 Hello everyone, I am here with 2020 congressional candidate from Wisconsin's third congressional district. His name is Justin Bonner Justin, he's here to talk about his campaign. Thank you so much for coming on the program Yeah, it's great to be here. I'll admit I was a little bit apprehensive about bringing you on because I like to kind of make myself the best beard in all of progressive politics, but you kind of challenge my dominance there if you will so You know, I'm a little intimidated to be to be honest We just got to go for the full angles beard. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely absolutely Um, but you know on another hand, it is nice to get some beard representation in progressive politics for once So basically I wanted to bring you on because your campaign is dynamic I really like what you are talking about your software engineer And you are an ordinary person that decided to challenge an establishment Democrat His name is Ron kind and I went over your platform and I really like what you are proposing Medicare for all and you are very clear single payer Medicare for all Ranked choice voting free college workplace democracy clean elections a green new deal You want to abolish ICE abolish the NSA and abolish the CIA now What's interesting is that as a software engineer, you know online privacy is something that's really important to you And before we went on you shared an article from 2014 and this was about and I haven't heard about this company It's called lava bit and this is someone who ran a startup for encrypted private email addresses that was essentially Challenged by the government to reveal the information of their customers And this was really influential to you and important to you So let's talk a little bit about why you decided to run and why this issue is a paramount to your campaign Certainly I decided to run purely on the basis of policy if there was somebody else running who is Equal or better to be on policy then I wouldn't have bothered for it. It's not like it's some It's not I'm not running to be a congressman. I'm running to get the policy done and Like you said with the abolishing the NSA stuff. It's good. It's as good a place to start as any So I read that lava bit article five years ago now and that really boiled my blood as it were with the NSA and it makes me angry that our government can act like that in such a blatantly unconstitutional way Frankly, it's criminal and we just need to get rid of it period. There's no reforming it There's no well if you tweak it a little bit. Maybe it'll be okay. I say just get rid of it completely Yeah, and I like that you're taking this bold stance and a lot of 2020 candidates They're elevating issues that aren't really being discussed. We're seeing talks of National rent control talks of reparations for American descendants of slavery and we're talking about now abolishing the NSA and the CIA with you And I really find this fascinating because when I read that article and I hadn't seen that or heard of this So I'm glad that you shared that with me it It really sounded like a story that you would hear from an authoritarian regime where, you know A government would come in and just be brazenly unconstitutional and demand this information. It's a violation of privacy it's a violation of trust and It's nice that we'd have someone who's a software engineer someone who's actually technologically literate in Congress Advocate because I know that everyone saw the you know the Congressional hearings with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and some of the questions that were asked It was just it was cringe-worthy So it'd be nice to have a little bit of a change in someone like you. It's great to hear I think I'd definitely be an improvement over Ron kind. Yeah. Yeah, I think so as well Now can you talk about Ron kind a little bit because he's someone who doesn't necessarily have that much national name recognition So explain why if you're progressive you are a democratic socialist It's better for people in the third district of Wisconsin to support you over Ron kind Certainly Ron kind is a pretty standard corporatist centrist third-way Democrat. I think he was actually Leading the new Democrat coalition for a few years there in Congress So there's nothing too much to say about you know him on a personal level or anything like that He's just standard cookie cutter corporate Democrat and the policies are all the centrist right-wing Compromise with Republicans, but you know we all know what we're compromising with Republicans really means Yeah, yeah It means laying down and dying Yeah, and it's it's nice to see so many candidates step up because What I would like even if you know, I can't imagine a situation where we get like a majority of progressives within the Democratic Party You know within 10 years, but just increasing the size of that block in Congress I don't think people realize how transformative that really could be So it is important that we get voices like you elected so talk a little bit about your campaign And what you're running on and what you're doing because you're not taking corporate PAC money You're running a fully grassroots funded campaign So what are you doing to kind of get out the word in your district? And what issues do you think you'd fight for if you were elected? Sure, I'm trying to get out the word by really focusing Really heavily on canvassing. I've gone door to door and knocked on I think a couple hundred doors myself I don't have the exact number right now, but it's definitely been Pretty busy. In fact, I can show you the uh canvassing handout that I hand out right here Yes, as you can see, it's nothing but policy, you know, there's no picture of me shaking the baby's hand or whatever No kissing a baby on the forehead No kissing a local businessman on the forehead It's just my name when I'm running for election date website and then the rest of it's just policy And justifications for the policy. So this sheet in particular talks about Medicare for all rank choice voting Abolishing the NSA money out of politics for your public higher education than the Green New Deal That's great. I like that you're really like you're putting policies front and center Because what a lot of politicians try to do is they try to make this like a personality contest and try to be like, you know Oh, I'm charismatic. I've got the charm. I can talk right. I could do the thumb point and voters love that They don't love that But you know, it's nice to see someone put the policies front and center Because that's really all that matters like when you're running for congress You should be leading with your policies and the fact that some politicians They don't even have an issues page on their website. It's absolutely mind blowing to me So it's nice to see, you know, you really put lead with this Now you talk a lot about rank choice voting and this is something that is just kind of near and dear to my heart Why do you think that's something that's important? Frankly, I really don't like the two-party system. It makes us choose between two usually pretty bad candidates And it punishes multiple candidates for running in the same party like, um In this election, if say there was another progressive running at the moment, there isn't although there is someone who's considering it So we'll have to figure something out there if we were to hypothetically both run We run into a situation where it'd be two progressives versus one conservative democrat And that puts the progressives at a really bad disadvantage there So in that situation, we'd have to you know work something out between the two of us So the only one of us was running up against run kind Right with rank choice voting, of course We wouldn't run into that problem because then voters could just rank their choices on the ballot And you could have as many progressives running as you want Totally eliminates the fear of vote splitting which is super important. There's a piece of legislation I'm not sure if it's been uh, reintroduced in this session, but uh, Ro Khanna was the sponsor of this legislation I believe it was 3057 and this would institute a nationwide rank choice voting But it also did a couple of other things. Um, it ended gerrymandering and it also increased the district magnitude in every single American district From one to two to three meaning that rather than us just getting one Representative we get multiple representatives and what's nice about that is when you look to other countries that have higher district magnitudes They usually don't just have two parties. They usually have You know, uh four to five sometimes six parties and of course in america, it's not like we only have two parties There's hundreds of parties technically, but it's just a matter of the institutions that we have You know, um, it just leads to two parties So we need people to be able to You know run in parties that aren't democrat that aren't republican and actually win and that's what matters And that's why I think rank choice voting is really important because this would facilitate The rise of multiple parties and I've always kind of maintained that we don't just need like a third party We need like five six Maybe seven parties now you don't want to get too crazy and have like 12 parties Because then you know the ideology starts to get a little bit watered down But I think that if we just have more variation than center right and far right, you know, it might do wonders for you know American policy policy outcomes specifically. I don't know if we had 12 different parties At least nine of them would be different leftist fraction parties. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely I would totally see that. Yeah, because you know, there's just we don't we don't feel represented and a lot of voters Don't feel represented, which is why when you look at, you know, um voter identification polling Most people identify as independence, you know, uh, the republican party, they're a minority party. Technically Democrats are a little bit better off, but still not by much So this is so crudely 33 or so and republicans only about 25 percent Yeah, so most people are not being adequately represented and that's just it's crazy because you know, we kind of pride ourselves on being A democracy the oldest democracy Um, but how representative is that democracy? Not very much not very much at all So, uh, what I wanted to talk about is abolishing the cia because we kind of touched on nsa kind of switching gears a little bit But this is something that is probably a little bit more controversial And if i'm not mistaken didn't bernie sanders float something like this like in the 70s or 80s I'm not sure if he still believes it but tell me the uh, why this is something that's important because I feel like this is such a new issue That um, most people don't know the reasoning and why this is important, but how would you sell this? Sure, I'm sure you're familiar with uh, the historical actions of the cia. I can see some of the books behind you there Yeah A chomsky book, so I'm sure you know all the uh, cia actions Including the september 11th 1972, you know the original 9 11 That we executed on chili Stealing their democracy from them and installing a far-right dictator and of course that's only one example We did the same to iran. That's why they hate us, you know, it's not because we have freedom Let's see I think Venezuela might have actually been the only south american country that we didn't successfully overthrow the government in It could be mistaken, but I think that's correct And we've certainly uh been trying um, and if we haven't tried to just out right overthrow them It's always been a constant ploy to get Their natural resources because they they have a lot of oil Yeah, I think that that's really important because We are supposedly invading these other countries like iraq, you know in afghanistan And we do this under the guise of freedom and democracy, which I can't even say with a straight face because it's so laughable But I mean ayende in chili was elected and we overthrew him which is insane You know we're we're not promoting democracies around the world and a lot of this has been done through the cia And what a lot of people I think fail to realize is that the drone program in the united states Is run by the cia with a fairly large amount of autonomy the president can certainly reign them in as commander in chief But this program is killing so many civilians So when you say abolish the cia what I hear is It's about damn time people are bringing this up and talking about this because I don't think people really realize How destructive the cia has been Around the world and it's part of the reason why people hate the united states around the world when you look at global polling They kind of view us as you know a destabilizer and we're kind of veering into foreign policy So I think that it would be probably useful to talk about that How would you be different because I see something really problematic happening? I see the democratic party by and large shifting to the right when it comes to foreign policy You have a few exceptions. What would you do differently to kind of try to pull that overton window back to the left? Well, I'd be as anti-war as you can be. I'd never vote for a war. There would have to be some Unforseeable extraordinary circumstances to make me vote yes on a war Yeah, so yes, and uh, I in terms of foreign policy. I do things like omar does we can criticize israel I wouldn't be afraid of being called anti-semitic. I mean, it's not like I'm planning on being in congress for a whole career or anything Yeah, ideally. I'd only do it for you know a term or two and then we can get the policies through I don't tend to do it as a whole career yeah, that's nice because um, a lot of people get into politics because They're career-minded. Um, you know and you kind of remind me of uh, laurence the sig but at you know The congressional level where you just have like this agenda. We're gonna get in past these policies and then i'm out I don't need to stay here longer Um, I don't care about any of that. I don't care about my career I'm just the normal dude and I want to get x y and z policies implemented I think that's fascinating although if you are successful at implementing these policies people are gonna want to keep you there I bet because there's not a lot of like representatives and we kind of like hold on to and cherish and sometimes um DFI progressives, you know, maybe that's not the right word, but we overly like We really rely on them because there's so few and even people who you know They kind of run as progressives. They kind of go quiet like uh, jamie raskin He's a fairly good congressman, but you know, he's not necessarily the fire brand that I thought he would be Um, when he was elected So if you are you know doing these things and you're heavily effective, I can guarantee this will be your career Um, regardless if you want it to be or not, but it's nice that you don't have that like as your goal Because that means that you're not going to be making these political calculations You're not going to think oh, well this vote could cost me my seat You're just thinking you know what? Fuck it. I just want to get in the past these policies and that's really nice And if I have to say something controversial, that's true. I'll be like hey sweet. Maybe I'll lose And I like that I like that a lot um I kind of feel like I would be the same way because being a member of congress It seems like something that would just be pure misery to me. Um, I would never want frankly me too Yeah, yeah, and I I get the sense that you're kind of doing this like out of obligation Like all right. Nobody else is going to do it. Nobody else in this district is running Um, so I need to do this and I need to um get these policies passed ronkine. Is it going to do it? Let's just pass these policies and then I'm going to retire Absolutely, if there was another good progressive with policies basically the same as mine, I'd let them do it They can take it. That's awesome. I really like that and I feel like um You know that shows people that you are with them and you are committed to the policies And I don't think you have to do much more to really, um Convince them. So let me ask you this in terms of timetable. I really like to kind of gauge where candidates are at Um, let's say hypothetically speaking you're elected and you get you know this we all get this Best case scenario where we have a bernie sanders presidency and you know a blue senate and a blue house And we kind of have this limited window of opportunity at least two years to pass these policies before the next election What would you just as an individual lawmaker prioritize like if you could pick three policies? What do you think feasibly we could get passed? I'd say my number one priority at least would be rank choice voting because if and uh Secondly money out of politics because if you can get those two things then you're not stuck with two years Now I guess third would be you know medicare for all because I don't much care for people dying because they can't afford healthcare yeah, yeah medicare for all is really important and um I feel like it's a little bit sad that now on the campaign trail people who support medicare for all They have to go out of their way to clarify No single payer medicare for all because we've seen a sort of co-optation of the rhetoric used by progressives I mean Kamala Harris just straight up calls her bill medicare for all when it's literally not medicare for all It's a multi-payer system So, you know, it's nice to have people fight who are not going to be doing the bidding of large multinational corporations So I'm pretty sure that you don't have to do much more to convince my audience at this point I feel like we're kind of preaching to the choir because people just want to vote for people who are ordinary Who are going to fight for them? So let me know How we can help how a viewer maybe not in the third congressional district of wisconsin can get justin bonner elected How do we help you help us? Sure, you can spread the word about me. You can follow me on twitter You can always donate on my website. That's justin bonner dot com Donate bushin the donate button isn't exactly hidden. Yeah Yeah, can we uh, can we phone bank for you yet? I don't have any phone banking set up yet. Okay I know I always think that uh canvassing is the best way to do it. Yeah, just to actually see him face to face Yeah, for sure Personally, I don't really tend to pick up the phone when I get random calls It's because I get a lot of spam calls. Yeah, in fact, I even got one spam call recently They said they were the bernie sanders campaign and they wanted me to make a donation. Please give me your credit card number That's pretty dirty. That's pretty sketchy. That's a dirty one See the worst that I got was um, I got a really nice voice message from this sweet lady Who told me that she's just returning my call about my inquiry to earn $10,000 per week And I'm like, oh, this totally sounds legit and not like a pyramid scheme. I should definitely give her a call back I will say though and I will encourage you to do phone banking for people who live outside of the state Um, because I the way that I view this is kind of like a national movement Like I don't just think about this as this is Justin Bonner fighting for the people in that third congressional district of wisconsin I kind of view this as you know, you're going to get in and you're going to pass national policies That help all of us and I use this in example in every single interview that I do So I'm sure people are sick of it. But like the Ilhan Omar's bill to cancel student loan debt That's going to affect me and she's not my representative, you know So I really I think that I always try to go out of my way to encourage people to help candidates even not in their state But definitely if you live in the third district, um, I totally agree that canvassing knocking on as many doors as you can That is the most effective thing because you know I have no doubt that you'll be outraged by the corporate democrat because they're a corporate democrat because they sell out to corporate interests But you know, you are doing this grassroots and people power can override money. Let me ask you this um What I've heard is that if you raise at least 10 percent of the corporate democrat, it seems like you are more viable What do you think you would have to raise in terms of money and how many doors do you think you'd have to knock on? I'm not sure if you guys have done any projections yet to actually defeat ron kind Well ron kind I believe has about Two to 2.6 million in cash in hand right now So we are not even going to approach that. Yeah, but if we can knock on enough doors I don't think it will matter Because in this district about 75,000 people voted for bernie sanders in 2016 in the primary In order to win this primary election and it's a pretty heavily uh democratic Democratic gerrymandered district We'll need around 30 maybe 35 000 votes to win So if only about half the people who voted for sanders turn out and vote for me, then I win It's just a question of reaching out to those people and making them aware Yeah, I think the number one most important thing One of the reasons that our politics is so crappy right now is there are a lot of uh lower information voters But they might agree with us on policy But they may not Research all the candidates carefully before voting Because there are a lot of candidates who you know or a lot of voters who You know they voted for sanders and then some of them probably turned around and voted for kind Even though they're opposite ends of uh democrats Yeah, I always say that for me I feel like every single progressive that's running would win If every voter in that district knew about them because it's just a matter of getting your name out there Name recognition is always like one of the biggest things in politics It's one of the biggest hurdles for you know insurgent candidates like yourself Absolutely, I have to agree. Yeah, so, you know, one thing that's important is even if grassroots You know canvassing and whatnot matters in order to do that I would encourage everyone to donate to Justin because you still have to build the infrastructure Have a staff that can do this who still have to be able to print mailers and that needs That requires ink that requires printers. So we need money But of course you can do this without 2.6 million, which is just insane Yeah, we're not going to approach anything like that. Yeah. Yeah, I I would be surprised if anyone even came close to that Who's running, you know a grassroots campaign because like that's that's such a huge amount of money Oh, he's been in that seat for Um, 24 years, I think Give or take Since 96 is when he won his first election and I was one then It's time for some new blood then needless to say So, um, the website is justinbonner.com. You can follow him on twitter at Justin Bonner 95 Support him help him help you and let's get as many progressives elected as we possibly can If we want to actually influence policy outcomes in this country and not just have elites influence Democracy for us. So Justin anything else that you want to leave us with? Well, uh, I'd say get out there canvas for whoever your local progressive candidate candidate is If you don't have a local progressive candidate and you're going to be 25 as of january of 21 Then run yourself and most importantly always research all the candidates before a congressional primary and go vote Absolutely, that's perfect. We'll leave that there. Thank you so much for coming on Justin Great to be here