Air Date 10/22/2024

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[00:00:00] 

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. 

This is your one-stop reference guide to every issue that is being wrongly blamed on immigrants, as the Trump campaign rhetoric turns evermore fascist and xenophobic. 

Sources providing our Top Takes in under 40 minutes today include:

Democracy Now!

Crazy Town

The Lever

Velshi and

The Zero Hour.

Then, in the additional, Deeper Dives half of the show, there’ll be more in four sections:

SECTION A - MIS/DISINFORMATION

SECTION B - REALITY CHECK

SECTION C - OTHERING and

SECTION D - SOLUTIONS.

Deportation First Trump and Harris Compete for Latinx Votes While Pushing Anti-Immigrant Policies - Democracy Now! - Air Date 10-16-24

 

AMY GOODMAN: With just 19 days until the presidential election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are ramping up efforts to appeal to a major voting bloc in battleground states: Latinx voters. Democratic [00:01:00] presidential nominee Kamala Harris appeared at a town hall with Latinx voters in Las Vegas, Nevada, hosted by Univision last week. She took a question from Yvette Castillo.

YVETTE CASTILLO: And I’m an American citizen, born to two Mexican parents. They were here before I was even born. They have worked their whole lives. But with the way immigration laws change over time, I was only able to help my dad get his legal status squared away, but not my mom’s. My mom passed away just six weeks ago.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Oh, I’m so sorry.

YVETTE CASTILLO: And she was never, ever able to get the type of care and service that she needed or deserved. Sorry.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Take your time. Take your time.

YVETTE CASTILLO: So, my question for you is: What are your plans, or do you have plans, to support that subgroup of immigrants who have been here their whole [00:02:00] lives, or most of them, and have to live and die in the shadows?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: There are real people who are suffering because of an inability to put solutions in front of politics. I mean, an example of this on immigration policy is that as it relates to what we need to do to strengthen our border.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Republican candidate Donald Trump will take the stage with Latinx voters tonight in Miami at a town hall also hosted by Univision.

For more, we go to Austin, Texas. We’re joined by Marisa Franco, director and co-founder of Mijente, a national organizing hub for Latinx and Chicanx communities.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! We had you on at the Democratic convention in Chicago, Marisa. I wanted to get first your response to Kamala Harris. What she responded to this very emotional plea was the support of the Biden administration for the bill that [00:03:00] militarizes the border further. Your response to the Democratic and Republican approach to how to deal with the immigration crisis in this country?

MARISA FRANCO: Hey there. Thanks for having me.

That story is heartbreaking. And it’s a story that many, many people experience in this country. We are now close to 40 years since the last legalization in this country. Vice President Harris’s response is insufficient. The woman was not talking about the border. She was talking about the fact that her mother lived in this country, contributed to this country and was part of her community and was her mother, and could not get the care she needed and had no recourse. And all around, we’ve seen — and she mentioned she was able to adjust the status for her father but wasn’t able for her mom.

There has been, unfortunately, immigration reform in this country. It has been deportation first and building [00:04:00] a huge infrastructure to survey, to identify and detain folks. And that includes at the border. What we’re seeing at the border is horrible. The border bill was not going to be a solution, and it will not be a solution for Vice President Harris to mimic Donald Trump’s policies on immigration. In fact, she has to contrast.

I think Latinos, by and large, even when they say immigration or border security is an issue for them, it’s a much more nuanced view. I think people want a fair shake, and they’re seeing that — I think what’s happening is that folks are generally — this is not just an issue in the Latino community, but generally. Working-class people are — the math isn’t mathing. Whether it’s their wages, whether it’s their job conditions or the cost of living, you know, just trying to make it, people are barely keeping their heads above water.

And what Donald Trump has presented is “Who’s at fault?” And instead of it being the billionaire class, instead of it being corporations not paying their fair [00:05:00] share, he’s blaming the easiest people to blame, which has been done time immemorial in this country, which is blame immigrants, blame the other.

Kamala Harris is not contrasting that sufficiently enough. And she didn’t answer that woman’s question. And I think the question remains: What will happen to folks who have been living, working and part of our community in this country who have no real recourse to be able to adjust their status in this country?

JUAN GONZALEZ: And I wanted to ask you, Marisa: What’s your sense of the enthusiasm for voting? Clearly, in 2020, there was a huge surge of Latino voters in the last election. But there are key states. A lot of people focus on Arizona, but I also keep reminding people that there’s a million Latinos who live in the state of Pennsylvania, perhaps the biggest —

MARISA FRANCO: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: — battleground state. What is your sense of the enthusiasm among Latinx voters [00:06:00] in terms of this election?

MARISA FRANCO: I think Harris-Walz will win the majority of Latino voters in this election. That, to me, is very clear. At the same time, it’s never been Trump’s goal to win the majority of Latino voters. He just has to win enough of a sliver of it. And I do think there are real cracks.

And I don’t know that the right question is, like: Is Harris doing enough? Is the Harris campaign doing enough? I think that, in many ways, that campaign is behind the eight ball in terms of what the Democratic Party has done over the last many, many years in terms of their posture not just to Latinos, but to Black Americans, to working-class people broadly in this country.

I think the enthusiasm is — you know, I think there was a surge after Biden stepped out and she came in. And I think it’s leveled out. And I think it’s the economy that’s really, really hurting, and the fact that Biden is not popular and she’s not contrasting [00:07:00] herself enough. And so, in those states where it’s going to be very, very close, I am somewhat concerned that there’s not going to be enough of a margin, because I think that there’s — you know, I think a lot of people don’t know exactly what her plan is, or the plans that are being put out are not really capturing folks’ imagination or interest. So, I think it’s going to be very close, and I don’t know that there’s huge enthusiasm, I would say, in the community right now.

Escaping Otherism Why Dr. Seuss Could Never Find a Rhyme for Genocide - Crazy Town - Air Date 6-12-24

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: So it may be that we're talking about escaping othering, maybe it's recognizing it's not something we can completely escape from, but try to navigate and manage in some ways. 

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Yeah. 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: But I do think we have to recognize and name and combat the truly dangerous and vile forms of othering that's happened.

And a lot of it does, you want to talk about the history, comes from the playbook of colonizers, right? We talked about this in our seasonal watershed moments. I think it was [00:08:00] episode 51, where we talked about the papal bulls and the doctrines of Christian discovery. In a sense, that was the papacy rubber stamping, authorizing the Spanish government, the Portuguese government and others to go out and conquer and divide up Muslim and pagan lands, to authorize slavery, authorize exploitation of the natural world. They codified that basically. 

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Yes. 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: And led to a sort of a playbook of doing this around the world. 

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Yeah, and I think that that ties into economics, of course, too. So in that season, related to these watershed moments, we talk about this as well about, and this was covered really well in the Seeing White podcast. There's a really interesting teachings of Suzanne Plissik of the Racial Equity Institute. And the story of what is defined as a different race or what is an inferior race versus superior race, it can't be separated from the story of labor, and rich [00:09:00] landowners in colonial America needed this reliable, consistent labor force. And they didn't want, they didn't want labor forces that were poor binding together. Bonding about their social status. And so they pitted white laborers against these racial African-- 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: So indentured white slaves. Yes, chattel, those in slavery. 

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: And so that prevented coming together because of class difference, of class solidarity, right? So this is how othered/othering can be used for empower dynamics to by the prop up the status quo and those in power 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Yeah, and this is where it gets so heavy -- it's just even hard to think about all the examples throughout history and into today of this sort of "divide and conquer" approach that colonizers have used. Maybe more recent example and horrendous is the genocide that happened in Rwanda about 30 years ago. The [00:10:00] numbers are staggering. As many as 800,000 people were slaughtered. And mostly one ethnic group, the Tutsis, were killed by another ethnic group, the Hutu. But the whole tension between them was initiated by the colonizing forces. The Belgians kind of gave the Tutsis these positions of power largely based on skin color.

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Yeah. And so starting in like the late 1930s, I think, or after World War I or something like that is when they set up that dynamic. And then it really culminated 60 years later in this genocide. 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: That to me is the -- we're going to talk about the consequences of othering, but that's getting at it. You start something moving at a point in history and it can end in utter tragedy and violence like that. 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: And we see, unfortunately we see that playbook still being adopted by those in power. And it can work across political structures, right? You see it in places in the world where you have authoritarian regimes [00:11:00] who find an other to pick on and to shine a light on as a scapegoat for the problems that the populace might feel because they don't have economic opportunity or civil rights of any kind. But you can also see it in democracies, where people rise to power because they played on the fears of, or tensions between different groups.

And unfortunately that playbook really works because of what we were talking about before, which is this maybe an innate tendency in us to other difference.

The Real Reason Trump Is Demonizing Immigrants - The Lever - Air Date 10-11-24

PAUL KAROLYI: Let's talk about what's happening in Aurora. How are they going to respond? Because Aurora has declared itself a, quote, "non sanctuary city." Like you said, they are run by a Republican, Mike Kaufman.

BREE: They also have this huge immigrant population already, and a lot of organizations are already mobilized to support folks in this situation. That's the interesting dichotomy.

PAUL KAROLYI: I agree. And then the other side, they don't spend public funds supporting [00:12:00] undocumented immigrants the way Denver does. These newcomers that we've supported so much in Denver. Do you all think that this wave of national scrutiny that Aurora is now like having this backlash of wait, maybe this isn't such a big problem? Do you think this is going to change anything in the local politics? 

DAVID SIROTA: Boy, that's a really great question and it's really hard to predict. Look, Aurora went Republican before all this, I guess amid all of this happening. 

And we are a state, we're going to talk about the history of our state. We are a state that has had that Tom Tancredo lineage of politics. A lot of people who are listening to this who may be younger don't remember that, but a real, anti-immigrant politics that was here in this state. So I think this is a volatile electoral issue. 

But that said, it is a blue state. It is a Democratic state. And there is no evidence that this state's politics are going to overnight become MAGA politics. But it's also to say that [00:13:00] there are pockets of that. Even here on the front range. 

PAUL KAROLYI: For the record, there have been some new polls out this week on the Trump-Harris race in Colorado, and Harris is up. No surprise. But Biden, that when he was the candidate, was only beating Trump by 2 percent in one poll back when it was getting really dicey for him. Harris is now up by 11 percent, according to this poll from Keating Research, which is a lot. But I was looking back at a precedent for this in our last gubernatorial election, Polis versus Ganahl. Polis beat Ganahl by 24 percentage points, which is double the margin that Harris is up on Trump. So I think there is something happening here. 

BREE: I'm just always trying to relate this to the everyday experience of someone in Aurora. Is this really impacting their lives? Someone who is housed, who has lived there, they're, for 10 years or 20, is this really impacting them, or are they going to be motivated by fear?

DAVID SIROTA: I think those two things can overlap. I [00:14:00] do think that the perception of crime impacts your perception of how safe you feel. And so there's like kind of a psychological Vulcan mind trick going on here, where, for instance, this has happened across the country, where people's perception that violent crime is going, have a perception that violent crime is skyrocketing. Meanwhile, violent crime continues to go down, nationally and in cities across the country. But the perception can change the voting patterns, and can change how you feel in your neighborhood, right? And so what I worry about is, if the police are saying, listen, yes, we have normal problems with crime, like within the mean, like normal problems with crime, that sprinkling in, "oh, it's, a foreign terrorist organization, a foreign gang, a transnational scary gang," that it changes the politics of how people vote [00:15:00] based on perceptions that aren't necessarily real and also it can change the psychological character of a community. If more and more people walking around being afraid, right? And to be honest, that's how violent crime can go up. If everyone's walking around being afraid in a country that's got a lot of guns, that's one way that crime can go up. 

BREE: Yeah, I just have thought about my own personal experience in my neighborhood and what changed when we saw the influx? I just saw more folks on the street, washing windows, asking for money, but that was literally the only difference. I didn't see a change in businesses that have been there. The housing prices didn't -- nothing changed to me. And my neighborhood conversations didn't really change.

And so that's why I wonder what it really means for Aurora residents. 

DAVID SIROTA: I did hear Trump say something that was, he's always interspersed as, once in a while he'll say something vaguely interesting and almost [00:16:00] accidentally correct. And he did say, he was like, look, states and societies have been built up over decades and hundreds of years and, a whole new quick influx of people can change that. There is a truth to that. That a society, a quote unquote "culture" does build up over decades and really centuries, and that a whole new population can somewhat change that culture and that can be terrifying to people who were there. 

Now, I'm not making a xenophobic argument, right? I'm not saying that I'm just saying like that fear of change is real. 

BREE: And my neighborhood's also a great example of this. I live next door to the Polish club. There is nary a Polish person on my block other than my husband's last name. There's a Polish event there once a month. The rest of the time, it's mostly Spanish-speaking folks having quinceañeras, weddings, and birthday parties.

That change has happened over decades, right? And the neighborhood maybe was more predominantly Polish at some [00:17:00] point, but now it is more predominantly Spanish speaking. But this happens in neighborhoods in America everywhere. And look, New York City is a great example of that. 

DAVID SIROTA: Yes-- 

BREE: To me, it's just part of the evolution of cities.

DAVID SIROTA: The fear of change, especially, if we're being honest among older people who are used to their communities. Not-- There was the old Wayne's World joke, right? We fear change, right? There's a baked in fear. And the question is, I go back to the maturity, are we a mature enough society to realize, okay, change can be scary, but we're being Vulcan mind-tricked into feeling it be a threat. 

PAUL KAROLYI: To his benefit.

DAVID SIROTA: Exactly. 

PAUL KAROLYI: To his benefit. 

BREE: Oh, for sure. 

PAUL KAROLYI: One more thing here, on the local impact, how it's actually affecting the people of Aurora. I wanted to share this cause I thought this was such an interesting Instagram post from Caroline Glover, the chef behind the wonderful restaurant Annette, which just by sheer [00:18:00] accident of the local economy ended up in this Stanley marketplace, which is just on the other side of the border in Aurora. And so therefore she didn't have a chance to win a Michelin star, which everyone says she probably would have in the last couple years that the Michelin guide has come here. But she put up this post and she said a lot about what's happening. But this one quote was just like, I have to share this. She wrote, "Our city leaders are doing too little to defend Aurora on the national stage and to call out these racist anti immigrant dog whistles for what they are. Some at the top in our city are even feeding the flames of falsehood and hate for political gain. This does nothing but harm our reputation and our economy. This city deserves better leadership. Let's be proud of where we live and work, and work to make it better." 

BREE: Yeah. 

PAUL KAROLYI: What did you all think of this from Caroline Glover? 

DAVID SIROTA: I'm really glad somebody said that. I think it's pathetic for local politicians to try to use their own community as a way to platform themselves nationally.

BREE: They're throwing their own people under the bus. 

DAVID SIROTA: I mean it's really gross, right? [00:19:00] Look, again, there are real problems in Aurora, like there are real problems in Denver. But the exploitation of your own constituency, your own city, to try to gain a national platform in conservative media, in any media.

BREE: And make your city look terrible. Why would you want to do that? That's the weird part to me. 

DAVID SIROTA: It's just bad. 

BREE: About Councilwoman Jurinsky's comments and consistent push of this rhetoric is, what are you doing? You're making people think the place that you're supposed to represent sucks. 

PAUL KAROLYI: Yeah, whose fault is that, councilwoman?

BREE: And then we have a restaurateur coming out and saying it doesn't suck here. Why are you doing this to us? 

DAVID SIROTA: Because here's the thing, If you're a restaurateur, I presume you want people to be, for instance, going out at night. 

BREE: Absolutely. 

DAVID SIROTA: You want people to be -- 

BREE: Feel safe. 

DAVID SIROTA: Feel safe in your community. Right. So when your local politician is running out on Fox News and being like, Oh my God, this is not safe, that's bad for your business. 

BREE: And it's bad for the economy of the city you're representing. So it is, [00:20:00] yeah, I liked her point. And I appreciated that. Because it takes a lot to stick your neck out a little bit as a business owner.

'Villains nor victims' Why immigration is good for our economy - Velshi - Air Date 6-2-24

VELSHI - HOST, MSNBC: "America must be kept American", said President Calvin Coolidge in 1923. As the Great Depression wore on and as xenophobia ran rampant, American leadership found a scapegoat in immigrants, blaming them for taking jobs, for not assimilating into American culture. Just before the bill was enacted, this op ed was published in the New York Times in April of 1924: "America of the melting pot comes to an end". 

Then at the end of May, 1924, 100 years ago, President Coolidge signed the Johnson Reed Act, or the Immigration Act of 1924. The act banned all immigration from Asia and instituted very low quotas limiting the number of people allowed from each country, severely limiting all other immigrants except those from Western and Northern Europe.

The impact of that bill was swift and extreme. Almost immediately, the United [00:21:00] States saw a sharp decline in immigration, which lasted for the next 40 years. As author and Wharton professor Zeke Hernandez wrote in a recent op ed, "Communities that lost immigrants because of the 1920s quotas receive significantly less investment capital from the countries where those immigrants would have come from, and businesses in those places today invest less abroad as a result. That lack of investment equals fewer jobs". 

The 1924 quotas, 100 years ago, led America to lose out on thousands of foreign scientists. As a result, native born scientists became 68 percent less likely to patent, and companies dependent on foreign talent suffered a multi decade decline in patenting. The architects of the 1920s immigration restrictions claimed to be protecting American workers, but it actually accomplished exactly the opposite. At the height of the Great Depression, politicians worried that American workers were being hurt by competition from Mexicans. [00:22:00] So, the government forcibly repatriated one third of all Mexicans living in the United States. That effort backfired, resulting in fewer and lower paying jobs for American workers. 

One hundred years later, we find ourselves having a similar rhetorical and ideological debate about immigration. Trump and his allies are stoking anti-immigrant sentiment, using brutally dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, pushing the idea that immigration is the reason that the United States is a "nation in decline". As Hernandez points out, even many of the most progressive among us who have a positive view of immigration often have that positive view based on personal morals or an ethical obligation to help those in need and to accept the "poor, huddled masses".

But even that compassionate point of view gets it wrong. Supporting an increase in legal accessible immigration isn't the kind of thing to do for those who are fleeing turmoil in their birth country. Immigration actively improves [00:23:00] American society and there is now tons of data to back that up. Hernandez writes, "immigrants foster investment, create jobs, make us more innovative, fill our public coffers, reduce crime, and successfully integrate culturally". 

Yes, people want to immigrate to our country because of the possibility of a better life, of economic prosperity, of social safety, of socio political stability. But we shouldn't just tolerate the idea of immigration as an act of humanistic altruism. We should embrace immigration as vital to our country's economic health, as integral to our position as a global leader in innovation, as necessary for us to continue on as a healthy and prosperous country.

Immigration and what we should do to change our current broken system is at the very front and center of the upcoming presidential election.

Escaping Otherism Why Dr. Seuss Could Never Find a Rhyme for Genocide Part 2 - Crazy Town - Air Date 6-12-24

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Okay, so let's talk about what the consequences are for this. Of course, there's health effects. We covered this in the episode on individualism. Being othered [00:24:00] leads to isolation and loneliness. It takes a toll on your mental and physical health. And remember we talked about, that being socially isolated is like taking up smoking or not exercising in terms of its health effects. 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Yeah, right. And of course, as we discussed in our episode on extremism, you see hate crimes, including violence against people based on their race or ethnicity or religion, gender, disabilities, sexual orientation. These rose nearly 12 percent between 2020 and 2021. Just that period of time in the U. S. 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Well, and of course, where this all really gets to is after you've othered people and dehumanized them, it's easy, you know, next step to start killing them. And we've had horrendous instances of genocide, in a lot of places in Myanmar, in Darfur region of Sudan, in Rwanda as we mentioned, Cambodia, and just naming a few. But this has been with us for a long time and [00:25:00] it's still with us 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: And I worry it is something we're going to have to increasingly face. We haven't talked a ton about this, but one of the drivers of othering, or a seeking of belonging to a group that might be a form of malignant belonging, is sense of scarcity, perceived scarcity, fear, and uncertainty.

And as we talk a lot about at Post Carbon Institute, if we're entering a period of what we've been calling the great unraveling of environmental systems like the climate system or social systems, that just heightens those tensions, that heightens that fear, heightens that uncertainty, heightens the at least perceived scarcity that people feel.

And so the risk of othering is even more real I think now and will be a more significant issue for us to contend [00:26:00] with looking forward. It really, if there's a thing that keeps me up at night it this is...you know. 

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Right. Yeah, I mean we talk about coming together in times of crisis, but also we could fall apart in a time of crisis.

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Well, I think there's a dichotomy there. So it's like if you are a society and you face an acute crisis... yeah, it's like i'm gonna help my neighbor, whatever they look like, whoever they are. But if you are subject to chronic crises, I think that's more where you're going to share the great unraveling. It's like over and over and over again, you're hit with this. You probably lose that sense of cohesion pretty quick.

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: And you have people coming in to say, this is happening because of those people. So it's a combination of those, especially from people who want to maintain their power and the status quo for as long as possible, trying to deflect and say, we don't need to change the fundamental way that we operate as a society, because that's what's brought us here. It's like, no, [00:27:00] we can get back. We can make America great again, if we deal with those people. 

Prof Richard Wolff A FUTURE WITHOUT FEAR OF IMMIGRANTS - The Zero Hour - Air Date 10-12-24

RICHARD WOLFF: First, and really important, I think that the Democrats are missing a fantastic opportunity to smash the Republicans on this issue. If I were advising Kamala Harris, I am not, but if I were, I would say go right after them. This is a mistake they have made. Clothe yourself in Judeo-Christian morality. Mary and Joseph were immigrants of a kind in that manger also, and we're kind of glad, at least those folks are, who are Christians, that they were able to survive and not be treated horribly at the border.[00:28:00] 

The morality of it is obvious. I won't dwell on it. I want to dwell on why It is not only moral and ethical to welcome—welcome!—immigrants, but I want to go through the reasons why. Number one, the United States' population is becoming older, and its rate of birth is shrinking. We are not reproducing ourselves and that weakens our society and our economy and is very costly because the shrinking number of young people working has to support a growing number of old people in retirement who are not working.

This is not a sustainable arrangement unless you tax those at the lower end a lot more to fund the Social [00:29:00] Security that has to go to the increasing number of the old ones. Immigrants are overwhelmingly young, working age human beings, and what they mostly want, and we know that because of that's what they mostly do, is go to work when they arrive here. They want a job, they want a steady job, which means a steady contribution into the Social Security system of the United States. So they are not only not a burden, they are helping to address a very serious problem. 

Number two, the United States, at least since the Monroe Doctrine of 1830, so we're talking now a two century history insistence that the United States is the dominant [00:30:00] power in the Western Hemisphere, that the others, mostly in those days the Europeans, are to keep out or to be secondary or need our permission or whatever. In other words, we're in charge, okay? I agree with that. We have been in charge. I would call it a kind of colonialism, but even if you didn't call it that, you know that major decisions about what has happened in Latin America over the last 200 years have been made by and with the heavy influence of the United States.

Therefore, major events like migration are partly the result of American policies across the board. Policies affecting trade, policies affecting politics, policies affecting the climate, all of which contribute to the very [00:31:00] conditions that drive people to leave their home, their religion, their community, their family, go to another country where they don't know any of those things, where they're taking enormous risks in order to create a livable life for their families. We ought to have some sense responsibility. 

It's a little bit like the responsibility we do sometimes take that if we have mobilized a part of the population of a foreign country to assist the United States in administering that country or fighting a war in that country, we feel a responsibility when the war is lost. I'm thinking here, of course, of Vietnam and, to a lesser degree, of Afghanistan, to say we will create a place in the United States for those who have taken [00:32:00] risks to work with the U. S. in those countries to be able to come here. The same logic could and should apply in Latin America, which is where most of the influx of residents, immigrants have come from.

Third, the FBI data show immigrants have lower rates of crime than native Americans, and the reason for that is no mystery, and everyone should understand it. And it's simple. If you are a native person and you commit a crime, you are entitled to all the procedures of due process. If you are an immigrant and you commit a crime, you can be thrown out of the country, and you often are. Immigrants know that. No way are they going to go through what they went through to leave their country [00:33:00] with all that that means. Go to another one and then commit a petty crime that can not only deprive them of any chance of citizenship, but force them to leave and to go back to the very circumstances from which they fled.That's the reason they don't commit crimes. It's much too dangerous for them to do so. Okay? 

I could go on. But I want to shift now beyond writing the list, which is a big list of why we should welcome immigrants, to asking a theoretical but yet also empirical question. Every wave of immigrants, and the United States is famous as being a country that has had one wave of immigrants after another throughout its history... well, let me change that: throughout its history, before [00:34:00] it ethnically cleansed the local people out of existence here. Those waves occasioned anxiety on the part of people who are already here, about their jobs, their housing, their communities, and so on. We know that story. And the way to handle that story, that a Democrat, especially one in the party of Franklin Roosevelt, ought to have thought through, is to say the following:

When the nation needs it, we have created full employment. We did it in 1941 when the nation went to war, okay? We are confronted with a twin crisis, a collapsing birth rate and an immigration wave. This is a good time to commit to [00:35:00] full employment, plus a housing construction program, and the two of them could be the same program. The unemployed could be put together to build the housing. The way the unemployed were put together to produce the Munitions that the other unemployed would use once they put their uniforms on. Okay, if we gave everybody a job who was here, we could then give a job to the immigrants without anyone here fearing loss of job or higher rents or any of the other bugaboos that are being suggested flow from immigration.

It would make the U. S. government a hero for all the people who need a secure job, who are native. It would make the friction between them and the immigrants disappear. It would [00:36:00] solve the entire problem and show up the Republicans and the right wingers for being the amoral, unethical departures from what could be a great American tradition of welcoming and integrating immigrants.

If Kamala Harris said it. My thinking is, it would be better for her, for her election prospects, a better response than going to the border and talking tough.

Notes from the Editor giving a quick list of immigration lies

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We’ve just heard clips starting with:

Democracy Now! looking critically at Harris’s answer on immigration at a recent town hall.

Crazy Town discussed how to escape the trap of othering.

The Lever looked at the accusation that crime is related to immigration in Colorado.

Velshi discussed the historical pattern of the impacts of immigration regulation.

Crazy Town discussed the impacts of othering.[00:37:00] 

And The Zero Hour argued for how Democrats could turn immigration into a strength of theirs by flipping the script on Republicans.

And those were just the Top Takes. There’s lots more in the Deeper Dives sections. But first, a reminder that this show is supported by members, who get access to bonus episodes featuring the production crew here discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often trying to make each other laugh in the process. 

To support all our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new, members-only podcast feed that you’ll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support [there’s a link in the show notes], through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app. 

Members also get chapter markers in the show, but, depending on the app you use to listen, you may be able to use the time codes in the show notes to jump around the show similar to chapter markers, so check that out. 

If regular membership isn’t in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don’t let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

Now, before we [00:38:00] continue on to the Deeper Dives half of the show, I just wanted to give credit to the article that inspired today’s episode. 

The publication “Popular Information” a couple of weeks ago wrote the piece: "Every problem Trump wrongfully blames on undocumented immigrants." Obviously, we’re covering a lot of them today in the clips, but to just go down the list real quick:

The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for a "crime wave." Turns out there isn’t a crime wave.

The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for voter fraud. Turns out there is hardly any voter fraud.

The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for driving up housing costs. Turns out there are lots of reasons for high housing costs, but immigrants don’t contribute very much to the problem, considering that most who come here can’t afford to by houses. Many do, however, work in the house-building industry, so kicking them out of the country would slow the pace of new housing, [00:39:00] helping to keep prices high.

The Trump campaign claims undocumented immigrants will bankrupt Medicare and Social Security. Turns out they actually pay into the system just like everyone else and help increase funding of those programs - the opposite of threatening them. 

The Trump campaign blamed undocumented immigrants for taking jobs from American citizens. This misunderstands the nature of where jobs come from. More people working and consuming within an economy, the more jobs need to exist to serve all those people. Mass deportation of migrants would kill jobs for those who remain because the economy would shrink. 

Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for smuggling Fentanyl. Over 85% of fentanyl trafficking is done by US citizens. So, working to block migrants based on that premise would only make a tiny dent, and it's [00:40:00] attacking a demand problem from the supply side, which is always the wrong angle anyway. 

The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for inflation. Again, understanding how an economy works is helpful here. Deporting migrants who currently work in the production of a wide variety of goods would constrain that production, raising prices. One primary example: food that comes from farms which employ migrant labor.

So, for that one listener of this show who’s been complaining about the price of eggs and is planning on voting for Trump so he can deport the immigrants, you probably need to think again.

SECTION A - MIS/DIS INFORMATION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now, we’ll continue to dive deeper on 4 topics. Next up: 

SECTION A - MIS/DISINFORMATION

Followed by SECTION B - REALITY CHECK

SECTION C - OTHERING

and SECTION D - SOLUTIONS

How is Trump winning the US immigration debate - Anywhere but Washington - Air Date 10-10-24

DONALD TRUMP: Millions and millions of people have come into our country and nobody has any idea where they're from.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: [00:41:00] Donald Trump has continued to push conspiratorial racist tropes. 

DONALD TRUMP: They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: And even more extreme policies. 

DONALD TRUMP: We're going to have the largest deportation effort in history. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Meanwhile, the Democrats have responded by shifting further to the right.

KAMALA HARRIS: If someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry, they will be barred from receiving asylum. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: We've come to southern Arizona, near the border with Mexico. to try and unpick facts for misinformation.

CITIZEN: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. We're 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: at a meeting of the Pima County Republican Party, which is a county that covers Tucson. This is a big car rally. A lot of people talking about the border. 

CITIZEN: The border has got to get closed up. Those people that are breaking the laws of this [00:42:00] country, that came across here illegal, are going to be mass deported.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Mass deportations? That's what Trump's calling for? 

CITIZEN: Yes. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: That's millions of people. Well, 

CITIZEN: the people that are here illegally. I don't have any problem with people coming here. My grandparents came here, but they did it the right way. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: But millions of people don't. I 

CITIZEN: don't care. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: I think 

CITIZEN: it has to happen, and I think citizens have to be behind it.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: How do you think it's possible to do that humanely? 

CITIZEN: I don't know that, but I'm confident Trump can do it. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: You said you're a Mexican American. What do you think about Trump's border policy? 

CITIZEN: I love it. I love it. I'm 100 percent for it. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Do you know anybody that came across the border without applying for green card?

Oh, 

CITIZEN: yes. Unfortunately, I have family members that did. Cousins, cousins, nephews, nieces. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Because those people might be deported if Donald Trump wins. 

CITIZEN: That's okay. That's okay. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: How long have they been here for 

CITIZEN: Years, like 20, somewhere, 30 years. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: And so you think they, the members of your own family have been here for 30 years, should be deported?

CITIZEN: Uh, yeah. Yes. I mean, they can be deported, but they [00:43:00] can also apply to, to come back again to United States. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: How do you think they would feel about you saying 

CITIZEN: that? It was lovely to meet you. so much. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Lovely to meet you too. for 

CITIZEN: what you're doing. Thank you. Okay. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: We've been making these films for a long time and I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that.

It shows to you how polarised this issue has become and how far fetched it is.

As the car rally lurched into action, we hitched a ride with party secretary Steve Selvey. There's a legal 

REPUBLICAN CHAIR: process, obviously there's uh, we expect some of that. Um, we have democrats talk about, it's their goal to uh, to replace the right majority and then if you bring it up it's, they're upset with you for no decision.

And is 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: that a concern that you've got about the white majority of this country? 

REPUBLICAN CHAIR: Not white, because they want to make it a racial issue. I'm concerned [00:44:00] that their, the plan is to bring in a bunch of new Democrat voters. We hear reports that there are terror cells setting up here. Um, that, uh, you know, when, when, you're not, you're not vetting people.

Where 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: are you seeing those reports? I'm sorry? Where are you seeing those reports? I definitely haven't seen them. 

REPUBLICAN CHAIR: You haven't seen those? No, no, no. I'd have to find that for you, because I've seen it. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: The views here are mainstream in the Republican Party. And in a political climate that's become increasingly hostile, groups like Humane Borders have stepped in.

For years, they've placed water stations for migrants crossing the desert, even as far right militia and border authorities have tried to obstruct their work. 

CITIZEN: Mayor has been alleged to have vandalized several water aid stations that were positioned in rural Pima County. 

HELPER: We have to lock them now. Uh. Why is that to, uh, keep vigilantes from, uh, doing, doing nasty stuff to the water?[00:45:00] 

It's probably down a quarter or so.

HELPER 2: Oh, this barrel is one of my patch jobs. It's been stabbed or shot quite a few times. You can see I've used, uh, the hot glue gun on it a few times. 

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: I mean, obviously there is a fentanyl crisis in this country at the moment. Some people would say that. Smuggling routes around here, you know, are contributing to that.

I just wonder whether you worry 

HELPER: about that. The vast, vast majority of the fentanyl that comes in, comes in through ports of entry. It doesn't come across, you know, illegal crossings through the border. You know, it comes across Americans, you know, driving it across in their trucks, cars, whatever. So, uh, I don't think that what we do here contributes to the fentanyl problem.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Just a few hundred yards away, Joel showed me where he recently found the body of a young Mexican woman. We've walked about 300 yards

and already doing 60 miles [00:46:00] feels unfathomable to me. 

HELPER 2: She was like a 32 year old woman from some small village in Mexico, just came here for a better life. And the heck of it is, her life, wherever she was going, probably wouldn't be that fantastic, but it was better than where she was. I think that's what people tend to forget, is, well, not, not everybody's as fortunate as Americans are.

OLIVER LAUGHLAND: Someone's hot. 

HELPER 2: Just a lightweight jacket. Does it matter if we're talking Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald J. Trump, or Joe Biden. It's all the same. Death is the policy. Supposedly we'd land a free at the home of the brave, but we don't act like it. 

FEMA is running low on disaster money, but not because funds went to housing undocumented migrants - Verify - Air Date 10-7-24

HOST, VERIFY: FEMA is asking Congress for more money to get through hurricane season, but some say the agency would have had plenty if it didn't spend so much helping undocumented migrants. Brandon Lewis from our Verify team went to the border to find out more. [00:47:00] 

BRANDON LEWIS - REPORTER, VERIFY: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the government's response to Hurricane Helene is stretching FEMA's budget and it doesn't have enough to make it through hurricane season.

Many people and politicians on social responded by claiming the real reason FEMA is running out of money is because it spent a billion dollars housing people who are entering the U. S. illegally. Multiple Verify viewers asked us if that's really the reason FEMA is running out of money. So, let's verify.

Our sources are Homeland Security, FEMA, the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, and the White House. Homeland Security tells Verify the claims are completely false. Congress funds disaster relief and migrant assistance through two different programs under FEMA's control, and lawmakers have yet to Don't allow the agency to transfer money between them.

A Congressional Research Service report from January says during the last four fiscal years, Congress gave FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund 175 [00:48:00] billion. Separately, Congress allocated roughly a billion dollars for migrant assistance. The Shelter and Service Program helps distribute funds to help communities provide services to migrants, such as temporary shelter, food, and urgent medical care.

And FEMA says on its website that disaster relief money has not been diverted for other non disaster related efforts. So, No, FEMA is not running out of disaster relief funds because it spent the money to house people who enter the U. S. illegally. Any additional funding for the disaster relief program would require congressional approval.

SECTION B - REALITY CHECK

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Reality check.

Prof Richard Wolff A FUTURE WITHOUT FEAR OF IMMIGRANTS Part 2 - The Zero Hour - Air Date 10-12-24

RICHARD WOLFF: Look, I talk from time to time to people who work for example. with the United States Chamber of Commerce. They are not in favor of anti immigration. They know that their members need and want to hire immigrant workers, partly because they need the workers, period, and partly because [00:49:00] those workers are cheaper, and partly because those workers are are very fearful of losing a job because of the what that might mean given their immigrant status.

So they are docile, um, nasty employers take avail advantage of that, don't pay them. Because they know, particularly if they're undocumented, or even if they're documented, but their husband or their wife or their old sick aunt is living with them and she isn't, that they don't want any governmental official coming around, etc.,

etc., etc. But there's an economic calculus, very well known, uh, in, in the literature of The economics of migration that I want to mention now because it, it belongs in the conversation. It's, it's obvious, uh, but it has been jazzed up to be useful for professional economists. So [00:50:00] here's how it goes. If you want to have a worker in your society, if you need workers, Immigration is the most efficient way to do that.

Why? Because all of the sunk costs of a baby being raised for five years while it is completely dependent, then when another 10 or 15 years of not only being dependent, but in the sense of consuming goods and services to survive, but the costs of putting that person through a public education system, learning to speak the language, learning to do the arithmetic, learning to read, and so on.

By the time they're 17, 18, 19, and enter the labor force, you have spent a fortune on them. Now, if they're Native, now consider an immigrant. Even an immigrant who comes from a poor country, [00:51:00] those expenses have been carried by that poor country. If that poor country trained that young person until he or she or they were old enough to do the dangerous trek up through Mexico and, and come across the border into the United States as a 19 or 20 year old, which many of them are, you have an unbelievable subsidy.

That's what it's called in the literature. It's a subsidy that goes perversely from the poor country to the rich country. Because the poor country paid to raise the child up, but then all the productivity of the child is lost. is in the United States. The United States gets the fruit of their labor, but the United States didn't have to pay any of the costs of feeding and clothing and housing and educating and medically caring for them.

[00:52:00] And it's perverse because subsidies like that for development purposes are supposed to go from the rich country to the poor one, but the irony is it goes the other way. And migration makes that happen. And yet, in America, you never hear from any leadwell, I shouldn't go that farbut I have never heard from a leading Republican or Democrat.

an argument in favor of the enormous benefits coming to the United States when you have millions of working age people who thereby have loaded the cost of their education onto the poor country they've left. in order to bring their most productive years to the United States. 

RJ ESKOW - HOST, THE ZERO HOUR: That reminds me of a, uh, a concept that had some currency in 2016 when I was working for Bernie Sanders and I, [00:53:00] I ran afoul of its adherence, even though I'm not necessarily opposed to it, uh, which is the concept of open borders.

Um, And here's a case where I think context is everything and the open borders adherence who are sort of a mixture of left and right, uh, of libertarian and some kind of left wing, uh, just so anybody can come in, right? Anyone, just no borders, no guards, no nothing. You want to come in, you come in. And, uh, as recline of the New York Times, uh, kind of sandbag Bernie on this one in an interview, uh, made it his leading question and pounded him.

Well, if you like immigration, you know, working people, why aren't you for this? Um, And I wrote a piece about it that basically, as I recall, just said, what I just said, context is everything, that if you'll have an open border policy with a 7. 25 [00:54:00] minimum wage, which is worth even less now than it was then, um, and, uh, and, uh, you know, no lack of, uh, employment guarantees, or absolute, complete lack of employment guarantees and so on, It would just, you know, screw the workers of the United States, you know, offer this flood of cheap labor.

And if people come in and don't obtain ID, they can be paid less than minimum wage and so on. You know, I saw a lot of practical problems with it. But again, coming back to the system we live under, but is there a system or a vision where something like Open borders could actually work, you think? 

RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, I think it absolutely could, it's a question of the commitment you want to make.

If I'm right, and I believe I am, that the economic benefit [00:55:00] is greater to the country to which the migrant goes

than most people have understood, then it is in the interest of the United States to facilitate that. At this point, If you open the border, my guess is you'd have a pretty hefty movement into the United States. But as people who take it seriously, the open border argument, have shown, border movements go in multiple directions.

RJ ESKOW - HOST, THE ZERO HOUR: Right. 

RICHARD WOLFF: Uh, when conditions change, uh, so does the, uh, immigration. Europe, which has open borders to an extent among the countries in the EU, etc., etc., gives us many examples of this, uh, of this sort of thing. The French story, which I know, [00:56:00] Um, is a variation on the American. The way the French work it, and I'm not advocating this, but the way the French work it is when the economy is booming and they're short of labor and wages are going up, they allow large numbers of North Africans and now also South Africans to come into the country.

And when the economy doesn't grow. They push them back out. And so what you have is actually a moving migration in one direction or the other. And even in the United States, we've had a significant amount of out migration of people from Central America going back to Central America and When they've lost their jobs, when jobs have become, uh, difficult to obtain in recessions, and so on.

The Real Reason Trump Is Demonizing Immigrants Part 2 - The Lever - Air Date 10-11-24

 

DONALD TRUMP: [00:57:00] You know, the governor is a Democrat and he's a radical left Democrat, and he's not too popular right now because they're going to take over a lot more than Aurora. They're going to go through Colorado, take over the whole damn state by the time they finished.

Unless I become president, they won't last long. 

BREE: A radical democrat? 

PAUL KAROLYI: He's talking about our governor, Jared Polis. 

DAVID SIROTA: Okay, can we just, first of all, talk about one thing that, well, many things. There's a lot of misinformation about what's going on in Aurora, and I'm sure we'll discuss that in a second. But let's just talk the pure politics of this.

Aurora is a Republican run city. 

BREE: Yeah. 

DAVID SIROTA: They made a big deal over the Republicans taking it over. There are barely any Democrats left in that city government. So, just the MAGA movement ripping on Aurora It's wild. It's like Yo, it's your city. It's like 

BREE: them ripping on Colorado Springs. Like, where do you think you are?

DAVID SIROTA: Like, the governor, like, [00:58:00] what is he, what about the city that this is allegedly, I'm gonna underscore allegedly, that this is all allegedly happening in? Like, they made a big deal of, like, MAGA taking it over. So 

BREE: it's goldfish brain, though. They don't remember. I don't know. 

DAVID SIROTA: To me, I don't even like a remember.

It's like what the government of Aurora literally is right now today. 

PAUL KAROLYI: Yeah, 

DAVID SIROTA: it's really weird. It is very 

BREE: weird. 

PAUL KAROLYI: Well, well, Kaufman is saying he would love for Trump to visit. He says he wants he now wants after weeks of he was so back and forth on this whole Venezuelan gang thing. He was like, it's a huge problem.

Then he was like, we made the arrests and he was like, it's overblown. And anyway, But he said he would love to see Trump visit because he wants the opportunity to set the record straight and show the candidate that quote, this is in the Colorado sun, we've dealt with the situation from a law enforcement perspective.

So he doesn't want to talk politics anymore. It sounds like 

DAVID SIROTA: I mean, the thing is, is that my takeaway from all of this is, first and foremost, there is a serious housing [00:59:00] crisis. I mean, at the root of this is an out of state developer, excuse me, owner, property owner, uh, with properties in disrepair.

Properties in disrepair tend to create all sorts of problems, right? 

BREE: Also, they're making money off of people living in squalor because these are the folks that will rent these places because they need housing so badly. It's the 

PAUL KAROLYI: exact same situation with the Haitian immigrants in Ohio. I made this point on the show two weeks ago, but both of these political hysterical narratives the conservatives are rolling out, they're both boiled down to the housing crisis in this country.

DAVID SIROTA: Also, the police department. continues to say that while they can't say that there's not one single person affiliated with a gang somewhere in Aurora, the police department continue continues to consistently say, this is not a gang problem, not a Venezuelan gang problem. I don't think the police department [01:00:00] has any motive to lie about this.

That right? I mean, the police police departments can lie and do lie. But about that specific fact, is this or is this not a Venezuelan gang problem? What would the motive be for the police department to lie about that? If somebody has evidence that contradicts that, that would be great to see. But why? Why are we sort of brushing aside that the police continue to say that this is not fundamentally a Venezuelan gang problem?

BREE: I love this quote from, uh, Trump said in Aurora, Entire apartment complexes are being taken over by armed Venezuelan gangs with weapons the likes of which even the military doesn't see. Sir, have you seen the military? 

PAUL KAROLYI: Is he for gun control? Yeah, this is like one of those things where, like, if you actually listen to what he says, it's like, What does he actually think about this stuff?

Like, what does he actually care about? These 

BREE: are vicious, violent people. I mean, it's like, It's just racism. It's just old school racism. That's 

DAVID SIROTA: all. That's all it is. Now, I will also say, look, I read a stat that it was [01:01:00] 40, 000 people in the sixth congressional district have moved in, in the last year, many of them immigrants.

And look. That's a huge influx of new people for a city, and it's going to sort of stress city services, it's going to stress the housing situation, I mean, that, how to deal with that, you can do what Trump is doing and just be just a straight up racist about it, or you can actually be. try to deal with the influx of people.

And I feel like what this all represents to me is an inability to have a mature conversation about, you know, population migration. It's just straight up lowest common denominator. Racism, uh, for electoral purposes, I don't think it'll work, but then again, like, I'm, I'm an eternal optimist, uh, and, you know, I mean, it's a pretty dark period of time right now, like I could [01:02:00] imagine it working, not for Colorado, not, not electorally in Colorado.

This is not an outcome. Yeah, we're like a stage for this, right? Like, uh, for the rest of the country. 

The Truth About Immigrants and the Economy - Robert Reich - Air Date 7-2-24

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Immigrants are good for the economy and our society. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. For centuries, immigration has been America's secret sauce for economic growth and prosperity. But for just as long, immigrants have been an easy scapegoat. One of the oldest, ugliest lies is to falsely smear immigrants as criminals.

We have a new category of crime. It's called migrant crime. It's just not true. Crime is way down in America. Anyone who says otherwise is fear mongering. And whatever crime there is, is not being driven by immigration. Immigrants, regardless of citizenship status, are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated for committing crimes than U.

S. born citizens. Maybe that's why border cities are among [01:03:00] America's safest. Immigration opponents also claim immigrants are a drag on the economy and a drain on government resources. They want the free stuff and they're coming here to get it and it's not right. Quite the opposite. The major reason immigrants are coming to America is to build a better life for themselves and their families, contributing to the American economy.

The long term economic benefits of immigration outweigh any short term costs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that adding more immigrants as workers and consumers, including undocumented immigrants, will grow America's economy by about 7 trillion. And those immigrants would increase tax revenue by about 1 trillion, shrinking the deficit and helping pay for programs we all benefit from.

Immigrants of all statuses pay more in taxes than they get in government [01:04:00] benefits. Research by the Libertarian Keto Institute found that first generation immigrants pay 1. 38 in taxes for every 1 they receive in benefits. This is especially true for undocumented immigrants, who pay billions in taxes each year, but are excluded from almost all federal benefits.

After all, you need documentation to receive federal benefits. And guess what undocumented immigrants don't have? And of course, one of the most common anti immigrant claims also isn't true. They're taking your jobs and they're creating lots of problems. They took our jobs! They took your jobs! No, immigrants are not taking away jobs that Americans want.

Undocumented immigrants in particular are doing some of the most dangerous, difficult, low paying, and essential jobs in the country. Despite what certain pundits [01:05:00] might tell you, immigration has not stopped the U. S. from enjoying record low unemployment. And as the baby boomer generation moves into retirement, young immigrants will help support Social Security by providing a thriving base of younger workers who are paying into the system.

The fact that so many immigrants want to come here gives America an advantage over other countries with aging populations, like Germany and Japan. What's more, immigrants are particularly ambitious and hardworking. They're 80 percent more likely to start a new business than U. S. born citizens. Immigrant founded businesses also impressively comprise 103 companies in last year's Fortune 500.

And immigrants continue to add immeasurably to the richness of American culture. We should be celebrating them, not denigrating them. We should be opening legal pathways to citizenship, not [01:06:00] closing them. It's time to speak the facts and the truth. We need your help. Immigrants to keep our economy and our country vibrant and growing.

They're not poisoning the blood of our nation. They're renewing and restoring it.

SECTION C - OTHERING

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next, Section C: Othering. 

'Folks are scared' Springfield residents reeling from the fallout of Trump's immigration lies - Deadline - Air Date 9-19-24

DONALD TRUMP: I'm going to go there in the next two weeks. I'm going to Springfield and I'm going to Aurora.

You may never see me again, but that's okay. Gotta do what I gotta do. Whatever happened to Trump? Well, he never got out of Springfield. 

NICOLLE WALLACE - HOST, DEADLINE: The mystery in that clip to me is why are they clapping, right? It's unclear what any of that was. Um, I think I know, but the ex president is. undoubtedly adding fuel to the fire for the people who live and work and have to try to survive and raise their families in [01:07:00] Springfield, Ohio, by talking about planning a visit that the Republican mayor warns would be a quote, extreme strain on the city resources.

Trump continues to ignore calls from local and state officials in his own party to stop fanning the flames of this baseless, debunked racist conspiracy theory about people who live there eating the family pets. To that point, his MAGA allies are now descending on Springfield, where, remember the sky, Vivek Ramaswamy is hosting what he calls an immigration town hall there later today.

The city itself is reeling from the recklessness of these lies. Our next guest reports that Clark County Democratic Party volunteers are now facing threats. From far right groups while canvassing for the election and in response to the bomb threats at the schools, the schools in Springfield are telling students to be careful of false information while state troopers sweep the school buildings twice a day.

Joining our conversation, NBC News Correspondent Shaq Brewster, [01:08:00] out in Springfield, Ohio, and Lifelong Ohian and Managing Editor of WYSO Southwest, Ohio's community owned radio station, Chris Walter is here with us. Alicia is still here as well. Um, Chris, tell me what it's like there. 

CHRIS: Well, it's, um, It's been pretty hectic the last week.

Um, you know, this is a community that has faced a lot of challenges for years and years. And, you know, the Haitian Americans here have been a part of that community for, you know, the last five years. And, uh, you know, they've been creating businesses. They've been, uh, you know, working jobs. Uh, they've been going to school.

They've, you know, they've become a part of the community. And so, uh, really, right now, things are just tense. There's a sense of anxiety in the air. Um, there continue to be bomb threats every day. We're going on six or seven days in a row. Um, you know, like you said earlier, Governor DeWine and Mayor Rue [01:09:00] resources are stretched thin.

The Ohio State troopers have been called into the city to kind of help keep the school secure. But You know, when I was on Tuesday, when I was sitting in the parking lot of one of the schools, there were parents running into the schools to pick up their kids after they heard about a new rumor of a threat on Facebook.

So everyone's just really on edge. And yeah, there's there's just a lot of uncertainty about what's going to come next. 

NICOLLE WALLACE - HOST, DEADLINE: Do people feel, um, do they understand why they're in the middle of the presidential race with 50 days to go? Do they understand that the lie that, that, that people like you, people have done the work to debunk the lie that nobody that follows the truth believes that anyone's Labrador retriever is at risk?

I mean, do they, do they, has it shattered their feeling that they're welcome in this country? 

CHRIS: I think it depends on the person. I've been able to speak with a lot of Haitian American folks over the last week. But, you know, I've been reporting on this issue since 2020. [01:10:00] Um, it's not even an issue. I've just been reporting on the reality that, you know, Haitian Americans are moving to our area.

Um, and, you know, kind of what the, you know, they're dealing with and, you know, the both the challenges and the successes they've had. So there are some folks that have talked about moving back to florida. I think there's a real misconception that these people are illegal immigrants or illegal aliens.

They're not. The vast majority are transplants, people that lived in florida or long island and decide to move to Springfield Ohio because of a cheaper cost of living and an opportunity to start their own businesses here. So some folks are talking about moving back to places where there's a larger Haitian American community.

Um, but other folks are talking about, you know, sticking it out and being resilient and they, you know, that this too will pass because a lot of people have, they have started businesses, they've started families here. Um, so it's, you know, they're in, they don't want to leave, right? They care about this community, they care about Springfield.

I 

NICOLLE WALLACE - HOST, DEADLINE: mean, what's amazing, Alicia, is that they, they're neither of those things, right? [01:11:00] They're, well, I mean, but that is what Donald Trump and J. D. Vance are calling them. And J. D. Vance knows better. He knows that whether you have They're 

ALICIA - MSNBC: his constituents. They're his constituents. They know, he knows what temporary protective status is.

He understands. But I want to take us to a moment in the debate where Donald Trump Was at was talking about how he was spreading a lie that immigrants are coming and stealing jobs and says, you know You know who it's the worst for black Americans and Hispanic Americans He was trying to to drive a wedge Between those of us are who are here with paperwork and those of us who are not and I think part of what?

Springfield has illustrated so sadly is that once that lie is out there, it attaches to all of us, right? To be anti Haitian is to be anti black, to be anti Latinos at the border is to be anti Latinos at the interior of this country, which they're doubling down on by saying they want to deport 11 million people who are living on the interior of this country.

So if he's trying to call to you and [01:12:00] say, don't worry, you will be protected. You will be special. You will be different because you have paperwork. They are now saying. That is not true. Temporary protective status. J. D. Vance is still calling you an illegal alien. They see no distinction between people who are here without papers and people who are 

NICOLLE WALLACE - HOST, DEADLINE: shack.

I want to play some of your great interviews since you've been on the ground there. Let me do that first. 

CLIP: So it was a very terrifying feeling, but I was also enraged because I know that a lot of it is rooted in lies. Against the community that has shown me a lot of love. All this activity with the bombing threats and stuff, I mean, it's has a little bit of an impact on the kids.

They're kind of scared. What's going on right now is really chaotic and hectic. Everybody having a right to live in peace, and this is just disrupting our peace. And there's men. These people are nice people. They're [01:13:00] good people. 

NICOLLE WALLACE - HOST, DEADLINE: Sheck Brewster, you're on the ground there, um, for us. Tell us what you're hearing.

SHAQ BREWSTER: Yeah, Nicole, I think one of those conversations that our team had with parents who were dropping their kids off to elementary school, one of the elementary schools that was evacuated last week because of that hoax threat. One of the parents said he didn't know how to explain a bomb threat to his six year old and he tried to sanitize it a little bit and tried to still explain.

And the six year old started crying to him wanting to go to school, but also just scared and fearful of going to school. And that's the word I continue to hear in the conversations I've been having with people. Folks are fearful. Folks are scared about the reality. Of course, it's the threats that we've been talking about, the bomb threats that we've targeted.

Elementary schools, high schools, campuses. Uh, yesterday it was a grocery store and a Walmart, but it's also the fear that something else could happen because you [01:14:00] continue to hear this rhetoric. You continue to hear these false, these debunked and nasty claims, uh, continue to be made. I spoke to the manager of a Creole restaurant in town, and he told me that people are still calling up, uh, his restaurant and saying, Hey, what's the cat special today?

Are you still serving that dog? Uh, That I'm hearing about just hateful calls that he's dealing with. And as he's dealing with that, he's also dealing with members of his community, other immigrants fearful of their reality, fearing that not only they can face a threat, uh, just existing in Springfield, but fearing if Donald Trump is elected And that temporary protected status, that is what is keeping them in a legal, uh, status here, a legal immigration status here in Ohio, if that is revoked.

What that means for them when they have purchased homes when they have started businesses. So there's a lot of fear that you're hearing on the ground and it's fear based on very different things, but all rooted. [01:15:00] It seems it seems from that lie.

‘Dangerous’ Trump's immigration 'fear-mongering' spreads lies to boost his campaign - The ReidOut - Air Date 9-28-24

 

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: And we begin tonight with just 39 days to go until election day with early and absentee voting already underway in some states. And while Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are barnstorming the country talking about what they call an opportunity economy and making things more affordable for Americans, including housing, food and starting a business.

Donald Trump has forced another issue into the center of the campaign with a lot of help from right wing media, including Fox. His running mates admitted lies, the internet and social media, and conspiracy theories cooked up by literal white supremacists. That issue, of course, is immigration. Donald Trump knows he can't win the election based on the crappy job he did as president, or his frankly crazy ideas for another administration, like spiking the cost of everything we buy through tariffs.

So instead he's going with fear of immigrants. Ironically, [01:16:00] immigration is how modern America was built, right? Both during and after slavery, someone had to replace all that free labor and immigrants fit the bill. Most of us here today, unless you are indigenous American, come from a family of immigrants.

And yet there's always been resistance by the old immigrants to the new people. There was the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s, the America First Nazi Curious Movement in the 1930s, and now we have Donald Trump, who has decided to make fear mongering about immigration the center of his entire campaign, with fascistic rhetoric like promising the largest mass deportation operation in history and promising it would be a bloody story, spreading racist lies about immigrants eating people's pets.

And even talking about giving immigrants serial numbers, Nazi style. At this point, his entire plan is trying to scare people into voting for him, despite two of his three wives being immigrants. And just to remind you, as we talk about this, [01:17:00] border crossings are actually down to the lowest levels in four years.

Violent crimes also weigh down across the country. And everything you hear on right wing media to suggest otherwise is a lie. There is no migrant crime wave. Immigrants actually commit fewer crimes than people born in the U. S. They also don't eat pets. But the facts don't matter to Trump. Instead, he just keeps ramping up the rhetoric more and more every day.

Here's what he said today at what was supposed to be a speech about the economy in Michigan. 

DONALD TRUMP: These are killers. These are people at the highest level of killing. They'd cut your throat. And they won't even think about it the next morning. A lot of gang members, they take their gangs off the street, like in Caracas, Venezuela, the criminals have all been brought to the United States.

She let our American sons and daughters be raped and murdered at the hands of vicious monsters. She let American [01:18:00] communities be conquered. They're conquering your communities. We have to get them the hell out of our country. Cause they've ruined, I mean, they're ruining the fabric of our country. 

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Okay. And then on the other side of this adjudicated sexual assaulter slash rapist and 34 count felon on the other side of that ironic dude, you have vice president Kamala Harris, the daughter of two immigrants.

Right now, she's in the swing state of Arizona visiting the Southern border for the first time since she became the democratic nominee. Harris met with border patrol agents and will receive a briefing on efforts to curb the flow of fentanyl, you know, presidential stuff. Now compare that to Donald Trump's super awkward meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier today.

Later this hour, the VP will also speak on immigration, where she'll likely highlight her record prosecuting transnational gangs and drug traffickers as California Attorney General. She's also expected to go after Trump for killing the [01:19:00] bipartisan border deal earlier this year, just because he wanted to run on the issue.

But despite all of this Recent polling has shown a majority of voters say they trust Trump more when it comes to dealing with the border. A man who doesn't know the difference between political asylum and an insane asylum and whose plans to deport every immigrant or anyone who just looks like an immigrant would send our economy into a free fall because fear whether real or irrational can be an effective political tactic.

The question now for America is have we gotten to the point where we would destroy our own economy? And walk willingly into a Hitlerian dictatorship because of the fear Donald Trump and his MAGA cronies are perpetuating solely for their own political benefit. Joining me now is Olivia Troy, a member of Republicans for Harris, who previously served as the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence.

And Ray Suarez, host of the [01:20:00] podcast On Shifting Ground, an author of We Are Home, Becoming American in the 21st Century, and Oral History. An apt book, Ray Suarez. I am going to start with you because this is the irony of all of this. Is that this is a country that wouldn't exist in its present form without immigrants.

It certainly wouldn't without slavery, but set aside slavery. That's not immigration after that. When the slaves were free, they still needed workers. So they went all around the world and they attracted people here literally to work because workers are what built the economy and what built the country.

And yet each new group of immigrants says, Oh, we don't want those new people. Oh, gosh, we don't want them. You're even seeing that. Uh, Mr. Suarez among some Latinos who also want to shut the border and kick people out and even mass deport them. Why is that? 

RAY: But you know, critically, Joy, part of this story is that the first century plus of immigration was almost solely from Europe.

And then As [01:21:00] America law, American law changed in the 20th century, people started to come here from more places in the world. So that created a bifurcated, stratified immigrant population in this country where most of the new people are non white, and most of the people with pictures of their grandparents and great grandparents, sepia toned photographs, lovingly kept on mantelpieces, those people are almost exclusively European.

And that sets up a difficult Social change for us now as the new folks, nine out of the 10 sending countries of people born in another place in the world are sending non white immigrants to the United States. That's a really important part of understanding the unease we're having about this right now.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Yeah, and I mean, Olivia, during the Trump administration, when you were working in the administration, I mean, Jeff Sessions, when he was Attorney General, he is an open supporter of the 1927, [01:22:00] I believe, Immigration Act, which essentially was, to Mr. Suarez's point, the goal of it was to shut down immigration from everywhere, but Europe was to say, we don't even want that.

Southern Europeans. They didn't even want Italians. They certainly didn't want Asians. They certainly didn't want Africans, North Africans, et cetera. The idea was to whiten immigration. And of course it was Reagan who did the opposite. 3 million people given open amnesty by Ronald Reagan. And those people were largely non white.

They were largely Mexican migrants. So, so how do you square a party where Ronald Reagan did amnesty or George Herbert Walker Bush was very open about saying, we welcome immigration. We want immigrants. And where George W. Bush said the same and even made positive noises about Muslim and Arab immigration to this.

OLIVIA TROY: Well, I think the fact of the matter is that that Republican party of the past is gone, Joy. I mean, that's the bottom line. Um, what it is today is a complete fear mongering, anti immigrant sentiment. And, you know, you mentioned Jeff [01:23:00] Sessions. I brought back a lot of memories of the immigration meetings I was in.

I, you know, Spent all four years of the Trump administration working the immigration portfolio when we could spend hours talking about the things that I witnessed and the things that were said. And it wasn't Jeff Sessions. I'll be very clear. I could just remember Stephen Miller was a big proponent of all these things.

And so when I hear actually Donald Trump speaking the way he is this week, the way he has in the past couple of weeks, he actually sounds like Stephen Miller did in actual immigrant immigration policy meetings at the very highest levels. I'm talking about cabinet meetings, Joy, where traditionally. You would not hear this type of language being spoken, but this is how he would speak.

He would talk in this manner and he would engage fear because that's the only thing he had. Right. And then he would push these extreme policies. And so I think in the contrast here, when we're looking at this and the Republican Party of today under Donald Trump, which breaks my heart, right, as a lifelong Republican and as a daughter of a Mexican immigrant who believed in the Republican Party of the past.

Watching what is happening here is so [01:24:00] just detrimental to who we are as a country. And it's also dangerous as we're seeing with all the threats that we're seeing throughout the country when they push these messages out. 

SECTION D - SOLUTIONS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally Section D: Solutions.

Prof Richard Wolff A FUTURE WITHOUT FEAR OF IMMIGRANTS Part 3 - The Zero Hour - Air Date 10-12-24

 

RICHARD WOLFF: I mean, I think it's a wonderful way to introduce socialism here in the United States. It's a wonderful idea. Look, it's about planning. It's about saying that our priority is to incorporate the benefits of a new technology, incorporate the benefits, if you like, of immigration, Without damaging people and and that requires planning you have to you have to plan you you can't say To the private sector you install AI when you want to and you fire X percent of your labor force And go about your business as if there's no agency, not [01:25:00] you, not the society, not the government, who takes charge.

We don't want you to fire those people. That destroys their morale. That puts, we know from, Every statistic there is that if you unemploy people, you increase their physical illness, their mental illness, their turn to drugs, their alcoholism, their, their wife abuse, their husband abuse, their child abuse. I mean, come on, the social ills that flow from unemployment are humongous and the costs of them equally so.

So it is irrational simply to incur them. And why? To secure private profit? That's not, that's not worth it. That's a bad bargain. Let's forego the private profit and make sure that we do the humane, cost minimizing thing, [01:26:00] which is to guarantee incomes and to guarantee the replacement of every worker who is found to be redundant.

Let us have a system in every workplace. If we need fewer positions, what is the system that allows those, for example, who are older to have a priority than those who are younger? Or those who have more dependents have a priority over those who have fewer? In other words, a whole system of planned adjustment.

Then we get the benefit of AI. without paying the absurd cost that is otherwise lurking. All of this anxiety about what AI is going to do has a premise that there is no program of planned job maintenance. If there were, we wouldn't be worried about it. It would be a non [01:27:00] issue. It's like saying in a community, we're worried that nobody has a public park.

No one can get out of the house. and have a picnic on the lawn. No one has a lawn. Okay, we're going to create Central Park, right in the middle of town. We knock down all the buildings, and we have grass and flowers and animals and ponds. Problem solved. Everybody can go to the picnic. This is not difficult, and if we had a voice that said it, whether it's on immigration or on AI, And I'm noticing the parallels as I talk.

I think these would be very popular positions politically for people to engage and think about. Even for one of the major parties if they lost just a bit of their mountain of timidity. [01:28:00] 

RJ ESKOW - HOST, THE ZERO HOUR: And uh, I would summarize that all, Richard Wolff, with the phrase that popped into my head was a future without fear.

Which, which we can have, but we have to prepare for it in order to avoid that fear.

Escaping Otherism Why Dr. Seuss Could Never Find a Rhyme for Genocide Part 3 - Post Carbon Institute - Air Date 6-12-24

 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Okay, let's talk about visions for for what doing the opposite might look like and 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: besides rooting for a sports team you mean Besides, okay, 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: and I think you talked about don't other another opposite is belonging, right? opposite of other Of othering. 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: I could, I could buy that. 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: So let's, let's just define belonging for a minute.

Belonging means having a meaningful voice and the opportunity to participate in the design of political, social, and cultural structures that shapes one's life. If you belong, then you have the right to both contribute and to make [01:29:00] demands upon the society and, and. political institutions. And so by this, we're talking about not just belonging to a small ingroup, but belonging to society, you know, more broadly, it's going outside of the completely homogeneous group, 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: right?

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: And the idea of belonging is radical, because it requires mutual power, right? It requires access for everyone opportunity for All the groups and the individuals within a shared container. 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Yeah. Like that, that's it, right? It requires those with power to give up and share some of that. 

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Or just to say like, well, that's our goal.

Our, our goal, we have power, but our goal is to be sharing that power and to listen to others. And I think we have to be very careful then about who we elect and do they have those values or not? I would say, okay, the need to belong is of course, fundamental and universal to human survival and.

Flourishing. And so bonding is part of surviving and thriving as a human. And there's these consistent findings, right, of infants and children. You can have all the nutrients and physical care [01:30:00] set up, but if you don't have love and emotional bonds, you're stunted in brain development and IQ and impulse control and emotional empathy as well as your physical growth.

So it's absolutely critical that, that people feel that they belong to something. 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Okay, so if belonging is the opposite of othering and we're going to promote belonging, let's look at what are the elements, what, what, what makes it up and I read from the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley that there are four elements, okay?

So the, the first of these is that belonging requires inclusion. This is probably the most obvious, but something I want to point out is you can be included somewhere. But still feel like you, you don't belong. So including is sort of a necessary step, but it certainly isn't sufficient. Uh, you know, an example would be, uh, Jason, you belong to a male only tennis club, right?

Why 

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: are you talking? I know it's not, 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: let's pretend it was the [01:31:00] 1930s and it was male only. Okay. And you started inviting women to participate. They can play 

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: sports. 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Yes. Okay. Okay. Don't get into trouble. I'm pretending it's the 1930s. Okay. Sorry. I'm being ridiculous. But that's the thing. If women are treated as outsiders or tokenized or even you're expected to serve as kind of the representative of all women everywhere, then we're not really getting past other ring at that point.

But I 

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: understand, 

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: but it's the first step is mixed 

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: doubles is a great game. It is. It's fine. Okay, 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: so belonging, you know, that's one element. Belonging also requires a sense of connection. And of course, that's subjective, but When an institution or an organization or a community engenders feelings of attachment and fondness, safety, warmth, that creates that sense of connection and belonging that's really critical for people.

JASON BRADFORD - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: And it also requires visibility or recognition and My wife tells me this all [01:32:00] the time, but the simple act of being seen, heard, and understood can be quite powerful for making people feel that their social group is respected and valued. 

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: And I think it's a particularly true for groups that have been long marginalized.

Yeah. And there can be, you know, often situations for people where, because they've never really felt that they had a voice at the table, it's not just a matter of saying, Oh, now you have a voice. It's really trying to encourage that in, in creating a sense of trust. That, that gets back to that sense of connection because people need to feel like they can actually trust to be able to feel recognized.

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Okay, so we've got inclusion, we've got connection, we've got visibility or recognition, and then the fourth element, maybe stepping it up even farther. is agency. Belonging requires agency. And that means that people have a voice and a say, they have a meaningful degree of influence over how the group or the institution operates.

[01:33:00] And it doesn't mean that when People who are formerly marginalized come into the group that any demand or anything they ask is going to automatically be incorporated or change the group, but it does mean that it would be considered that you would have a legitimate listening, weighing, and then, you know, maybe you would have a compromise or an amendment to how the group operates, but that agency is key for belonging.

ASHER MILLER - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: So part of doing the opposite to othering or otherism is practicing anti othering. So we should talk a little bit about what that looks like. And I would say it begins with a commitment to not just tolerating or respecting differences, but to ensuring that all people are welcome and that they feel like they belong in society.

It's an active form. It's not a passive form of ensuring that

ROB DIETZ - CO-HOST, POST CARBON INSTITUTE: Yeah, I think all of the anti [01:34:00] othering that we can suggest is, you have to be active. And one of the ways you can be active is to challenge, and reject negative representations and stereotypes of other social groups. You know, you hear something, see something, then you kind of got to speak out. And on the flip side of that, be welcoming to outgroups.

Send them messages that they belong, that they're welcome in your community, in your society. 

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That’s going to be it for today.

As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today’s topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at: 202-999-3991 or simply email me to [email protected] 

The additional sections of the show included clips from:

Anywhere but Washington

Verify

The Zero Hour

The Lever

Robert Reich

The ReidOut

Deadline White House

and Crazy Town

Further details are in the show [01:35:00] notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening, thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes, thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together, thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting and thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships 

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So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay! And this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from [01:36:00] bestoftheleft.com.