 Welcome back to channel 17. We have a treat here today. We've had Mike Blair, Malpunk, join us when we found him after seeing the video clip and seeing that there was a lot of interest in that. And today, Mike was recently contacted by- Michelle. Michelle, awesome. And Mike, I just wanna talk to you because you're wearing the Bernie shirt and you've now started a Twitter feed called Malpunk. Right. Were you involved in the campaign? Oh, I currently am volunteering. Yeah. I'm a volunteer texture from home. Yeah. So I'm doing what I can. Yeah. And so were you already involved in the campaign before you did the interview here? I wasn't before I did the interview. Yeah. But then I also didn't know that you could actually just volunteer from home. Yeah. Which makes a huge difference. Yeah. So we're able to connect with a lot of people and there's been a lot of people who've said, oh, I can volunteer from home. Yeah. So it's growing. Cool. And so let's welcome Michelle. We have Michelle here on Skype. So hi, Michelle. Welcome. Hi. Where are you right now? Even Arizona. Wow. And tell us like how did you figure, how did you, how did we find you or how did you find us? Kind of interesting. Out of the blue, somebody sent me a message via Facebook Messenger. And I didn't even know who sent me the video, quite frankly, because I know people send, you know, their profiles don't often have their actual name or sometimes don't have their actual name. So I had no idea. It was just some random weird name on there. He sent me this video. So I clicked on it and was like, oh, dear God. Honestly, it was so long ago. This is awesome. And it was a lot easier for me to find Mike because, well, he stayed in Vermont and I knew he had stayed in Vermont. And well, you know, his name didn't change when he got married. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I was a little harder to find. Yeah. So for those folks who are tuning into this, completely new, the video clip that we're talking about is this video clip. You see a still of it and we'll watch it in a few minutes. Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington starting in 1981. And one of the things that he did during his tenure was a series called Bernie Speaks with the Community. And there are 52 episodes in our archives of Bernie. In this case, he was walking through the downtown mall, talking to people, and he ran into Mike and Michelle at the time and spoke with them about their interests in the world. And it caught the interest and imagination of folks who watched it. Also part of that video series are him talking to a group of kids at Franklin Square, talking to Brent Sclafani's class, the third grade class at then Barnes Elementary School, a whole series. He really used the Community Access Center, which is CCTV, which is where we are located as a way of engaging with people. The community. The community. So let's take a look at that clip now, Michael, if you want to roll that for us. We're now talking to two young people from South Burlington. Burlington. All right, one from Burlington. What is your name? Michelle. Michelle, and your name is? Mike Blair. And Mike, you're from South Burlington. Michelle, you're from Burlington. Well, let me start off by saying it's an interesting hairdo. Thank you. Lipstick is also very interesting. The color screen will focus in on it. It seems to be a black. Is that right? All right, so let me ask you the obvious question. All right? What does your dress mean? What does it say? Or does it mean anything? It's just basically saying to heck with society, to heck with law and order. Well, it's not so much a law and order, but. It's saying to the mayor to heck with law and order? It's just basically saying that you can do whatever you want to do, and it doesn't matter. I can be punk rock if you want to say it. I don't like the way societies run. OK, well, let's cop out. Everybody's plastic. All right, and all right, talk about that. What are the aspects of that society that you don't like? How would you like to see it change? People are not open-minded enough. They think that in order to be stable in society, you have to have money. You have to live in a suburb. You have to do the set things, such as have so many people over for dinner a night, a week, or you're not socially acceptable. You've got to dress a certain way to be socially acceptable. And I don't believe in having to belong to anything, to be a person. I can do basically what I want with my appearance, with my attitude, and it doesn't matter. OK, that's a good statement. I appreciate that. Would you like to add to that? Well, about the dress, it's just it shows the way you feel. People wear black because they're not feeling too good about what's going on around them. Some of the stuff that goes on in the society is basically baloney. And people say that the democracy is so truly free. And I mean, that's fine. But the way we're living in this democracy isn't a true democracy. And everybody's always complaining about depression and such. Well, that's going to happen in the democracy. It's natural because if you have a democracy, there's going to be capitalists. And I guess that they shouldn't be complaining because that's what they asked for. What kind of society would you like to see? Well, I'm kind of an anarchist. But communism doesn't bother me like a true communism where it just goes to no freedom of enterprise because then everybody gets a chance to live and be safe. But when it goes as far as cutting down people's freedom of speech, I don't feel that's right. Distinguishing between what you mean as true communism as opposed to what exists in the Soviet Union. Yeah, Max's idea of communism was a lot different than what they have it now. I'm kind of an anarchist too. But I don't believe in total anarchy because then we're just going to kill ourselves. I just don't like the way it's run now. How do you feel society can be changed? Well, if we could go into the archives and see what the government's really been doing for the past, I don't know how long, many years, then we'd all be pretty appalled and sickened by it because we think we're so free. We think we're so democratic. Everybody has a say. We're just as imperialistic as the Soviets are, if not more. We're the ones that go into the other countries. We start wars. What really scares me is that we've never had a war in our own country. We don't know what it's like. We push our luck. Maybe one day we will get invaded, then maybe we'll know what it's like. Also, with communism and democracy, one government always makes the people in its country feel that the other government's trying to impose on them. Well, that's not really true. They just want to be the way they want to be. And we should just want to stay the way we want to and not try and spread our beliefs onto someone else. What did you guys think of your own high school education? The education itself was good. I'm going to college now, which is also good. What college are you going to? Community College Vermont. But the environment is not the best. A lot of black balling goes on. If you do one thing wrong, well, then you're considered throughout the whole year, throughout your whole stay there as a bad person. I don't know. It's odd. And if you dress radically, then you're good. You dress radically, right? Yeah. Can we say that? Yeah. That's the best thing. If you don't dress like everybody else, then they automatically think there's something wrong with you. They send you away. Yeah. And with school, the education part is fine. But they do so much programming to everybody to make them feel like teachers will poke fun at me a lot. I'm not going to mention any names because they probably wouldn't be too pleased if they heard about that. But they specifically point out at me that I'm trying to ruin their government. I don't care what they do. I just want to live the way I want to live, you know? OK, well, thank you very much for your forthright views. OK, see you. Thank you. OK, I was the next person that was. So Michelle, Mike, what are your reactions to that, watching it? Well, I'm still at, if we had known then what we know now, we would have just said actually what Bernie's saying. Would have been a short interview. Uh-huh. What is your, like when you listen to that, you know, you've got to live in the suburbs. You've got to dress a certain way. You've got to all have dinner at a certain time. How has your life shaped since you were having those thoughts? I spent pursuing a career of my own, choosing in my tattoo shop for 20 years. And, you know, I refuse to define myself. I get to be proud of who I wake up and see in the mirror every day. I get to be proud that everything that I own and everything that I do to provide for my family, I did on my own terms. And you really can't ask for anything better out of life. But at the same time, you can't just opt out of life all together, you know. And for a while I tried to because it's, if you can't wake up the nation around you, you can't, you can't see any change. You can't affect any change in the world around you. So, you know, you can put your head in the sand and you can opt out and do what you want for your own family. And that's fine. But I got tired of putting in my head in the sand. And, you know, so I'm trying to make a difference. I've done, you know, we spent most of the 20 years in our shop doing fundraisers to help people when their houses went upside down, when the housing bubble just exploded. And, you know, we're talking about irresponsible people. We're talking about people that, you know, work hard every day. They do the expected thing. They pay their taxes. They are a productive member of society and they're still losing their home over, you know, economic stuff beyond their making, beyond their repair. Yeah. And so we tried to do our best in every way that we can. And, you know, hopefully now we've got someone running that actually does care what the little man thinks, needs, wants. Hopefully we can affect larger change than just helping the people in your very small community. Yeah. So at that time, well, I think before we didn't, we talked about, you didn't know that you were talking to the mayor, right? No. And how old are you in that clip? Oh, 17, 18 years old, yeah. So you were already going to CCV. You'd already gotten out of the high school system and into CCV. What is, what are you thinking when you look back at her now? And now you're thinking about Bernie running for president. What do you think, what does it make you feel like? Well, again, it just, it shows that he really does care. I mean, like I said, I had forgotten I'd done this interview. I'd forgotten that it existed until it was sent to me. But, you know, as soon as I saw it and started watching it, it triggered the memory and was like, oh my gosh, that's right. This is amazing. He really does see, and I was telling all my friends, see, he really does care. He really does want, and even all the way 32 years ago, he cares. He wants to make sure that he's talking to everybody. And it wasn't just us. There were a lot of other people spoken to. So he wants to get everybody's story and try to do what's right for everybody. So it really, I think of it as, I really haven't changed much other than, I'm a lot older. But, you know, my opinions are pretty much the same. I, you know, I'm probably a little less naive. So not all 17-year-olds, though, are thinking the way that you were thinking at that time. What brought you to those views at 17? Or you, Mike, what brought you to those views? Was it the culture of like the clothes or was it the ideas first? I think it was the ideas first. I think the clothes kind of caught up to it, and, you know, just us not being necessarily happy with what we see going on and what we know the government's doing. And, you know, it's a way to stand out and not be just part of the status quo. And you are, you were good buds at that time? Yeah, we met in... Yeah, we both played bass in the Vermont Youth Orchestra. Very, and that's a very upright, upstanding organization, not a lot of punks in the Vermont Youth Orchestra. Yeah, Caroline along took a little issue with the hair. But yeah, and I would say that also music in general, I think took a big, well, had a big role in what our thought process was because a lot of what we were listening to had a lot of political messaging in it. And also, as we all know, Bernie started the Mayor's Youth Office, 242 Main, which we spent a lot of time at. I was working at Mayor's Youth Office at the time, yeah. Nice. Yeah. So, and this clip got picked up and shared by the dead Kennedys. Yeah, the dead Kennedys. Just awesome, which we were listening to back then. So, that's just simply amazing. Do you still listen to the dead Kennedys now? Yeah, from time to time. Absolutely, absolutely. You got a favorite dead Kennedys song? Holiday in Cambodia. Yeah. I actually heard a version of Holiday in Cambodia as done by Richard Cheese. He's a lounge act. Oh, God. He does it in lounge version and he does it like an actual Christmas song in his whole area. Oh, my God. I'm gonna have to hear that. You absolutely must. Well, that's fantastic. So, do you have, when you got in touch with each other after all these years, did you have things that you needed to catch up on? So, were you campaigning for Bernie also? You were campaigning for Bernie. It sounds like, Michelle, you were supporting Bernie. Well, we both been Bernie supporters, but that was, we were talking back and forth about the video clip and then I just had to ask, are you a Bernie supporter? And then I couldn't have been more happy to see that both mall punks support Bernie Sanders. Fantastic. Are there things that you want to share or ask of one another after all these years? I don't know. You know, it's funny because we talk a little bit. We see what we said back then and we're still on the same page. Yeah. You know, it's about people and people taking care of people, not people doing things to harm people and take things away from people, but to live together as a good, strong society. Yeah. And I, you know, I- Put some phones, you gotta pick them up. Yeah. And have you, what have you thought about the response to this clip? People really, you know, this, DJ, people, a million or more people have watched the clip of Bernie interviewing you two in the mall. And- Very surreal. Well, and the amazing thing is, is that it was brought out and put out there as something to try and hurt Bernie. Oh, absolutely. And they're trying to spin this narrative like, oh, that's just crazy. What mayor talks to the people? Yeah. Who would ever do that? Well, he got, those videos got my mom to vote for Bernie. Fantastic. She was not a Bernie supporter. Yeah. She is now. Just for that reason, he talks to the people. Comments that was accusing this as a canned interview because no punks they ever didn't cuss every other. I can, I can cuss like a duck worker, but- Yeah, they have no idea about her. You don't, you can't, you can't cuss on TV, I told them. I was like, we knew that. We're not stupid. If you wanna be heard and have your interview correctly, use your lexicon. So one of the, one of the things in, in looking at some of the comments, which is a dangerous place to tread in the world, I have come to realize is a, you know, sort of the obvious question. Anarchists supporting a presidential candidate? Talk about that a little bit. What I said in the original video is I'm not a true anarchist because I don't support that because we really would kill ourselves. Human beings can be very ugly and without some sort of back- Yeah, and I think the statement was more about being against the government that we have than actually a full understanding of what things, I mean, it was 16. What anarchy would actually be inviting. So, yeah. Yeah, so that's interesting. But there is, there's something different about Bernie in particular or his candidacy over other candidates. And I'm, you know, I'm not talking about, but just, is there something particular about Bernie? Well, yeah, it's the whole concept of everything he wants to do is actually for the people. So the society is working to sustain itself as opposed to sustaining, you know, the military industrial complex or Amazon, you know, these massive corporations. I mean, we pave the roads for Amazon to make their deliveries and they don't pay taxes. It's not right. I don't need to support them, you know, I'd like to take care of my friends, my family, my neighbors and my fellow countrymen rather than Jeff Bezos. Any thoughts on that, Michelle? Yeah, honestly, he's the only politician I've ever supported because he's the only one that's not strictly worried about lining their own pockets. All right. Well, thank you so much, Michelle. You're out there in Arizona enjoying the sun just as we're, you know, just past Super Tuesday and town meeting. The sun is starting to come up here, starting to get warm. Yep. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. And for tracking each other down. Say that again. I don't miss the snow. Yeah. Yeah, I hate the snow. And what will you be doing after November 2020 regardless of who gets into office? Where do you think you're gonna be? I continue doing the same things that we've been doing. We do fundraisers for the Boys and Girls Club. We do fundraisers for, you know, the community at large just trying to help out our neighbors of a grassroots thing. Great. So anything else that you want to share with the viewers about this? Well, I think one of the other noteworthy points is that at the end of the video, one of our friends gets up and walks off with us who was Gary Lane, who ended up a few years back having a day in Burlington dedicated to him. Oh, like by the city council? Yeah, something. I can't remember. It's Gary Lane. Yeah, Gary Lane. Michelle, who's Gary Lane? Oh, probably the most knowledgeable person in the entire world about music. I don't think anybody, anybody owns more records than Gary Lane. I don't think anybody's been to more concerts than Gary Lane. I agree. He was the most amazing human being, sweetest, nicest, kindest, and most aimfully shy person. And that's why he was standing up against the wall and not part of the interview. Exactly. I don't think... Do you remember what you said to him when you went? What do you think you said as you went over to him after the interview? That just happened. Uh-huh. Yeah, who the heck was that? Who was that guy? Because you didn't even know it was the mayor of that. He didn't tell you. He wasn't like, I'm the mayor of Burlington. Here, let me interview you. Yeah, not until we were in the middle of the interview. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And I didn't live in Burlington, so I definitely had no idea who the mayor of Burlington was. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on. And thanks for watching. And if you haven't, check out the other Bernie Speaks, part of the Bernie Speaks series, and stay tuned for more community programming here on town meeting television.