 I want corporations out of the government and I want people back in. I want peace rather than militarization. I want the top bothiest Americans to be taxed higher and that money to go to education. I want economic justice. I want a greater regulation of the banks and the markets. I want my kids to have a job and healthcare. I want true democracy for the 99% of us who don't have it anymore. 99% we are the 99% We are the 99% We are the 99% Hey everybody and welcome to the Occupy Wall Street show. We've got a fantastic surprise for you today. Our guest is political commentator, Sally Kohn. Welcome Sally. Pleasure to be with you. So nice to meet you. I want to start at the beginning because I first discovered you on Twitter of all things because I'm really big into Twitter and I think it was one of your tweets that caught my eye where you said, oh my gosh, I can't believe my pro Occupy Wall Street article was on the front page of foxnews.com. So that caught my eye. Whoa, pro Occupy Wall Street? First of all that there was a pro Occupy Wall Street article on Foxnews and that was pretty cool. So then I read it and I was like, wow, very impressed. Yeah, I'm a woman of many mysteries. Yes. No, I actually am a regular columnist for Foxnews among other outlets and so written and as a columnist get to write whatever I think. And so I enjoyed writing a piece recently supporting Occupy Wall Street trying to explain to folks the reason for Occupy Wall Street, why it was doing what it was doing and actually the main point of the piece was to make the argument that at this point, this was early on when I wrote it, it doesn't matter what they're for, it just matters that they're against something and that's bringing people together. And I think it went on to get 30,000 Facebook likes, over a half million hits and growing. That's a lot of likes. That was a nice surprise for everyone. I think it chose the resonance of the message both on all sides of the aisle. Yeah. And since then I've seen you on CNN and Foxnews and where else? Around. Yeah, all over. On the subway. No. On the internet. Not until now, only on TV. But you haven't always been a political commentator. So what did you do before that? How did all this happen? So Bruce for 15 years or so, I was a community organizer, more of a behind the scenes person helping grassroots organizations and grassroots leaders find their voice, do what they wanted to do better, run their campaigns better, do their media work better, and then knit them together to do more powerful work at the national level. And it was very, very, very deeply rewarding work and I'm still connected to that work and do some of that. But then I made a shift, you know, sort of really frustrated with the times we were in, this is sort of post-Obama, post-Obama's election, frustrated that, you know, on paper we won, right? Yeah. But in practice, the governing guiding principles of the country were still largely determined by the right wing. Yeah. And, you know, continuing to sort of push our various political boulders up a hill when that hill was fundamentally shaped by the right, extremist far right and has been for 30 years, you know, felt like this sort of impossible Sisyphusian task. So instead, I thought, well, what would it look like if I sort of played a different role and tried to change that public conversation to in effect do what organizers do, you know, in small groups and, you know, church halls and union halls and do it instead through the media. For sure, yeah. Do you know who Lisa Phithian is? I do, yeah. She was actually a guest two episodes ago. Our friend Daniel interviewed her and it was fantastic. You have to check that out. She's amazing. You know, we've only actually met once, but I know she does amazing work and is a real resource and gem to the movement. So I look forward to that, yeah. For sure, for sure. So what have, let's see, you know, there's, it's been reported that unions and Soros and move on and Acorn all have been behind organizing Occupy Wall Street. Who's really behind organizing Occupy Wall Street? Yeah. You know, it's really, it's really funny Bruce. The defenders of the 1% and the enemies of the middle class really are throwing everything in the kitchen sink at the 99% movement because it is in fact so popular and not just, you know, among the traditional liberal left, but independence, you know, the sort of Ross Perot, Ron Paul types, a lot of Tea Party members, a lot of conservatives. Last poll I saw a third of conservatives support, endorse the Occupy movement itself specifically and a much larger percentage agree with a lot of their critiques about the system. Right. So, you know, when you have something that is so popular and represents such a fundamental threat to the status quo, to our ways of doing things, to the inequality that has been shoved down our throats for generations. You got to try, you know, you're seeing everybody scramble to make this movement look, oh, they're a bunch of fringe, lefty radicals, they're unemployed kids, they're being paid to be there by Acorn. I mean, come on. It's actually just, apart from being pathetic, it would be, it would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic. It's really just a sign of how successful the movement is. Right. Like that, isn't it, quote, was it Gandhi who said, first they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win? Yes. That's just so apropos, because you can see first they were just laughing and now they're getting serious and fighting and countering it. And it's going to, it's going to be very interesting. Don't you think though that the average person can, to me, it seems so obvious, but is it just me? Don't you think that the average person can see them just throwing everything? Like you said, they're throwing everything at it. Every random thing they can think of just hoping something will stick. Well, you know, I mean, look at McCarthyism. I mean, this is what we've done in the history of we, I mean, not me, not you, we, but we, have done in the history of the United States when we want to distract from a, quote, unquote, dangerous political movement. Dangerous not because of its ideas or ideology, but dangerous because of its proximation to actual success and victory. So, you know, there's no question. There's a group of people in America who are freaked out if they think, oh my gosh, these are Marxists or Socialists or whatever other kind ofists have you. But the reality is sort of twofold, right? So the reality is, yeah, some of them are. Some of them are Marxists and Socialists. That's okay. I mean, first of all, you know, there was a poll recently that almost a quarter of Americans, this was in 2009, almost a quarter of Americans think capitalism doesn't work anymore in our country and would prefer an alternative like socialism, would present it with a question that way. It's almost one in five. Now, I think that says less about people's support for socialism than it does with people's frustration with capitalism as we currently know it. As we currently know it, yeah. I mean, something like, I want to say seven in ten, it was around there, seven in ten Americans said capitalism in its current form isn't working in our country. So, let's be clear, some of them are. But most of them aren't. And the point is, if the critique is valid, who cares? Who cares if it's Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer who's come down from the sky, started talking and made some really valid points about what's wrong with our economic system, how Wall Street is ruining our country and running our politics and shutting out ordinary Americans. You know, the critiques, the aberrations, the, you know, random acts of violence, all of these things don't belie the fundamentally right and just and resonant message of Occupy Wall Street. Exactly. And of course the media loves hysteria and violence and things. Like you see Occupy Oakland, right, where the, I've seen video on YouTube, you have to go to YouTube to get your news, it's so sad, but where they had 20 or 30,000 people marching in all these families and little children and, you know, seniors and everybody, just so diverse and it was like a festive parade, really. It was just so masses of people and people power marching all day for hours, right? But the only thing that makes the evening news is somebody started a fire and apparently, the later I read the story was that because the police were throwing tear gas, somebody lit a fire in a dumpster to burn off some of the fumes from the tear gas. But they literally, apparently the police in Oakland waited until there were no media around. It was late at night, no media, the coast is clear, attack. The police in Oakland are very savvy. I mean, look, first of all, two things. No one should be condoning the violence that's happened. There has been violence. They don't want to sugar coat it. You don't want to paper it over. That's right. There have been assaults in the Occupy camps. There's been violence done to businesses and banks. This is true. Yeah. It hasn't been frequent. It hasn't been the norm. There have been a few aberrant activities that have been widely condemned by the rest of the protesters. But we don't want to sugar coat it. Right. At the same time, I think it's very instructive to look a little more closely at what's happening in Oakland, because Oakland has a deep and very justified, I would note. The Oakland community has a very deep and justified longstanding tension, tense relationship with the police to put it very lightly. The Oakland police are notorious for racial profiling, for abuse of force. Just heinous for beating someone to death because he didn't show his ID. These are really longstanding issues with the Oakland police that the Occupy movement has mapped on top of. It doesn't get rid of those underlying tensions. The fact that the scene in Oakland exploded more than other sites, I think has more to do with that very justifiable and understandable history than it does the particularities of the Occupy movement. That's kind of strange. I mean, I don't know that much about the Oakland area, but it seems to me, if the people are so supportive and open-minded, apparently, and liberal and supporting Occupy Wall Street and all that, isn't there any democracy there at all? Is it a police state? Do the people have any power or responsibility for their own police force? Can't they eject them and replace them, do something? I mean, Bruce, that's a more complicated conversation. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on Oakland. I think generally around the country, generally around the country, in small towns and big towns, your relationship to the police force in general, your relationship to power and authority, but particularly your relationship to the police force is often determined more by your class and your race than it is by the particularities of that police force, whether it's accountable or not. So in New York, I'm white, I live in a nice neighborhood. If something goes wrong, I call the police. The police are on my side. I perceive them to be on my side. My life experience tells me that they're on my side. When I pass a police officer, our interaction confirms they're on my side. But if I'm a young black man and something happens, am I going to call the police? Well, I've been stopped and frisked for no good reason. I've been walking down the street and looked at by a police officer like, are you suspicious? Are you doing anything wrong? I've experienced in my life the police more as an oppressive force than a liberating or saving or helping force. So in Oakland, I think that's very, very much the history mapped on top of patterns of political unrest and a police force that frankly has never been effectively rained in by the political system. In a way that maybe now we'll start to see, but it's worth noting, incidentally, that it was only after a white Marine, Marine vet, and I'm going to get the wrong branch. You get in trouble for that. Marine vet was injured by the Oakland police. It became a national story. Whereas the many, many, many, many people of color who have been injured or killed by the Oakland police have not generated that sort of attention. So it has really to do with that discrepancy. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, let's take a break real quick and thank our sponsors because, obviously, without our sponsors, we wouldn't be here. So first, we want to thank Mt. Gox. We were talking about Bitcoin earlier before we started, and Bitcoin is the money of the future. We call it the, I say it's the most interesting, exciting technology invention since the internet itself. Bitcoin is the electronic digital cash, in effect, currency that is completely distributed peer-to-peer based on open source software. It's not distributed by any bank or any government or entity, corporation, website, group of guys, nothing like that. It's just literally peer-to-peer software. Mt. Gox, though, is a company. Mt. Gox is the number one Bitcoin exchange, the online exchange. There are dozens of online exchanges, but Mt. Gox has at least 90% market share. They're reliable, long-standing. They've been around. They've been hacked. They've been through all kinds of problems, but they've come out... On top. On top, right. Nobody lost any Bitcoins, so they're in it for the long haul, and they're profitable, so they're not going away. Now, do they pay for their sponsorship in dollars or Bitcoins? Bitcoin, actually. Oh, that's interesting. Just curious. That's the thing. It's convertible. That's what Mt. Gox does. Mt. Gox site lets you sell Bitcoins for dollars and buy Bitcoins with dollars and 16 other currencies, by the way. Yeah, they're headquartered in Japan, and we have another show called the Bitcoin Show. It's a whole other show, literally, but Mt. Gox is a fantastic operation and makes it so convenient so that you can buy and sell Bitcoin from the comfort of your own home online without having to go anywhere. Very cool. Very cool, yeah. Now they have mobile app for Android and they're working on one for iPhone, so really slick. So check it out, mtgox.com. We thank Mt. Gox for sponsoring the Occupy Wall Street show and the Thank You Economy book. It's thankyoueconomybook.com. Thank You Economy book is by New York Times bestselling author Gary Vaynerchuk, and this book is about social media. How do I explain it? It's about taking your business, whether it's a small startup or a very large business. It's a scalable method to bringing your business back to the old days like your grandparents' days when businesses gave you personalized customer service. And so it's leveraging the new technologies of social media in the right way. Because speaking of 99%, 99% of businesses do it wrong. They get on Twitter and they Facebook and they spam you and they're annoying and it's not done right, but if you do it right, you can actually build, not just make a sale, but you can make a customer relationship for life and really have success that is sustainable. So it's all about using social media and leveraging that technology to really satisfy your customers. So it's called the thankyoueconomy, thankyoueconomybook.com. So thanks for supporting The Occupy Wall Street Show. And so click here to continue to part two of this show.