 So, by now, I'm sure that you are aware of the fact that an American hero and an anti-imperialist legend has passed away over the weekend. And I am, of course, referring to Mike Gravel, who ran for president in 2008 and 2020. And I am absolutely privileged to have had the opportunity to speak to him, my bottom on my show. He was incredibly intelligent and charming and insightful. And you know, I wasn't really sure how to process his death. You know, I didn't say much on Twitter about it. I just said Rip Mike Gravel. But I do really want to share, you know, some really nice words from other individuals that I respect who spoke out after they learned of his passing because, you know, when somebody passes away, I think that one of the most important things for healing is to kind of deal with it with other individuals. And that's what I want to do here in this video. So Bernie Sanders shared this, Jane and I are saddened by the passing of Senator Mike Gravel. He was dedicated to ending forever wars and bringing more Americans into the political process. His courage will be deeply missed. Our thoughts are with his loved ones. Yohan Omar said Senator Gravel was a voice of moral clarity in pursuit of peace when he was in the Senate. And he kept that voice in the years after he left public service. Our politics desperately needs more people like him. My thoughts are with his family and with all of those who loved him. He didn't retire and become a K Street lobbyist like so many of his colleagues. He continued to speak truth to power. So tonight, Senator Gravel rest in power. Henry Williams writes, Today I lost a man who shaped my life so profoundly that I've thought of him as a surrogate grandfather. Senator Gravel stood fast against the world for 91 billion years and pointed away for all of us. We have to honor his memory by achieving the world he dreamed of. And that's just beautifully put. I'm really thankful for the Gravel teens for bringing him back into the spotlight and for allowing those of us who didn't necessarily follow him during the 2008 years to actually learn about everything that he did and his contribution to American democracy and his advocacy to end the wars that he really like it affected him on a really personal level. And we'll get to that here in a moment, but I do want to read some write ups on him that kind of give you a little bit of insight into what he stood for, what he fought for, because I think that right now, you know, as Henry pointed out, we do have to take what he fought for and try to like make his dream a reality. So Andrea Germanos of Common Dreams writes an outspoken critic of US militarism and a two time presidential candidate Gravel served Alaska as a Democratic senator from 1969 to 1981, during which time he helped bring the military draft to an end. In 1971, Gravel read over 4000 pages of the Pentagon Papers, the classified documents leaked by Daniel Ellsberg that revealed vast US government lies about the Vietnam War into the congressional record. That action came a day before the US Supreme Court lifted an injunction that had blocked the post and the New York Times, which had already published excerpts of the documents from further publication of them. Columbia Magazine detailed earlier this month the scene on the evening of June 29th, 1971, there was a clutch of microphones on the table before him and Gravel spoke into them. The people must know the full story of what has occurred in the past 20 years in their government, he said. The story is a terrible one. It is replete with duplicity, connivance against the public and public officials. I know of nothing in our history to equal it for extent of failure and extent of loss in all aspects of the terms. As he spoke, visions of maimed bodies flashed through his sleep deprived mind. People, human beings are being killed as I speak to you tonight killed as a direct result of policy decisions that we as a body have made arms. Arms are being severed. Metal is crashing through human bodies because of a public policy. This government Gravel overcome began to sob. He wiped his face with a handkerchief and composed himself. One may respond that we made such a sacrifice to preserve freedom and liberty in Southeast Asia. One may respond that we sacrifice ourselves on the continent of Asia so that we will not have to fight a similar war on the shores of America. One can make these arguments only if he has failed to read the Pentagon papers. That is the terrible truth of it all. And I just want to share a really quick clip of Michael Gravel tearing up as he read the Pentagon papers. The greatest frills, black marketeers and grand scale dope pushers. Someone who is that moved by the thought of human suffering and descriptions of people being massacred. That is someone who you absolutely want in our government because now you look to the US Congress and you see basically what are essentially, I mean, for lack of a better word, sociopaths who are cold. They they don't care about the suffering of millions. They don't care how the actions of our government impact people around the globe or at home. So, you know, to see someone who genuinely cared to the point where it brought him to tears, that is such a rarity in US government. And it's why Michael Gravel is really one of a kind. Now, I want to get some more on what he did in his state. This is written up by Bronco Marcetic of Jacobin, who explains, if not for Mike Gravel, the military draft might never have ended. Gravel spent five months as a one man wrecking ball trying to topple conscription for the war and succeeded in filibustering the extension of the draft to death in 1971, partly by reading the Pentagon papers. Gravel played an important role in establishing what became Alaska's permanent fund dividend program, a kind of universal basic income funded off of Alaska's fossil fuel exploitation. And he had earlier experienced a meteoric rise to the Alaskan state legislature's speakership, where he presided over, among other things, the creation of a rural high school program that let indigenous kids get local education instead of being shipped off sometimes thousands of miles to other parts of the country. This doesn't make him a saint, of course. Gravel was indeed a fierce fighter for fossil fuel interests in the Senate in the 1970s and was not immune to fundraising off them. And all the sleazy pay for play shenanigans that came with that. Yet, ironically, his stubbornness on the matter unwittingly spurred one of the major executive actions of environmental protection in presidential history. And by 2007, he had shifted dramatically on the issue running on what was then an aggressive climate platform to prevent what he later called planetary suicide. So I love this because throughout the years, you see Mike Gravel become even more radicalized than he already was. And someone like that, like I think looking at his flaws and how he was a fighter for fossil fuels is really important because it shows that you can convince people so long as they actually have a moral core and Mike Gravel had a moral core, he had strong, strong convictions. And not only that, one thing that I really admire about Mike Gravel, aside from his policy positions and what he advocated for is he's kind of like Bernie Sanders in the sense that he hates the whole DC circuit, all of the pageantry around it, all of the cocktail parties that you're expected to go to if you're a senator. And this line about him attending the prayer breakfast from an interview that he gave in 2019 to Jacobin is is one of my favorite quotes of all time from a former senator. So he said, I'm an atheist in point of fact, but the leaders were going to the prayer breakfast. So I thought that was a clever way to become ingratiated with the leadership. So I went to one prayer breakfast and realized that all these people sitting at the table praying were essentially the warmongering hawks who perpetuated the Vietnam War and I couldn't stomach it anymore. So that was my first and last prayer breakfast. And I love that so much because, you know, it's it's easy to, you know, play the game in DC once you get there. You know, the dynamic changes. You can go from being an activist and once you're elected, things kind of change because the people who you were formerly criticizing are not your colleagues. And, you know, he realizes that it might be politically beneficial to kind of rub shoulders with them, get to know them on a more personal level, to be a more effective legislator. But he thought I can't deal with these people. They're fakes, they're phonies. They're sitting here acting as if they believe in God and they're attending this prayer breakfast, but yet they support a Vietnam war that is ruthless and bloody and I just I can't take it. So he checked out and, you know, till this day, he's not loved by the political establishment. But I think that people are going to realize that that's like the best feature about him, right? Not only what he advocated for, but the fact that he was hated by so many powerful people in DC, I think he wore that as a badge of honor. And that's what makes him so cool, right? So, I mean, Mike Ravel, his legacy is just incredible. And the impact that he's had on me has been profound. You know, I think that in 2020, he had one of the best platforms I've ever seen offering reparations, not only to black Americans, but Iraqi citizens who were brutalized by our, you know, imperialism, everything about him. You know, it just I really respect him and he will be sorely missed. His integrity, his passion, his care for humanity and desire to prevent suffering. It's just it's so rare. And I really want to celebrate people who fought for the right things. So having said that, we're going to leave sharing my favorite clips of Mike Ravel. Of course, it is of the 2008 debate and a bit of him sharing what we all found out with the Pentagon Papers, thanks to Daniel Ellsberg. So we'll leave you with this rest in peace, Mike Ravel. At a forum earlier this year, I want to get this right. You said it doesn't matter whether you are elected president or not. So then why are you here tonight? Shouldn't debates be for candidates who are in the race to win the race? Ryan, you're right. I made that statement. But that's before I had a chance to stand with them a couple of three times. It's like going into the Senate. You know, the first time you get there, you're all excited. My God, how did I ever get here? Then about six months later, you say, how the hell did the rest of them get here? And I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me, they frighten me when you have mainline candidates to turn around and say that there's nothing off the table with respect to Iran. That's code for using nukes, nuclear devices. I got to tell you, I'm president of the United States. There will be no preemptive wars with nuclear devices. To my mind, it's immoral and it's been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign policy. Let's use a little moderator discretion here. Senator Gravel, that's a weighty charge. Who on this stage exactly tonight worries you so much? Well, I would say the top tier ones, the top tier ones. They've made statements. Oh, Joe, I'll include you too. You have a certain arrogance. You want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country. I got to tell you, we should just play get out. Just play get out. It's their country. They're asking us to leave and we insist on staying there. And why not get out? What harm is it going to do? Oh, you hear the statement. Well, my God, the soldiers will have died in vain. The entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain. And they're dying in vain right this very second. You know what's worse than a soldier dying in vain is more soldiers dying in vain. That's what's worse. Other than Iraq, three most important enemies to the United States. We have no important enemies. What we need to do is to begin to deal with the rest of the world as equals. And we don't do that. We spend more as a nation on defense than all the rest of the world put together. Who are we afraid of? Who are you afraid of? But, Brian, I'm not. And Iraq has never been a threat to us. We invaded them. I mean, it is unbelievable. The military industrial complex not only controls our government lock, stock and barrel, but they control our culture. When I came into possession of these papers, I looked around and nobody in government had done anything. The only thing that was being done in government was an effort to stifle and hide this stuff. And it just dawned on me that somebody, if we're going to have any faith at all in our institution, somebody from government's got to be going to have the same resolve, the same feelings for stopping the killing, as Ellsberg did, as the Post did, as the New York Times did, as the St. Louis Post dispatched, as all these, not only myself, because the people who released this were bureaucrats. You know, bureaucrats, the people that we disparage so often, they weren't elected officials, they were bureaucrats. And they have much less risk than I have. The risk that I have is being expulsed from the Senate.