ourVoices

Andra Gillespie is a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

On 5 January, a special Senate run-off election in the ‘Deep South’ state of Georgia will determine the future of Biden’s presidency. Will the new president be able to pass badly needed COVID relief; take action on climate change, racial justice and much more?

The voters of Georgia will decide the crucial power balance in the US Senate – and right now, the polls are neck and neck.

Ahead of the vote, we’ve been talking to friends, family, political experts and regular people across the state. They’ve told us how record-breaking sums of cash are piling into Georgia; of fierce battles over voter suppression, corruption and dirty tricks – and of how millions of Black, Brown and younger voters are mobilising in this historic race.

We’ve spoken with the trailblazing Nse Ufot of the New Georgia Project about how grassroots organisations like hers have registered millions of new voters. Investigative journalist Greg Palast has told us about how he uncovered documents showing widespread voter suppression.

We’ve heard from Republican lawyers waging war on the state’s voting system; from elusive ‘swing voters’ – and from citizens just struggling to survive.

As we’ve been discovering, the story of Georgia is both a story of what’s deeply broken in American politics – and of how dramatic change is possible, fast.

In this ourVoices special, openDemocracy’s Editor in Chief Mary Fitzgerald travels 1,400 miles across the midwestern United States with North America editor, Aaron White.

Their journey starts on the eve of the US election in the city of Louisville, Kentucky – where Mary’s family has lived for generations – and ends on the east coast in Philadelphia, right as jubilant crowds are proclaiming Biden the winner.

Despite the carnival, they found a country facing a dark winter; with nearly half a million COVID deaths projected by year-end, and an economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression. People from all walks of life say they desperately need unity and leadership.

Jecorey Arthur is the soon to be youngest member ever elected to the City Council of Louisville in the state of Kentucky. He’s also a professor and a musician.

With over 8.5 million cases, and nearly 225,000 deaths, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the cruel dysfunctionality of the US healthcare system.

Aaron White and Freddie Stuart are joined by David Adler, the policy director of the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) and General Coordinator of the newly launched Progressive International – a global initiative with a mission to unite, organize and mobilize progressive forces around the world. 

The conversation dives into the current state of the international left, the threat of another Trump term, and the strategy of the Progressive International moving forward.  

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The police murder of George Floyd in the US sparked Black Lives Matter protests in every continent in the world. Combined with the global pandemic and the climate catastrophe – both of which are highly racialised - they have led many people to fundamentally question the deepest structures of our political economy.

This week’s guest is the academic philosopher, and political theorist, Charles W. Mills. 

Mills is a professor at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the author of multiple books – most famously The Racial Contract published in 1997. 

This conversation, between Charles Mills, and ourEconomy’s Europe Editor, Laura Basu, delves into the concepts of racism and capitalism – dissecting the historical role of the nation state, and asking whether any form of capitalist system requires racial differentiation and thus racial discrimination.

The United States is facing a severe housing crisis. 

As millions are laid off around the country, there is not a single US state where the number of affordable homes to let matches the number of low-income people looking to rent.

Where people can find shelter, three quarters of all extremely low-income families pay more than half their income in rent.

With eviction moratoriums now lifting across the country and Congress stalling over a new relief package, recent reports suggest that up to 43 million Americans could face eviction in the coming months.

Jen Perelman is challenging former head of the Democratic National Committee and current Florida 23rd congressional district representative Debbie Wasserman Shultz in a primary election on August 18th.

In the US today, the number of households who are renting is near postwar highs. Since the 2008 recession, home ownership has dropped by 6%. While 17% of households pay over half their income in rent, another fifth pay over a third. 

This housing crisis has been further exposed during the current coronavirus pandemic.  With record rates of unemployment, and 30 million workers collecting jobless benefits, the tenuous precarity of America’s housing market is on full display. But how did it get to this point? 

In the first part of our two-part documentary podcast on the US housing crisis, we dig deeper into the history of US housing policy, and place the negligence of Trump’s tenure in the context of decades of disinvestment and privatization by successive administrations. 

This week’s guest on ourVoices is the billionaire philanthropist, environmental activist, and former presidential candidate, Tom Steyer.

Since leaving the corporate sector, Steyer has pursued an active political career.

In 2013 he launched the nonprofit organization NextGen America, which mobilizes young people to vote for Democratic candidates who back progressive positions on climate change, immigration, and education.

Last year, Steyer launched his own outside bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Running on a platform that forefronted the climate crisis, he also advocated for a wealth tax and reparations for slavery.

Michael Brooks was a renowned journalist, intellectual, and political satirist.

Best known for his work with the Majority Report and for hosting The Michael Brooks Show, Brooks was an outspoken activist for social justice and human rights across the world.

Kshama Sawant is a socialist member of the Seattle City Council.

Elected in 2013, Sawant has championed increasing the minimum wage and higher taxes on multinational corporations.

We are connected on a planetary scale. The same process that has allowed the coronavirus pandemic to spread so far so quickly – globalisation – also means that all our resources, our infrastructure, our food, energy, clothing, our electronic devices, almost everything human-made that we see around us, contains some component that someone from somewhere else has worked on. Our economy is global. It affects not only every human but also every animal, our climate and every aspect of our environment.

Yet most media coverage of the economy focuses on the national level, and when problems like global inequality, poverty or underdevelopment do get attention, they are often treated as the result of natural forces, or as resulting from corruption or bad governance in developing countries.

In this episode of ourVoices, Laura Basu digs into the structures of the global economy to understand why it is that some parts of the world have so much more wealth and power than others. 

This interview with Bhaskar Sunkara is the latest in our series exploring the policies and trends influencing the US election.

Bhaskar is the founding editor and publisher of Jacobin magazine. He is also the former vice-chair of Democratic Socialists of America and author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.

We discussed the resurgence of the term “democratic socialism” in US politics and the future of the Democratic party beyond 2020.

Lauren Ashcraft is running for the US House to represent New York’s 12th congressional district. The district encompasses the wealthiest zip code in the United States – the Upper East Side – as well as parts of lower Manhattan and western Queens. She is primarying Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who is serving her 14th term in Congress and is the current chair of the House Oversight Committee.

A comedian and former project manager for JP Morgan Chase, Ashcraft identifies as a democratic socialist, advocating for a Green New Deal, Medicare-for-All, canceling student debt and universal child care.

She has been endorsed by Brand New Congress, former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, and the New York chapter of US Youth Climate Strike.

We interviewed Lauren several months ago in Long Island City, Queens where we discussed the staggering levels of wealth inequality within the district and her top legislative priorities if she were to win her race. 

Alex Morse is the current Mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts, and a progressive candidate running to be the Democratic nominee in Massachusetts’ 1st congressional district.

At the age of 22, Alex Morse was elected the youngest mayor of Holyoke and is currently serving his fourth term as mayor.

Morse is seeking to oust long serving Democratic incumbent, Representative Richard Neal – the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and one of the most powerful Democrats in DC. The primary election is set to take place on September 1st.

Endorsing a Green New Deal, Medicare-for-All, legalization of marijuana and decriminalizing sex work, Morse’s campaign has received backing from progressive organisations such as Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement.

What follows is an abridged version of an interview we conducted with Morse in his hometown of Holyoke back in February. The discussion centers around the challenges and imperatives of primarying entrenched incumbents to enact a substantive progressive policy agenda.

Samelys López is running to represent New York’s 15th congressional district. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the South Bronx, Lopez is looking to replace Congressman José Serrano who is retiring due to Parkinson's disease.

Endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Socialists of America, the Working Families Party, Sunrise and other progressive organizations – López is consolidating coveted support in this packed primary set to take place on June 23rd.

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Samelys López a couple months ago, in a hispanic cafe in the South Bronx. From emphasizing how her lived experience of homelessness has informed her support for a national Homes Guarantee, to the inspiration that she has taken from the “squad” – Lopez discusses why political representation should center those who are most oppressed.

Shahid Buttar is running to represent California's 12th congressional district. He is challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has not faced a Democratic opponent in 30 years.

In March, Buttar came in second in California’s nonpartisan blanket primary, winning himself a place on the ballot in November.

A graduate of Stanford Law School, Buttar built a national progressive legal network at the American Constitution Society to help correct the conservative bias in federal courts. He also worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, advocating digital rights for policy issues such as mass surveillance and encryption.

Buttar endorses a Green New Deal, Medicare-for-All, guaranteeing housing to all Americans, and overhauling the military-industrial complex.

Last week, we interviewed Buttar to discuss how the pandemic has affected his insurgent campaign and why he believes a change of leadership is required to combat America’s socio-economic crises.

In the second part of our series on the US election, we had the pleasure of speaking with Raj Patel: the award winning author, film-maker and academic, who is currently a research professor at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Austin, Texas.

Raj Patel has written several books including The Value of Nothing which was an international and New York Times bestseller, and most recently A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, co-written with Jason W. Moore.

This extended conversation covers a range of topics, from the labor mobilizations crucial to implementing the original New Deal, to why reparations are central to an equitable climate agenda.

The US economy is currently facing its greatest crisis in a generation. Due to the coronavirus, the Federal Reserve has warned that unemployment could reach 30% and the economy could experience a downturn on a scale which has not been seen since the Great Depression. In Washington, a program of large scale public investment is being considered on both sides of the aisle as a way to revive a floundering economy. Congress has already injected more than $2.3 trillion into the US economy, with billions being doled out to the highest carbon emitting industries, such as fracking and airline companies.

At this crucial moment, should we really be trying to restore business as usual? Or does the scale of the environmental crisis mean that we need to put our economy on a fundamentally new path?

In this second episode of ourVoices series on the US election, Aaron White and Freddie Stuart explore the extensive influence of fossil fuel companies in American politics, and examine the growing consensus that is finally emerging around a transformative Green New Deal agenda.

Aaron White and Freddie Stuart speak with Wilfred Chan, a writer and organizer living in New York. He previously worked as a journalist in Hong Kong. Chan has been featured in The Nation, Dissent Magazine, The Intercept and is a contributor at Lausan – a collective of writers, researchers, activists and artists sharing decolonial left perspectives on Hong Kong. 

Our discussion covers the US/China relationship, the recent wave of protests in Hong Kong and how they connect to the broader backlash against neoliberalism all around the world.

The US government spends nearly $1 trillion on defense annually, more than the next eight countries combined. This spending fuels a military industrial complex with a network of nearly 800 bases around the globe, while employing millions of workers domestically. In this first episode of ourVoice’s special series on the US election, Aaron White and Freddie Stuart explore the influence of the military industrial complex on the US economy and foreign policy.