 Hi, and welcome to Rad TV. My name is Noah Detzer, and you're joining us on the last show of the year. If this is your first episode of Rad TV, I'll tell you a little bit about Rad. It stands for Rights and Democracy. Essentially, it's a people-powered grassroots organization dedicated to making long-lasting change. The idea is that we want to get involved on a personal level to advocate for the issues that matter to us. Tonight, we're going to be doing a little bit of a retrospective about the past year. Rad has done a lot, and there's been a lot going on over the course of this year. We're going to be joined tonight by James Haslam, who's the Executive Director, and Grant Taylor, who is a leader right here in Burlington, and the former host of Rad TV. Thank you both for joining us tonight. Just a little heads-up. We're going to be talking about a couple of things. First, the people's platform. It's been an ongoing process to develop basically what we, as an organization, really feel demonstrates the platform that we want to advocate for. That's causes, that's the way that we go about, making sure that people are hearing and understanding what we stand for, and advocating for them on a local level, all the way up to a national level. We're also going to be talking about the National Assembly. Basically, we got together in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and we'll be talking about that, as well as, finally, our endorsement process and how that all played out. First, James, thank you so much for joining us. James is joining us via Skype today, so we'll be seeing how that goes. James, thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. So, James, first, we just wanted to touch base about how the year has gone for you. I mean, how you feel Rad has developed, has changed, and what we can expect going forward. Yeah. Well, thanks, Noah. Thanks, Grant. It's been an exciting year, although obviously a challenging year. Rights and Democracy got started in 2016. We were trying to go full speed, getting ready for the election. We thought we'd have a little time to rest after that election and plan ahead, but with the national results, with Trump, et cetera, we ended up kind of just shifting it into a higher gear to be part of the resistance and the mobilization. And it's been, you know, frankly, quite a blur. But looking back, we've grown quite a bit. We're now getting stronger across the state, across both Vermont and New Hampshire, and going deeper into certain communities like Burlington, where more and more folks are getting involved. Not only to be part of bigger fights and statewide issues, but also local struggles. That's been definitely a big development over the last year. And as you said, at the membership assembly that just happened on December 10th in Lebanon, we were able to see hundreds of folks from both states get together and really think about how to strategically build this movement together in 2018. Yes, so we actually wanted to go into that a little bit and talk about how that went, just to kind of get your take on it. First, how did it go? How many people showed up? And ultimately, how did it compare to maybe previous years? Well, so this is the second one. You know, we got started towards the end of 2015 and we didn't have our first membership assembly until the end of 2016. So we had it actually in the same place. So it was easy to see how we had grown. We had over 50 more people. So the first time we had a little bit over 150 people, somewhere between 130, 150 people. And then this year we had well over 200 people. So clearly more people had gotten involved. It was actually kind of a snowy Sunday back on the 10th. So, you know, we felt pretty good about the level of participation, both the quantity of folks that came out, but also the quality. I mean, some really dedicated leaders that came out from places. And it's clear that we're strong in some areas. You know, Bennington, Vermont, you know, is incredibly well organized. We had, you know, caravans coming up from there and also the Monadnok region of New Hampshire, kind of the keen area. So both like the basically the southwestern corners of both states, we were incredibly strong and obviously in the big, you know, kind of urban-like areas of Burlington and Manchester and Concord and Montpelier and so on. There's also, you know, kind of strong representation. So it's definitely looking like, you know, we've made some big strides, but more excitingly for me is I feel like we're really well positioned to grow and take some big steps forward in 2018. That's awesome, yeah. And so looking ahead, as we're kind of going to be continuing on and continuing to push for the People's Platform, which we'll be talking about in just a second, what kind of changes do you hope to see in Rad next year and how can somebody who's watching this who wants to get involved but maybe doesn't necessarily know how, how can somebody get involved and what can they do? Well, you know, in Vermont, we're in an exciting position in 2018. There's, you know, this is the second year of a biennium. So we had an election in 2016, in 2017, a whole bunch of new people took office, including a new governor, but also a new Speaker of the House, a new Senate pro tem, you know, a lot of new legislative leaders. And we have, you know, a governor who's in the Republican Party, Governor Scott, but there's a strong majority in both the Senate and the House of Democrats and progressives. And this is a year where there's an opportunity to put forward some really old, you know, advances for working families. You know, they're talking very seriously about moving a minimum wage bill that would move a minimum wage much closer to a livable wage, closer to $15 an hour. And that is, you know, the kind of thing that would have a tremendous impact on thousands of families throughout the state and really have, you know, a broad impact, not only to the people who are earning a minimum wage, but, you know, tens of thousands of low-wage earners right now would be able to see, you know, thousands of dollars more and their income in that is the kind of policies we think is how our whole economy can thrive more. They're going to be also talking about paid family and medical leave insurance for everybody, which, you know, for any working parent out there, you know, knows it's next to impossible if you don't have paid leave. Be able to, you know, have a meaningful experience with your kids when they're born and not transition. Also, you know, medical leave important, you know, support for other dependents and family when they're in need. So that, you know, that is something that we think that Vermont can play a meaningful role in helping move our country in that direction. You know, also, you know, other important things like moving forward with the racial justice coalition's recommendations around, you know, eliminating bias in the justice systems. And there's a number of things that we think that the legislature can put on the governor's desk to pass that would be pushing our state in the right direction. And we hope that this can be, you know, really a year of a lot of progress in the first half of the year and then the second half of the year, you know, we look towards the 2018 election and there's an enormous opportunity to continue to move Vermont in the right direction. Our Senator Bernie Sanders will be up for reelection and hopefully we can have the right kind of debate about the future of the state. Right. Thanks so much, James. It's been really interesting to hear about that. And if you're watching at home and you've heard some of the issues that maybe you're interested in, Rights and Democracy continues to welcome and hope that you will take an active part in making those issues a reality. As we kind of go forward in the show, by the way, if you hear something and you want to talk with us, talk a little bit about that issue, please feel free to call in. The number is 862-3966. We look forward to hearing from you. At this point, we're going to segue a little bit into talking about the People's Platform. Grant, thank you so much for joining us tonight. And yeah, if you wanted to talk a little bit about, first, the development of the People's Platform and then just kind of your take on the process so far. Well, when I heard about the Burlington People's Platform, initially I was really psyched to have something that politicians that are going to be campaigning in the future can focus around. In incumbent politicians, they have their own platforms and everything, but this is something to unite, kind of a more progressive viewpoint around. And so to see that focused by Rights and Democracy on Burlington was kind of like a breath of fresh air after a lot of big issues when we're kind of dealt with in the past year and we didn't necessarily have the focus and capacity, like James was saying, there's a lot of crazy things going on and we're working in two different states. The staff is very small for covering two different states. So it's all on the volunteers, you know, after that the members to go out and get a lot of stuff done. So now they helped us to organize around a Burlington People's Platform, which was awesome. We had an initial meeting after some of the platform had been put together where the public was invited, the Burlington Organizing Team and Beyond was invited to come and provide feedback. Were you at that initial meeting? No. No. But the follow-up? Yeah, the follow-up. And so we had the initial meeting. A lot of great things were brought up that were not in the platform yet and so they were incorporated into different sections of the platform. And actually that platform is available at radbt.org. If you go look around there, I think you can find it pretty quickly. But yeah, so a lot of things got added the first meeting and then we were able to communicate with Rad to add more things. We had another meeting about a month, I think it was a month later, which you were at. And I mean, do you want to talk a little bit about that meeting? That was pretty exciting, a bigger meeting. Yeah, I mean, I think essentially it was at the follow-up meeting there was just a lot more of discussion about, okay, here's kind of the basic blueprint for what we're going to be trying to accomplish. Where do we go from here? How do we kind of take these individual facets of things that are important? Some of the issues that James mentioned earlier and how do we represent them in the platform in a way that first people can identify with and that gets people excited about, okay, this is what we believe in, this is how we're gonna go about making that happen, but then also about how do we work together to kind of work through the language and make sure that it comes across as kind of a democratic approach because I know for you and for me personally, I think a lot of the importance of developing something as a group is making sure it has that kind of small D democratic process involved. If it's a bunch of people kind of alone off in a room that doesn't really feel like that kind of basically like the type of change that we're looking for, the type of change that we're trying to advocate for on a local level. So, yeah, if you wanna talk a little bit about the process here and what made it so democratic, maybe good for our listeners to kind of... Well, I thought it was great how it initially started with a plan and they had the outline, but there was a lot of things that were brought up that maybe weren't focused on enough. So even whole sections were added and they took the feedback that was given by the people that showed up to the meetings and the people that sent them information electronically and they did change the platform a lot and they have an additional platform that is probably seven or eight pages long now that's not really the platform that's probably on the website but you can find a link to it on the website and that has many more of those ideas that were brought in by a lot of the different constituents that showed up to add input and that's what I thought helped to be democratic. It is also still evolving, I think and it's not set in stone yet which also is another testament to its kind of malleability and our ability to help add to it if we need to. And just kind of building off of that, I mean what you said in terms of it being malleable it's really been interesting to see it develop first just from kind of that initial draft and then it's really become kind of a living document that's been changing and kind of developing as it's gone forward. So it's been cool to see that happen and it's really been cool to see how people have responded to that most recently in our endorsement process with the mayoral candidates which we'll get to in just a second. James, I don't know if there was anything that you wanted to touch base about in regards to the people's platform but I figured I'd open it up if you had any comments there. Yeah, no, that's great. I really appreciated hearing your reports on it and you know, we did this is the first time I guess I will say that we've been able to do a local version of the people's platform. In Vermont, we have a statewide version you know, some of the issues I was referring to raising the minimum wage to a livable wage the family and medically you know, moving forward with universal healthcare starting with universal primary care you know, the racial justice system reforms that I spoke of, you know, and so on. So there's a whole kind of statewide agenda but the cool thing about what you're talking about is that you know, this local process of figuring out like what is the local things that we need to move forward with and some of the you know, there's a lot of things that impact us on a state level. There's a lot of things that certainly impact us on a federal level but it's amazing to think about how many of the most important things that impact our families are really determined on a local level and this is what that platform is meant to get at and it's a lot of great issue work that is done. People work on different issues housing, you know, environment, climate, different things. The thing that is exciting for us is an organization that really wants to have a full range of impact is being able to not only push for these issues but to push for them during the electoral process. So people that are running for office can be held accountable on this platform and then once they're elected, no matter who's elected we push forward with these issues and we win as much as can be won. So it's very exciting time in Burlington. Glad that not only you're talking about it but both of you have been part of that process. Thanks James. So yeah, it's been really interesting to see how the mayoral candidates have responded and I think this is as good a time as any to bring us to our last segment here all about the endorsement process. Once again, if you're watching and you have comments or want to chime in on anything that we're talking about the number is 8623966. So if you haven't heard Rights in Democracy officially endorsed Karina Driscoll in the race for mayor. So this process is really interesting to see Grant and I were both kind of on the front lines of seeing how this developed and basically how we got to the point of how RAD as an organization ended up endorsing Karina. So first, let's talk a little bit about the beginning of the process. Grant, if you want to talk about maybe how RAD went about kind of talking to the candidates and the process there. Yeah, so this is the second time that I've been a part of the process. A year ago, we endorsed a slate of candidates for state level positions along with a candidate for governor as well in November. And then so now this year, we're headed looking forward to town meeting day in March in Burlington and we're thinking about who are we going to support that's going to help us to implement the Burlington People's Platform. And so what we do initially is we send out a questionnaire to all of the candidates that might even want our endorsement. So we sent out three questionnaires and we received two back and one was from Karina Driscoll and the other from Infinite Coal Pleasure who's another candidate for Mayor of Burlington. And so after receiving both of those candidate questionnaires come back, we invited both of those candidates to come in for a video interview. So they would be interviewed by our leadership team in Burlington and then we'd record those interviews and send that out to everybody. The responses on the questionnaire and the interviews, the recorded interviews. And I thought that process leading up to who wanted the endorsement, how to kind of vet that they really wanted the endorsement and then to do the interview with them in a committee but also have that shared then on a voting platform with over 200 members of rights and democracy that live in Burlington. That was a really great way to kind of go through this process and I think it's the first time that we've done it that way and I think that was really, really great as far as making a commitment to democracy and participatory governance really. And these questionnaires were pretty extensive. There were a lot of kind of shorter answers targeted specifically towards elements of the people's platform but then also just the different issues, some of which James mentioned kind of earlier in the program but it was all about how the candidate would basically stood on those issues and then how they might or might not work with Rad kind of going forward to push advocacy in those specific areas. And just try to make sure that basically that these candidates are reflecting the values of the organization as a whole. So Infinite and Karina sent back the questionnaires. The current mayor, Mero Weinberger, sent back basically a letter talking a little bit about how he hoped to achieve various elements of the people's platform but did not specifically seek the rights and democracy endorsement. So when we got those back and kind of had conducted the video interviews, essentially we segued into the final part of the process. Do you want to talk a little bit about the actual voting there? So we opened up the voting. I think it was at the beginning of one day and we had it open for a day and a half, I think. So everybody got an email with an ID, a voting ID and specific to their identity from a platform and in that email they had the answers to the questionnaires from both candidates and the link to the video on the YouTube platform of the interviews. And so we let everybody get all that information and take their time, view it, look through everything and then cast their vote. And it was pretty interesting. We had to design a ballot to make sure there was obviously a vote for each candidate but then we had to decide if we wanted to put a vote for neither candidate and another section to do a write-in. And so we ended up going with all four options to try to give people the most real choice to voice their opinion in this and not force them into two boxes. And there was a lot of discussion about that too but ultimately, Rad came down on the side of, well, it's best to have as many options as possible so that people really feel like they're being heard and it kind of ties back to what we've been talking about all along, which is all about giving the power back to the people and having that small D-democratic process so that people really feel like their voices are being heard. Looks like we have a caller coming in. Caller, you are on air. It's got to vet it first. Vet it. Yeah. Just kidding, caller's not on air. So it looks like at this point, we'll just kind of segue it back. Essentially, in talking about this process, one of the other important components of it was about at the end, after we had received the votes, we kind of did a final wrap-up basically looking at, okay, in the end, Karina had won by a percentage of, I don't remember the exact percentage. So about 50 people out of 200 viewed the videos and checked out the information and voted and it was about, I think there was 33 people that voted for Karina and then something like 17 for Infinite and then I think two people, maybe four, I think it was two, wrote in Miro Weinberger's name, which was just good to see that people used that section of the ballot and then nobody checked in either candidate. So that was really neat to see the results come back. It was about a 63% for Karina and then about 33% for Infinite and something very interesting that I noticed about that and that we all felt, I think, was that one-third of the people, basically, that decided to vote chose Infinite and that was really clearly representative of a key part of this political revolution that we're trying to push for and this progressive social change. That's a part of our constituency that really voted for that person and so it shows that there's support for both candidates but clearly more support for Karina. So that was really neat to see the results come back and see what people voted and that 25% of the people that we sent out the information to voted and that was pretty good, I think, for the amount of time that we had it out there. Maybe if we had it out there for a little bit longer, it might have been more participation, I don't know. Yeah, but I think ultimately it was really interesting to see this process go forward and really see just how we could go about giving people access to be able to have a say in this process. And I think most importantly, it'd be really interesting to see how this process develops going forward. I thought this is my first time being a part of any kind of endorsement process and it seemed to work, at least on an initial level, just kind of based on the way that things played out but I think it'll also be interesting to see how it develops going forward in the future. I think perhaps maybe a little bit more time for people to vote would be good. In the end, we ultimately want as many people who want to have a say to be able to be heard and I think that's just one of those key parts of what RAD is trying to do here. So, yeah, Grant, any wrap-up thoughts about the endorsement? Well, I thought it was an extremely tough choice for everybody to make but in the end here, I see and heard directly from Karina and we have seen her history. She's been a school board member in Burlington. She was a city council member in Burlington and she was also a state representative many years ago now but she's ready to come back and do some more good work. So, she has a track record of doing some good things for the environment and for social justice and that's something that was really good to see. She was also a successful business owner. Actually, I believe it's a woodworking school with like 40 students or something which that just shows the ability to start and lead and manage people which I think that's a pretty important thing to have some experience with in the mayor's seat but at the same time, I thought that Infinite was a really great candidate as well and he's got a lot of experience that could be extremely applicable in the mayor's seat as well about really connecting to people in the community that are not often heard sometimes. What I found I think most powerful about this process was that both candidates spoke to the need for kind of a movement rather than just somebody getting elected. It's not really about the individual getting elected. It's more about the process involved and basically getting people to agree on a sequence of kind of values and the idea of like working together to get those things done. So I thought it was really effective that both candidates spoke about that and I think regardless of who wins, it'll be really interesting to see if that movement is actually able to take root and to develop as we go forward. Going into 2018, there's a lot going on, especially if you're in the Burlington area coming up. March 6th, I believe is going to be town voting day. So essentially we'll be talking about not only electing the mayor and as we mentioned Karina Driscoll won the Rad endorsement but we are also going to be electing to various different city councilors. All of those seats are going to be up for grabs and so some of those races are going to be particularly interesting and particularly close. So if you are interested in having a say, a couple of months ago we had Max Tracy who's a city councilor for Ward 2 on the program. Other city councilors have been here before as well and so it'll be really interesting to see how that shapes up and if you want to get involved, please check out radvt.org or to search rights and democracy we are a couple of places across the web so it shouldn't be too hard to find us there. But if you want to get involved, please do. We're always looking to work with people to try to make sure that the change that you want and the changes that you're looking for is actually enacted. So again, please seek us out radvt.org and we'll see how that goes. Yeah. Yeah, so awesome thanks for watching everybody. This is kind of the conclusion, the completion of two full years of monthly programming by rights and democracy, only to have been thwarted by a couple of elections or a holiday or two. But other than that, we're here and we're going to keep this going. Rights and democracy has grown as an organization like James was mentioning earlier. I was there at the Labor Day Party two and a half years ago. It's been quite a change and it's been great to be a part of too. So again, like Noah was saying, you can check out the website. You can give money if you want to, if you think that's the easiest thing for you to do. But for me, it's been showing up and just donating my time. And I think that that's extremely important. That's the capacity that Noah's here in and we really appreciate everybody that's volunteering and doing anything to help with events or Canvas or a phone bank or anything. So yeah, come be a part of it. Come on Rad TV if you want. Come be in the audience and stuff and yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of ways to get involved. If you want to run for office, there's a movement politics training that we do basically getting candidates ready to run. I took the training back in September and found it really interesting, really helpful and it ultimately led me to win a race in November. And so ultimately we're making change and if you want to be a part of that change, we look forward to working with you. Thanks.