 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we're joined by Eugene Pudir of Breakthrough News and we're going to be talking about a lot of developments to do with the U.S. presidential elections. Of course, the nomination of Kamala Harris as the vice presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, but also issues around voter separation. Thank you so much, Eugene, for talking to us. As always, it's such a pleasure to be here. Yes. So to read with, let's talk about the Kamala Harris nomination. There's been a lot of celebration from some of the usual quarters, including from some in India, surprisingly, about how this is a landmark moment. It's historic. Someone, you know, she, during a campaign last year, she sort of channelized her involvement or her role in the civil rights movement. There's a lot of discussion about a black woman finally being part of a major ticket. But you yourself have reported there's been also a lot of conversation about how a record is very controversial as well. So could you talk a bit about this? Absolutely. You know, it's one of those things that there's history and there's history. I mean, obviously in like the textbook reality, there is no doubt that this is in fact historic, which I think in some ways is such a statement about the United States. It's been around since 1787 that it took till 2020 to have a black woman on a major party ticket and a woman of also South Asia to send on a major party ticket. I mean, it just seems unbelievable. But in many ways, a statement about American racism. And you know, I think it's an interesting question and sort of the way I've been approaching it is that in some ways I view it as good because if nothing else, it will clarify many questions. Because I think because of the long history of racism in America, the ongoing reality of even in the highest bodies of the country would be mainly white, mainly male has created a sense that just changing the faces in some of these offices will bring in a new type of sensibility. Someone who understands, you know, the oppression of black people understands the plight of immigrant folks who understands maybe global issues a little bit more because they have, you know, our fathers from Jamaica and our mothers from India. And I think what we've seen the record shows is that none of that impact is true. You know, of course, we've seen Nikki Haley as the representative at the United Nations of Indian Indian American woman and one of the most vicious imperialists there were. So perhaps maybe a more global view, but it didn't change the actual policies she was willing to put in place. Obviously, Barack Obama was the president. And we've seen from his policy of drone strikes to, you know, some of his early actions against immigrants here in the United States, the inability to act seriously on income equality, and many other important issues for workers that basically despite having a black president, the status quo issues remained more or less the same in terms of sort of the core structure of US capitalism. And I think what we're seeing with Kamala Harris or what we're not seeing now, what I think we will ultimately see is another replay of that is that there's a lot of, well, this is going to be such a groundbreaking thing, but what we'll see is at the end of the day, like anyone else in her position as a moderate middle-of-the-road, center-left individual who sees the Democratic Party as their path to power, she will try to balance between, you know, giving lip service to the interests of oppressed people and of working-class people, which is the Democrats' brand. But then as we've already seen, the front page of the Wall Street Journal, Wall Street exhales a sigh of relief upon Kamala Harris being chosen. We saw a story, I believe it was in The New York Times, might have been The Washington Post, about how the big tech industry expects her to be a silent ally of the big tech and pushing back against calls to break up the big internet giants. So at the end of the day, you know, she's lifelong prosecutor. At the end of the day, I think that we are going to see, unfortunately, you know, certainly some differences from Trump, but really more of the same in terms of the broader Wall Street super wealthy, highly unequal society that we see under both Democrats and Republicans. Right, absolutely. And her record as both attorney general and prosecutor has not been inspiring in any sense, especially in the state of California. I mean, it really is unbelievable in some ways how that her record has almost been completely whitewashed now in this conversation and people are saying, well, forget about that. I mean, in some of the things they want people to forget about it. You know, first and foremost, she came on the scene as district attorney in San Francisco. She won her first race. I believe this was 2003, essentially by running as a tough on crime law and order candidate saying that the other candidate at the time was too soft on crime, too soft on criminals that she was going to toughen up. And she was notable for saying that she would never seek the death penalty, although later as attorney general of California, she defended the death penalty. But be that as it may, you know, that one sort of solo fact has completely whitewashed the fact that she came in on a law and order platform. She covered up misconduct. Well, her office covered up misconduct, let's say, in a major scandal in the San Francisco crime lab where a tech was tampering with evidence over 600 cases dismissed as attorney general of California. She fought against the innocence of several people, someone death row, some doing long sentences, you know, using every little technicality possible to prevent a rehearing of many of the cases, despite serious, serious prosecutorial misconduct. And you've got cases that I mean, people, other people, you know, almost certainly being the person who did it, and she is fighting to prevent DNA evidence to keep Kevin Cooper on death row rather than potentially exonerate him for a crime. I mean, you know, many different things like this. Also, you know, she has misrepresented her role in the mortgage settlement. There was a national mortgage settlement that was allegedly designed to compensate the victims of Wall Street banks who were illegally foreclosing on millions of Americans. She did almost nothing in that settlement, completely misrepresented her record in that, played only a very small role. And notably, her office, Attorney General Office, let Steve Mnuchin, the current Treasury Secretary, off the hook when his financial company was clearly illegally evicting people, illegally foreclosing on people and evicting them from their home, basically stealing their homes from them. And it was her office that essentially gave him and his cronies a pass and they made a huge, huge sum of money. I also know Donald Trump contributed to her campaigns early on. So, you know, someone whose record as a district attorney and as an attorney general was very much around the idea of, I'm going to use this law and order law enforcement platform as a, I mean, this is a big problem in the United States because black politicians are often seem to be quote, unquote, soft on crime because the criminal justice system is so racist. And so there's a class of black politicians who say, well, I'll go into law enforcement and show that I'm tough on crime so that I can run to a higher office. It becomes a springboard to a higher office of essentially sacrificing your own community and your own people to these policies of mass incarceration to build SMA. And that was Kamala Harris. Right. And in this context, again, we come back to the limitations of the two-party system. We talked about it earlier, of course, the Republicans and Democrats basically proposing basically pushing the same agenda with a very different, with a very different language. So we also saw in the past one year that there was a very powerful movement. Bernie Sanders was of course a key part of that movement, but also many movements around it, which pushed a very radical agenda. So how are these movements right now mobilizing at this point? You know, I think that, you know, it's a great point. You know, first and foremost, I think people should realize the uprising that people have seen is actually not over in cities like Chicago, especially, but also still in Portland, 70 some days of protests still going strong, Seattle, Chicago people may have seen because of activities that took place where a young person was killed. And, you know, some individuals from the community decided to, you know, make themselves heard by taking to the magnificent mile and offering some messages to some of the richest, most powerful corporations and brands there in Chicago and the mayor responding aggressively. So, you know, that element of the mobilization against police violence and against racism is ongoing. People are still pushing for defunding of the police, but really the protests have shifted in a major way, I think, to an understanding that politicians are so unwilling to do this, that the protests themselves have to become an element of mass disruption. I think that's what we're seeing in Portland with 70 straight days of protests to say there's no return to normal until something takes place. And we're seeing that quite a bit, you know, there's a growing movement here around the issue of evictions. The many of the protections that came around the COVID-19 lockdowns are expiring millions and millions of people, maybe as many as 30 million people facing eviction from their home or their apartment in the United States right now. So, we saw in New Orleans, for instance, recently, a number of activists who chain themselves to the doors to prevent the opening of rent court, which is where evictions are adjudicated to prevent evictions from taking place. We've seen in Los Angeles, we've seen in Washington, D.C., a number of different times in other places, activists are going to homes and basically saying, if you're going to evict these people, you've got to go through us. And we've seen in many cases, they have been unwilling to go through them and evictions have been stopped. And I think that's going to be a growing trend over the next few months. And then also, there has been an upsurge and activism amongst labor unions of teachers that have really taken the forefront here because of the issue of school reopening. In the United States, school terms start to reopen really right about the end of August, right around now, early September. That's when school terms start, usually almost every major metropolitan area now is saying they will start with in-person learning because of the dangers. And that is because the Chicago Teachers Union, the Los Angeles Teachers Union, San Francisco, and others really fought and said, we are not going to put the students at risk, the parents, the family members, the teachers. And in New York City, which is the last major metropolitan area, to not develop a plan in this planning, at least of now to go in-person, there have been a number of large marches of teachers and even some conversation about teachers taking job action to prevent a move back into school and to in-person learning too quickly in a dangerous way. So that's coming more and more into the forefront as more and more school systems are starting to have to face this and look at that. So an upsurge in labor activism as well. So it really has not been as there normally is in U.S. election years. There's a big downtick in social movement activity as everyone either goes to support a candidate or just sort of runs and hides because the two-party system is so terrible. Let's maybe like rip and wrinkle it and hopefully wake up after it's over. But this year, it really seems that there's a very different dynamic where there is not a let-up in social movements really at all. And I think a greater understanding, even amongst some people who may be supporting, you know, Democrats against Joe Biden, I think there's a growing understanding even amongst that set of the population that to let the foot off the gas of workers' movements and poor people's movements really putting on the pressure and being ungovernable is the key factor. Absolutely. Right. And you need to know in this context, another key issue that has come up in the past couple of days. In fact, the past couple of months is the issue of voter suppression as well. So if you've seen Trump's comments on the postal service, but this is again part of a very long tradition of voter suppression that has happened in various states over the past many years and it is intensified over the past many years. So could you take us through what are the key issues around this right now? Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, Trump's comments in the postal service, I don't know if this is unprecedented. I'm not a historian, but I think it's the most open I've ever heard voter suppression in America discussed historically, except maybe the reconstruction period where white supremacists, just the 1870s now, you know, maybe the 1870s. So this is really a throwback to the most open, you know, history of voter suppression, especially the black community, which has a long history. I mean, in the wake of the Civil War, the emergence of black voters was a pivot question for a lot of political issues. And it really was the key issue for moving the country in a more progressive direction after the Civil War as opposed to towards the monopoly capitalism that it became. So the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South, which was done by ballot stuffing and murder, you know, people should look up the Wilmington riots of 1898, where there was just a whole city government just overthrown by a white supremacist mob. So there's a long history of this. In recent years, it's become a much bigger issue. Republicans, you know, really, since the Civil Rights Movement, but significantly for some time have, you know, really tried to use as a major part of their politics, the politics of racial grievance, the idea that for black, for white working class and middle class people to try to say, well, all of the problems of the neoliberal era are really because there's a limited pie and blacks have gotten more of the pie, as opposed to they used to and you're an immigrant now and you are failing because of that. And so in the past really, I would say, since about 1998, Republicans have developed an extremely sophisticated system of voter suppression that has been primarily based around purging people from the voting roles, creating a range of different, you know, maneuvers that basically mean that millions and millions of people have been subject to having their names removed. A lot of times they don't know that this has really happened or don't fully understand it until they show up to vote. Then you have to fill out something called a provisional ballot. Provisional ballots often aren't even fully counted. So, you know, there's a very large number of votes. Greg Palis is a journalist who's done much work on this since the year 2000, you know, of potentially millions and millions of people who've been denied the right to vote. And so Trump's saying that he wants to prevent the postal service from getting additional funds that will allow it to deal with many things, including the onslaught of mail-in ballots because of COVID-19. Most elections will probably be very heavily via mail, but we're not set up for that in this country, so the postal service needs more infrastructure as do the states. And Trump openly saying he wants to do this defunding of the postal service to prevent mail, to prevent people from voting. I mean, it really is that simple. He's claiming that the votes are off fraudulent, but obviously that's false. Larry Kudlow, who is the top economist at the White House, also said, same day as Trump says, I'm going to stop the mail-in ballots, he says that voting rights is part of a liberal wish list of Democrats that Republicans have no interest in. So, I mean, it really is a blatant direct assault because they have to limit the number of Black people, but also Asians and Latino people who vote because they're trying to do this explicitly racist appeal. And obviously if those people, you know, will come out and vote against the feeling that there's some, you know, potential, far-right white supremacist institution, they have to be able to limit that in order to give what they want. So here we're seeing, you know, yet again the unfolding of this terrible situation. But I mean, it's really miraculous. I mean, people who don't follow the United States closely, I think, for who's, you know, see what's on Voice of America or CNN or whatever, would be very surprised to know literally millions and millions of people have been disenfranchised. And many of the top architects of this are the biggest supporters of Trump in the country. And many of them are deeply ensconced in his campaign already. Absolutely. And how has the COVID-19 pandemic actually affected this issue? Because it has caused an insane amount of social chaos. The pandemic is still very much on. The number of cases are still in tens of thousands every day. So how is it likely to affect voting and mobilizing around this time? I think that it is the possibility of the election being a complete debacle is unfortunately relatively high. I mean, there's a range of issues. One issue that's not getting a lot of play in the press. Most people who work in elections are volunteers, but many people who volunteer are senior citizens. And so almost every jurisdiction in the United States is seeing a big drop in campaign workers because people who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 are, you know, not volunteering because they're concerned about their own health. And what we've seen so far in the primaries, most states are not providing the proper protections for campaign workers. So very much right there, we have a huge possibility for longer lines, bigger backlogs, and then there will be a greater push of vote by mail. But there isn't a lot of vote by mail in many states. And many states haven't even allowed it that much until recently, except in very narrow circumstances. So that means a whole new system. And what we saw, for instance, in a recent primary election in Kentucky was it literally took over a week to get the results. So we're in a situation where we'll have the election and people who know U.S. elections know you usually know the same night who won. We could be going weeks. We could have legal challenges against mail-in ballots. We could have legal challenges from progressive people around voter suppression and things like that. Plus, we don't know what's going to happen with the counting of the ballots. So I mean, there could be the impact of COVID-19, I think, could be to turn this an election into a long, drawn out, very bitter contest that could start to call into question some of the basic fundamentals of U.S. democracy, which seems impossible because the U.S. represents itself as such a shining beacon on a hill of democratic values. But it's very, very brittle and already because of what the Republicans have been saying regarding the mail-in ballots and because of the Russiagate towards Trump and what he's saying about the Postal Service, there will be a minority of the supporters of whoever loses who will not recognize the next president as legitimate. And I think that that in and of itself with COVID-19, with climate change, with the uprising against racism, potentially a very explosive situation in the fall. Thank you so much, Eugene, for talking to us. It's such a pleasure. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.