It is so much fun to be out there on the campaign trail with Ajamu Baraka because who comes out is totally different from anything I have seen before in progressive campaigns because he is so empowering and inspiring.
My grandfather was a prominent executive at Chevron (oil), and of course my father is a fairly radical and progressive environmentalist. But he was also a very active Democrat and pacifist. More importantly, he was one of the best storytellers I've ever met. I think that trait has been passed down the line, even to my kids.
I would say one thing people need to do - and his is how Roosevelt's New Deal began - let us go back to cities and states where we can, build emblematic progressive reforms, like the Fight for 15 minimum wage, paid sick leave, things that improve the conditions of people's lives and that drive them into a national message.
The ranks of educated professional swelled as more Americans went to college and more Americans sort of adopted a more cosmopolitan lifestyle and worldview. And as the Democrats were looking for an alternative to the unions who no longer seemed like a large enough base for the party, they found the educated who veered more toward a progressive cultural outlook, who may have had - may have been working in the financial sector, in entertainment, in media, in universities. That became really the rank and file of the Democratic Party over a long period of time.
The way that you address this right-wing extremism is actually by putting forward a truly progressive agenda. That's the only solution here.
In America, we have to really be working on two fronts right now. Immediately, we have to be rising in resistance and protecting our Muslim brothers and sisters [and] every marginalized person under threat and siege. At the same time, we have to be planning and envisioning where we're going. How we build moments and movements, how we come up with the vision we want of a progressive left - that's what comes in after.
While she [Hillary Clinton] may have a - give lip service to progressive issues, she led the charge, and there she definitely did, in Haiti, to push down the minimum wage from 60 cents an hour down to 40 cents an hour. She, you know, has been the good friend of the big banks forever, and the insurance companies.
There's traditionally been two different ways of seeing addiction. Either it's a sin and you're a horrible bad person and you are just choosing to be hedonist or it's a chronic progressive disease. And while I certainly believe addiction is a medical problem that should be dealt with by the health system, the way we've conceptualized addiction as a disease is not actually accurate, and it has unfortunately become stigmatizing and it's also created a lot of hopelessness in a lot of people.
Neoliberalism, arguably, sets the course for this kind for this kind of neo-extremism, this right-wing extremism that we are facing. The only way we solve that crisis, the rise of the right-wing extreme, is by truly progressive policies that address this crisis of economic security. That will not come from the lesser evil.
Bernie Sanders had public support behind him that outstripped... in head-to-head polling, Bernie Sanders was ahead of all the other competition. This is a progressive agenda that the American people embrace every time they have something to say about it.
It was shameful that, after Haiti, Colombia was the second most unequal country in Latin America. But we've achieved some things; the inequality is coming down, and coming down fast. The growing economy has provided us with the funds to finance a very progressive social policy that has reduced extreme poverty. We have the lowest inflation rate of all Latin-America countries and the highest growth rate.
Progressive Consequentialsm requires us to make the world better but we are under no obligation to bring about the best possible world.
Progressive visions pale and are smashed next to the normalization of market-driven government policies that wipe out pensions, eliminate quality health care, punish unions, demonize public servants, raise college tuition, and produce a harsh world of joblessness - all the while giving billions and huge bonuses, instead of prison sentences... to those bankers and investment brokers who were responsible for the 2008 meltdown of the economy and the loss of homes for millions of Americans.
That was an extremely unhelpful thing for Bill Shorten to say because those of us - and as the Attorney-General I've been closely involved in this along with my colleague Nigel Scullion, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs - what we have been trying to do for some years now, throughout the life of the Coalition Government in fact, is to bring the Australian people on a journey with us - conservative Australians as well as more progressive Australians, to persuade them that it is a seemly and fitting and decent and appropriate thing to recognise the first Australians in the Constitution.
Congress is the great enabler, constitutionally, for progressive society, and it's the great graveyard, the way it's been behaving, against a prosperous society, or another billionaire or two.
Congress is the most powerful branch. It can expand a progressive society, or it can block a progressive society.
I think that wars will never stop, it's just that there are sides. You have to choose your side. And there are more progressive sides.
While liberals had embraced Obama as someone who had left-wing progressive ideas, the truth is that by personality he's a very incremental guy.
I'm not so optimistic as to think that you would ever be able to garner a majority of an American Congress that would make those kinds of investments above and beyond the kinds of investments that could be made in a progressive program for lifting up all people.
Sometimes that irrational commitment to principle is what society needs to survive. Whenever you talk about radicalism, whenever you talk about activism, whenever you talk about progressive activity, that sort of moves the measure of liberty in human society forward, makes us all enjoy a better standard of liberty, it typically starts out criminal. It typically starts out a little bit shaky, and rather radical. And that's irrational to put yourself up to do that.
I don't think that the forms of feminism that are prevailing on campus are left wing. It's a conservative form of feminism in gender politics and there [isn't] anything particularly progressive about it. That's what is baffling. You've got conservatives acting like liberals touting free speech and due process.
It would be devastating for America if Donald Trump won, and it would be devastating for the anti-gun-violence movement. But we would be on a long list of progressive causes that would be shattered by a Trump win.
There are so many issues that impact women. When we talk about prison reform, for example, women were [once] sterilized in women's prisons. When they were giving birth, they were asked to sign paperwork but they weren't even completely conscious of what they were signing. That sounds like something that would never happen in America, but it was happening, not just in America, but in [California], one of the most progressive states in the United States.
I think, from a progressive point of view, to have a Democratic Congress and a Democratic White House, and to have spent the time on Obamacare, which had real benefits, 20 million insured, but not on inequality, was a major cost to the Democratic Party, costing them their majorities, but also a bit of a cost to the country, because it didn't address the fundamental issues that led to Donald Trump and that led to a lot of unhappiness, just the continued widening inequality.
I think a lot of times people from the traditional DJing world think I'm trying to come up with an ultimate dance mix. That's not really what I'm doing. I'm trying to make something a little bit progressive and challenging.
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