Spirit in Action

Progressive Voice for Democracy Matt Rothschild

A powerful advocate for democracy and progressive causes, Matt Rothschild led The Progressive Magazine for most of 32 years, and in now Executive Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Matt has a birds-eye view of the nuts and bolts of government, elections, & the success or failure of democracy.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 01 May 2016
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along I'm really excited to have Matt Roth's child here today for Spirit in Action. If you didn't know him before, you're about to be dramatically enriched by his knowledge and perspective and his deep experience in working for the best Wisconsin and USA are capable of. He was editor of the Progressive Magazine for most of the 32 years he spent there, and this year he's joined the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign as Executive Director, a great organizer and voice for the best progressive ideas and efforts of our nation. Matt Roth's child joins us by phone from Madison, Wisconsin. Matt, thank you so much for joining me today for Spirit in Action. Oh, it's my pleasure to be on your show. I'm flattered that you've decided to call me and I'm looking forward to this conversation. After so many years working with the Progressive, how does it feel to be sitting in a new seat? Well, I'm very honored to be here as the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which does such important work here in Wisconsin to combat the corrupting power of money and politics, and to try to clean up the government, we're also working with a lot of other pro-democracy nonprofits in this state to try to roll back the counter-revolution that Scott Walker has set into motion here. It's really important work at an urgent time and I'm glad to be joining it. It certainly was bittersweet to leave the Progressive where I worked for 32 years, and most of that time I was editor and publisher of this great publication that's been around since 1909 and was founded by fighting Bob La Follette. And I'm not the person in the world who likes change the most. I have some radical politics, but I kind of have a conservative personality in that I don't change very easily, and it took me a long time to figure out how to get out of the Progressive, because I wanted to leave because I accomplished pretty much what I wanted to accomplish there, and I didn't have really the skill set to bring the Progressive across the digital divide, and I was kind of tired of the battle there, the financial battle of keeping the Progressive going, which was always a battle even before the Internet, and keeping a print publication going in the day and age of the Internet is no easy task either. But I was able to execute a transition and pass the baton on to Ruth Connor, who's just doing an amazing job over there as the editor of the Progressive. She's on MSNBC a lot with Ed Schultz. She's a tremendous spokesperson for Progressive values. She's championing public education right now, which has been in the crosshairs, not only of Scott Walker, but of privatizers across the country. So it's flourishing without me, which I'm delighted to see. Well, it's big shoes that she has to fill, so I'm sure she's doing a great job, Ruth is, but I really want to honor you for your length of service there, making a real difference in Wisconsin. Well, I appreciate it, and we all have different footwear, so I don't think she has to fill my shoes, just as I don't think I have to fill my CABE shoes over here at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. We do honor our predecessors, and I think Mike has done a terrific job over here from the 15 years that he was here, but he too wanted to transition. And I think it's important in nonprofits that there is a logical succession in place, and that people just don't hang on forever until they die. It's important to let new leadership in, and certainly, I tried to do that with Ruth, and Mike has done that now with me. There's certainly different job functions being part of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign from the work that you were doing as editor of the Progressive, but how does the content differ? Did you have to get up to speed on certain stuff in order to step into those shoes? Well, yeah, there are different areas of specialization, but there are a lot of things in common. Let me talk about those first. First of all, the values and the politics, the things we stand for, democracy, fighting corporate power, letting the people really rule. Those are essential elements, both of the progressive and of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. And some of the tasks are the same, speaking in public, writing, editing, and also just figuring out what's going on as far as the issues go. And the different skillset was just really focusing here on this specific narrow subject of campaign finance reform, which I had read about in grasp at some vague level at the progressive, but I didn't really have my handle on all the intricacies of campaign finance law from the Buckley versus Vallejo decision in the 1970s, all the way up through Citizens United decision and the McCutcheon decision. So I had to go bone up on that stuff and also look at Wisconsin's own statute on campaign finance, which I'd never looked at before, in which, by the way, the Republicans in the state capital are busy rewriting and trying to gut right now. They want to raise the limits or destroy the limits on campaign contributions so that people can give almost unlimited amounts and they want to have less disclosure as opposed to more disclosure. So there are a lot of issues that I've just started to delve into here statewide. Another is the Government Accountability Board. You know, I knew vaguely what the Government Accountability Board was. It's the board that governs elections and ethics and lobbying, but I didn't know the intricacies of that, and I had to wrap my head around that. So it's okay. It's good at my age, 56, to get a little bit of change and to study new things. And I'm also a cancer survivor four years ago at Hodgkin's lymphoma, and I've recovered from that, but, you know, it's good for the brain to keep on moving. And so it's been an exciting move over the last four months to come over here. Well, I'm glad you've been able to come off well dealing with the cancer. How does that affect you today? What does that change in the way that you work, what you think about, what you're pursuing? Well, it makes me just want to appreciate every day. I'm all about having fun every day, enjoying life every day, and I do that. I'm a bird watcher. I watch birds every morning. I feed the birds every morning. We moved out to the country. My wife and I did a year ago to the town of Don. We're on seven and a half acres. There's 50,000 protected acres of DNR lands. And so I get all sorts of woodpeckers and cardinals and chickadees and nut hatches in the winter time and also had a Carolina rent that I was feeding dried mealworms all winter long and kept it going. That was a beautiful, unusual bird to have right outside my window every morning. So that was fun. And now the migration of the warblers and the oil is about to come through and that's the happiest several weeks of my year always. But, you know, birds keep me happy. My wife keeps me happy. I play basketball at lunchtime three days a week. I play tennis once a week. I play poker in the evenings. A couple of times a week I try to enjoy life every day. Also, you know, when you get a cancer diagnosis, it's a shot across the bow. You realize you're not going to be here forever. You know, you get to realize that work isn't the most important thing. You know, I was working 60 hours a week for about 25 years over there at the Progressive. You know, I'm working hard here at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, but it's not the last thing I think about when I go to sleep and the stuff I have nightmares about at night. And the first thing I worry about when I get up in the morning, so I'm enjoying things a little more right now. Great. You mentioned the Carolina Wren. Is that a sign of global warming that you see it by Madison, Wisconsin? Well, it's occasionally been wintering in Northern Illinois and in Wisconsin. I remember my uncle had a Carolina Wren at his house in Northbrook, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. One Christmas must have been now 45 years ago. So they do occasionally come up here. I do think global warming has extended the range of a lot of birds. For instance, mockingbirds are seen almost every year now in Wisconsin, and a mockingbird is a southern bird. And so it's unusual and was very odd that it's been coming up to Wisconsin. And then I do think we're going to see a whole different variety of birds up here, which may be interesting for the casual bird watcher, but it's a distressing sign because it shows us what's happening to our environment with global warming. And some birds aren't going to survive very well. In fact, the Audubon Society has put out a study showing the birds that are going to be jeopardized by global warming because their habitat is going to vanish, and they may not be able to find the habitat that they need quickly enough to survive. And some of that information is also in the book, The Sixth Extinction, which is an incredible book on global warming, which I highly recommend by Elizabeth Colbert. K-O-L-B-E-R-T. She's a terrific writer for The New Yorker. And that book, more than any book on global warming that I've read, is really ripping from a scientific standpoint, but also alarming as to how quickly the shifts are going on and how hard it's going to be for species, not just birds, but other species to adapt. Now, we're going to be talking a lot about your involvement, which has been in Wisconsin, but certainly is very aware of the other states, the whole temperature of the nation. You testified just recently about that proposed Wisconsin campaign finance law that, as you said, the Republicans are evidently getting ready to gut. How did you get in to testify? I would imagine that there's a lot of folks who didn't want to hear what you had to say. Well, I was honored to be half-decentified, never testified officially anywhere before any government body, so I was excited to do it, and a little nervous about doing it, but it was kind of thrilling. I had been speaking with some of the state Democratic legislators who are on the committees on campaigns and elections, and they got word that the Republicans who chair those committees wanted to have an open hearing and informational hearing on the campaign finance statute in Wisconsin, and they were asked by the Republican chairman and chairwoman to get a couple witnesses, ask a couple witnesses that could represent more progressive views, and then the Republicans had three or four witnesses that represented, you know, let people spend as much as possible view, and so I got an invitation from the Republican chair, and actually I sent him a thank you note after I testified a thank you email, and then he sent me a thank you note, and written that I have up here on my wall, so it was very kind of polite in a Wisconsin way, but I really tried to not mince my words when I got there up to the desk with the microphone and just said, "Look how corrupt our system is." I cited several examples of corruption of elected officials, several of them, examples of Republican corruption, one example of Democratic corruption, and they let me just give my whole testimony, so I was able to be able to do that. Did they all cheer for you? I mean, I believe this is really crucial information you were sharing. I read the testimony and I was impressed. This isn't just your opinions. This is, here's what happened. Right. Well, they didn't give me a standing ovation by any stretch of the imagination, but they let me get my testimony to ask a few questions afterwards, none of which were particularly rude, certainly. None were rude at all, and they weren't stumping me either, so it all went over peacefully, but yeah, what I had to say in here is essentially, you know, our system is corrupt. There's a sea of dark money that's drowning our democracy here, and if you let people spend more money and decrease the disclosure, it's just going to make Wisconsin less of a democracy than it is now, and I just warned them, "Look, we're on the march to plutocracy, rule by the rich, and don't send us further down this dangerous path toward plutocracy." And yeah, I was able to say it. I was happy to say. You said, "Make us less of a democracy than we are now." And I think you must have seen the study was that a year ago about we are officially, we don't qualify very well. I mean, obviously, we're a representative of democracy at best, but you know what I'm saying, that we've already shifted in how this country really works. Was there a high point when the U.S., when Wisconsin, when our nation as a whole, was a good democracy? It was really a vital democracy? Well, we're certainly not one now, and that's the crucial thing. We're becoming less and less a functioning democracy. We're a formal democracy. We get to vote every two and every four years, but the views of the American people are not adequately represented in government or in policies. The policies that are enacted are policies that benefit the few. The majority of Americans have wanted for a long time, universal healthcare, wanted for a long time, an increase in the minimum wage, wanted for a long time, more spending on the environment, more spending on education, have known for a long time and expressed their belief for a long time that corporations have too much power, not only over the economy, but over our electoral system. Those views are not translated into policy, though. That's a real problem, and a lot of political scientists have been studying this problem over the last couple of decades and have concluded that we're not a democracy anymore. We're not a shock to me, and I don't think it's a shock to the majority of Americans who understand their views are meaningless most of the time. This is a huge problem. We are an aristocracy right now. We're a plutocracy. We are an oligarchy. We're ruled by the very, very wealthiest in this country and the huge corporations that have tremendous power in Congress both in their lobbying and in their campaign contributions. To say that we're a democracy right now is a falsehood. I tried to make that point in my testimony. I tried to make that point when I was at the Progressive magazine. We're making that point over here at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, but over the history of the United States, this has been a contest. It's a campaign. It's a battle. It's a struggle. Are we going to be a democracy or are we going to be a government that's for the rich or for the property class, which was the first fight during the Constitutional Convention and in those early years? And then are we going to be a full democracy where we have everyone having the right to vote, including African Americans and women? That was the next battle, but the big battle that Jefferson warned us about when he said, and this quote is up on my wall here, Jefferson in the early part of the 19th century, "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations." Well, he wasn't able to crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations. Fighting Bob La Follette, our hero here in Wisconsin, fought day and night his whole career against the moneyed corporations. And right now, the moneyed corporations are no longer in their birth. They are fully grown. They're monstrous. They're devouring our democracy. People understand that. That's the struggle we're facing right now. And we've had constant struggle with it. We saw that in the Occupy movement a few years ago, focusing on the 1%. We see it now with the $15 an hour campaign, which is exhilarating and I think very important. We see a fight for democracy in this Black Lives Matter movement, which is really important. Are we going to have equal justice under the law? Are black people going to be target practice for the police? I mean, these are huge issues. And I want to give your listener the idea that there's a struggle going on. We need to engage in the struggle. Otherwise, those with the most power are going to win. The only power that we have, those who are for democracy, is the power of the community. The power of people getting together and exercising our voice, not just every two years or every four years. It's not a plebiscite kind of democracy. We need to be an act of democracy. This is what Howard Zinn, the great historian, has taught us over and over again that we need to get out into the streets. That voting is probably the least important political activity we can do. Howard Zinn used to tell us. He was the author of A People's History of the United States and passed away a few years ago. He wrote for the progressive in the last dozen years of his life and was one of the big heroes of mine. But his book A People's History of the United States shows the ongoing struggle for democracy, for human rights, for civil rights, for civil liberties that's been going on in this country from its inception, even before its inception. Are we going to prevail the people who are well-meaning and believe in democracy and believe in civil rights and believe in civil liberties? Or are those who are reactionary, those who are the moneyed corporations or the aristocrats or the royalists or the fascists? Are they going to prevail? These are huge questions and we've got to wrestle with these questions. We've got to go out in the streets and in our neighborhoods and with our colleagues and discuss these issues. Otherwise, we're going to get rolled over and right now we're being rolled over. We're being rolled over here in Wisconsin by Scott Walker and this crowd of privatizers and this crowd of water carriers for the Koch brothers. That's what Scott Walker is. Anyone who listens to that phony phone call made by the reporter who has impersonated one of the Koch brothers understands that this is what people like Scott Walker are all about. They're all about serving their paymasters. And that's not what democracy is supposed to be about either. In case you're wondering listeners who this compelling and dynamic voice you're listening to belongs to, his name is Matt Roth's child and he was with the Progressive magazine for 32 years, most of that as the editor. This year he became the executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign taking over from Mike McCabe who's been on this program a couple times. You were just talking, Matt, about the division that took place under Governor Scott Walker and I was certainly very excited in 2011 when first it was thousands and then tens of thousands and then over a hundred thousand people showed up in Madison, Wisconsin saying, "This is what democracy looks like." I was thrilled by that. Then there was the recall and it made some headway, but it failed when it came to actually recalling Scott Walker. What was wrong with that vote and is Wisconsin really that divided? And it's my perception that we really are that divided, but why is that? Economic reality is that there is the 1% and that the interests of the 99% are very different, but it seems that maybe 49% are voting against their interests with the 1%. Well, that's a big and important question. I'm glad you raised it. First of all, yes, the uprising of 2011, this protest, this mass spontaneous protest in the streets of Madison and surrounding the Capitol and occupying the Capitol, that protest was the single most exhilarating political experience of my adult life. 40 years I've been doing political stuff. It was just an amazing thing to behold that protest and to attend. You had people coming from all over the state just streaming up East Washington Avenue to the Capitol or streaming up East Main Street, which is where I was working at 409 East Main Street at the Progressive. And we saw these people just coming out of nowhere. And this wasn't the usual crowd of Madison lefties. I know all those people. I know that 250 person crowd by name. This was tens of thousands and more than 100,000 people, as you say, and these weren't just Madison lefties or students from the University of Wisconsin as the mass media was portraying it. No, this was people from all over the state. And in every occupation, it wasn't just teachers. And isn't it amazing that Scott Walker has been able to demonize teachers, teachers who are serving our children so well, teachers who bear on their shoulders, all the burdens of our society, the social problems, they have to deal with day in and day out in the classroom and they're supposed to be, you know, the enemy now. But that's what Scott Walker does. He plays on the politics of resentment. He goes after the people who may be one wrong above someone else in the society, say the public worker, the teacher, is getting slightly better pay or slightly better benefits than the worker with a company that's got no union and no benefits. And so Walker says to that person, well, look, you're getting cheated by the teacher. And so he distracts attention from people at the very top of the letter and focuses attention on the person just one notch above. Another rung on the letter, even though the people at the very top are the ones who are prohibiting anybody for priming the letter. And that's a really disgusting kind of politics to practice, but that is the politics of Scott Walker. I was hoping that we would have done more during that uprising, that we all of us there would have realized that we have real power in the streets. That was a moment of great solidarity. Solidarity is not just a musty word in an old labor song. Solidarity can be a living, breathing thing. We were seeing solidarity in the streets of Madison in 2011. It was public sector workers, but not just teachers and AFSCME employees. It was also private sector workers. There were carpenters and electricians and teamsters and farmers on their tractors. And it was a stunning act of unity. And yet we were told ultimately to go back home and work on recalls, first the recalls of the state senators. And then the recall on Scott Walker, the recall of the state senators wasn't really something that was emanating from the crowd out there. It wasn't people were saying, let's get rid of those senators. People did want to get rid of Scott Walker, no doubt. But they didn't really focus on this question of recalling the state senators until some of the Democratic party leaders brought that forward, I think. But what people were saying in the streets were, "General Strike!" It was the first time in my adult life I'd heard people talk about General Strike. You know, I'd read about it in the Chronicles of US labor history that I studied in college. You know, back in the 19 teens, or in the 1930s, talk of a General Strike. An actual General Strike's occasionally in a few places in the United States, but I'd never seen it discussed in public. I'd never seen it as an option that people were actually considering, and the South Central Federation of Labor actually had a meeting where they discussed whether they should come out in favor of a General Strike. And they did come out in favor of studying the question of a General Strike. That's how radical that moment was. That's how threatening that moment was to certainly the Republicans in power, to corporations in Wisconsin. But also I think it was threatening somewhat to the Democratic party, and maybe even to some members of organized labor who didn't know what to do with 110,000 people in the streets. They couldn't control them, so maybe they were concerned. Maybe they were worried that the people were going to do something that they weren't going to approve of, or that they couldn't control. And so we wanted to do something more. The people in the streets wanted to do something more. There could have been mass civil disobedience. There could have been a blue flu epidemic from one company or one industry to another where people call in sick on a Monday or on a Tuesday, and that goes to the next workplace where people are calling in sick. Or there could have been creative disruptions where people are just working to the rule of their contract, just doing the basics of what they're required to do, and nothing more. Kind of a slowdown or work slowdown. Or there could have been the Teamsters and their 18 wheelers going 40 miles an hour on interstate highways, just slowing things down, telling people that this is a huge issue, and it's not going to be business as usual. And we're not going to let Scott Walker and the Koch brothers and those people who are so opposed to unions to win the day. And unfortunately, we didn't take those actions, and we funneled all that energy and all that power, all that latent power, into the kind of narrow channels of recall. And that was, I think, in hindsight a mistake. I do think that people wanted to recall Scott Walker. That was a very close race. We are a divided state. Walker is a genius at playing the resentment fiddle. And people also in Wisconsin, there are a lot of people who thought this didn't rise to the level of recall. And they wanted to give Scott Walker the benefit of the doubt. They didn't want to have a do-over. They didn't think that was fair in some Midwestern, decent way. And the Democrats failed to make the case as to why what Scott Walker had done rose to the level of recall. It was an easy case to make. Certainly, fighting Bob LaFalle, when he introduced the recall legislation in the early part of the 20th century, said recall was for misrepresentation and betrayal. Those were the two words he used, not in legal activity. And the Democrats tried to say "walkers." Then a criminal, they couldn't approve that. And the people of Wisconsin knew that. But misrepresentation and betrayal, that was an easy one to win. It was easy because Scott Walker himself said he was going to drop a bomb on the people of Wisconsin. That's betrayal. That's misrepresentation. And so the case could be made that it wasn't made. And as a result, Scott Walker won the recall. And Scott Walker, still governor of the state of Wisconsin, now running for president, has a good shot at the Republican nomination. And anyone who wins the Republican nomination has a shot at the White House. You're giving me nightmares, Matt. You know that? I'm afraid it's all far too true. You know, I had a thought. You mentioned the idea of having a general strike during the 2011 uprising. I had that thought too. And part of me said, "Yes, yes." And part of me said, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Is that maybe what Governor Walker would like that proves that it makes government, ineffectual, shuts down government?" Which from his point of view is like, "Yeah, let's shut it down. The corporations, the private people, can do it better." I was afraid that having a strike might actually play into his hands. Well, it may have played into his hands, and it would have been very risky. Risky for working people. They could have lost their jobs. And I understand that. I'm not saying we should definitely have had a general strike. And, you know, I wasn't in a position to lose my job at the progressive, so it wasn't up to me to tell people to go stick your neck out, maybe get it chopped off. But I do think there should have been discussion of creative, nonviolent tactics that we could have used. And some discussion in a democratic way about whether there'll be a general strike or not. And instead, you know, just a few people said, "Well, essentially enough's enough, and we're not going to hold these rallies anymore. Let's go back to our districts and circulate petitions and do the recalls." And so this was a real central question of tactics, and I'm not sure we came up with the right ones. But you're also correct in that Scott Walker would have liked it, I think. He would have liked it because he could have said, "Look at these people who are lawbreakers. He wants to be Ronald Reagan. He loves Ronald Reagan for firing the air traffic controllers, the PACO workers." That's one of his examples of Reagan being heroic when it's, to me, an example of Reagan being horrible. And we need to look at this question as to why people don't like unions, or why Republican office holders don't like unions, or why their paymasters, the corporations, don't like unions. It's the same reason they don't like government regulations. They don't want anything to stand between them, the corporations, and the corporations' ability to extract every last dime of profit they possibly can, no matter the cost to the worker, no matter the cost to the environment, no matter the cost to society. And what stands in the way of a corporation just exploiting people and ruining the environment? Well, unions for one, as far as exploiting people in the workplace, and regulations for two, as regards to destroying the environment. And so that's why they're trying to get rid of unions and get rid of government regulations. I mean, we need to be clear about what this strategy is, and it's a strategy of immense corporate power. It's a strategy of eternal corporate rule, and that's not what a democracy is. We can't have eternal corporate rules here, and at the same time, claim that we're some kind of a democracy. I mean, at some point, capitalism in democracy are totally incompatible, and we're getting very close to that point right now. Capitalism is devouring democracy. Capitalism is destroying democracy. And we have a choice. Are we going to be a capitalist society where corporations and the private property and profit motive rule? Or are we going to be a democracy where people actually can govern themselves? I mean, the problem with being in a workplace where there's no union is you're living in a dictatorship eight hours a day, five days a week. That's why people need unions. It's not just to get better pay and better benefits. It's to have a say, some sense of say over your life in the workplace, and that's what democracy is about. That's what freedom is about. And to destroy your union is to be anti-democracy and anti-freedom. I want to get into all of that, Matt, but first I want to remind your listeners that you are tuned to Spirit in Action. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and this is a Norton Spirit radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org. And on that site, you'll find almost 10 years of our programs for free listening and download. You'll find links to our guests. So you'll find your way to Matt Roth's child at the Progressive magazine before. But now with the Wisconsin Democracy campaign, you'll find a place to post your comments. And we do love that you comment when you visit because we love two-way communication. There's also a place to support Northern Spirit radio. Just click on support and make a donation. Even more than supporting Northern Spirit radio, though, I would like you to support your local community radio station. In Madison, where Matt Roth's child is, WRT is kind of famous. We need more community radio station because we need something that's not controlled by the corporations. So please start by supporting your local community radio station. Again, Matthew Rothchild is with us here today, currently Executive Director of Wisconsin Democracy campaign down in Madison, Wisconsin. There's so much that I would love to talk to you about, partly because the 32 years that you were with the Progressive magazine, you garnered such knowledge and such important historical precedents that I think we have to learn from. Mike McCabe spoke about these things when he was on the show a couple months ago. I would like you to comment on a few of them if you would. First, one very specific area. And it was the thing that I thought that the recall should have been made about. I think our democracy is badly eroding and eroded here in Wisconsin. And some of the voting changes, not only the redistricting that happened, but the laws about voting, how they're changing. I think those are very clearly attempts to undermine democracy. What do you think about that? Absolutely. I mean, the idea that voting is getting harder in Wisconsin or harder in other states in this country should be appalling to people who revere democracy. And we're setting up hurdles for people to have to clear on their way to the voting booth. And the whole progression in the United States right through the Civil Rights Movement was to make voting easier. And now we're really turning the clock back and getting to a situation where it's harder for people to vote. And that serves, again, the interest of the plutocracy, the interest of the wealthy. They vote in much higher percentage than anyone else. So if they can get people who have trouble finding their way to the voting booth because they can't find their voter ID card or they don't have a driver's license or they don't have a birth certificate, you can bet your last dollar that the rich are going to be able to get the voting booth. Those who aren't rich are going to have a harder time. And if they can steer the election toward the rich, you know, it's so much better for the rich. That's who's calling the shots right now and that's who's ruling the roost and they're making it harder for the rest of us. Again, this is about democracy. Our democracy is under assault. It's under assault with these voting regulations to get the voter ID. They're under assault with redistricting here in Wisconsin. You've got two-thirds of the districts in Wisconsin are more democratic in their population than they are in their representation. That is, we've got conservatives in so many redistricted areas here. They've just been carving out these districts so that conservatives can win and progressives are going to lose. Even though the state in every presidential election for the last couple decades has gone democratic, we here now in Wisconsin have a Republican state assembly and a Republican state senate and a Republican governor and a reactionary state supreme court. I mean, the whole system is rigged right now. This is a real problem for our democracy. We need to expand our democracy, not shrink it both formally with legitimate, rational, non-partisan districting. In Iowa, for instance, they have a redistricting that was done in a non-partisan way and it's very rational and it's not in favor of one or the other party and it works great. A lot of states are trying to expand voting. Oregon, for instance, just passed a law saying that if as soon as you go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and get your driver's license, you're registered to vote. Whereas in Wisconsin and some other states, especially in the south, they're making voting much more difficult. In Wisconsin, it's becoming a southern state. I mean, Wisconsin is becoming like Mississippi or Alabama. It's really turned the state around. Scott Walker and the Republicans have in a way that I'm just kind of astonished at the speed and the scope of this turnaround. I mean, we are in the midst of a counter-revolution here in Wisconsin and to some extent in the country where the forces of reaction the forces of the plutocracy are gaining ground on every front and they are pushing as aggressively as possible to make their gains. I think they're going to overstep their bounds. They already have overstepped their bounds. But is the pendulum going to swing back? I hope it will, but I'm not going to sit around and wait for the pendulum to swing back. I'm going to try to give that pendulum a shove and I encourage other people to do that. And I think there are movements out there today that are exciting, that are doing that. $15 an hour movement, the black lives matter movement, the anti-global warming movement. Those are efforts really to give this pendulum a shove back toward a progressive democracy direction. And that's certainly the direction we need to go in. I think you know so much, Matt, about corporate history and how that's played out in Wisconsin and in the nation. I had a guest on a couple years ago, Richter Maine, he was part of the move to amend campaign, seeking to overturn Citizens United. And he gave me a real nice view on corporate history. And over the years I've learned a few interesting things. One is that corporations used to serve the nation, as opposed to the nation serving the corporations. It's kind of been flipped on its head. What's your perspective in Wisconsin about how corporations were dealt with over the centuries? And I'm also interested in this pendulum swinging, because I think that the pendulum, as you say, has moved quite a bit. What did it used to be like and what is it now? Right. Well, fighting Bible thought, fought against corporate power, which was just so ascendant in Wisconsin that they're a late part of the 19th century. The railroads really controlled everything. And so if you were a farmer and you wanted to get your product to market and you had to use the railroad, the railroads were charging you exorbitant prices. Whereas if you were a manufacturer who was in cahoots with the railroad company, the railroad company would give the manufacturer cheaper rates than the poor farmer was getting. So, you know, they'd go off and make huge profits, whereas the farmer sometimes kind of make money getting his product to market. And Lofolop saw that and saw the collusion that was going on and fought hard, very hard against the railroads and the other robber barons of the Europe. And we were successful here in Wisconsin in curbing some of that corporate power. And bring more democracy, bring direct election of senators, for instance, ending child labor, raising the minimum wage, getting unions and getting public sector unions in here, getting minimum wage. All those things were kind of progressive era reforms, and that's as far back as these guys are trying to turn the clock. It's not that they're just trying to wipe out LBJ's great society or wipe out FDR's new deal. They're trying to wipe out progressive era reforms. And I trust in Food and Drug Administration and all that stuff. They don't want any of it about the pendulum. You know, this notion, and I know it's kind of a common sense one, that the pendulum does swing back. It's true to some extent. But on the other hand, it can make you feel passive. Okay, I'm just going to wait around for the pendulum to come back. Or the pendulum always comes back, so we don't have to do anything. To bring it back, I don't buy that and I don't have time in my life to wait for that. We need desperately to organize ourselves and oppose this reactionary counter-revolution of the plutocrats and the moneyed corporations. The Thomas Jefferson warned us against, and the fighting bible followed warned us against, and that FDR warned us against. And we have to organize and demand real democracy. You mentioned the Citizens United decision of 2010 by the U.S. Supreme Court. I mean, this was the single worst decision by the U.S. Supreme Court since Bush v. Gore, maybe even worse than that. There's a history of bad Supreme Court decisions dating back to the 19th century that give corporations a sense of personhood. I mean, the idea that corporations are persons is an absurdity. And yet, there you have it enshrined by the Supreme Court most recently in the Citizens United decision. And that Citizens United decision, I urge the listener to go Google it and read it because it is atrocious. And it's laughable, too, because it contains the two most naive statements ever written in a Supreme Court decision. Here's the first one, because let's give it a little context first though. Citizens United said, the Supreme Court of the Neurom 5-4 majority said corporations can give unlimited amounts of money from their own treasury to try to elect this candidate or defeat that candidate, so long as they're not coordinating with the candidate of their choice. So long as they are independent expenditures, as they're called, which are often affictions. But leaving that aside, listen to these two naive statements. This is the Supreme Court. Independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. And then the second naive statement, the appearance of influencer access furthermore will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy. Well, I don't know what planet these Supreme Court justices were living on. The American people understand that huge expenditures, millions and millions of dollars by the Koch brothers who want to spend, they and their billionaire friends, $900 million in this next election, that does give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. And people understand that when corporations and their lobbyists spend $800 million that they get access that the American people don't, that you and I and Joe blow down the street don't get when we visit Washington with our families. We don't get to go in and tell our senators for a half hour how they should vote on such as such a bill. And the people who have already lost faith in our democracy. And for the Supreme Court justices to claim otherwise is just one of the biggest absurdities of the last couple decades. I'm with you there. And I felt like when you were reading those statements, I should have had a laugh track piped in too. It's like, this is comedy stuff, isn't it? Well, people do laugh about it when I give this talk in public, I was just giving a speech around the state of Wisconsin in a couple places. And yeah, I would read those statements, the first sentence, laughter, the second sentence, laughter. People understand in their gut instinctively that these are just ridiculous claims by the Supreme Court. And those are the two claims that justify their decision in Citizens United and that are causing this huge tidal wave of outside money and dark money just to drown our lives. And that's why it's so exciting that people are doing something about it. And here in Wisconsin, in 57 villages, towns, cities and counties, people or their representatives devoted by overwhelming margins to say they want to amend the U.S. Constitution and overturn that Citizens United decision. And to say once and for all the corporations aren't persons, and money isn't speech, and we as people, citizens, through our elected officials can regulate what goes on during an election. I mean, otherwise it's, you know, it's just a, it's a contest between billionaires and the American people, the citizens of this country are turning into mere spectators during an election. And that's not what we're supposed to be, we're supposed to run the government. We're supposed to rule the society of the citizens out. Not the people who can spend millions and billions of dollars. This is making a joke of our electoral system and makes a joke of one person, one vote. You know, I have very much the same critique as you have met of how our government is going to follow about the power of corporations and how that is deadly to our democracy. But I do have to admit that part of what I see that enables that is this vast amount of citizen at its apathy is maybe not even strong enough word. I mean, I know too many people who say, I don't have to think about that. And most countries of the world vote in higher percentages than we do in most cases, much higher percentages. So are we just too comfortable or what is it that has cut us off? I mean, it's great when you see 110,000 people make that journey to not just vote, but to show up and be part of politics and be part of changing the country. Why aren't we doing that? I mean, we certainly have the need for it now. Well, I think citizen apathy is something that serves those who are in power quite well. It serves the corporations quite well. They don't want people to be active. And it serves those who manage to get elected with an apathetic public well because they've figured out that puzzle and figured out how to raise money in the existing campaign finance system so that they flourish. And it doesn't matter to them whether the government is more responsive or the citizenry, more active. I don't think it's because we're too comfortable. I think a lot of people in majority of this country is not comfortable at all. People are struggling financially. People's wages have stagnated or gone down a majority of people's wages. I'm the median income in Wisconsin for an individual's $27,500. Students are burdened with enormous amounts of debt if they go to college and graduate college. And only, you know, one out of three or one out of four of our kids is graduating college. I think the citizen apathy that we're seeing is rational to some extent. I'm not in favor of it, but people understand that what they feel and what they believe is not represented in the state capital or in Washington, D.C. And so they conclude why bother? And while that is destructive, it's certainly understandable. And we need to make it clear that people's voices are going to get heard. And if our elected officials aren't going to hear the voices of the people and respond to their demands of higher minimum wage, for instance, people are just going to get more and more empathetic. But we need to organize people so that they get into the streets like this $15 an hour living wage campaign that's been going on and get into the streets and demand justice, demand that our elected officials give us a living wage and respond to our needs for universal health care and for a decent retirement pension and for environmental protection and decent education. You know, or paid sick leave. I mean, paid sick leave. How can we not be a government that offers paid sick leave to people? And so this, we're so far behind a lot of other countries, but the people in this country, we understand that a lot of things that we are demanding are getting responded to, and that creates the apathy. To overcome that, we need elected officials or we need a political party or we need a political movement that is going to say we hear what you are saying, the American public or majority of the American public, and we are going to respond to that. We're not going to respond to the plutocrats and the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and the biggest corporations in the country. We're not going to be a government of the 1 percent, for the 1 percent, by the 1 percent. We're going to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people like we're supposed to be. But you rarely hear political figures talking about that. Bernie Sanders talks about that. Elizabeth Warren talks about that, but there are exceptions, but there are truth tellers too. And I think that truth resonates so clearly and obviously with people that that demand is going to catch on and politicians who otherwise weren't have come close to it may start trying to echo it. You know Matt, I'm a Quaker and I do see things through how would I say deep motivation, what governs what runs a person's life. And I'm afraid that in the United States, one of the reasons we have as much apathy as we have is because what people really care about is how many toys they have. That there's too many people focused on that and not enough on how they relate to their neighbors I would say. So one of the great forces for improvement of the United States was the social gospel movement. Quakers had their hands in a couple things, you know, like maybe abolition of slavery and women's equality and that kind of thing and certainly anti-war stuff. But the social gospel movement was very widespread and it came from a religious spiritual basis. What do you think motivates people now? The people who you've seen transformed from non-involved to become gung-ho to really make this nation the better nation, the democracy that it could be. What have you seen change people's lives? Well sometimes it's just when it hits you over the head when the reactionary policies hit you over the head like with a frying pan. And that's what's happened in Wisconsin with Scott Walker. He hit people over the head and people woke up and said wow this is what reactionary politics is about. He wants to take our union representation away. He wants to go into our wallets and purses and take 10% of our incomes away which he did to public sector workers. So a lot of public sector workers and union members who even voted for Scott Walker realized in 2011 the way the world works. And so you could see around the square in Madison people holding up signs I voted for Scott Walker I never will again. I voted Republican I'm sorry. And things like that people are getting their consciousness raised on the spot and sometimes that's what it takes. Or another example I heard from an elected official here in Wisconsin who has some property on a beautiful lake up north. And also on that lake there is an ex-marine who is very right wing. You know he always liked to fish in the lake and swim and boat in the lake one summer. The lake was so contaminated that he and his family could not enjoy the lake could not go swimming in the lake could not fish in the lake except for three days of the summer. And that turned him almost overnight into an environmentalist. And that in turn opened his eyes to a lot of these other issues about who rules America and what kind of a country we've become. And maybe that's what it takes for a lot of people but I also think a lot of people are very well most people the vast majority of people in this country and in this state are well meaning people. We need to just give them the information but not just the facts because that's not how people's minds work. You don't convince people like facts and maybe this is where your social gospel comes in. You convince people by appealing to their highest moral values and talk to them in a framework that they can understand. And if we talk about America as a place where we're supposed to have a democracy where people are supposed to have control over their government where their government is supposed to respond to them and where we're supposed to provide for the common welfare. I think people can get into that and respond to it. We have two competing notions of freedom in this country. The reactionaries believe and the corporatists love it when they believe this that freedom means don't tread on me or in the vernacular of today leave me the f alone. But people who really believe in democracy have a more expansive view of freedom. It's a view of freedom that FDR talked about in his four freedom speech in 1944 including the freedom from want. But it's also the freedom you get when you have an education because that gives you opportunity or the freedom you get when it's up to you and your doctor whether you decide whether you're going to have a baby or not. That's giving you a freedom of opportunity or it's the freedom of being in a union. So you have some say over the workplace. You're not free otherwise in any sense when you're working a nine to five. And so we need to talk about freedom in this expansive way. You're not free if you can't find a job. You're not free if you're working at $7.25 an hour. You don't have an opportunity. Your employer has a gun to your head. And we need to live in a land where employers don't have guns to their workers' heads. And so we need to just describe this world that we want to live in this democracy we want to live in in Wisconsin, in the United States in ways that our fellow citizens can understand so that we can move toward these goals of real freedom, real liberty, real democracy. And real economic democracy. We have the richest corporations that are over running our government. And the one percent of them doing just fine and the rest of us are kind of cut out on our own. And that's not how it should be. You know, way back at the beginning, Matt, you mentioned about this motivation working to clean up government. And that's certainly a vital part of the work of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. I've had discussions with people who are Tea Party supporters. And I would describe them for the most part as being pretty well-meaning. There's a caricature of them, which is very negative. And certainly some of the policies they've championed I'm diametrically opposed to. But these people I talked to would put right at the center of their core, yes, clean up government. Is there any hope that we can work together, that we can really, as a United State and as a United Nations, this is supposed to be the United States after all, that we could work across conceptual differences of government? I do think it's very possible to clean up government and to try to get money out of politics. For instance, 75 to 80 percent of the people thought in poll after poll that the Citizens United decision was a terrible decision, allowing corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to elect a candidate or trash another candidate. That's wrong. And even though a wide majority of Republicans were against the Citizens United decision, people aren't doctrinaire. I mean, a few of them are. But the vast majority of Americans, you know, some people, you know, they're kind of progressive in some outlooks and maybe kind of reactionary in other outlooks. And we need to appeal to the progressive pro-democracy side of people's brains and then we can't clean up government. People across ideological identifications want to clean up government. It's not like we want dirty government. You don't hear many people saying that except, you know, some corporate CEOs and lobbyists probably because they're loving dirty government. People want clean government for sure. One last thing that I'd be really remiss if I didn't ask, you said that what gets people involved in this kind of stuff is when something hits them over the head. So what hit you over the head that's meant that you've lived a life dedicated to making government better, making this more progressive, and really I think more beautiful world? What hit you? Well, I don't know how hard I got hit. I mean, I was very fortunate in my upbringing. My parents were kind of Adlight Stevenson Democrats. My mom worked on the fair housing issue civil rights for African Americans to own houses in the northern suburbs of Chicago. They were prohibited from doing so. You know, I'm a Jewish American and Jews were prohibited from owning houses in some of those northern suburbs of Chicago for a long time. Not when I came around, but before that, and maybe that had something to do with it. I don't know. I was a fat kid and teens were being fat. Maybe that had something to do with it. I just don't know. But for my whole life, I've been concerned about these issues. I mean, I remember when I was a 14-year-old kid, I was passing out bumper stickers for McGovern. And so I've been interested in politics and interested in left-wing politics. And then in college, I got involved in the anti-apartheid movement, which made a huge difference in my life and has been with me for a long time since. Well, I'm glad that whatever the motivation was, whatever the transformation that happened for you that you stuck with it for so long. Again, Matt Roth's child, he worked for 32 years with the Progressive magazine most that time as its editor. Just this past year, he became Executive Director of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Their website, by the way, is WIS, like Wisconsin, WISDCDemocracyCampaign.org. And you can find a link on Nordenspiritradio.org. Matt, every time I've heard you speak, you've been galvanizing. Your work has been so influential in lifting up the good in this state. I'm so thankful that you've done that work, that you continue to do it now with Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, and that you join me here today for Spirit in Action. Well, Mark, it's been a real pleasure. I've really enjoyed the conversation with you, and thanks for all that you do. The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World," performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You