canvas and stuff, but don't have childcare after they get off work for their child, it's crucial. And it's like investing, but not a stock market. Every dollar you donate is investing and moving this country forward and dynamic progressive vision, that's what it is. And to piggyback off of that point, there's so many candidates running across the country, but the point that I always bring up is this isn't just about like New York's ninth district, because if you get in, the policy that you pass potentially will impact everyone. So my favorite example, because I have a ton of student loan debt, is Ilhan Omar's debt cancellation bill. That will affect me and I'm not in her district. So this is really a national movement. You know, you're one of many candidates running, but we need you in Congress, we need you fighting, we need you to really get in there and change the status quo, break up that 1% dictatorship and really move the Overton window to the left on a number of issues. So just please, if you can spare anything, then contribute to Isaiah James. And also, if you don't have money, then time is also a way that you can invest. You don't have to be in that district to knock on doors, even though that's absolutely a necessity. But if you're across the country, you can probably phone bank. You have a phone bank system, I'm sure, right? Yes, yes, yes. So even if you can't phone bank, just helping to amplify the message because the right likes to call us snowflakes. And I was sitting on my couch the other night, I was like, you know what? A snowflake by itself hits the ground and melts. But if enough of them get together, they create a mighty avalanche and they can sweep away anything. So yeah, we are snowflakes and together we are damn strong. So just amplifying that message, getting it out there, that is what people can do that too. I love that, I'm gonna have to use that analogy. Don't steal it, I thought of that two in the morning when I was doing campaign stuff on my couch. I will credit you for that because that's so good. I like when we take right-wing terms and appropriate them because then they have to come up with something new and they're not very creative, so it's difficult for them. I like that. Well, Isaiah James running in New York's ninth congressional district. Thank you so much for coming on. We are rooting for you and we'll be watching you closely, man. Thank you, thank you for having me and thank you to all your viewers for watching this.