 So, we're gonna actually do something a little bit different today. We are going to talk about something positive. I'm going to share some good news with you because as you all know, last week on the program we talked about the Seattle City Council race occurring in District 3, where Amazon tried to defeat socialist Shama Sawant by pouring more than 1.4 million into that small race. Now at the time when I talked about that, it seemed as if she was defeated and the corporatists was going to pull through. Although once the mail-in ballots came in, well turns out Shama pulled ahead and she ended up winning. So I just want you to pause and really think about the ramifications of this. Amazon, a large multi-billion dollar company, poured more than a million dollars into a local election and they still lost. In normal circumstances, 1.4 million, I mean anything over 100,000 is substantial in a small race. But it just really goes to show you that what Shama did was remarkable. And this is important because it has implications for the 2020 election and what Bernie Sanders wants to do. Because as I laid out in that video where we talked about the results of this election was that what Shama is doing essentially is she's replicating what Bernie Sanders says he wants to do, albeit at a local level. So Bernie Sanders says the policies like Medicare for All, Green New Deal, which will be incredibly difficult to get past, we're going to need grassroots organization like a people powered movement to actually rise up in cities across the country to get this past. Well, what Shama has been doing is effectively that same thing, but in Seattle, she has more small grassroots donors than anybody else and she's actually been very effective. She was the leader of the Fight for 15 and she got that passed in Seattle. So what she's doing here really matters and the fact that Amazon, a behemoth like them, couldn't even defeat her. That just demonstrates that this strategy, organizing this a bottom up approach to politics, this is our ticket to victory. Now Bernie Sanders tweeted about Shama saying Jeff Bezos and Amazon spent 1.5 million to defeat progressives like vote Siwan. They should have kept their money. The people of Seattle want leaders who will fight to end corporate greed to make big corporations pay their fair share and for affordable housing. So I love that there's this solidarity, you know, progressives from the national level to the local level understand that we are all in this together. This is a national movement and every single race matters. Now on top of that, on top of the Shamas want race, there's another race where progressives had a major victory with Chesa Boudin, who is running to be district attorney in San Francisco. And as Julia Conley of Common Dreams reports, Chesa Boudin, a public defender and the son of parents who were incarcerated when he was a child, won San Francisco's election for district attorney, promised to confront mass incarceration, institutionalized racism and police violence in the city. In voting for this campaign, Boudin told the Washington Post, the residents of San Francisco have demanded radical change and rejected calls to go back to the tough on crime era that did not make us safer and destroyed the lives of thousands of San Franciscans. Boudin ran against interim district attorney Susie Loftus, who previously served as a police commissioner before stepping into the role just weeks ago and had the support of the California's Democratic Party and several establishment figures. Boudin had won the support of Senator Bernie Sanders and other progressives with his pledges to eliminate cash bail, implement restorative justice programs to help end mass incarceration and introduce community based initiatives to reduce gun violence. Now he won and the establishment was against him, and this is a position that was formerly held by none other than Kamala Harris. Now another really important DA, Larry Krasner, tweeted about this, saying, Americans are more humane and compassionate than institutions created and controlled by the powerful few. Our movement for a truly just system that supports the well being of all communities has a new technician in Chesa Boudin. Congratulations. Bernie Sanders also tweeted about this, saying, now is the moment to fundamentally transform our racist and broken criminal justice system by ending mass incarceration, the failed war on drugs and the criminalization of poverty. Congratulations to Chesa Boudin on your historic victory. So all around this is fantastic news. And I want to share a video that his campaign shared where his team found out that he won. And this is just a moment of pure human happiness that is so wholesome that I couldn't not share it with you because their happiness here is absolutely contagious. Take a look. That is so great. So listen, there's more where that came from. If we organize, if we put in the time now, I promise you, it will pay off in the future. It's just a matter of us all coming together, understanding that grassroots activists, we are one, right? This is not some desegregated movement where we're working against each other, where we have different goals. We are all doing what we can to unrig the system and change American culture and institutions permanently, right? To undo the damage that American capitalism has caused and whether you are a democratic socialist or social democrat or capitalist progressive either way, understand that we are all fighting together. And people on the ground, these organizers who are doing the time like putting in the effort that I'm not doing, we really have to understand that their contribution is larger than anyone else's. People who oftentimes don't get credit, but they are the ones who are making this possible. And we absolutely should understand and appreciate their contribution because they're fighting for all of us. You know, their victories, you know, these victories of Chesa Boudin and Shama Suwant would not be possible without boots on the ground. And we're not talking militarily. We're talking about people knocking on doors, making phone calls, putting in the time to really make sure that we defeat these highly, you know, bankrolled incumbents who are entrenched within the system, who are trying to cling to power desperately. Now, on top of all of this, all of that good news we got came with the release of Lula de Silva, who was a political prisoner in Brazil, who was released and endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders. So all around we got a lot of really fantastic news as progressives, and this was something that we all needed. Because oftentimes, you know, this situation and the outlook in American politics, it's so grim that you can't help but be overly cynical. And I'm definitely, you know, part of that as well. But every once in a while, we have to step back and really just appreciate what we've managed to accomplish. Right. We haven't won the war yet, but all of these individual battles, they are incredibly important. And it really speaks to the staying power of our movement. Right. There was the Occupy movement where we felt like that really was the start of change in this country. And then that kind of died out. And then there was, you know, Bernie Sanders in 2016 and then he lost. But what we need to understand is that all of these things were a build up to what's happening now, right? The floodgates are opening and change is coming. And we are the ones who are facilitating that change because we are fighting and we're not giving up. So take the time to appreciate all that people on the ground and you have managed to accomplish and understand that change is possible and victory is within our grasp. We just have to fight for it and fight hard and losing once in a while. That may be demoralizing, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the battle is over. We just have to keep trying and things like this will happen.