In the wealthiest nation this universe has ever seen,
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the universe,
we can afford for everybody to live in abundance.
I think it is the universe.
I've been out there, I’ve checked.
Hello my guest today is Solana Rice,
who is co-founder and co-executive director of
Liberation in a Generation Action.
So delighted to have you, Solana.
I really want to find out from you what organizers do most successfully.
What is it that an organizer, the best organizers do
when they go into a community and build relationships around hope?
I think the best organizers, for one, are from the communities.
I'm always looking for the people who are already in the community,
and who are trusted, and who are influential.
There's no substituting trusted brokers.
Because, you know, we're not always going to win.
And even when we lose, there are, we have made strides forward.
And I think that's what's honestly,
the next step for many of our political parties
is to realize,
those trusted relationships have to be there day-in and day-out.
You know, Moe Mitchell of the Working Families Party, for example,
talks about the sandcastles that we build during an election cycle.
We’re like, “Okay, stand up everything,
put up the signs,
put up the spaces.
Okay, election’s over. Tear all down.”
Community organizers don't do that.
They're there day-in and day-out.
They're there,
and I'm old enough to remember the Alinsky movement,
I mean, where Saul Alinsky was saying,
“You get into those communities, you build relationships
and you talk about
and focus on things that are really important to people.
You don't talk about ideology.
You don't talk about political parties.
You talk about the bread-and-butter issues.”
That's right.
What is it that people are worried about?
And I will say,
I find that when we are talking to organizers now,
what they're saying
is that people in their communities
want to be talking about the role of racism.
They want to be talking about
why these problems exist.
When you talk about racism, isn't it the case that
a lot of the racism that is being pushed in our society
is being pushed because
you've got some very powerful forces
that want to keep people divided,
don't want people
to see where all the power has gone,
see where all the money has gone?
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
You know, Toni Morrison talks about,
that racism will no longer be useful when it stops being profitable,
when it stops being psychologically useful,
and it stops being profitable.
And I think that racism keeps us fearful.
It is psychologically useful because it says that
that somebody else is to blame for why I'm struggling.
It's the fear and it's the othering.
Yeah.
Both of them together.
So that would also include anti-Semitism.
Yeah.
I mean, it's including every of the efforts
that are being made
to divide us, to make us fearful,
to create a kind of a society that is very divided and very angry.
Yeah.
And we've codified this,
we've started to codify this in policies.
And I think people are ready to start saying,
“Look, we've gone too far,
all of us are suffering.”
In the wealthiest nation in this universe has ever seen,
and I'm going to go out on a limb and say the universe,
we can afford for everybody to live in abundance.
I think it is the universe.
I’ve been out there,
I've checked.
We are the wealthiest society in the universe
and we've never been as wealthy.
But do we need,
in terms of getting people to come together,
do we need a common enemy, a villain?
Do we need to say that there is an oligarchy
that really wants us to be split apart so we don't
basically have the numbers
to impose a wealth tax, for example?
In other words,
how important in getting people together
is it to get them to turn
against a real force out there
that is shafting them?
I think it's important to name a villain.
I think that's a first step, though.
What we are fighting against is the role —
the role that these folks hold.
We are fighting against the assumptions that we have to work in fear,
that we don't live in abundance,
that everybody doesn't deserve dignity.
So it is about naming a villain,
but then it's also about understanding and fighting against
the assumptions and beliefs
that uphold those villainous roles.
We've got to educate people about the system
in terms of the incentives that are built in –
baked into the system – that are working against most people.
And how do you begin to do that?
In other words, what we're doing,
you and I right now, is we're trying to drill into
the process of educating people to come together.
But how do you get people to understand
the system’s dynamics?
I think folks understand the system’s dynamics.
I think
everyday folks might not know
about the role of the Federal Reserve chair,
but I don't think that's necessary, actually.
Good.
Exactly.
Because I was starting to worry.
What I think is necessary is that
folks that do know the power of the [Federal Reserve] chair
start to use our role to help
get those folks,
regular folks, as policy experts.
I mean, you have to admit,
the idea that
a woman that was a bartender and a waitress
is now in our Congress – and she’s
rallying thousands and millions of people –
that's exciting, right?
Imagine if you and I
just knew regular folk that were actually making policy decisions.
And that's what,
at Liberation in a Generation and Liberation in a Generation Action,
that's what ignites us —
is that the people that are experiencing housing insecurity,
the people that are experiencing wage theft and wage loss,
they’re policy experts.
They experience the injustices day-in and day-out.
They know the holes in our economy.
They do.
They know it's “rigged,” in a sense.
But, here's the problem;
A Donald Trump,
or an authoritarian personality like Trump
comes in and says,
“You know, it's rigged.
It's rigged against you.
I am going to be your voice and I'm going to cut through all of this awfulness.”
Yeah.
And what I'm so excited about
is that we are telling people,
“Don't let anybody speak for you,”
that we are here to broker this relationship.
So I'll give you an example.
We've been working with the folks at National People's Action.
They have a homes guarantee campaign —
this campaign generated directly from public housing tenants.
They are the ones that know about evictions.
They are the ones that know about how
Housing and Urban Development [HUD]
runs their public housing.
So we are there to broker a relationship between
the highest officials at HUD,
directly with public housing tenants.
That's our job, right?
And when we empower those folks to walk into those conversations,
we don't say, “Don't worry, we'll handle this.
We've got the talking points. You tell your story.”
No, we say, “Here are all the policy options.
Which ones sound right to you?
You present those to the director of HUD.”
And that's what I'm talking about,
is that anybody,
listening, can play that kind of role.
I have a confession to make.
I was once a cabinet member
in the United States government.
I ran a big federal agency,
and I was in conversations with a lot of people.
A lot of people. A lot of average working people.
A lot of poor working people.
And they were in the same room as me and they would tell me what they knew.
And I would say, “Yes, you're right.”
Yeah.
And then what?
I had very limited options.
Yeah.
How do you break out of that?
It's an inside and outside game, right?
We can't just go to D.C. and expect
that meeting,
or even a series of meetings to change.
We have to anticipate that we are building power
in order to change
those dynamics that you're facing
as a cabinet secretary.
Right? On the outside, too.
So in other words,
I, as a cabinet member, need those people out there to push me.
Yes.
And give me —
Exactly.
— the power
so I can turn to the
structures that are making it very difficult
for me to do anything
and say, “Look, they're pushing me.”
Yes, that's right. That's it.
It's really simple Bob.
But wait a minute!
Wait a minute! What's the timeline?
How long is it going to take?
I mean, what are we actually envisioning,
in terms of our model
for people,
becoming empowered enough to change the system?
10 years? 20 years? 80 years?
A generation, in our generation Bob.
Like 22 to 25 years.
But you know what that means?
It means that we can't tinker around the edges.
We can't say,
“We're going to do small things to the tax code.
We're going to do small things to corporate regulation.”
Like, we don't have time.
We don't have time.
So you say 25 years!
I mean, I'll be 100!
I’ll wait, but if you guarantee that things are really going to change.
Well, that's what I'm also hopeful too, is that,
you know, there was a lot of talk in this midterms
about the younger generations turning out.
And the reason why we did have some wins
and things weren’t as bad as we thought
was because younger generations turned out.
And so I do think it is incumbent upon all of us to equip younger folks
with this understanding about systems —
about, it's not necessarily just the person you’re fighting,
it's the actual structure that we're fighting.
And,
this balance of, like, it's not going to happen overnight.
We are living in racialized capitalism today.
We can have a foot in something different for tomorrow,
but we shouldn't just say,
“Uhhhh, it just won't happen.”
We can't put up our hands.
Cynicism is the enemy of real, important social change.
My grandparents could have never imagined the world that I live in.
And so I'm trying to build a world that
my son could have never imagined he would live in.
Right? Or that I would see for him.
And it's not about what I'm going to see in my lifetime.
It's about what he's going to see, what his kids are going to see.
And we have to have a little faith in that.
It's a — just like a little sprinkle of faith.
We've got to have faith that we're on the right route.
Yeah. And it's not for the faint of heart. It really isn't.
And it's hard.
It's a challenge to walk a path towards economic liberation.
We've never seen it.
We've never seen it in this nation.
There's no blueprint.
But it’s still a venture worth going on.
Solana Rice —
thank you for your vision,
your optimism,
your faith,
and your work.
Thanks.