WFP Represents You!: Maurice Mitchell
January 2nd, 2025
”Elections are not the prize. Governing is the prize.”
We discuss why now is the time for a third political party to really take center stage in American democracy.
Maurice Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party. He's a nationally recognized social movement strategist, a visionary leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and a community organizer for racial, social, and economic justice.
Your civic action toolkit recommendations from Maurice are:
Organize! Join an organization.
Create conditions where people can govern and decide the direction of their country and their democracy
Let’s connect! Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/
Discover new ways to #BetheSpark:
https://www.futurehindsight.com/spark
Follow Mila on X:
Follow Maurice on X:
Check out the Working Families Party:
Sponsors:
Thank you to Shopify for supporting the show! Sign up for a $1/month trial at shopify.com/hopeful.
Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/
Early episodes for Patreon supporters:
https://patreon.com/futurehindsight
Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Maurice Mitchell
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
-
Maurice Mitchell Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a
platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the
resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at
shopify.com/hopeful. All lowercase.
Mila Atmos: [00:00:22] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast on a mission to spark
civic action. I'm your host, Mila Atmos. I'm a global citizen based in New York City, and
I'm deeply curious about the way our society works. So each week, I bring you
conversations to cut through the confusion around today's most important civic issues
and share clear, actionable ways for us to build a brighter future together. After all,
democracy is not a spectator sport. Tomorrow starts right now. Since I live in New York
City, I'm familiar with the Working Families Party and fusion voting, and while I strongly
support the existence of third parties, I've been skeptical about the viability of such
parties in the American system, which is structured in a way that enables two powerful
parties to be dominant. But in the wake of the Democratic Party's defeat in the
presidential election, perhaps now is the time for a third party to really take center stage.
Our guest is Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party. He's a
nationally recognized social movement strategist, a visionary leader in the Movement
for Black Lives, and a community organizer for racial, social, and economic justice.
Welcome, Maurice. Thank you for joining us.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:01:41] It's good to be here. Thank you.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:43] You're welcome. Let's start with the basics. What is the working
Families Party?
Maurice Mitchell: [00:01:47] Okay. Well, the Working Families Party is a grassroots,
bottom up, third party project inside the United States. And I know your listeners are
thinking, well, in the United States, this is a rigid two party system. So what's the big
idea with this idea of a third party? What does that look like? And I'd like to say that
we're a non-delusional third party. So we don't pretend that we don't live in a very rigid
two party system, that we don't have a first past the post electoral system, which means
whoever gets the most votes gets the entire prize. We're clear about that. And weactually believe that that type of system is fundamentally undemocratic and leads to
really, really poor outcomes. And if we don't express ourselves outside of that system,
that it will lead to the conditions that we're in right now. And so our strategy is based on
this idea that you can build third parties from the ground up. We don't believe in the top
down model, kind of like the Ross Perot model, where in 1992, Ross Perot -- he was a
billionaire -- so he basically had unlimited money. He started...
Mila Atmos: [00:02:59] But he did get 19% of the vote at that time, which is actually a
lot.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:03:02] It's a, it's a lot. He didn't break 20%. And to me, that was
the best test case for a third party in this system.
Mila Atmos: [00:03:10] Right.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:03:10] We looked at that and we're like, well, we're not
billionaires. We're labor unions. We're grassroots organizations. Like, if a billionaire
couldn't make it be viable with all of that money and all of those resources, then how
can we actually make a third party experiment work in the United States? And so we
started in 1998. We're in New York right now, so we started in New York as a coalition
of labor unions and grassroots organizations. And ironically, we came together because
many people felt that the Democratic Party was losing its commitment to everyday
working people. This is 1998. Because of some of the policies that the Democratic Party
was committing to the economic policies, the sort of neoliberal...
Mila Atmos: [00:03:55] So in the wake of NAFTA.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:03:56] Yeah, free trade policies. Now, fast forward 26 years.
We're living in a world where a lot of the people who lost their jobs because of NAFTA,
because of the offshoring of those jobs, a lot of those communities eventually turned to
the right wing. Right. And so we believe that our idea in '98 was very prescient. Now,
since then, we've heard so many people say we want to live in a world where there are
more options from the bottom all the way to the top, and that in a country of more than
300 million people, where you have almost unlimited choices of butter or yogurt, we
should have more than two choices for president, right? We're hearing that more andmore. This was a presidential election where we had probably more popular
conversations around third parties than ever before, where people were saying, we
want something else. And the problem is, because the system is so rigid, when third
parties try to run in a general election, and this is a systemic flaw, it leads to the spoiler
dilemma where, okay, if you're a left party, let's say you're a left of the Democrats. Yes,
you're likely to pull some necessary votes away from the Democrat -- one of the main
party candidates -- towards your party, which will only advantage the Republican Party,
the party that you have less in common with.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:26] Right. Notably during the 2000 election.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:05:29] Yes. Right. And so this is a real problem, right? And it's a
systemic problem in our democracy. The way the Working Families Party solves for that
is we cook with what we have in the kitchen. We understand that the system is not, for
lack of a better word, it's not ideal. Right. And so we do a few things.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:46] Right.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:05:47] In states like New York and Connecticut and Oregon,
there is something called fusion voting.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:52] Yes.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:05:53] Maybe I'll get into it more later, but it basically means that
parties have their own ballot line. Parties like the Working Families Party have their own
ballot line. So when you vote in New York, like you're a New York voter, you can vote on
the Democratic Party line, the Republican Party line, or the Working Families Party line.
What makes fusion interesting is that parties can cross endorse the candidates of other
parties. And this is how we get over the spoiler problem, where we could organize
people into our party and we could organize people around a set of values and issues,
for example, education, health care, a critique on U.S. foreign policy. And those voters
could come together and they understand that a vote on the Working Families Party line
signals that they're voting for these issues for the interest of these labor unions and
grassroots organizations. Right. And at the same time we could say at the top of the
ticket. It still is a binary choice based on this system. And so we're informing our votersthat in this binary choice we should choose, for example, this last election, Kamala
Harris and Tim Walz. And all those votes on the Working Families Party line in New
York and Connecticut ultimately get fused with the votes on the Democratic Party line.
So you don't waste your vote,
Mila Atmos: [00:07:13] Right. Right.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:07:13] But you get to.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:14] So I have a question about, you know, you said that your
policies are different. Maybe not every single one from the Democratic Party, let's say.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:07:21] Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:21] But how does that get funneled up to the actual candidate? Like
how many votes... Well, in this last election, '24, how many votes did the Working
Families Party get and how did you communicate this, the power of your voice to the
candidate?
Maurice Mitchell: [00:07:35] Great question. So just in New York, we got more than a
quarter of a million votes, right? It's a significant number of votes in one state, right? I
mean, we are in an election that was decided by less, less than 200,000 votes around
the country in swing states. So we're just talking about more than a quarter of a million
people chose to vote on the Working Families Party line just in New York. And why
that's significant, I want to explain it from the top all the way to the bottom. Right. So
elections tend to be close, especially in this period, right? I've seen elections that we've
won by a handful of votes or we've lost by like less than 100 votes. Right?
Mila Atmos: [00:08:14] Yes.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:08:15] So in New York, in the Hudson Valley, there were a
number of very, very close elections, congressional elections. Congressman Riley, for
example, he won his election by a fraction. That margin could be made up by the voters
on the Working Families Party line. And who controls the House of Representatives ishugely important. Right. And right now it's one of the closest Houses. The Republicans
won, but it's one of the closest sort of margins.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:44] Right.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:08:44] That flip from Republican to Democrat was in part brought
to you by the Working Families Party and our voters because of how close the margins
are. And people might be thinking, well, those working families party voters, wouldn't
they just have been Democratic Party voters if you didn't have the ballot line? Well,
some of them.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:00] Yes.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:09:00] And some of them, for sure, a significant number of them,
would have been part of the many, many, many millions of people who every single
election believe many of the things that we believe. But stay home.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:13] Yes.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:09:13] And need a positive reason to vote and to organize their
vote around something that they believe in. And that's what the Working Families Party
has done again and again and again. So that's the impact and how that translates. So if
that's the impact on the congressional level.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:28] Yeah.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:09:28] And I guarantee you because I get the phone calls.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:33] Yes.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:09:33] Our leaders and our members in states get the phone
calls from elected officials that after the election, they could do the math.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:42] Right.Maurice Mitchell: [00:09:42] Right. It's not... It's very clear. They want to understand
how to stay in the good graces of the Working Families Party. And we are able to
surface these issues in New York.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:52] I have a question about that, because I'm curious about your
theory of change at the Working Families Party, and you have a deep background in
organizing, and you're talking about the power of electoral politics in effecting change at
the government level. So what's, what's really the power in that -- electing somebody on
the Working Families Party ticket or throwing your vote in that direction in order to tip
the election?
Maurice Mitchell: [00:10:15] Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:15] And so what's the power of that over, or maybe in addition to
issue advocacy?
Maurice Mitchell: [00:10:21] Absolutely. Well, elections are not the prize. Governing is
the prize. And so there's vehicles. Their main existence is to raise and spend really
smart political money in order to get people elected. You know, ever since the Citizens
United ruling, it's allowed for unlimited spending on the independent side. So you have
these independent vehicles that technically don't coordinate with the candidate that
raised and spent political money simply to get people elected. And there's many really
efficient organizations that do that work on the Democratic Party side, on the
Republican Party side. That's not who we are. We're not just about getting people
elected. We're about actually governing, which brings in the question of policy, which
means we have a relationship with our endorsed elected officials and our endorsed
candidates before the election. And when I say we, it's not just a bunch of smart staff
people. I'm talking about our party apparatus, which includes labor unions and their
members, grassroots organizations and their members, party activists who show up
before the election and volunteer and participate and, you know, bring their sweat equity
and their small dollar donations and everything else into the fight, so that candidate
knows who actually propelled them to victory. And then post-election, we govern with
them. And I want to give an example. So I talked on the congressional level. Let's stay
in New York and let's go down to the city council, because ...Mila Atmos: [00:11:52] You had some big victories there.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:11:54] Oh, absolutely. And I want to pull out a specific example
of what I mean by we govern together as a party. Chelsea. Chelsea is an independent
Working Families Party city Council member, and che is one of the youngest city council
members, a millennial city council member. Che with his colleagues in the city council.
But che led this. And you know, with the forces of the Working Families Party, both on
the city council and many of the grassroots organizations that make up our party passed
legislation where New York renters were faced with this really problematic practice
where whether or not you went through a broker, if you rented in New York, you had to
pay a broker's fee, right?
Mila Atmos: [00:12:42] As a renter, as a renter, as opposed to the owner who's renting
it out? Yeah. Yes.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:12:46] And it's just it's just unfair, right? Yeah, totally. And it was.
It's an unfair practice. It only served the industry. It didn't serve everyday New Yorkers,
but it remained because it's a very powerful industry. It's a very powerful lobby. Yes.
And because of Shays independence as an independent WFP elected official and with
the support of the WFP coalition, was able to loudly and proudly pass that pro everyday
worker, everyday renter legislation. Right. So that shows the direct line between the
Working Families Party, our grassroots power, our ability to elect independent elected
officials and then govern with them and deliver on policies that support the members of
labor unions and grassroots organizations and everyday working people across the city
that are suffering from this affordability crisis. Yeah, right. So that's that's a concrete
example of how that works. And we do that across the country. Rinse and repeat. Rinse
and repeat. There's a number of different examples including places where we don't
have fusion voting. So we just kind of focused on the state of New York. We went to the
top of the ticket. Yeah. We talked about how our ballot line has an impact in
congressional races, actually swinging congressional races, which is like a big deal. It's
a big deal. But then also on the local level, governing with and by everyday working
people.Mila Atmos: [00:14:14] Extrapolate this onto the national stage, because right now
you're in 15 states. Yeah. And we have obviously we know we have 50 states. Yes.
That's correct. What's the strategy? How do we get there? Okay.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:14:23] Sure. So you know, this country is very large. It's the size
of a continent. There is more than 300 million people in this country, and we're broken
up into 50 states. And it's it's actually really important that your listeners are reminded of
this. We learned this in civics class, but power is very diffuse in this country. Yes. And
we did our hardest to defeat Donald Trump, although we failed. And Trump and MAGA
now will eventually run the federal government. Presidents in this country are not kings.
And despite all the efforts of the recent Supreme Court, the presidents are still not
kings, which means a lot of power exists on the state level, on the county level, on the
local level, which is why the Working Families Party focuses so much on building from
the ground up, state by state, by state. And we do have aspirations to be everywhere
and to have party structures everywhere. But in order for it to this model to work, it takes
a little bit of time. You know, that's the thing that we we like to sort of remind people
there's no microwave revolution, right? The real organizing takes some time. Yes. I think
our friends on the far right, they understood that in the mid to late 70s.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:40] It has taken them decades.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:15:41] Decades and decades. And they were.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:43] Dedicated to this project.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:15:44] Absolutely. And so the work that we're doing at the
Working Families Party is a generational project where we believe in the next 20 years,
we could have a third force in American politics and a true independent Labor Party
called the Working Families Party, organizing that third force. So, like you said, we
currently have party structures in 15 states. So just like New York, grassroots
organizations, labor institutions, activists are endorsed candidates who then govern with
us. And every cycle that grows. So I'll give an example in California, which is a new
state, a relatively new state, we've been cooking with grease. And so at the end of this
election, we now have 100 working Families Party endorsed elected officials up and
down the ballot in California. So that includes people and school boards. That includespeople on the county level, on the municipal level, that includes people on the state
legislature level and even Lateefah Simon, who's going to be a new Working Families
Party congressional leader, which we're very proud of. And what we understand is that
this country like this is something that your listeners should take note of. We're looking
at long term trends. So population is moving to the south. And if the population moves
to the south, that means Electoral College votes are moving to the southeast and the
southwest. So there's a world.
Mila Atmos: [00:17:04] Yeah. Thanks for that reminder. Because every time you have a
census, you rejigger the Electoral college.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:17:09] That's correct. So this is a world in the future where the
Democrats may reestablish the, quote unquote, blue wall of Michigan, Wisconsin, and
Pennsylvania.
Mila Atmos: [00:17:19] But to no avail, because they will be less powerful.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:17:22] Yeah. And so the Working Families Party is organizing in
the South. We have chapters in Texas and Georgia. In Georgia, we have an organizing
committee. In Arizona, we have an organizing committee, and we're also in New
Mexico. And we're developing a long term strategy to build that type of power in the
South. Now, we don't have the ballot line, even though just recently in Kansas and New
Jersey, there are lawsuits arguing that fusion should be law in those states.
Mila Atmos: [00:17:52] Yes.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:17:52] And there's been a growing movement for fusion voting
throughout the country. And it's not just the Working Families Party. There are political
moderates and people who are in the center right who are arguing for fusion. Because
imagine a world where in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Arizona and
Georgia, all of these swing states, there was fusion voting. You could imagine many of
the conflicted voters who knew they weren't Republicans, but were struggling around
the choice. They would have had a ballot line and they would have had something to
vote for. Many of the voters that were struggling around the Democrats position in
Gaza,Mila Atmos: [00:18:35] Yes,
Maurice Mitchell: [00:18:35] Would have had an option that was actually anti-war. That
said, we are anti-war. We're going to organize our votes to be the anti-war faction that is
also pro-democracy. So vote on our line. Many of the voters who don't identify as
Democrats, because maybe they've identified all their lives as being maybe Republican,
being something else, being independent, whatever. They could say, all right, I could
vote for Kamala Harris on a line that isn't identified with the Democratic Party.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:08] Right.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:19:09] So you could imagine in a world where there is fusion
voting, we might have been in a different situation and a different outcome. We think
that it's pretty clear.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:22] We'll be back with Maurice Mitchell in just a moment, so stick
around. You definitely don't want to miss this episode's civic spark, one small step we
can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. But first, we want to
tell you about our sponsor, Shopify. Take a minute to think about businesses that are
putting up numbers. What comes to mind? Maybe someone like Mattel or Heinz?
Classic brands, right? And I'm sure you're thinking about a cool brand with brilliant
marketing and of course, a great product. But an often overlooked secret is actually the
businesses behind the business making selling, and for shoppers buying, simple. For
millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than
Shopify. It's the home of the number one checkout on the planet. And I have a not so
secret secret for you, a little something called Shop Pay. The payment method that
boosts conversions up to 50%. That means way fewer carts going abandoned and way
more sales going cha-ching. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce
platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or scrolling, on
the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell
more, sell on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take
your business to the next level, no matter how big you want to grow. And that's what I
love about Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Heinz uses.
Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/hopeful, all lowercase. Go toshopify.com/hopeful to upgrade your selling today. shopify.com/hopeful. And now let's
return to my conversation with Maurice Mitchell.
Mila Atmos: [00:21:21] You're saying something really interesting here about policies
driving people to the voting booth. Right. But, like, we're in a really cynical time, I think,
about political parties and about the political process. And in a time when it doesn't feel
that government is delivering, even though it may in fact be doing that, you know,
whether it's actually doing that or not, the feeling is that it's not.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:21:42] Yeah,
Mila Atmos: [00:21:43] Do deliverables really matter? You know, and like, does the
policy prescription really matter? Because Kamala Harris, for example, talked about,
what is it, $25,000 for your first home or something like this. And I thought to myself,
okay, well, that got no traction at all.
Mila Atmos: [00:21:58] Okay.
Mila Atmos: [00:21:59] You know.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:21:59] all right. This is a really great question. Does policy
matter? Does delivering matter? It's not a simple question from the standpoint of the
ethical and moral responsibility to use our power and to leverage the power that we
have. And if that's governing power for the greater good, and to use government as a
tool to, in some ways, redistribute compassion. Yes it does, it does matter. Right?
Maurice Mitchell: [00:22:30] Right, right.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:31] Whatever the political ramifications, it matters on that level. But
let's go a little bit deeper. Government organizations, they're all human systems, right?
At the end of the day, we're people. And people operate from the standpoint of how they
feel, right? Like that's how I operate. That's how you operate, how you feel.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:56] That's how humans are.Maurice Mitchell: [00:22:57] Right. And so if facts contradict your feelings, your
feelings is the information or the inputs that you're going to privilege. Right. And so if
we're ever in a situation where we're arguing against people's feelings, we're in the
wrong conversation, as people who are concerned with politics. Politics are essentially
about people. So that's number one. Number two, this is like deep in our evolutionary
biology, people really learn through stories. People understand their place in the world
through stories. People contextualize through stories. If you're not telling a compelling
story or if there is a more compelling story, that story will be how people understand the
world and understand what you're doing, what everybody else is doing. Stories have
heroes. Stories have villains. And I think there's a lot we can learn from this past
election. I think Donald Trump, and I want to be clear, I never mentioned the truth.
Right.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:01] [laughter] Well, you know, the truth is, how can I say... We we
are very committed to speak truthfully only on this podcast.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:24:08] Yes,
Mila Atmos: [00:24:09] But I feel like the truth has no value in many ways.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:24:12] Well, I think the truth has value. I think we should be real
about what is the nature of the or the purpose or the value of the truth in politics. Right?
Mila Atmos: [00:24:24] Yes. Let's go there.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:24:25] You don't need to be truthful in politics. You don't need to
be ethical in politics. You need to tell the most compelling story. Yes, but having a
compelling story that is supported by the truth and is supported by ethics, it's certainly,
to me, a much more durable story, right? From a political standpoint. But also ethically,
what I choose to do, and how I choose to live my life, and why I believe the nature of the
politics I'm involved in isn't simply a marketing device, but is actually a concern with
something much deeper. But politics don't need to have fidelity to the truth. And so
when I see breathless liberals clutching their pearls and pointing out Donald Trump's
lies and pointing out the fact that he's choosing to engage politics in this manner, it's
like, this is a form of politics. This right wing, authoritarian form of politics is aboutchaos. It's about gaslighting the society, and it's about scrambling the truth. That's
actually what the politics are for. That's the nature of the politics. And so we shouldn't be
surprised. And Donald Trump is going to do what he's going to do. MAGA is going to do
what they're going to do. What are WE going to do?
Mila Atmos: [00:25:39] Yes. What are we going to do?
Maurice Mitchell: [00:25:39] And so to me,
Mila Atmos: [00:25:40] what do we stand for?
Maurice Mitchell: [00:25:41] So the question is what is our compelling story? And in
this last election, yes you're right. VP Harris had articulated a number of very popular
policies. I guarantee you she wasn't naming those policies because they were
unpopular. They were popular. And we know they're popular because you could poll
them and you could see that they're popular. In fact, when you remove those policies
from any elected official or candidate or party, they do very well with independents, with
people. Like, they're popular.
Mila Atmos: [00:26:13] Yes.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:26:14] The thing that I think people should be curious about is
like, what are the stories that we're telling people?
Mila Atmos: [00:26:18] Yeah.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:26:19] Who are the heroes? Who are the villains in each one of
those stories? Each one of those policies, rather, there are to me clear heroes and
villains. So the fact that there are specific hedge funds that are buying up single family
homes, artificially driving up the value of those homes, leading to exploding rents and
exploding home prices, the fact that there are companies that are using algorithms and
AI to artificially explode the prices of rents, these are nameless, faceless algorithms, but
organized by organizations and entities and hedge funds and rapacious capitalists that
have names and faces. They should have been called out.Mila Atmos: [00:27:09] 100%, but they wouldn't do that. Democrats wouldn't do that.
And I feel like this is the right place to ask about neoliberalism and how it has changed
not only our societies, meaning the way that we live every day, but also the way that the
political process has been warped, let's say. It's a mild understatement.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:27:25] Yeah, yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:26] But you know, and how basically, I would say neither the
Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has really been representing people full
stop. They've just been representing corporate interests.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:27:36] Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:37] And so in that light, I feel like the vote for Trump was really
because he's a chaos agent. And I think people know that. I don't think this is foreign to
people. People understand he's a chaos agent because they want systems change, and
they want something that's going to break the system no matter what the cost is to
themselves, because they think no matter what, they themselves will not be affected.
This is somebody else's, somebody else is going to be affected by the breaking down of
the system.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:28:01] Correct.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:02] And I think there's also no real grasp of what breaking the
system will actually do for all of us. And I mean that. I don't really know either, because I
don't know what's going to break, which one he's going to successfully break. You
know.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:28:16] I don't think anybody knows, including Trump and MAGA,
what will actually happen, right? And if we take a few steps back, all of us around the
world have been operating inside of this political and economic and social philosophy of
neoliberalism for more than 40 years. And it was supposed to be this magic, almost like
utopian philosophy where... The end of big ideas. We figured it out. It's the end of
history, right? We figured out this model that is going to create unlimited growth and
trickle that growth down to everybody. Trickle the wealth down to everyone. And it'sbased on all of these ideas that we don't even think about, but are part and parcel of
how we operate and these philosophies that we don't really think about very often, but
we live in this idea that everything has a value in the market, and that the market is
almost magically attuned to solve every problem, and it's like a religious faith in the
market. The idea that corporations have one duty, one duty alone, to serve their
shareholders, this shareholder supremacy, and the idea that the shareholders are the
only stakeholder.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:36] And I want to add here that during the Reagan administration,
stock buybacks became legal again. And they had been illegal. And I think people also
don't remember that.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:29:45] Yes, yes. I mean, there are real policies, right? So there
are real policies that followed this philosophy. The idea that there is no society, actually,
there's just individuals. There's people, maybe families, and that's it. Right? Which is a
very Interesting and radical idea, but it has an impact on how we live our lives. So, okay,
there's just individuals. There is no society that you have to take care of.
Mila Atmos: [00:30:14] As Margaret Thatcher famously said, and Ronald Reagan
embraced.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:30:16] Right, that the markets are somehow magically designed
to solve all our problems. So if we have big problems, little problems, the best solution is
to figure out how to create the market-based solution, and that somehow the
competition inside the market will create the more efficient problem that somehow
efficiency is the goal. Efficiency in itself is the goal, and greed is good, right? And many,
many other tenets that now we live in. So for example, with education, the goal of
education isn't to develop and sharpen your mind or to develop curiosity, or the goal of
education has to be economized. And so also the way that we even determine what a
good education is. It's all based on high stakes testing, right? There's a metric attached
to it. This obsession with metrics. Right. And then for many people who are going into
higher education, they decide what a good route is based on what major will lead to the
most money, post-election.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:21] Right.Maurice Mitchell: [00:31:22] Right. So we don't even question it. But like this is
neoliberalism in action. And what it does, what it has done is it's led to people feeling
totally disconnected because there was a bigger commons. By Commons, I mean all
the things that we through government invest in together, right? Like parks and libraries
and you know, and we shrunk the commons in service of the market. Right. So all right.
Well, we're in New York right now. Not too long ago, a generation ago, people actually
went to free or close to free college in New York, right?
Mila Atmos: [00:31:56] This is again before Reagan.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:31:58] Yes. Right.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:58] Just to make sure we remember this history. Right.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:32:01] Yeah. And we just included it as part of the Commons.
Right. But this neoliberal consensus suggested that. Well, no...
Mila Atmos: [00:32:08] Not everybody deserves.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:32:09] Yes.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:10] Some people deserve and some people don't. And it depends
on the efficiency and what the market can deliver.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:32:14] Yes.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:14] But let's talk about reclaiming the commons. Right. Like I'm also
passionate about reclaiming the commons. That's one reason I do this podcast. But how
can party politics get us there? How do you get to reclaim the Commons through the
Working Families Party?
Maurice Mitchell: [00:32:27] Absolutely. So I believe that one of the reasons why we
have the outcomes that we have is that people are disconnected, people are lonely,
people are afraid. And that's one of the horrible hangovers of neoliberalism. It's done itsjob of having people feel like there is no society. And it turns out when you are
disconnected, you lose a sense of purpose. You lose a grasp of meaning. And so we
need to reverse that. The way that you do that is through association. It's through
connection. It's through belonging. And one of the ways that that happens, and one of
the ways that you reclaim democracy is through a robust civil society, which basically
means organization. And one of the things that we know around the world, and it's true
in this country, when you have weak organization, weak trade unions, weak civic
organizations, a weak sense of connection, it's very easy for the uber wealthy and
oligarchs and authoritarians to take over. And that's something that is happening in this
country that we can reverse through coming together as parties. It's one of the reasons
why I focus so much on party organizing. It's unfortunate, but the party system in this
country does not allow people to feel that sense of connection. It's become one
marketing scheme versus another. So, you know, famously...
Mila Atmos: [00:33:51] Although they didn't used to be this way. I mean, I was just
reading about Tammany Hall and how it was like real, you know, it was a real
patronage. The party boss bailed you out of jail, made sure you didn't get that ticket,
and there was a direct connection which we no longer have. Now it's like, give me $10
and elect me to Congress or whatever. You know.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:34:08] Most people's experience of their party is a text from
them.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:11] Yes.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:11] A breathless text about why today
Mila Atmos: [00:34:14] why you need to give today. Another five bucks or.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:34:16] Whatever. And it's funny, some people might remember
Tammany Hall because they might have learned it in high school civics, perhaps. Right.
And there's downsides to patronage, right. And there's upsides to that type of party
relationship. It's funny when we talk about a lot of these previous eras of the Democratic
Party and other parties, we kind of poo poo and look down on some of that. And
because there was some serious corruption for sure.Mila Atmos: [00:34:44] Yes, yes.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:34:45] And people had a real applied deep relationship to their
party. Yes. Right. And I believe we need to return to a commitment to a deep,
connected relationship to their party. I remember I was in Barcelona and I was blown
away by the fact that, you know, this a parliamentary system, right? So there's a lot
more parties. Yes, but they were bars, right? That people went and they, they socialized
in that were attached to particular political parties. They were.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:15] Party bars.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:35:15] Yes, yes. And so we need to think very seriously. After an
election where I was knocking on doors and I met people in places like North Philly who
were like, you're the first person I spoke to. This is like days before the election. And I
agree with everything you're saying. Like what you're saying sounds nice. Like nobody
was disagreeing with any of the issues. But just like I don't believe that that lady there
talking about VP Harris is going to if we vote for her, that it's going to matter. Right?
They weren't right wingers, they weren't trumpists.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:50] They weren't just looking at what's happening in Gaza. Yeah.
You know, why would anybody believe that our vote matters? And that's so concrete in
this moment? Yes. Because, yeah, a majority of Americans want to stop sending arms
and stop the war. Yes. And stop the genocide, if you are willing to call it that. Yes. You
know, and it's the kind of thing where, like, well, it's not going to matter and it doesn't
really matter which one you're going to vote for if you're going to vote, because the
policy on that, which is a horrendous policy and for which we pay with our dear tax
dollars. Yes. It's not going to change.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:36:21] Yes. And what happens? And so this is, you know,
because a lot of people are focusing on the working class people that may have voted
for Trump. And I think we should be curious about what's going on there. I have some
ideas.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:33] But a lot of people just stayed home.Maurice Mitchell: [00:36:35] Yeah, there are a lot of people who, if they had pulled the
lever, they would have pulled the lever for democracy. They stayed home because this
system now it is to me the byproduct of more than 40 years of neoliberalism. Right. This
huge transfer of wealth from everyday people all the way to the top. This hollowing out
of our economy, this hollowing out of the commons, this disconnection of everyday
people. So people are just kind of swimming around in a sea without feeling connected
to anything, with no purchase of meaning. We should not be surprised that people are
cynical or skeptical as it relates to how politics might actually redound to anything
meaningful in their lives. That, to me, is a much deeper issue. The issue of a growing
cynicism on people's belief that anything matters at all. And it's not like people are
making this up, right? And that's and that's real.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:33] It's real. Not just a feeling. In fact.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:37:35] It's not just a feeling. It's a feeling and it's a feeling
attached to people's real experience. Yeah. Same thing with the economy, right? So I
think this is something that really mystified, especially a lot of Democrats, because we
were definitely part of the community of people that were arguing. And we were able to
win this argument that the Democratic Party and the Biden administration should really
challenge the neoliberal consensus and the trickle down consensus, and invest in a
robust industrial policy and stimulate the economy by investing in everyday people, by
creating great union jobs, by all those things happened. And the impact of that is
probably going to be felt much later. So Trump is probably ten.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:22] Years Yeah, Trump.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:38:23] Will take advantage of it. And month after month after
month, we saw positive job growth. So when you look at these macro economic
indicators, the quote unquote economy is doing well. Yeah. You know, there was an
increase.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:36] Rent went up and didn't go back down. Yes.Maurice Mitchell: [00:38:37] Your rent went up and didn't go back down. Inflation
happens. So the price of basic goods went up. And even though there was a bump in
inflation and then eventually the rate of inflation petered Peter down the rate of inflation.
Peter down. Those prices didn't go back down. Right, right, right. And because so much
of the wealth like you look at the S&P. Right. You look at the stock market which is.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:00] Totally dislodged from the actual performance on the ground.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:39:04] Yes, yes.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:05] Because you're buying your own stock back and driving up the
stock price.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:39:07] Yeah. And so yes, absolutely. That indicator is real that all
of that wealth is bouncing around. But it's not hitting everyday people's pockets. Right.
And so the people that I'm talking to in actual communities, they're not making this up.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:24] Yeah. Yeah.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:39:25] It's real. And so the way that we have to respond to it. It's
ironic so many right wingers get this right, especially the right wing populists, where they
simply say, because they don't have they don't they're not curious about actual
solutions, but they're like, yeah, believe your eyes and ears.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:41] Right.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:39:41] The suffering that you feel is real. It's valid. You're valid.
You're important. You're suffering is important. Your feelings are important. I think that's
true. And if you have the sneaky suspicion that there's a set of elites that have rigged
the system to their advantage, you're right. Yes, this is true. Right. And work with me.
Right. Work with me so that I could, with you, help you protect your family. Help you
regain your dignity. Right. And this is how we're going to do it. We're going to come
together. We're going to regain our national dignity, our personal dignity, our ability to
protect our families. And we're going to fight back against the elites and the
establishment who have robbed from you and given to them. And the them is whicheverother makes sense, right? You know, for us, it might be undocumented immigrants from
Venezuela or from Mexico, or it might be the perennial boogeyman of urban dwelling
black people who You are taking, taking and taking and taking from the government,
right?
Mila Atmos: [00:40:48] It doesn't die, right? It doesn't die. Yes.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:40:50] And in other countries, there's another other. Right. So our
story needs to be more compelling than that story. Okay. And the good news about our
story is it's supported by the truth. Okay.
Mila Atmos: [00:41:02] Right. So I have only two more questions. Okay, great. Tell the
story. Well, actually, maybe you can tell the story through this question. Yeah. Every
week on Future Hindsight, I ask my guest to share a civic spark. One small step we can
all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. So what's a good way to
turn the insights you've shared with us into action? Sure.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:41:23] I think one way is by telling your story. The other way is by
joining an organization. Right. And there is a bigger story afoot. So tell your story inside
of this story. I was born in 1979, which means I was born at the birth of neoliberalism.
And Basically, that story is a story where elites, both in government and in industry,
have taken the wheel and driven us from one crisis to another, one subprime mortgage
crisis, to a climate crisis to a racial justice crisis, again and again and again, every four
years or every two years. Election time. One set of elites argues that they should have
the wheel versus another set of elites. In this election, the American people handed the
wheel from one set of billionaires and political elites to another set of billionaires and
political elites. What would it look like if we everyday working people, people who know
how to solve hard problems, people who know how to make ends meet, how to make a
dollar out of $0.15. People who know how to struggle together across difference. What
would happen if we joined together and took the wheel? That could only happen if you
and you and you and you. Instead of placing your gaze upwards towards the billionaires
and the elites who have failed us, who have used their ability to write the rules, to get
their kids to go into the fancy colleges without having any merit based reason to do so,
who have gotten to the top of industry and have broken our economy. What if we
stopped looking up to them and looked towards one another? That is the essence oforganization. And so when we join organizations, when we join labor unions and we join
civic organizations and we join our own parties like the Working Families Party, we then
create the conditions where we can govern, where we could take the wheel, and we
could decide for ourselves the direction of our country, our democracy and our world.
Mila Atmos: [00:43:50] Well said. Last question looking into the future, what makes you
hopeful?
Maurice Mitchell: [00:43:56] What makes me hopeful?
Mila Atmos: [00:43:57] This is not a very hopeful time.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:43:59] You know, this is a but.
Mila Atmos: [00:44:00] Also I think it's a time of opportunity.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:44:02] Yeah, as Gramsci said, this is a time of monsters. But
what makes me hopeful, actually, is the fact that in a time like this, when there are so
many changes, let me use the analogy. I'm going to use a high priced item analogy. So
this might out me as as a part of the decadent elite. So on the on the on the iPhone.
Right. You have a bunch of apps on the iPhone and you want to change the apps, you
want to move them around. You hold really close and then they start to wiggle, right?
And then you kind of move them around. Yes. I believe that this is a moment where in
society all the little pieces of society are wiggling. This is a realignment moment. Yes.
And so now we kind of move them around. And the far right doesn't only get purchase
of that agency to move things around. We do too. Yes. And so we could ask ourselves
fundamental questions about how we want our politics to organize, whether or not we
want to build independent third parties from the ground up like I'm doing, how we want
our economy organized. So many things are in flux. So yeah, they're going to send a
wrecking ball to a lot of the establishment, and we'll see how far they go and what
wreckage actually ensues.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:45:21] The upside is their brand is chaos. They seek to and know
how to destroy things. They are not builders in the wreckage of some of these
institutions that never really served us to begin with. What can we build together wheninvariably Donald Trump and MAGA fail at governing? And many of the people who are
not MAGA cultish sort of people are having buyer's remorse. What is the opportunity to
build a bigger we with the people who stayed home, the people who voted for
democracy, and some of the people who may have voted for Trump, but they simply
wanted change. That's also up for grabs. Yes, there's so many things that are up for
grabs. And in a moment when you know winning is better than losing, of course. But
one of the advantages of a loss is that you get to reconsider and kick the tires on all of
your assumptions. And from that very, very novel, things could be born. Experiments
could be born, new institutions, new leaders, new organizations, new strategies. So this
is a time, I think, that will birth The New Democracy movement that we have yet to see,
and anybody listening can be at the ground floor of that. That is very exciting. And
anybody that's interested in that, you have a partner in me and the Working Families
Party.
Mila Atmos: [00:46:49] Thank you. That is very hopeful. And I agree this is a unique
opportunity when things are wiggling and about to move and we can be in there on the
ground. Thank you so much, Maurice, for joining me on Future Hindsight. It was really a
pleasure to have you on the show.
Maurice Mitchell: [00:47:03] It was good to be here.
Mila Atmos: [00:47:04] Maurice Mitchell is the national director of the Working Families
Party. Remember, civic action doesn't have to be complicated. It's about small steps
that spark progress. Like sharing this episode with a friend. So let's recap this week's
civic spark and fire up our collective power. We are more powerful together than we are
individually. You are an empowered citizen, just like we always say. And you join us
every week to build our civic action toolkits. But how much more can we all get done
when we share our tools? Join the organization. Build the coalition. Go out to vote in a
group. It matters. 2025 is here. Let's be the spark.
Mila Atmos: [00:47:54] Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Didi Kuo. She's
a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford
University, and the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave
and Why They Don't. Which comes out on February 3rd.Didi Kuo: [00:48:12] So in understanding, you know, these twin crises, one of
democracy on the one hand, and one of sort of capitalism or economics on the other,
we really need to understand what it is democracies are failing to do for their citizens.
And that really lies in a failure of representation and of articulating those interests and
translating them into meaningful policy. That is a problem of political parties.
Mila Atmos: [00:48:34] That's next time on future hindsight. Now don't forget to hit that
follow button on your podcast app. It's right there. This way our episodes will stay in
your rotation every week. Thanks for tuning in. And until next time, see clearly, act
boldly and spark the change you want to see. Oh, you're still here. I guess you just can't
get enough of future hindsight. In that case, you should sign up for the newsletter. Just
go to Future hindsight.com to sign up for free. Then every week we'll come to you. This
episode was produced by Zack Travis and me.
The Democracy Group: [00:49:23] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.