 This is not inflation that is just happening by magic. Hello, my guest today is Solana Rice, who is co-founder and co-executive director of Liberation in a Generation Action, an organization dedicated as she will describe to making social change from the grassroots up, community organizing and education, and how it all fits together. So delighted to have you, Solana. So, we're in this kind of in-between period between the election being over and a new Congress coming in. Are you, are you, what's your mood? My mood right now is that we still have work to do. We always still have work to do, right? We talk about the Inflation Reduction Act. It's going to be a while until we see the Inflation Reduction Act actually reduce inflation. But guess what it does? Guess what it helps people buy groceries? Guess what it helps parents pay for childcare? The child tax credit. We're still in an economic crisis. A lot of families are still struggling day to day. And this we know cash to people is working. A lot of conservative economists and Republicans will say, well, that's, if you give cash to people, you're going to even aggravate inflation. You're going to make a bad situation even worse. What do you say in response? We say no way because this is not inflation that is just happening by magic. This is inflation that has been driven by corporations. And I think you've spoken to this quite a bit, right? This is not about we give more money and then we go into more debt and then people won't spend it how we think they will. People are going to take care of their families. People are going to buy food. People are going to do the things that help our economy run, but also make sure that they are solvent and prosperous, right? So inflation is definitely being driven by corporations, by corporate greed, by profiteering in this moment. You listen to the quarterly prospects for the companies as they talk about like, oh, what are we going to do? We got our quarterly earnings, da-da-da. They're talking about raising prices on things like toothpaste, on things like tape, on basic things. And we need to be listening to what they're saying because they're basically telling us, hey, folks are in a pinch right now. They're going to get money. Let's raise the prices. Well, that's exactly right. But you have people like the head of the Federal Reserve Board, Mr. Powell, who says inflation is being driven by wages, by people getting too much money from their employers. What is, what's your response? I can guess, but let's get it down for the record. I think that we can talk to any, almost any working person right now that is working at a grocery store up the street anywhere and they can easily tell us that their wages are not causing inflation. It's really because the corporations are driving what the prices are of things. In fact, most people I talk to, or most working people, they can't even keep up with inflation. Their wages are not keeping up with prices and therefore their purchasing power is declining. But the Federal Reserve Board doesn't seem to get it. And my real fear is that over the next six months, the Fed keeps on raising interest rates, putting the economy into a recession and taking out on the poorest members of our society. You know, we talk a lot about wages, but we also don't talk about housing costs. You know, the idea that housing costs can go up infinitely is very much problematic. Nowhere in this country can somebody live on minimum wage and actually afford a one or two-bedroom place to rent. Well, Powell at the Fed would say, well, that's why we're raising interest rates because then we're gonna bring housing costs down because there's gonna be less demand for housing and it's already happening. I don't know how we make money more expensive, which is exactly what raising interest rates is doing and people make that work in their day-to-day budget. But what do we do about it? So I think we've gotta keep the eye on corporations. We have to defend the wins that we have on issues and we've gotta believe in organizers. And what it's going to take from each of us is to make sure that we're implementing and driving home these wins and continue expanding on them. A lot of people look at the midterm elections and they say, well, it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but are we better off in terms of being able to legislate? No, because the house is now under Republicans. We have a Supreme Court that is really awful. Where is the source of the optimism that we need in order to drive people to, well, drive organizers, drive communities to actually get together and wanna do things that will drive social change? Yeah. I was in a conversation earlier today about freedom and this idea that freedom is about collectivity and that's why I love working with organizers is because organizers understand every day, day in and day out, that it's about the relationships that we build in our communities and those relationships always give me optimism. They always do. And so I think we can look in our local communities for these bright spots. Salana Rice, thank you for your vision, your optimism, your faith and your work. Thanks.