The American Prospect #325

ROBERT KUTTNER: DEMOCRACY SUMMER STEPHEN FRANKLIN AND ABEL URIBE: LATINO WORKERS IN DANGER

New Progressive Faces David Dayen on Rohit Chopra Harold Meyerson on Jennifer Abruzzo Lee Harris on Lucas Kunce Marcia Brown on Justin Bibb

APRIL 2022 PROSPECT.ORG

It’s Time to Bring Manufacturing Back to America.

If the past two years have shown us anything, it’s that the United States can no longer depend on imports for the critical goods it needs.

We must strengthen U.S. manufacturing.

Let’s re-establish domestic supply chains, create millions of new well-paid jobs, and build a stronger, more secure America.

americanmanufacturing.org

April 2022 VOL 33 #2

Features 12 Washington’s Best Hope

9

Rohit Chopra’s unconventional methods for making change happen in a sclerotic government By David Dayen

22 The Memo Writer

Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, has outlined an agenda that would transform the American workplace. By Harold Meyerson

51

28 The War Nerd

Lucas Kunce is captaining a campaign against corporate power, foreign oligarchs, and Wall Street raiders. Can he convince Missourians that they share a common enemy? By Lee Harris

42

36 The Fixer

Justin Bibb’s election signals a new era in Cleveland, but it remains unclear how his progressive rhetoric will translate into governing. By Marcia Brown

42 A Dangerous Place to Be Latino

Texas, the only state without universal workers’ comp, leads the nation in workplace injuries and deaths. It’s Latino workers on unregulated construction sites who fare the worst.

By Stephen Franklin and Abel Uribe

Prospects 04 Democracy Summer By Robert Kuttner

Notebook 06 Terms and Conditions Need Not Apply By Jarod Facundo 09 Tug Life By Sarah Jaffe

Culture 51 Toby Jaffe on Burn the Page: A True Story of Torching Doubts, Blazing Trails, and Igniting Change 54 M icah Schwartzman and Richard Schragger on Common Good Constitutionalism 58 Ryan Cooper on It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom 61 Peter Dreier on San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities 64 Parting Shot: Steps to De-Russianize By Francesca Fiorentini Cover art by Philip Burke APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 1

On the Web

Visit prospect.org/ontheweb to read the following stories:

Left Anchor

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THE WAR IN UKRAINE The Supreme Court

Prospect staff writer Alexander Sammon’s coverage of the nomination battle to replace Stephen Breyer changed the conversation in Washington. Plus, the Prospect covers the most important Court cases and what they’ll mean to you.

Supply Chains

In case you missed our special issue on the supply chain, you can find every story from it and more at our website.

The Midterms

Prospect board member and pollster Stan Greenberg shook up the status quo by calling on Democrats to speak to the discontent of working-class voters of all races.

2 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

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The Prospect covers developments in Eastern Europe and what they mean for geopolitics, energy security, and our future. Check out a series of expert interviews with the Quincy Institute’s Anatol Lieven.

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CO-FOUNDER Robert B. Reich EDITOR AT LARGE Harold Meyerson SENIOR EDITOR Gabrielle Gurley MANAGING EDITOR Ryan Cooper ART DIRECTOR Jandos Rothstein ASSOCIATE EDITOR Susanna Beiser STAFF WRITER Alexander Sammon JOHN LEWIS WRITING FELLOW Ramenda Cyrus WRITING FELLOWS Jarod Facundo, Lee Harris INTERNS Aden Choate, Isabelle Gius, Ronald

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S T C E P PROS ROBERT KUTTNER

Democracy Summer American presidents

routinely encounter crises they didn’t anticipate. Barack Obama hoped to pull back from foreign-policy adventures and heal America’s racial divides; he ended up getting bogged down in the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression and entangled in new foreign-policy messes. LBJ was going to complete FDR’s New Deal and redeem Lincoln’s emancipation; he blew it all in Vietnam. Woodrow Wilson got elected on the slogan “He kept us out of war,” hoping instead to complete his progressive domestic agenda; he ended up winning the war, losing the peace, and ushering in a decade of Republican rule.

Yet it feels like Joe Biden is setting the record for the most simultaneous unexpected crises. He sought to return the country to a competent, normal chief executive who did not govern by fabrications and tweets, one who would repair democracy and support an activist government countervailing predatory capitalism. Instead, Biden got two more waves of COVID, an economic boom hobbled by supply-shock inf lation, faithless members of his own party blocking much of his agenda, and the gravest wartime emergency since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. One thinks of a line attributed to Emerson: “Events are in the saddle and ride mankind.”

It’s easy to forget amid that run, but from spring 2020 to summer 2021 Biden was the luckiest politician in living memory. He went from a moribund presidential campaign in February to becoming the certain nominee in March, thanks to the South 4 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

Carolina primary and Jim Clyburn. Given the immense stakes of defeating Trump, he benefited from rare party unity. Progressive also-rans Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders traded loyalty for influence, and ended up substantially shaping both Biden’s surprisingly progressive program and his personnel.

After Biden took office, he was able to unite Democrats on the far-reaching $1.9 trillion ARPA relief law, and catch a wave of emerging economic recovery and subsiding COVID cases. His approval ratings were far from stratospheric but more than serviceable, with a positive spread of 10 to 15 points up until last summer.

But Lady Luck deserted Biden. COVID resurged with the delta variant. A supply shock not of Biden’s making exploded on his watch, spiking inflation. He made unforced errors in the long-overdue withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite getting the policy directionally right. As Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema blocked major elements of his program, Biden looked like a leader who couldn’t govern. By the new year, Biden’s approval ratings were negative by more than 20 points. All of this portended disaster for the November midterms and the survival of democracy itself.

Then Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine, and we got to see Biden at his best. The president issued early warnings of Putin’s designs, using the unorthodox tactic of making public raw intelligence reports.

This wrong-footed Putin—not enough to dissuade him from invading, but exposing

his deceptions. Biden got credit for reviving and unifying the Western alliance, and organizing a program of damaging economic sanctions. All this knocked the Republicans off their usual game, isolated Putin apologists, and produced more bipartisan unity than anything seen in Biden’s presidency.

This was not the work of a foreign-policy establishment reverting to Cold War autopilot. These successes reflected Biden’s own foreign-policy leadership, in extensive conversations with allied leaders, congressional figures in both parties, and Ukraine’s heroic Volodymyr Zelensky. Biden’s leadership and Zelensky’s courage have drawn strength from each other.

It also drove a rapid resurgence in the polls. According to the Marist Poll done for NPR and PBS, public approval for Biden’s handling of the Ukraine war rose from 34 percent in late February to 52 percent on March 3. This spilled over into increased approval for Biden generally and for his performance on other issues, thanks in part to the waning of omicron. Some 55 percent approved his handling of COVID, up from 47 percent, and his overall approval rating bounced back to 47 percent, the best margin since early fall. Even on the economy, Biden’s approval recovered to 45 percent from a previous 36 percent. (More recent polls show about ten points negative overall.)

A Russian occupation of Ukraine could drag on inconclusively, with the disruptions to the global economy further spiking energy prices and inflation. Putin could stumble into the first ground war between Russia and NATO, bringing the world closer to nuclear conflagration.

Yet Biden’s unexpected wartime leadership to date has caused skeptical voters to give him a second look and maybe a second chance. The Russia-Ukraine war may also have spillovers that are good for progressives. It shows that global capitalism can and should be regulated in the national interest after all. The war has also tempered the Fed’s rush to raise interest rates.

Politically, the most consequential spillover is that Putin’s invasion and Biden’s response make Donald Trump even more radioactive. It reminds voters how Putin and Trump are twin thugs, joined at the hip.

The usual pattern is that the first midterm congressional election is a disaster for a new president’s party. However, 2022 will

be anything but a normal off-year election.

Neither Biden nor Trump will be on the ballot. But Trump, unsavory and unwelcome to Republicans outside hardcore MAGA territory, will be omnipresent.

America today has few swing voters, but dozens of swing districts where turnout will determine the winner. If Democratic voters turn out, Democrats win. With the failure of Congress to enact voting rights legislation, however, the worry is that suppression could offset mobilization. Low Democratic turnout in the elections of November 2021 could portend a midterm with Republicans on the march and Democrats dispirited.

But take a closer look. For starters, most contestable seats are not in the states where Republicans have enacted voter suppression laws. Some 40 House Republicans won election by ten points or less in 2020, and 25 of them are in states that have either made it easier to vote or added no voter suppression measures. Many of these incumbents refused to join Trumpers in voting against certification of Biden’s victory. As of March 1, ten already were facing primary challenges, and that number grows by the week.

So there are at least 25 possible Democratic pickups in the House. Of course, Democrats will also need to defend their own incumbents in closely held seats, of which there are also about 25.

The 2022 election was supposed to cost Democrats several House seats due to gerrymandering. But due to several factors, gerrymandering will either be a wash or will help Democrats gain seats. Some states are being redistricted by genuinely nonpartisan panels. The Supreme Court has refused to overturn a court-ordered redistricting plan in North Carolina that benefits Democrats.

The rest are a mix of partisan redistricting by Republicans in some states and by Democrats in others.

The Senate also looks surprisingly promising. The most serious at-risk incumbent is Raphael Warnock of Georgia, because of the degree of that state’s voter suppression.

In New Hampshire, however, Sen. Maggie Hassan got lucky when her strongest potential opponent, Gov. Chris Sununu, decided not to make the race. In Arizona and Nevada, both blue-trending states, vulnerable incumbents Mark Kelly and Catherine Cortez Masto could well hold their seats given decent mobilization.

Conversely, several Democratic pickups seem possible, notably the open seat

in Pennsylvania, which Biden carried in 2020, as well as in Wisconsin, another Biden state, and where far-right incumbent Ron Johnson is a lightning rod for Democratic turnout. Elsewhere, Republicans face a divisive primary in Ohio, where Democrats have a strong candidate in Tim Ryan. In the open seat in North Carolina, a competitive state with a Democratic governor, Democratic chances depend on the degree of voter suppression. In Missouri, Republican incumbent Roy Blunt barely won the seat in 2016.

Blunt is retiring, and the leading contender for the Republican nomination is Eric Greit­ ens, who resigned as governor after accusations of abuse by a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair.

This potential narrative-shifting election all comes down to turnout. If Democratic 2022 midterm turnout is more like 2018, it’s possible for Democrats to hold the House. If it’s more like 2014 and 2016, then the predicted Republican takeover will ensue.

The alarm at Trump’s presidency in 2018 produced the largest increase in turnout over the previous midterm in all of American history, most of it reflecting mobilization by Democrats. Turnout increased by 13.6 percent relative to the 2014 midterms.

Democratic votes increased by an astonishing 23.8 million. Republicans, by contrast, gained only 11.4 million.

As voters once again grasp the stakes, my wager is that 2022 will be more like 2018.

A similar story holds when you compare 2020 with 2016. According to unpublished research by Catalyst, 2020 Biden voters included 18 million Democratic voters who skipped 2016, but did turn out in 2018 and 2020, plus 6.8 million Democrats who cast ballots for the first time.

There is also great potential for live organizing. Democratic mobilization in 2020 compared to 2018 was depressed by COVID, which led to reliance on phones and texts rather than face-to-face contact. In 2022, Democratic organizers will be back on the doors.

The ten-year history of voter mobilization in Georgia led by Stacey Abrams shows what can be done nationally. Plans are being laid for a nationwide Democracy Summer, evoking Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964 and Vietnam Summer 1969.

Some of those promoting the idea, such as legendary organizer Heather Booth, former SDS national secretary Lee Webb, and

the onetime leader of Massachusetts Fair Share Michael Ansara, are veterans of those earlier student-led struggles. The hope is that today’s students can be mobilized to spearhead voter organizing.

In recent years, Democracy Summer has been a project of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who brings college students to Washington to learn politics for six weeks, and then dispatches them to work in elections. At this writing, Raskin’s Democracy Summer has been adopted as a model by the DCCC and is being expanded to campaigns in at least 50 House districts.

There is also a pre-existing voter mobilization infrastructure of local groups such as Indivisible, which will go into high gear as the election season wears on. Activists hope these will converge with the new Democracy Summer, and citizens will again grasp the stakes as they did in 2018 and 2020. The Prospect will be providing extensive on-theground coverage of organizing efforts and which mobilizing strategies work.

Democratic candidates will have no shortage of talking points. They might begin by asking their Republican opponents how they think Donald Trump compares with Joe Biden as a leader facing down Vladimir Putin. They might ask the Republican candidate whether they would vote to make Donald Trump Speaker of the House; and whether they think the January 6 insurrectionists should be pardoned. There will be Democratic ad clips of Trump fulsomely praising Putin even as the war on Ukraine began, congratulating Putin as a genius for seizing some prime real estate.

Like Trump, Biden will not be on the 2022 ballot. But the president could do more to rally voters if he wants genuine enthusiasm. He could stop dithering with temporary student loan moratoria and cancel all student debt up to $50,000. He could take on the drug companies and use existing law to put drugs with exorbitant price tags into the public domain as generics.

We can count on Trump to continue saying dumb quotable things that will split his party and embarrass GOP candidates.

All this will intensify the schisms among Republicans, already badly divided by primary battles against incumbents sponsored

by Trumpers. If Democracy Summer can reignite popular awareness of the larger stakes as in 2018, the conventional predictions on the Biden presidency and the 2022 midterms can be upended. n APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 5

NOTEBOOK

Terms and Conditions Need Not Apply “Buy now, pay later,” the latest fashion in consumer debt, is even worse than credit cards.

By Jarod Facundo The way financial firms sold consumer debt products used to be downright cute. In a 1978 commercial for a company called Access, for instance, an anthropomorphized 6 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

Schoolhouse Rock!-esque character called Money appears with the business itself as a huge walking credit card. Money complains that he can’t cope with everything he needs to buy. “Don’t worry, leave it to me. I’ll take care of the bills,” says Access, the “flexible

friend.” “Aw thanks, Access. You’re a real friend,” Money replies.

Access, alas, no longer exists. Mastercard acquired and then retired the credit card brand in 1997. Since then, traditional credit card debt no longer seems distinctly cute, thanks to wider knowledge of its punishing interest rates and skepticism induced by the 2008 financial crisis.

Fear not! There is a new savvy spending scheme for the financially conscious millen-

Some of the biggest names in buy now pay later include:

nial or Gen Zer: Buy now, pay later (BNPL).

Companies like Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna market themselves as innovative new companies, creating financial freedom for all through flexible payment options. But it’s not a new concept, and at bottom, they’re even worse than credit cards.

Instead of paying for a purchase all at once or in monthly installments (plus interest), BNPLs typically offer four interest-free installments due every two weeks (though not always, as we’ll see below). While consumers take weeks or months to pay off the purchase, the BNPL lender fronts the bill to the retailer.

BNPL’s appeal is deceptively simple; Gen Z and millennials hate debt. A Klarna investor sheet cited an American Psychological Association survey which found that more millennials feared credit card debt than feared death and war. With BNPL, consumers avoid the psychological toll of interest with a product that’s just as easy to use as a credit card.

BNPL’s integration with online merchants is impressive too. Currently, there are millions of merchants worldwide accepting some form of BNPL payment, and with PayPal recently offering the service to any of its 32 million merchants with the click of a button, likely millions more very soon. Whether you’re shopping for last-minute gifts for the holidays, big-ticket electronics, or you came across an ad as you were tapping through Instagram stories, the setup is seamless. BNPL transactions have also begun to show up on credit reports, allowing customers to build credit.

Last year, 1 in 5 Americans used a BNPL lending scheme, and 1 in 3 who haven’t used BNPL expressed interest in using it in the future. By the end of 2022, almost half of Gen Z in the United States will have used a BNPL service once, and by 2025 BNPL transactions are predicted to amount to $760 billion worldwide, a 92 percent increase from 2019. That would mean 12 percent of all physical goods purchased online through a BNPL service.

BNPL loans have so far sidestepped Regulation Z, which implements the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) to ensure credit term transparency for consumers—mandating a universal language and format so consumers can understand the terms of the agreement they are entering. It also covers deceptive and inaccurate credit billing and credit card practices, and allows consumers to dispute fraudulent charges.

Although the recent updates to Regula-

tion Z implemented additional consumer protections, and longer-term data collection for compliance purposes, BNPL loans are typically structured as installment loans, and Regulation Z does not apply to those types of credit products.

That concerns some policymakers. In a statement to the Prospect, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said, “We’ve seen how some buy now, pay later companies have used hidden fees and marketing to mislead consumers into taking on more debt than they can handle.”

There are a lot of hidden downsides, in fact. Klarna charges up to a 24.99 percent annual percentage rate (APR) for purchases on longer payment plans; Affirm charges up to a 30 percent APR for similar services. Afterpay doesn’t charge a traditional interest payment, but does slap on one late fee per late installment; however, the total amount of late fees charged won’t exceed 25 percent of the initial order value.

A financial adviser and host of the podcast She’s On the Money, Victoria Devine recalled in a 2019 episode, “I have people in the She’s On the Money community who have had their mortgages declined because they’ve forgotten to disclose that they have Afterpay debt because they didn’t see it as debt.”

On the business side, merchant fees are higher for BNPL lenders than credit card companies; BNPL lenders charge 1.5 to 7 percent, compared to credit card companies charging 1.3 to 3.5 percent, plus the payment processor’s cut. Despite the higher fees, retailers eat the costs because customers who use a BNPL service spend more than those who do not. Klarna told investors that when using BNPL, the average order value—the average amount spent by customers with a retailer—increased by 68 percent, alongside a 20 percent increase in shopping frequency. What’s more, those fees are passed on to customers through higher prices. According to a co-authored report by PYMNTS and Afterpay, 33 percent of businesses offering BNPL saw increased revenues from 2019 to 2020.

By the end of 2022, almost half of Gen Z in the United States will have used a BNPL service once.

It’s common for people to take on more BNPL debt than they can afford, and that often means a black mark on one’s credit report. The smaller BNPL lender Laybuy reported almost half of its revenue in a sixmonth period came from late fees, while bigger players like Afterpay—which was recently acquired by founder and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s fintech company Block—reported that in 2020, $51.8 million of its $399 million in revenue came from the same source. The following year, CEO Magazine reported Afterpay’s revenue from late fees increasing to $99 million.

Andrei Stadnik, a senior equity research analyst for Morgan Stanley, has developed models that predict Afterpay’s revenue from late fees will rise to $340 million by June 2023. According to the Australian Financial Review, if the periodic payment calculations used for credit cards were applied to Afterpay’s late fees, it’s an equivalent interest rate of 55 to 68 percent per year.

A report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund found that BNPL borrowers are often harmed by “hidden fees, interest and debt collection problems … consumers also face problems with customer service.”

Justin Baldwin, a 24-year-old living in East Lansing, Michigan, told the Prospect, “J​​ust using [Afterpay’s] service lowered my credit score 30 points.” He could afford the purchase outright but figured on-time payments would boost his credit score. “Ever since I saw [my credit score drop], I decided not to use those online layaway things.”

Functionally, BNPLs are a Wall Street devil’s brew of credit cards, layaway, and a sneaky end run around financial regulation, all in one. The industry’s potential growth is still in its infancy, but long-standing financial titans like Barclays have warned about the proliferation of BNPL services. Last year, the bank conducted a study among 2,000 BNPL users in the U.K., and the results are troubling. The average Gen Z BNPL user spent an average of £175.50 in monthly repayments (US$231), accounting for 20 percent of their monthly discretionary income. Perhaps even more telling, Barclays last year also announced a partnership with Amazon for installment options over £100, which would include interest over the payment period. If BNPLs really take off, financial incumbents will likely simply jump on the bandwagon.

“BNPL’s value should undoubtedly come as a warning sign to incumbent financial APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 7

NOTEBOOK

Last year, in an attempt to stop BNPL services from circumventing regulation, Sens.

Jack Reed (D-RI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) sent a letter urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take action governing the rise of BNPL products.

The letter stated, “Many BNPL providers structure these products in an effort to avoid certain consumer protection obligations under the Truth in Lending Act or the Military Lending Act, which generally apply to loans that are repayable in more than four installments or are subject to a finance charge.”

On December 16, 2021, the CFPB announced an inquiry into the leading BNPL companies. CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said, “Buy now, pay later is the new version of the old layaway plan, but with modern, faster twists where the consumer gets the product immediately but gets the debt

immediately too. We have ordered Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal, and Zip to submit information so that we can report to the public about industry practices and risks.”

The report from each of the companies was due March 1, 2022, though none have been released thus far.

The CFPB had three main concerns: First, the ease with which consumers accumulate debt, thereby overextending themselves with several loans on multiple schedules.

Second, regulatory arbitrage, referring to the consumer protection laws the companies may be evading, such as not providing dispute resolution protections, which credit cards provide, and identifying the rules the lenders follow in regard to late fees and policies. And lastly, the agency requested information on all five companies’ dataharvesting techniques to figure out practices around data collection, behavioral targeting, data monetization, and the risks consumers face when using BNPL services.

“Depending on the nature and scope of the entity and its involvement in BNPL lending,” a CFPB spokesperson told the Prospect, “some or all of [the agency’s] authorities may be available to constrain illegal activity and to facilitate compliance with federal consumer financial laws.”

Sen. Warren applauded the action.

“CFPB is right to take a close look at these products to ensure that consumers are protected from predatory schemes,” she told the Prospect.

The U.K. is far ahead of U.S. regulation.

Earlier this year, the country’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ordered BNPL companies to redraft their lending terms.

Afterpay claims it’s “helping people spend responsibly,” and Klarna says it’s committed to approaching “global challenges with a sense of urgency and great optimism … to build a better future for everyone.” But really, BNPL is just another version of the same potentially risky consumer debt that has been around for ages.

As Sen. Warren told the Prospect, “Buy now, pay later plans provide big banks and fintech companies with new schemes to trick and trap consumers, burdening them with costly loans they can’t afford.”

BNPL has found most traction with younger people and millennials. But the supposed affordability is what entices Americans on the lower end of the income scale to the service; 53 percent said they couldn’t have afforded their purchase otherwise. Black consumers are also most likely to use BNPL for affordability reasons, with 51 percent citing affordability, compared to 36 percent of white consumers who used the service.

In a 2019 interview, Afterpay’s CEO Nick Molnar recalled the malaise of young adulthood following the 2008 financial crisis.

His generational cohort abandoned credit cards and other traditional lines of credit, and that’s where he saw his opportunity— not by genuinely innovating, but by slapping a glossy coat of paint on the same old lending as before.

“That’s the entirety of financial services.

That’s the old Volcker comment, that there have been no good financial innovations since the ATM,” Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin told the Prospect. “These are still either credit or payment products, whether you access it from your phone or computer or a 3×5 card, it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference.” Regulators are scrambling to catch up to this old playbook dressed up with a new cover. n (clockwise from top left) Sens. Jack Reed, Sherrod Brown, Chris Van Hollen, Jon Ossoff, Tina Smith, and Elizabeth Warren have asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take action on BNPL.

8 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

AP PHOTOS

institutions, whose sole method of offering finance for eCommerce is the credit card or cumbersome online financing offers,” said the fintech research firm Kaleido Intelligence in a 2020 digital financing markets outlook report.

A tugboat directs a ship in the waters around British Columbia, Canada.

Tug Life

From Canada to Panama, tugboat workers are being squeezed as shipping companies earn record profits.

JONATHAN HAYWARD / AP PHOTO

By Sarah Jaffe Jason Woods, a longtime tugboat worker and the president of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 400, quotes a former colleague who described his job as “hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of terror.” There’s plenty of standby time waiting on the boat, or sometimes long hours of towing that can be dull. But workers are always just a heartbeat away from danger.

“The ship’s moving, the tug’s moving, everything is moving,” Woods says. “Even something like pulling a ship off of berth, something that’s so standardized and easy, can go badly just because of the size of the equipment and the forces that are generated by the power.”

That’s why the February 2021 deaths in British Columbia, where Woods works, of two tugboat workers, Troy Pearson and Charley Cragg, still weigh heavily on his union members’ hearts and minds. The

Ingenika, a small tugboat, sank in “70-knot winds and freezing spray and an outflow wind,” Woods says. It was weather that Pearson, the captain, knew was hazardous.

But the crew was pushed to get a bargeload of equipment to a Rio Tinto mining site.

“Troy wasn’t a hot shot kind of guy. He wasn’t the guy that would take risks, especially if the risks involved other people,” Judy Carlick-Pearson, Troy Pearson’s partner, told reporters. “That afternoon, he did not want to go.”

Woods is a second-generation tugboat worker, and his 20-year-old niece is about to become the third. The industry, he says, is full of such family connections, and that makes it more painful to recall the deaths.

When he mentioned the Ingenika to his father, Woods says, “he listed off all these tugs that had sunk in his time and all these co-workers that he’d worked with that had APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 9

NOTEBOOK died, and he’s like, ‘And nothing’s changed.’”

When we talk about global shipping, most of the conversation revolves around container ships, which have only grown more massive in recent years. But the safe travel and docking of those behemoth vessels relies on comparatively tiny tugboats and workers like Woods, who risk their safety every day to guide the big ships in and out of ports, through canals, and sometimes on long distances along coasts. When the Ever Given infamously got stuck in the Suez Canal, pictures of the tugboats working to free the vessel became popular memes, but Woods and his colleagues saw little change in appreciation for their work.

Instead, they continue to struggle against a global “race to the bottom” that sees tugboat operators squeezed by a consolidating industry, and pressure to cut costs that winds up costing lives. Because of unions like the ILWU, and internationally, the work of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), tugboat work can be a good, family-sustaining job. But the labor crunch is hitting even well-unionized workforces.

The tugboat companies have demanded that tugboats run with bare-bones crews of two or three people, which Woods says is just asking for catastrophe. “I’m in the water, how is my captain going to effectively rescue me while trying to operate the vessel?” In the year since the Ingenika sank, the ILWU and the families of Cragg and Pearson have demanded stricter regulation and safety provisions on small vessels. But “there’s downward pressure on maintenance and all those other things, because now everybody’s fighting over rates,” Woods says.

Taking a tugboat out of commission to do maintenance work on it would cost the company money, so operators wind up skimping on necessary upkeep, assuming that they won’t be inspected. Woods points out that with the number of inspectors currently on staff with Transport Canada, “you could see an inspection every nine years if they decided to show up, if they got to every vessel in Canada, which they don’t.”

In British Columbia, tugboats often move vessels carrying hazardous materials, sometimes for long distances—petroleum products down to Oregon, for example. During longer jobs, workers are supposed to have six hours on, six to rest, and six on watch, but with understaffed crews, that often leaves exhausted workers, like on the Ingenika, manning the controls. Woods notes that the 10 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

barges are sometimes “just a flat box with tanker trucks strapped to the deck, and then they’re towing up and down the coast. You get into weather, that barge heels a little bit, and that tanker truck’s in the water.”

This isn’t just theoretical. In 2007, heavy equipment, including a fuel truck, slipped off a barge in the Robson Bight ecological reserve, spilling diesel into the water. Woods worries that undersized, understaffed tugboats create “an oil spill waiting to happen.”

The race to the bottom happening in British Columbia is a global phenomenon. “We now have a system that puts a few dollars before the lives and livelihoods of tug workers, while shipping companies and lead firms are making tremendous profits,” ITF General Secretary Stephen Cotton said in a statement.

The story will be familiar to Prospect readers. A few corporations at the top are raking in astronomical sums as demand for shipping has skyrocketed. In 2021, the ocean shipping industry earned $190 billion in profits, five times as much as it made between 2010 and 2020 combined. Despite this windfall, companies work together to wring every last penny from their tug and towage contracts. In turn, those pennies are wrung out of the workers on the tugboats. The container ship is the profit center, When the Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal, tugboats became recognized but not greatly appreciated, workers say.

Tugboat work can be a good, family-sustaining job. But the labor crunch is hitting even wellunionized workforces. everything else just a cost to be driven as low as possible.

But without tugboats, those massive ships can’t maneuver, and the Ever Given’s clogging of the Suez Canal reminded us all how easily global shipping can be disrupted.

The major ocean shipping companies have formed three global alliances whose market share rose from 30 percent of container capacity in 2011 to 80 percent today, according to a recent White House report.

The alliances have given these shipping companies more market power and more leverage in negotiating with tugboat companies, along with cargo owners and seafarers and everyone else who relies on them. But tugboat work in particular is highly specialized, skilled, and dangerous—a key choke point in the supply chain. Without tugs, the pileups of container ships at the big ports would be far worse, and far riskier.

The new locks in the Panama Canal require a lot more work from tugboat drivers.

AP PHOTO (LEFT) JIM MONE / AP PHOTO

The backlog at the ports, Woods notes, is a reminder of what happens when companies don’t want to pay for skilled labor.

The refusal to hire more workers—because ILWU members have successfully organized to drive up their wages—has left companies scrambling to move freight, just as the deregulation of trucking has led to an artificial shortage of drivers, as workers leave the industry. It’s the ILWU’s willingness to strike, whether it’s in West Coast ports (where the current labor agreement expires July 1) or the waters of British Columbia, that has led to good jobs. The union, Woods says, has “got their hands on the levers of commerce, and they’re not afraid to use it.”

But what happens when the workers aren’t allowed to strike?

Iván de la Guardia, a Panama Canal tugboat captain and leader in the local Unión de Capitanes y Oficiales de Cubierta (UCOC), has seen conditions deteriorate even more rapidly in the canal since 2016, when new, expanded locks for bigger ships opened. The canal operates under its own labor system, which bans striking and operates on the principle, de la Guardia says, that “the canal cannot be stopped.”

That principle overrides everything else, de la Guardia explains. The workers are supposed to have a set of compensatory guar-

antees to make up for the lack of a right to strike, and a labor board that is supposed to mediate differences between management and labor. But in practice, he says, the system isn’t working, and right now, all of the unions that represent canal workers are at an impasse in their contract bargaining. “The negotiation of our CBA has taken two years.

That’s unheard of,” de la Guardia says. But because the canal brings in a lot of money— toll revenue has been approaching $3 billion a year—“no one messes with the canal.”

The new locks require a lot more towing work from tugboat drivers, and the work is more dangerous, according to de la Guardia. It can take five or six hours, he says, to escort a container ship to the other side of the canal. And that has to be done without letting go of controls—meaning no time for a bathroom break, much less rest. Overtime, he says, is regular; tugboat workers are sometimes toiling up to 16 hours straight. While some welcome the money that comes with overtime, he notes, “you can imagine the damage they’re doing to their personal life.”

In 2018, a study on the pressures on the canal workers commissioned by ITF called the long hours and understaffing after the change to the new locks “a disaster waiting to happen.” Dr. Isabel Gonzalez, an occupational medicine physician, and Dr. Barry Strauch,

a transportation human factors specialist, found that, in addition to health consequences including hypertension, sleep disorders, and anxious-depressive syndrome, the irregular and grueling schedules could have “a direct, negative impact on the safety of Panama Canal operations because of the degradation in tugboat captain cognitive performance … Since the cognitive activities needed for safe tugboat operations include situation awareness, vigilance, attention, and decision making are activities that degrade when operators are fatigued, the captain’s ability to maintain safe operations when fatigued is limited.” (The Panama Canal Authority disputes the findings.)

The Panama Canal, like other key nodes in global shipping, is only seeing more traffic lately. There have been more accidents in recent years, de la Guardia says, and while none have been catastrophic, dangers have heightened with the reduced crews that tugboats have been operating with since 2018.

In that year, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) cut the staffing on the tugs to the minimum—one captain, two deckhands, and one engineer. When several tugboat captains protested the cutbacks, they were sanctioned by the ACP. De la Guardia feels like he has nowhere to turn but to the international community for pressure.

The canal, de la Guardia says, is always full, and it has raised prices on the ships, including for use of the tugboats. There’s more money for everyone, in other words, except the workers. “All these supply chain disruptions, believe it or not, have been beneficial to the Panama Canal and the government,” de la Guardia explains. “Not actually to the workers, and not even to the people of Panama.”

Tugboat workers, like others along the supply chain, are weighing their options as they watch corporate profits spike while their employers lowball them at the bargaining table. “The supply chain can be fixed,” Jason Woods says. “They need more people and they need to pay a living wage.”

At the moment, though, the workers feel that their employers would rather risk their lives than spend more money. n Sarah Jaffe is the author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt and Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Leaves Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The New Republic, The Atlantic, and many other publications.

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 11

Rohit Chopra’s unconventional methods for making change happen in a sclerotic government

By David Dayen

Last June, when Lina Khan was unexpectedly named the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, an FTC staffer named Jen Howard posted a picture on Twitter with the caption “#squad.” The picture (see page 15) featured Khan in the FTC offices, leaning against a desk alongside her fellow commissioner Rohit Chopra. The knowing smiles invited a recognition of newfound power, a self-awareness that these two young progressives were about to shake up executive boardrooms nationwide. To the small community of experts working on corporate power, it was a viral moment.

But the picture was actually taken three years earlier, when Khan came to work for Chopra at the FTC. The quiet confidence shows through despite a position of weakness: Chopra, as one of two Democrats, was outnumbered on the commission by three Republicans handpicked by Donald Trump.

Even when Democrats ran the agency, it had been paralyzed since the late 1970s by a selfimposed inertia and reluctance to take on powerful interests.

Yet the self-assurance was warranted.

12 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

By the end of the Trump presidency, the FTC would advance Chopra’s proposal to penalize bogus “Made in USA” labeling, take action on one of his top priorities by filing suit against Facebook for illegal monopolization, and become at least a little relevant again as a willing implementer of the public’s business.

That picture of Chopra and Khan now hangs in a hallway at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Last October, Chopra, who just turned 40, took over as director. But the legacy he left at the FTC is remarkable. Khan, now the chair, worked for Chopra. The director of the Bureau of Competition, Holly Vedova, advised Chopra. The director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, Samuel Levine, also advised Chopra. And Jen Howard, who was Chopra’s chief of staff, is fulfilling that role for Khan. “He brings in a staff that actually today runs the FTC,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit privacy advocate.

“Rohit was exactly the ER doctor the FTC desperately needed.”

To hear it from Chopra’s end, he wasn’t the intellectual godfather of the FTC’s restoration, but a junior partner. “Sam Levine, I knew him from the Illinois attorney general’s office, prosecuting Westwood, a for-profit college chain,” he told me in an interview. “I learned so much from Lina, Sam, Holly Vedova. I brought in people I learned a lot from, I don’t know how much teaching I did.”

You will not hear Chopra take anything approaching credit; he constantly defers to his colleagues. But in just over a decade in government, he has been astonishingly effective in finding ways to make even unfavorable positions in Washington work for the public good. In this way, he has swum against a tide of lost faith in institutions that dates back decades.

We hear a constant lament from the media, the public, and even policymakers that a system with multiple veto points, unbearable gridlock, the overbearing specter of corporate money, and official cowardice in the face of all that has become essentially unnavigable. Chopra’s career

PHILIP BURKE

Washington’s Best Hope L

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 13

puts the lie to that, according to dozens of former colleagues, public-interest partners, and regulatory experts. He has shown that a combination of understanding what’s possible, amplifying the voices who need the most help, and having the gumption to take risks can pay off.

“He’s really smart, strategic, and fearless,” said Dennis Kelleher, financial reform advocate with Better Markets. “That’s what makes him dangerous to the financial industry. You sometimes get people who are smart, strategic, or fearless, but not all three.”

Because of the numerous challenges to 21st-century governance, those who are willing and able to exploit opportunities to produce change stand out. Chopra’s unconventional fights have earned him substantial support, including from some Republicans.

He may be a reluctant role model. But he’s developed a new pathway for policy triumph in a divided America.

Rohit Chopra was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1982, and his family moved up and down the state before settling in Camden County, across the border from Philadelphia. True to his desire to avoid any personal spotlight, almost no information about Chopra’s childhood has ever been reported, and when I asked him what shaped his worldview in his formative years, he deflected and talked about the financial crisis, which happened in his mid-twenties.

But one aspect of Chopra’s life before public service was extensively covered in real time: his year as president of the Undergraduate Council at Harvard, where he was a government major. Chopra wrote in The Harvard Crimson that he always considered student government “completely bogus” in high school, but he saw too many frustrating aspects of student life at Harvard—a place he “love[d] to hate”—that he believed could be fixed.

The student presidency prefigured his government posts: a meager, somewhat thankless job without much formal power.

Chopra described his predecessors on the council as “spend[ing] more time taking attendance than discussing the issues people care about.” But in that year, Chopra was able to add multiple new student activities like dollar movie nights, provide input on a broad curricular review, and fight preregistration and enrollment caps for popular classes. The council’s influence on student 14 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

issues grew; Chopra riled up the mayor of Cambridge to stall a bid to move certain dormitories off the main campus.

Chopra’s relationship with administrators would often turn adversarial, yet earned him broad respect. As one faculty member told him, “Rohit, you have mastered the art of saying ‘fuck you’ with a smile.” One of those administrators was Larry Summers, then president of Harvard.

“Professor Summers and I had a very spirited set of engagements,” Chopra told me.

“I thought that we had certain people running the university who were pretty unaccountable.” One of Chopra’s classmates put it differently, thanking him at the end of his term for “being brave enough to tell Larry Summers … ‘to shove it.’”

The young striver caught the eye of a professor at Harvard’s law school named Elizabeth Warren. “Drew Faust [a history professor and colleague of Warren’s from when she taught at Penn, who would succeed Summers as Harvard’s president] said there is an undergrad who is just terrific,” Warren told the Prospect. When she went to Washington to set up the CFPB, her brainchild that became reality in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, Warren heard from Faust again that Chopra wanted to join the agency.

In between Harvard and the CFPB, Chopra had earned a business degree at Penn’s Wharton School (“He didn’t come over to the law school to get a real education,” Warren joked) and did a stint at McKinsey, the controversial management consultant. “I really got an in-depth education in how boardrooms make decisions and how Wall Street makes decisions,” he said. “It’s not what the textbooks teach you: investing to dominate, to exclude, to conquer.”

The financial crisis, where millions were duped into high-risk mortgages based on false and fraudulent promises and robbed of their life savings, revealed the risks of that decision-making. A system ostensibly designed to help ordinary people build wealth and get ahead instead destroyed their opportunity. It spurred Chopra to take what he thought would be “a little break” from his private-sector career to become part of the solution. A new agency with the mission to defend consumers from scam artists and financial crimes seemed like the perfect fit.

When Chopra arrived at the CFPB in its early weeks, nobody had any titles. Chopra occupied his time rifling through the

Because of the numerous challenges to 21st-century governance, those who are willing and able to exploit opportunities to produce change stand out.

U.S. Code to understand things like how to set up a non-bank supervision system. “No one digs into the weeds of understanding authorities and power like him,” said one colleague from that time. “That’s why people are successful. It’s called doing the work.”

Warren hired Chopra without a particular job in mind. But within a few weeks, he came to her with an idea. “He told me what he wanted to do, student loans,” Warren said. “And I said, ‘Great, that’s your part.’”

Dodd-Frank Section 1035 established a “private education loan ombudsman” at CFPB (The Department of Education had a similar position for government-issued loans) whose set of functions were trifling at best. The ombudsman could informally collect, analyze, and attempt to resolve borrower complaints, make recommendations on student loan policy to other officials, and file an annual report on the office’s activities.

It was maybe the least effective division in the entire agency on paper. “It was kind of expressly written to not have too much teeth,” said Angela Peoples, who was a student activist just a couple years out of college when she became one of Chopra’s first two hires at the agency. “That’s why we were able to get it included, the people lobbying against it thought it wouldn’t be very powerful.”

Arguably more forbidding than the meager authorities was the invisibility of the struggles of student borrowers. CFPB was birthed out of the mortgage crisis. There was a major student loan kickback scandal in 2007, where private lenders paid universities to keep students away from the federal direct loan program. And breakdowns in student loan servicing were similar to problems with the servicing of mortgages. But these rarely made headlines.

FTC chair Lina Khan worked for Chopra when he was a commissioner in 2018.

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 15

“There was a dominant school of thought that we have to get everyone into college no matter how much they borrow,” Chopra said. “There were a million borrowers defaulting every year. It was very clear to me that something was seriously wrong, and we needed to be very unambiguous about what the problems were. We needed basic market information.”

That thirst for research drove an insight that making the office a listening post for legal services groups, consumer advocates, and students could infuse it with some weight. “We realized early that the Department of Education never thought about the effects of student debt on people that owe it,” said Mike Pierce, another early Chopra hire. “[Chopra] took time to listen to those people that served those communities for decades.” Forums with stakeholders were set up quickly. A complaint database for student loan borrowers, which consumer groups helped publicize, would eventually add tens of thousands of perspectives.

“They did these comment requests which were unusual because they were fairly openended,” said Deanne Loonin, the former 16 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project. “They would say, ‘Tell us what you’re seeing out there.’ The policy initiatives really came out of those.”

The ombudsman’s office began preparing a comprehensive report on the student loan market, combining government and private data. Chopra decided to preview it in a speech before the Consumer Bankers Association in March 2012. He let fly a surprising statistic: Borrowers were carrying over $1 trillion in student debt. An excerpt from the speech was posted at the CFPB website and became known internally as the trillion-dollar blog.

This was a much higher figure than previously estimated, jumping by $117 billion just in federal loans in 2011 and surpassing credit card debt to become the second-largest debt pile in the country, behind mortgages. “It seems that this market is too big to fail,” Chopra warned in the speech. The debt wasn’t just growing through incoming students taking out loans, but through accruing balances from those out of school who couldn’t make their interest payments.

And it wouldn’t just impose hardships on students. Chopra made the point that debtors with large student loan balances would likely delay major purchases like cars or mortgages, slowing the economic recovery.

“Too much debt means too much risk for a generation of young people,” Chopra said in the speech. “Large levels of debt might also impose immediate problems for the rest of us.”

By that time, CFPB had assisted the Education Department on a simplified “financial aid shopping sheet” to easily compare information across colleges and universities. It was supervising private student lenders and had set up a student loan repayment assistant to help borrowers understand their options. But the trillion-dollar blog harnessed perhaps a policymaker’s most powerful tool: the public megaphone. “It focused policymakers on the crisis, became the first talking point,” said Pierce.

Periodic updates on the running total of outstanding student debt marked Chopra’s tenure. The annual ombudsman reports built on the narrative by highlighting issues borrowers had with servicing and repaying

ZACH BRIEN / AP PHOTO

As the CFPB’s student loan ombudsman, Chopra worked with young activists to help change the conversation around student debt.

“Nobody digs into the weeds of understanding authorities and power like him,” said one colleague of Chopra’s. loans. It was a manifestation of how the agency was designed to be responsive to the public in ways that the federal government normally isn’t. “By taking a moment to name this trillion-dollar milestone, he shined a light on the whole picture of student debt,” said Peoples. “It said this isn’t an individual problem, it’s not just about bad actors.”

Pierce, who later became head of the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group for students, says that the current debate over whether the Biden administration should use its authority to cancel student debt wouldn’t have been possible without Chopra’s direction. “He used his strategic sense to reorient the entire government around student debt,” Pierce said. “If you didn’t have that conversation, you don’t get to the conversation about cancellation.”

Under Chopra, the ombudsman’s office would also become a catchall for issues affecting students. Military issues were highlighted as a canary in the coal mine of financial services breakdowns. Because military members move a lot, and have special protections like interest rate caps under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), they don’t fit cleanly into the automated customer systems financial firms use to save money. “The service member is usually the first type of customer to get lost in the system,” he explained. “It’s a sign, a smoke signal that they can’t handle complexity.”

Holly Petraeus, then the CFPB’s lead on service member issues, traveled with Chopra to military bases and Defense Department conferences to discuss financial predation of active-duty military. “He’s a very quick study,” she said, understanding quirks in federal laws like the GI Bill, which gives service members education benefits. The for-profit college industry, which offered diplomas of questionable utility and often sunk students deep into debt, was bound to only receive 90 percent of its income from

the federal government, like from federal student loans. But because of a loophole, GI Bill benefits don’t count under that rule as federal dollars. This meant that every GI Bill student enrolled would allow the industry to bring in more money through student loans; it made military members prime targets.

“They saw them as dollar signs in uniform,” Chopra said.

In 2014, CFPB sued major for-profit chains Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech for pressuring students into high-risk loans and misleading them about the value of the diplomas offered. Within two years, Corinthian and ITT Tech would shut down, in large part due to sanctions and investigations from the Education Department, which held the purse strings on student loans.

In another for-profit college action, Chopra elevated ideas from wronged borrowers, particularly the Corinthian debt strikers, that they had the right to use “defense to repayment,” a clause in the Higher Education Act, to forgive debt in cases of fraud.

The Education Department resisted this for years, but it was harder to do so with support from another arm of the government.

“What it’s like to work with Rohit, he would say, ‘You have the power to do this if you want to,’” said Peoples. “It’s just a question of whether we’re choosing to do it, and if not we have to ask why.”

For-profits were one of a series of areas where Chopra and the CFPB spurred other agencies to get their jobs done. The CFPB complaint database tracked a pattern of numerous service members explaining how Sallie Mae wasn’t offering the 6 percent rate cap on student loans required under the SCRA. Referring the information to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division resulted in a $60 million settlement that compensated borrowers. Another section of complaints discovered junk fees layered onto prepaid cards that students used to access living expenses from student loans and Pell grants. The Department of Education had rulemaking authority to deal with those fees; they did so to eliminate the worst practices.

“It wasn’t just about what we could do but where were all the tools across the government, what were the processes we can use to make change,” Chopra said. “I always thought you judge by results. The public doesn’t care which agency does it.”

But Chopra is actually responsible for some of this work outside of CFPB. In the final year of the Obama administration,

he transferred to the Education Department as a special adviser. By that point, the agency (in part because of CFPB’s urging) had aligned with the consensus that much greater scrutiny needed to be placed on colleges and servicers to ensure that student loans weren’t being used as a profit center.

It got Chopra familiar with other sets of tools to police the industry. And it paid off; ITT was cut off from federal student loans during Chopra’s tenure, leading to the college’s dissolution.

Financial firms didn’t want to see anyone rousing the machinery of the federal government, and they groused about Chopra to anyone and everyone. In a recently uncovered email from 2015, Kevin Modany, then the CEO of ITT Tech, told his lawyers that Chopra was an “economic terrorist” and that he “should be sent to Guantanamo Bay for about a decade of R&R; which should include an aggressive regimen of ‘water sports’!”

Rohit Chopra was nominated as a commissioner to the Federal Trade Commission in October 2017. He didn’t get confirmed until May 2018. Chopra spent the interim period strategizing.

The FTC was envisioned as a pillar of the movement to counteract corporate power when it was established during the Progressive Era, with the power to write and enforce rules around economic concentration, consumer protection, and, later in its life, privacy. But the commission had been quiet since the late 1970s, when an effort to limit advertising to children generated a tremendous backlash from corporate America, which persuaded Congress to roll back some of the agency’s powers.

Ronald Reagan’s first chair, James Miller, was the first economist put in charge of the FTC, and he not only curtailed the agency’s reach but broke its spirit. “To say that the commission for the last several decades has been ineffective is too kind,” said Jeff Chester. “The agency is an unindicted coconspirator when it comes to the eroding of democracy in the U.S.” Chopra recognized that underneath the corporate capture and regulatory inertia was an entity that could make a critical contribution to a fairer economy. The FTC could serve as the primary data collection agency to help policymakers understand what was happening in markets. It had expansive and largely unused powers around privacy and consumer protection. Chopra would APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 17

later write with Lina Khan an academic paper showing that the FTC had rulemaking authority under Section 5 of its statute that could revitalize antitrust enforcement.

“These agencies have a huge amount of tools they don’t use,” Chopra told me. “I’d be told by the lawyers, ‘We can’t do that.’ And then they would research it and say we can.”

Chopra and Jen Howard, who followed him from CFPB to the FTC, mapped out some basic themes for his tenure, following much of the playbook that made him effective as student loan ombudsman. The core demand was for better agency enforcement and more market competition. Despite not having the votes to set the agenda, he thought he could bend the agency’s posture anyway. It all came together in a memo, sent directly to the other four commissioners, just nine days after taking over his seat.

In what was known as the “repeat offenders” memo, Chopra outlined a commitment to stop corporate recidivism, where companies break the law over and over yet receive hardly any additional sanctions as a result.

He recommended that the FTC fire senior executives and board members, cut executive compensation, or close business lines to reverse the incentives that led to repeat violations. “FTC orders are not suggestions,” he wrote, staking out territory that he would come back to in written opinions on practically every enforcement order.

For decades, the commission strived for bipartisanship as a cover to preempt attacks on its authority. Dissents on enforcement orders were discouraged; in fact, there was an informal policy for commissioners to submit private dissents to staff that never got released. “This was seen as how the agency would survive, with pretend bipartisanship,” said Chester.

Chopra didn’t comply with this. After the repeat offenders memo, he issued a litany of dissenting opinions accompanying his votes, taking issue with “weak, no-consequences settlements” or merger transactions with “no noteworthy benefits to customers.” The dissents told a story of what an active, aggressive FTC would look like, and put pressure on not just his fellow commissioners but agency staff to up their game. “Lots of people thought they were doing a good job,” Chopra said. “I thought it was important to demonstrate all of the ways the agency could make a difference.”

This was more than just playing the goodsoldier role of a Democrat opposing Repub18 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

licans. Chopra was attacking a self-satisfied status quo punctuated by bipartisan failure that led to unending corporate dominance.

It was a conscious effort to embarrass the agency into action. Chester, who has lobbied the FTC as a privacy advocate for decades, told me that Chopra was seen inside the agency as “kind of a traitor.”

But the grumbling did not dissuade Chopra. One dissent, in a case called Your Therapy Source that unearthed multiple employers conspiring over text messages to suppress wages but imposed no penalties on the ringleader, led Chopra to publicly refer the matter to the Justice Department.

In late 2020, DOJ indicted the organizer of the scheme, and the case would become the most wide-reaching criminal antitrust action against wage-fixing in history. Like so many Chopra efforts, it set a trend.

From the outside, Chopra was seen as someone who was finally willing to break down the walls between the FTC and the small businesses and consumers who relied on it for their livelihoods. Keith Miller, a Subway franchisee with stores in Nevada and California who works for the American Association of Franchisees and Dealers (AAFD), explained to me that the FTC in prior years had admitted that, despite having responsibility to enforce rules around franchising, they had done little on the matter. The franchising rule at the time was weak and only applied to disclosures before the sale. Chopra sought Miller out to talk things over.

“When you walk in to talk to a person of that status, you wonder, am I starting with a blank slate? Am I going to have to spell franchise to him?” Miller said. “He starts asking about Section 5. I say, ‘That’s great, what the hell is that?’ I’m now the idiot, I’m the blank slate.” Miller told me that he’d talked to franchise lawyers who spent 30 years without getting close to a commissioner. “They said, ‘I don’t know how the sandwich guy got in,’” he joked.

Chopra made some simple changes on franchising, starting with how franchisees could report complaints. The standard complaint form was geared toward fraud complaints and scam artists. This changed to one contoured specifically to franchisees.

“The fact that they did that tells people they will pay attention,” Miller said. A recent FTC lawsuit against Burgerim, an Israeli fast-food joint, alleges that the company

“These agencies have a huge amount of tools they don’t use,” Chopra told me. targeted veterans with discount programs but failed to disclose key information, set up potential franchisees for failure, and pocketed the fees without giving refunds. Miller said it was the first FTC action against a franchise since 2007. “Now there’s a risk of being caught,” he said.

When Chopra was nominated to run CFPB, the AAFD offered their endorsement, despite his progressive profile. “I’m a Reagan Republican,” Miller said. “So much of what I see in franchising shouldn’t be a redblue issue. It’s just right and wrong.”

Another area where Chopra defied convention was on the FTC’s Made in USA authority. This was intended to police companies who falsely affixed “Made in USA” labels to their products, but the commission hadn’t enforced it. Typically, the problem would be solved through staff “closing letters,” which imposed no penalty as long as the offending company removed the labels.

Sometimes the companies, like a high-profile example from Walmart, would continue to violate the ordinance after the closing letter, without further FTC follow-up.

Chopra recalled visiting with a small manufacturer of high-quality boots in Detroit, who told him how his business couldn’t survive if knockoff artists overseas could spoof his product on Amazon with a false label. He saw this as another area where the commission wasn’t using its power.

Congress had given the FTC the ability to write its own Made in USA rule in the 1990s. Chopra found support from Republicans on the issue in Congress and the White House. Peter Navarro, the top Trump trade adviser, became an internal champion. “He wanted to get stuff done,” Navarro said in an interview. “What I noted was the deep institutional resistance, the arrogance of the traditional Republicans that loved to offshore our jobs and turned their noses up at Buy America.”

After two years of highlighting the issue and building support, the FTC adopted a

Despite a Republican majority on the FTC, Chopra got the agency to adopt his priority of new Made in USA labeling rules.

staff report on Made in USA and proposed a rule, which was finalized last July. Despite Chopra’s position in the minority, the staff report was adopted unanimously and the proposed rule was approved 4-1. In an early test of the FTC’s seriousness, the commission settled with Williams-Sonoma on a Made in USA case, and didn’t just file a closing letter, but took a $1 million fine. “The MAGA folks on the Republican side should embrace him, the traditional working-class Dems should embrace him,” Navarro said. “He can build Republican support for these issues.”

That was also true in the case of Facebook, long a huge missed opportunity for the FTC. In 2012, the Democratic majority on the commission was in possession of a smoking-gun internal document during deliberations over the Facebook-Instagram merger. Written by a top Facebook executive, the document stated flatly that Facebook was buying Instagram to eliminate a competitor. But despite this, at least one Democrat failed to give their support to block the merger.

With Chopra on the commission, it had a second chance in 2019 to scrutinize Facebook’s business model and investigate illegal monopolization. Despite the Trump majority, the FTC approved a case against Facebook, and part of the rationale was the company’s illegal acquisitions of rivals like Instagram. The case was initially dismissed but refiled, and the second version survived a motion to dismiss. The issue is of long-standing interest to Chopra, who was one of Facebook’s earliest users when his classmate Mark Zuckerberg designed it at Harvard.

Today, the FTC is respected if not feared under Khan’s direction. But that springs from the often lonely work of her predecessor. “The fact that we have a great commission today,” said Jeff Chester, “is a legacy of Rohit Chopra.”

The CFPB has been through three stages in its short history, argues Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown University and a key financial reform ally. CFPB 1.0, in its inception under its first director Rich

Cordray, labored under a harsh political spotlight and an unclear legal future. It was one Republican legislative move or unfavorable Supreme Court ruling away from oblivion, and Cordray proceeded cautiously to not wake the bear. An eventual legal case, Selia Law, reaffirmed the constitutionality of the bureau, at the expense of allowing presidents to fire the director at will. Paradoxically, this ruling also let President Biden install Chopra; under the old system, Trump-era director Kathy Kraninger would have been eligible to stay until December 2023.

CFPB 2.0 was in the hands of Trump lackeys Mick Mulvaney and then Kraninger.

While Mulvaney was ideologically dedicated to the agency’s destruction, he was running the Office of Management and Budget while aiming to dismantle CFPB in his spare time. Handing the reins over to Kraninger relieved the pressure in an odd way. “Gosh, did the bureau luck out with Kraninger,” Levitin said. She had no background in financial services or consumer protection, and no ambitions to be transformative. The APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 19

agency suffered from some inertia, and certainly let financial predators get away with violations. But it “came out pretty intact,” according to Levitin.

Now, with version 3.0, Republicans don’t have as big a target on the bureau, much of the political pressure is off, and there’s not the same kind of full-scale post-Trump rebuilding project as in other agencies. And instead of Chopra having to cajole the bureaucracy, he controls it, in the most powerful position he’s ever had. “Rohit is a damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead guy,” Levitin said. “His view of the world is every shot you don’t take, you miss.”

Established in an era of complex mortgage innovations and debt collection, as CFPB cracked down the financial system has attempted to migrate to unregulated corners. Fintech firms feature peer-to-peer lending and robo-financial advisers. Cryp20 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

tocurrency companies spin up novel coins and NFTs. Old schemes are dressed up for the digital age; layaway is called “Buy Now Pay Later” on an app; payday loans are now “earned wage access” products that offer an advance on salary for a fee. And the bigger tech platforms are circling, figuring out whether they can collect consumer data and get in on the profit-taking outside of the regulatory perimeter. All of these innovations maintain that they are not credit, or not eligible for regulation under current rules. That’s the game.

“Back when I was talking to Congress about the idea for a consumer agency,” said Sen. Warren, “one of the arguments I made was we need an agency because the industry can innovate ways to cheat faster than Congress can respond.” Even with all the innovation, the newfangled products are either selling credit or smoothing payment. Though CFPB came out of

the mortgage crisis, its tools are broad enough to empower the bureau to solve the next crisis.

Some of Chopra’s older priorities remain in place at CFPB. He’s going to seek tougher penalties on repeat offenders, as he advocated for at the FTC. He’s looking into private lending from for-profit colleges, restarting another fight.

But one of the first things Chopra did as director was to ask tech companies for information on their payment products, the associated fees, how they are marketed to consumers, and what is done with customer data. He’s examining bias in artificial-intelligence programs that inform algorithmic lending and could lead to “digital redlining” of customers. One of his first enforcement actions was against JPay, a monopoly provider of web-based financial services to prisoners, for forcing incarcerated people leaving prison to get account balances and govern-

GR AEME SLOAN / SIPA USA VIA AP

As CFPB director, Chopra now doesn’t have to cajole the bureaucracy; he controls it.

CFPB’s signaling that it would use its supervisory powers created a virtuous circle, making it easier for banks to eliminate overdraft fees than fight. ment benefits on prepaid cards with high fees.

“Rohit’s the right guy at the right time to deal with tech and consumer finance. If we don’t get this right we are screwed,” said one colleague at the bureau who wasn’t authorized to go on the record.

Chopra also put out a request for public comment on “junk fees” imposed on top of ordinary charges for goods and services—things like late fees, levies for balance transfers, and service fees for everything from concert tickets to use of resort hotel amenities. Coming up with a pithy name for this array of charges often explained through bloodless, technical jargon is a Chopra hallmark.

“Here’s what’s quite important about CFPB, we can order information and look under the hood,” Chopra said. “It allows us to understand how the business model works.” And what he has learned is that even signaling an area of focus can accomplish results.

Last December, the CFPB released a report about one particular junk fee, the overdraft charges incurred by individuals when they take out more from their bank account than they have available. The charge is typically around $35 per incident, and the report showed that this was a dependable $15.5 billion profit center, earned off the backs of the poorest customers. In 2019, the biggest banks—JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America—were responsible for 44 percent of the total. Chopra announced that the agency would engage in “a range of regulatory interventions” on companies that earned excessive amounts from overdraft.

This was not an earth-shattering proclamation; overdraft was a known issue for years. But Chopra’s insistence that it would be an area of focus had immediate impact.

The same month as the CFPB report, Capi-

tal One announced it would end overdraft fees, and that overdrawn requests would instead be denied. The next month, Bank of America announced it would cut its $35 fee to $10. JPMorgan Chase announced that customers could go up to $50 below their account balance and avoid fees, and later added a one-day grace period. Wells Fargo added a grace period too. And in February, Citigroup nixed overdraft fees.

Combined with smaller competitors, that’s nearly a clean sweep of changes, months before any rule limiting or barring overdraft fees could be published. CFPB’s signaling that it would use its supervisory powers created a virtuous circle making it easier for banks to eliminate the fees than fight.

Similarly, after Chopra hounded credit reporting companies that they would be held responsible for consumer credit reports that have widespread errors on medical debt, the companies decided to drop most medical debt from credit reports.

Some financial reform advocates don’t trust these voluntary efforts. “There needs to be a rulemaking so Capital One or Bank of America or Wells doesn’t restart them under the radar,” said Elyse Hicks with Americans for Financial Reform. But to Chopra, supervisory work doesn’t forestall rulemaking; it complements it. “I do feel a lot of urgency to get things done quickly and not wait for a big ta-da moment,” Chopra said. “Let me be clear: There will be rulemaking. But we have to be mindful that there are many ways to make markets more fair and competitive.”

The drive Chopra feels toward protecting consumers carries over to his own staff. One colleague told me he calls staff to make sure they’re signed up for the best health and life insurance. He told me that he runs his own benefits orientations because agency sessions are “kinda unhelpful.”

The overall goal is to create a competitive market so financial firms aren’t basing their business models on how much cheating of customers they can get away with, but on how they can offer a better product than the next guy. As in all his other positions, Chopra is harnessing the information collected from the ground level to force that competitive market through. This is why the grumbling from the industry has begun.

“The industry is having a hard time adjusting to a serious cop back on the consumer protection beat,” said Dennis Kelleher.

That desire for competitive, open mar-

kets triggered one of the biggest fights of Chopra’s early tenure, which didn’t even happen inside the agency. The CFPB director also sits on the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Despite Democrats having a 3-1 edge on that board, Trump holdover Jelena McWilliams still held the chair, and attempted to use her power to block the will of the majority.

McWilliams held up a request for information on bank mergers—a very Chopra-like attempt to understand markets—despite majority support. “This was about the most minimal thing the FDIC could do,” Kelleher said. “When the head of the FDIC will not agree to put out an RFI, then you know you have the leader of an agency that has no interest in fulfilling that agency’s role.”

Chopra led an effort to approve the request through a private vote outside of an FDIC meeting, a legal process under the bylaws. But McWilliams contested the vote, spilling the fight into the public arena. It was a classic Chopra flex, finding a method buried in statute to get things accomplished and isolate opponents. Knowing that her power to obstruct was tenuous, McWilliams didn’t last long, quitting the agency on New Year’s Eve. The new acting chair, Chopra ally Martin Gruenberg, can now move forward on bank oversight and regulatory actions on everything from cryptocurrency to climate risk.

The past 40 years since Ronald Reagan has led many to wonder if America can possibly restrain capitalism’s abuses amid what seems like a broken, ineffectual government. Rohit Chopra’s tour through government reveals a blueprint for how to get things done. Collecting research wherever it’s housed can inform where markets are headed. Digging into statutes can yield a bounty of authorities to protect the public.

Going public with a model for how markets should work, even if it offends putative allies, can shame and browbeat them into action. Choosing battlefields that have been dormant can shake up the bureaucracy and draw faith with forgotten and vulnerable populations.

The status quo is powerful, but these types of actions can knock it off balance.

And it defuses the cynical notion that America is ungovernable, that Big Money and gridlocked ideology resist progress. Chopra exemplifies what government can accomplish when just one person inside it cares enough to make it work. n APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 21

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Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, has outlined an agenda that would transform the American workplace.

By Harold Meyerson

The Memo Writer

PHILIP BURKE

O

One gap between American public opinion and American public policy has been growing steadily wider over the past dozen years. Public support for unions rose to a high point of 68 percent last year, while the actual rate of membership in unions, continuing its 70-year descent, hit a new low last year of a bare 6 percent of privatesector employees.

In democracies, the common response to realities so at odds with public sentiment is something like “there ought to be a law.”

In this case, there is. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), enacted in 1935, gave workers a legal right to form unions and bargain collectively. For a decade, it worked as intended, as a previously moribund union movement grew to encompass fully onethird of the nation’s workforce. For the next decade, despite a Republican Congress limiting the law’s scope with the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, unions held their own. Thereafter, membership percentages began a slow but relentless decline, as court decisions and the ferocious opposition of American

business to worker rights turned the NLRA on its head. Though the Act remained on the books, the penalties employers faced for violating its terms—by intimidating or even firing workers seeking to unionize—were so minimal that employer lawbreaking became common practice and successful unionization campaigns became rarer and rarer.

Eventually, Democrats became aware that the weakness of federal labor law not only triggered deunionization and hollowed out the middle class, but also reduced workers’ support for the Democratic Party. But Republicans are implacably opposed to unions, and a critical mass of Democrats are implacably opposed to abolishing the filibuster and restoring majority rule in the Senate. So while you can write a bill like the PRO Act, which would patch many of the holes in the NLRA, you can’t get it passed, and consequently, you can’t reverse labor’s decline.

Or can you?

Last summer, on a party-line vote, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Jennifer Abruzzo as general counsel of the National

Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees union recognition contests and investigates and adjudicates disputes over violations of the NLRA. While not a member of the Board itself (which by law consists of three appointees from the president’s party and two from the opposition’s), the general counsel functions as the NLRB’s chief prosecutor, directing its roughly 500 attorneys across the nation on what kind of cases to bring and what remedies to seek. It’s a powerful position, but no previous general counsel had used that power quite like Abruzzo has.

Just two weeks after she was confirmed in late July, Abruzzo sent out her first memo to staff attorneys, a common practice for new general counsels, laying out the kind of cases attorneys should file. Her stated intention was to reverse the Trump-appointeedominated Board’s anti-worker rulings that, she wrote, had “overruled legal precedent.”

But she added that she also wanted to pursue other cases “not necessarily the subject of a more recent Board decision, [that] are nevertheless ones I would like to carefully APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 23

Abruzzo’s priorities at NLRB are pushing the envelope even beyond what unions themselves have been pushing for. examine,” because they, too, ran counter to the NLRA. For example, in cases where employers refused to recognize a union even though a majority of workers had indicated through signing affiliation cards that they wished to form one, she advised the Board attorneys to consult the Joy Silk Mills case for the appropriate remedy.

“Even labor lawyers had forgotten about Joy Silk,” says Catherine Fisk, a professor of labor law at the University of California, Berkeley. And no wonder: The Joy Silk ruling, which was promulgated in 1949 by a Board dominated by Harry Truman’s appointees, was substantially overturned in 1969 in a Supreme Court case known as Gissel, and the NLRB, dominated by Richard Nixon’s appointees at the time, wasn’t inclined to defend the Truman Board’s remedies.

Under Joy Silk, employers who refused to recognize a union’s legitimate majority status had been compelled to recognize the union and to enter into bargaining with it, except in rare instances. Under Gissel, employers who refused to recognize a union’s legitimate majority status were 24 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

compelled merely to run or rerun an election among their employees to determine union status, except in rare instances. That enabled employers to delay recognition and bargaining, in some cases for years, and to intimidate workers from voting in a union in a much-delayed election.

The abandonment of Joy Silk made a huge difference in employer behavior. As a 2017 article in the Santa Clara Law Review documented, eliminating Joy Silk’s standard for the remedy when employers refused to recognize their workers’ pro-union preference led to an immediate increase in employer violations of the NLRA’s letter and spirit.

In the five years before Joy Silk was struck down, charges of employer intimidation totaled about 1,000 cases a year. Once the softball remedies of Gissel became the standard, charges exploded to a peak of 6,493 in 1981, after which they fell along with unionization efforts generally. Under Gissel, intimidation became the norm.

Abruzzo believed it would take going back to Joy Silk to make workers’ right to form unions—a right ensured by the NLRA—real

again. Many employers, Abruzzo told me, are “abusing [the law’s] processes in order to coerce employees to change their minds and vote against the union, where it obviously enjoys majority support.” When Joy Silk was the standard, “there were many more elections that were untainted” by employer intimidation. And if the company, under a revived Joy Silk, enters into a bargaining process that it prolongs by stalling and refusing to reach an agreement, Abruzzo further believes the NLRB should compel it to compensate workers for what they would have made under a promptly negotiated contract, “if the employer had bargained in good faith from the start.”

Nothing in the PRO Act, or any labor law proposal over the past few decades, even touches on reviving Joy Silk. As one union official puts it, “we have a general counsel that’s pushing the envelope beyond what unions themselves have been pushing for.”

The Joy Silk memo was just the beginning for Abruzzo. In short order, a flurry of other memos followed.

One former NLRB special counsel called Abruzzo’s appointment “the most impactful action that the Biden administration took for working people.”

She called for increasing employers’ “back pay” payments to employees that they’ve illegally fired to include payments for the financial sacrifices the employees made due to the firing, such as withdrawals from 401(k)s or taking out loans. Her new standards also required employers to compensate unions for the expenses they incurred in fighting their employer’s illegal behavior.

She proposed treating employers’ “captive audience” meetings, in which workers are invariably compelled to hear management’s case against unionizing, as an unfair labor practice, for which an appropriate remedy would be allowing the union to hold meetings with workers at their worksite as well.

She recommended that costs to workers and unions be paid in full in any settlement agreements, while eliminating any “nonadmission of guilt” language from such settlements to establish a pattern of violations if such were to exist. She recognized student athletes in lucrative college sports as employees under the NLRA. She ensured rights, protections, and remedies for immigrant workers under the NLRA. And she instructed attorneys to hasten remedies under the NLRA’s 10(j) section by more frequently seeking cease-and-desist injunctions against offending employers.

Abruzzo encouraged filing these injunctions not only when a worker in an organizing drive was illegally fired, but when an employer threatened to fire such workers, or to shut down the worksite if the workers go union. Both of those actions are also illegal under the NLRA. Abruzzo’s goal is to make sure that efforts to unlawfully thwart employees’ rights to form a union can “be nipped in the bud” while the organizing drive is still proceeding.

The Biden administration is clearly the most pro-union administration in American history, with its backing of the PRO Act, its

recommendations for greater worker rights in the federal government, its extension of higher wage standards on federally funded projects, its preference for unionized companies in its domestic production bill, its groundbreaking demand for a fair union affiliation vote in a Mexican factory under the terms of the revised NAFTA, and the president’s own pro-worker message to the employees at Amazon’s Alabama warehouse.

Even without Abruzzo’s efforts, this would be a significant step forward in the posture of a presidency toward the labor movement.

But few observers would dispute the assessment of Celine McNicholas, a former NLRB special counsel who is now the general counsel and director of policy and government affairs at the Economic Policy Institute, who tells me, “Installing Jennifer Abruzzo as the NLRB’s general counsel will be the most impactful action that the Biden administration took in its first term for working people.”

Jennifer Abruzzo has spent 23 of her 58 years as an attorney at the NLRB, starting out as a field attorney in the Miami office, rising to the position of deputy attorney for the Florida region, then moving at the Board’s request to its Washington, D.C., headquarters, where she rose to be deputy general counsel during the Obama administration. During the Trump years, she rotated out of government to the Communications Workers of America (CWA), where she served as special counsel until the Senate confirmed her nomination last summer.

Abruzzo grew up in a working-class family in the (then as now) working-class neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens.

Her father was an electrical engineer at ConEd; her mother was an X-ray technician at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

Both were union members. Jennifer, her parents, and her siblings (she’s the eldest of four) lived in a three-room apartment.

“Not three bedrooms,” she clarified. “Three rooms. But I had a roof over my head and food on the table, and having those union benefits definitely helped us.”

She attended parochial schools, then went to college at New York state colleges: SUNY Binghamton and SUNY Stony Brook.

An early marriage brought her to Miami, where she had her son, divorced, and went to work in the human resources department of a South American–oriented branch of Deutsche Bank.

“I was divorced with a young child and needed to support us both,” she said, “so I ended up going to law school, the University of Miami Law School, at night,” while working at the bank during the day. No labor law classes were available at night, but Abruzzo took an evidence class with Michael Fischl, a former NLRB attorney who taught labor law in the daytime.

Fischl, now a law professor at the University of Connecticut, recalls that he taught that evidence class “with a heavy labor and employment law emphasis.” In a class of roughly 100 students, he says, Abruzzo “stood out for her thoughtfulness and the depth of her engagement,” so much so that she was invited to join a social justice and legal theory book group with other faculty members and students.

“It’s hard enough to work and go to law school at the same time,” Fischl says. “Add to that being a single mom. I’m reminded of that line about Ginger Rogers, that she did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels.”

When an attorney’s position came open in the NLRB’s Miami office, Fischl recommended Abruzzo for the job, though she’d had just a year in private practice. At the NLRB, she spent a good deal of her time representing immigrants from both Central and South America, as well as Haiti.

“What drew me to the NLRB?” Abruzzo says. “Coming from a union household helped, but what that instilled in me was a very strong work ethic, and also being empathetic towards others who might not have as much as we did … I just wanted to ensure that I did everything I could to ensure that people were treated equitably.”

“I would describe Jennifer as the master mechanic of the NLRB,” says Jody Calemine, the general counsel and chief of staff at CWA. “She’s worked there at every level, she knows what works, what doesn’t work.

She has encyclopedic knowledge of the case law, knows all the arguments inside and out, and she truly believes in the Act.” When McNicholas worked as an NLRB special counsel while Abruzzo was deputy general counsel during Obama’s presidency, “she helped me figure out how the agency worked,” McNicholas says. “All the regional offices are overseen by general counsel’s division of operations. She brought a field perspective to the job.”

Abruzzo’s attentiveness to the concerns APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 25

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savings and retirement funds that the worker has been compelled to make.

The NLRB should be looking, Abruzzo told me, at “how can we put people back to the way it was before all this unlawful activity occurred, at whether there’s been emotional distress that can be particularly linked to an unlawful discharge, in much the way our sister agencies [like, for instance, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] seek such compensation.”

Harvard labor law professor Ben Sachs explains, “For decades, the lament of labor lawyers and organizers has been that the NLRA remedies are like a bad joke, so weak that it’s economically rational for employers to violate the law. Now, she’s done something that really wasn’t in the collective legal imagination: figured out how to increase remedies without congressional action. She’s found a number of ways to do exactly that.”

“Making employers who’ve broken the law pay the union back for its organizing expenses could be of major importance,” Sachs says. “She’s been imaginative in an arena where many of us were just lamenting.”

Another remedy that wasn’t in the collective legal imagination is Abruzzo’s proposal to declare captive audience meetings an unfair labor practice, the remedy for which should be enabling unions to hold their own meetings with workers, at the worksite. She also has called for making employers provide unions with the home addresses of workers during organizing campaigns, a remedy that’s particularly important at a time when an unprecedented number of employees are working from home.

In her memos, Abruzzo has said Board attorneys should file cases based on the argument that the misclassification of workers as independent contractors when they are actually employees is in itself an unfair labor practice under the NLRA, for which the Board can provide a remedy that states the workers are employees and thus eligible to unionize.

The Trump-dominated Board had ruled that such misclassifications were not an unfair labor practice. That’s one of the Trump rulings, Abruzzo has stated, that violates the NLRA and should be overturned. And on March 17th, following Abruzzo’s memos, NLRB attorneys filed a complaint against a port trucking company at the Los Angeles harbor for the unfair labor practice of misclassifying its drivers, which, if upheld by an administrative law judge, would compel the firm to compensate them for lost wages and

The understanding of how workers and employers actually interact in an organizing campaign underpins many of Abruzzo’s directions to staff. expenses and to provide a union with access to the drivers in an organizing campaign.

Misclassification is at the heart of the gig economy and, increasingly, the economy at large. Depending on the “common sense” standard of whether, say, a driver of a company’s trucks is an employee or a contractor, such a ruling could affect such mega-companies as FedEx, Amazon, Uber, and Lyft, not to mention countless smaller employers.

As labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein points out, due to the need to win support from Southern senators, the NLRA initially excluded farm and domestic workers (that is, Black workers) from the law’s guarantees.

As a result of the civil rights and kindred movements, some New Deal measures, like the minimum wage, were finally extended to some of those workers in recent decades.

This triggered a new tactic from employers, Lichtenstein says. “The guarantees of labor law have been chipped away to exempt other people: managers, and now ‘independent contractors.’ That exempts more and more people from New Deal standards and rights.

It’s been a Republican project.”

Making misclassification a violation of the NLRA would go a long way, then, to revive not just the NLRA, but an entire suite of legal obligations—like the minimum wage and payments into the Social Security and unemployment insurance systems—that companies now evade by refusing to acknowledge their workers actually work for them.

Both the quality and the quantity of Abruzzo’s directives have dazzled the labor and legal communities, while alarming management-side attorneys. At a recent American Bar Association meeting that Abruzzo addressed, one corporate lawyer was overheard remarking, “We may have to find a different country.”

Abruzzo’s suggested reforms certainly mark a departure from previous practices under Democratic as well as Republican

JAE C. HONG / AP PHOTO

of the Board’s far-flung staff is already the stuff of legend. Her zeal to make the NLRA work again has won her a particular following among the many young attorneys who work there.

“I’ve seen her with her young attorneys,” says Julie Gutman Dickinson, an attorney in private practice who represents unions and workers who are misclassified by their employers as independent contractors rather than employees. “They see this general counsel who is brilliant, who believes in the Act, who articulates their beliefs so eloquently and who works so hard.”

One of those young attorneys is Aaron Samsel, who works in the Board’s Washington headquarters. After going to work for the Board right out of law school, he left during the Trump presidency, but when Biden nominated Abruzzo for the general counsel’s post, he decided to go back. “Among all my colleagues, both staff attorneys and supervisory attorneys, there’s this feeling of profound relief to have a general counsel who they feel has their back,” Samsel says. “She really listens when people bring concerns to her, and she understands it all. She can get into the minutiae of handling a case.”

That understanding of how workers and employers actually interact in an organizing campaign underpins many of Abruzzo’s directions to her staff. Her directive on filing 10(j) injunctions against employers threatening their workers during organizing campaigns is based on her knowledge that the long-established practice of winning backpay settlements for illegally fired workers years after they’ve been fired does nothing to stop such conduct when it’s being used to thwart a unionization campaign. “10(j) injunctions are the teeth of the Act,” says Gutman Dickinson, who under its terms has won a number of such cease-and-desist orders and orders to reinstate fired workers, “and Jennifer completely understands that.”

Abruzzo’s memos take aim not just at the timing but also at the insufficiency of the penalties the NLRB has commonly assessed against employers—chiefly, offering back pay to illegally fired workers and posting a notice somewhere in the worksite that the employer has been found in violation of the NLRA and made such a payment. Abruzzo points out that the Act doesn’t allow for punitive damages, so that truly enforcing it requires that fired workers be made financially whole.

That means making the employer cover all loans, credit card fees, and withdrawals from

administrations. In the assessment of one longtime union official, “the Board under Bill Clinton viewed the Act largely as they received it, accepting as precedents the interpretations that had watered it down.

The Board under Obama sought to update the law to meet new developments in the economy, as they did in their joint employer ruling saying that the parent company shared in the liability of its franchisers if they violated the Act, a ruling that the courts subsequently struck down. With Abruzzo under Biden, the agenda is now to get rid of all the erosions of the Act that have essentially ended the worker rights the Act created and secured.”

NLRB veterans generally believe the Democratic majority on the current Board will establish rulings that are based on Abruzzo’s arguments. “The majority will likely be sympathetic to all her proposals,” says Wilma Liebman, who chaired the Board during

Obama’s presidency. Liebman is concerned, however, that the Board may be stretched by the sheer number of precedent-challenging cases that Abruzzo brings before it.

Some labor attorneys are concerned for a different reason: that Abruzzo’s agenda is both too ambitious and too well publicized.

“I’m surprised at how public she’s been about it all, putting out her theories step by step,” says one. “Does the publicity heighten the possibility that rulings will be challenged more quickly in the courts? She may be giving employers an unnecessary head start.”

The courts, after all, can overturn NLRB rulings, and no court since the 1920s has been as anti-labor as the Supreme Court is today. Every attorney and union official I’ve spoken with for this piece has been gloomy about the prospects of some of Abruzzo’s policies passing muster with such avowed union-haters as the Supreme Court’s Sam Alito and his five Republican colleagues.

They point out, however, that it normally takes many years for NLRB rulings to reach the Supreme Court (“They’re too busy right now outlawing abortion,” one lawyer said), and that during that interval, Abruzzo’s suggested policies can make it significantly easier for workers to prevail, particularly the generation of young workers at universities and Starbucks and tech companies, who in growing numbers are moving to win a voice at work. A case in point: Shortly after she sent out her memo calling captive audience meetings an unfair labor practice, the union seeking to organize Amazon’s warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, put out a press release alleging just such violations, quoting her memo to bolster their case.

That may be one more reason, in addition to her determination to restore the worker rights encoded in the NLRA, and her general sense of justice, why Abruzzo looks to be in such a blessed hurry. n Abruzzo is taking on worker misclassification, a critical issue for port truckers.

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 27

Lucas Kunce is captaining a campaign against corporate power, foreign oligarchs, and Wall Street raiders. Can he convince Missourians that they share a common enemy?

By Lee Harris

1. Nation Building

“Part of their economy is picking pecans off the ground. Old people pick pecans from under trees,” Lucas Kunce explains to me as we turn onto Braggadocio Road. It’s his third trip to Hayti Heights, a 537-person town in the cotton country of southeastern Missouri, and Kunce, a candidate for U.S. Senate, knows his way around.

He met Mayor Catrina Robinson last year, and drove out to attend a town fundraiser. They were just sitting down to Polish sausage and bratwurst when Robinson said she had to step away. Kunce tagged along.

Five times a day, Robinson drives around a circuit of four pumps that push sewage from one end of town to the other. Since she took office in 2019, only one pump has been working. To get wastewater moving, she uses hand-powered gas generators that work like lawnmower engines: You fill the tank with gas, pull the chain, and wait for the sewage to flow.

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“I swear to God, it was like I was in Iraq again,” says Kunce, a veteran of two wars who still serves in the Marine Corps Reserve. “When I’d drive around on missions in Iraq, I’d see all these gas-powered pumps all over the place, moving irrigation water, moving sewage. People would go out and crank them. It was just crazy to see right here in Missouri.”

It has been 50 years since Hayti Heights, an all-Black town, split off from neighboring Hayti, which is about half white and has a handful of businesses. Hayti Heights’s economy is rudimentary. Besides the pecan pickers, one resident participates in a USDA program that sends her vegetable seeds.

The town pays Hayti for water under an emergency contract, and also pays to empty sewage into a disputed lagoon.

Robinson has been working to get the city’s finances in order to reclaim the municipal water system, which is currently in receivership. But much of her time is spent

manually running the wastewater pipes, fixing leaks and dusting spillage sites with lime when sewage bubbles up in residents’ front yards. People sometimes bootleg electricity by running a power cable to the water tower, which currently stands empty. Also complicating her efforts, Robinson said, most of the town’s records were destroyed when the city hall was twice set on fire.

“It’s a town of firebugs,” Robinson said.

“They’ll set fire to try and cover up anything.”

There is a staggering amount of arson.

Almost every corner shows some evidence of fire damage. The last commercial business in the Heights—a joint barber shop, tire shop, and lounge—closed after a 2019 fire that Robinson said was set deliberately.

Even one of the gas generators was torched.

In one especially bad week, Robinson said, a car, a business, and a house were set on fire. “Every night, something was burning.”

Hayti Heights is the first place Kunce takes me during the three days I shadow

PHILIP BURKE

The War Nerd

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 29

Kunce says about his adolescence: “I was not, like, a sought-after commodity.” his campaign. He doesn’t offer much commentary, but since the place gets almost no attention from journalists, he presses Robinson to detail its problems.

The town is emblematic of a point Kunce makes often in his populist campaign for Roy Blunt’s old Senate seat: We’ve spent trillions on failed nation building abroad, and none at home. And unlike many politicians, he can speak from experience.

During tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he oversaw a bevy of failed adventures in state development. He watched multimilliondollar buildings erected in the middle of the desert that would only be used to enrich defense contractors.

Over the same period, economists took to comparing America’s hinterlands to the developing world. A 2017 United Nations 30 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

study found that 5.3 million Americans live in “Third World conditions of absolute poverty.”

John Ikerd, an emeritus economist at the University of Missouri, calls land and labor use by agribusiness giants a form of “economic colonization.” Democrats, meanwhile, have been almost eradicated in rural America.

Kunce, who has never won elected office, wants to rein in the reckless adventurism of Wall Street bankers and rechannel imperial vanity back into Missouri. A century ago, Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Administration helped bring light and heat to towns including Hayti. If Kunce wins, he wants the Plains States to manufacture and install the next generation of energy. You won’t hear him talk about a Green New Deal, but his campaign pays homage to the postwar era’s program of public investment. And

populists have won before in Missouri, on similar plans to stanch corporate greed.

The Show-Me State’s only native-son president climbed to fame off a war profiteering investigation. Kunce now lives in the same town where Harry S. Truman grew up: Independence.

Kunce’s plainspoken style has earned him the attention of national media. TV news has turned to him to explain failed wars, Russian energy, and his pitch for banning stock trading by sitting members of Congress. With an entirely grassroots-funded campaign, Kunce raised more money in 2021 than anyone else running. Private polling shows him within striking distance.

His slogan is targeted at places that have been left behind by globalization: “It’s time to Marshall Plan the Midwest.”

Kunce gets animated about Wall Street raiders, monopolies, and foreign oligarchs that have stripped Missouri for parts.

At times, Kunce seems to see Missouri as a foreign country. Driving across the state, he marvels at the cattle country of the north, the Ozark mountains of the south, cobalt mining, corn and cotton. The state map is a microcosm of America: a reddening core flanked by two blue coasts, complete with a Florida-style southern “bootheel.” It’s all, he frequently remarks, “very interesting.” I suggest adjectives beyond interesting. Diverse?

All-American? It’s the biggest softball question for any candidate: Tell me about the district. What binds Missouri together?

The most he can offer is a kind of kid glee: “We touch the most states! Eight.” (Missouri is tied with Tennessee as the state with the most neighbors.)

Kunce is reluctant to spell out exactly who he’s fighting for. Instead, he gets animated about pressing back hostile forces: the Wall Street raiders, monopolies, and foreign oligarchs that have stripped Missouri for parts. He’s allergic to talk of identity, which he sees as an elite PSYOP. Culture wars keep workers fighting each other instead of the owner class, so he’ll have no part in them, thanks. But in a state drifting right where two-thirds of the citizens believe in hell, can he write off unifying values and build his coalition around a common enemy?

2. “He Wanted to Be Challenged” Kunce grew up in the state capital of Jefferson City with Christian parents who were conservative Democrats. Working-class and pro-life, the Kunces opposed abortion, the death penalty, and nuclear weapons. Lucas was a Boy Scout, and his dad, who worked for the state Department of Conservation, was a scoutmaster. Together they tagged deer and chopped down invasive plant species. When his youngest sister was born with a heart condition, his parents went

into debt and eventually declared bankruptcy. But neighbors made them resilient.

His mom would write a check and ask the grocer not to cash it yet. The cashier would oblige, Kunce says, because “we grew up in a magical neighborhood.”

Benyam Tesfai, a fellow Boy Scout who also grew up on Jeff City’s rougher West Side, remembers Kunce as the kid who made it cool to wear shabby clothes. Kunce is more diffident. “I was super nerdy,” he says. “I was not, like, a sought-after commodity.”

Kunce spent middle school ashamed of his grubby socks and his dad’s rusted-out van. Then, a classmate’s father—the warden of Algoa state penitentiary, who drove a black Cadillac—gave him a ride home from their fancier house. Kunce tried everything to avoid it, but the man insisted. When they pulled up, seeing Kunce’s distress, the warden stepped out of the car, and told him to be proud of where he came from.

The episode gave Kunce a lasting confidence. He became class president and valedictorian, and also sat on the homecoming court. He then breezed through four years at Yale, running track and trying a stint as a male cheerleader. In fact, he seemed to do everything without trying. He joined the Marines and is running for office, Tesfai thinks, because “he wanted to be challenged by something.”

Kunce deployed to Iraq with his Marine unit in 2007. Much of his work involved state capacity-building. This was tracked through a system called “stoplight charts,” color-coded lists of skills for Iraqi partner forces, assessing them on how they conduct community policing, for example. Red meant the forces were poor, yellow would mean making improvement, and green stood for excellence.

When Kunce first got his stoplight chart, it was mostly green. “I was like, damn, these guys are good,” he said. Then he was assigned to assess Iraqi detention facilities in the field. “We discovered, they’re not green on any of these things.” He told higher-ups the charts were inaccurate. “They came back and were like, ‘No, there will be no re-review. And, at the end of this thing, they better have gone up in a couple of categories, and we’re not gonna ever put them down in anything.’”

Iraq was his first lesson in the disconnect between on-the-ground reality and happy talk. Afghanistan’s corruption was worse.

As an attorney, he was charged with review-

ing infrastructure projects, water wells, and combat forces. “We would do reviews of the security forces we were paying for, and discover that most of the soldiers or police didn’t even exist. One guy would invent a sheet of people, and get the salaries for all of them.”

That experience gave Kunce the nerve, last summer, to unequivocally support withdrawal from Afghanistan, as other critics hemmed and hawed. “I learned Pashto as a U.S. Marine captain and spoke to everyone I could there: everyday people, elites, allies and yes, even the Taliban,” he wrote in a widely circulated op-ed for The Kansas City Star. “The Afghan National Security Forces was a jobs program for Afghans, propped up by U.S. taxpayer dollars.” As a curtainraiser for a national audience, the op-ed gave Kunce a name as a straight talker.

Elite adventurism in the Middle East did other lasting damage, he found. American rivals grew stronger: Europe became more reliant on Russia for fossil fuels and on China for green technology. He was further convinced that America was getting screwed during a stint in the Pentagon, where he led arms negotiations with Russia and NATO. And while working in weapons system procurement, he worried about parts sourcing for jets like Boeing’s KC-46 refueler. Where dozens of contractors had once competed to sell military equipment, he noticed, many key systems now had only a single supplier.

To talk about his concerns, Kunce asked Matt Stoller, a researcher on monopolies, to lunch at the Pentagon. They hit it off: Both now work for the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit that opposes corporate consolidation, and they co-wrote an article for The American Conservative on monopolization among military contractors. At the nonprofit, Kunce found that the dynamic he had identified in defense was part of an economy-wide takeover by a handful of firms and financiers. Within six months of leaving the Pentagon in 2020, he was back in Missouri plotting his Senate run.

3. Reviving an Old Script In 2006, while getting his law degree at the age of 24, Kunce ran for the Missouri state House, taking on an incumbent Republican in an ideologically indistinct district with a campaign Kunce said he had been “planAPRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 31

ning for three years.” He came up short by about 1,600 votes, but narrowed the gap relative to 2004 by 17 points.

That was 16 years and a world of time ago for Missouri. In 2006, the state had five statewide elected Democrats and four Democrats in the U.S. House. Today, state auditor Nicole Galloway is the only statewide Democrat, and she was demolished in a 2020 run for governor. The Republican-Democratic split in the House delegation, once 5-4, is 6-2.

The red tide is glaring in a state that has passed progressive ballot measures like expanding Medicaid and legalizing medical marijuana, while overwhelmingly rejecting a proposal for an anti-union “right to work” law. Adjusted for cost of living, Missouri’s minimum wage trounces New York’s and California’s. Yet Democrats—once the party of workers—are in dismal shape in the former swing state.

Kunce is undeterred. High-profile Democrats pitched right to cling to their seats.

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill lost after repealing tax cuts on the rich and pushing for a balanced budget. By contrast, Kunce focuses on fighting corporate power, a message he thinks cuts across party lines.

Studies have found that Republicans and Democrats alike see big tech companies and hospital conglomerates as wielding too much power. One poll had farmer opposition to the 2018 merger of Bayer and Monsanto, two agribusiness giants, at 93 percent.

His model is FDR, whom he admires for reviving the adversarial relationship between the state and the private sector, watching contractors “like a hawk.” He cites the takedown of aluminum giant Alcoa, decided a month before Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Appeals court judge Learned Hand argued that, despite a lack of evidence of illegal conspiracy to exclude competitors, a single enormous producer’s market position could itself be a form of abuse under the Sherman Act. Not to find Alcoa guilty of monopolization, the court found, would “emasculate the Act.” Kunce would like to use the same logic against Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi, three insulin producers he says set abusive prices. He proposes that the government set up its own insulin production facilities—ideally in Missouri, which already has a biopharmaceuticals presence. It will be important to spin these off to the private sector, he says, since “the government should fund things, not run things.”

32 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

Clean energy is also a big chance for public investment. In March, conservative talk radio host Pete Mundo asked him if the U.S. should drill more oil, given recent geopolitical shocks. Since 2018, Kunce pointed out, the United States has been the world’s biggest producer of oil and natural gas—bigger than Russia and Saudi Arabia. Yet the market-driven volatility of U.S. oil production has made Americans more vulnerable, despite controlling a huge slice of global production. Meanwhile, Europe is sourcing big shipments of renewable-energy infrastructure, like solar panels, from China.

“We are going to find ourselves replacing Russia and Saudi Arabia, as people who control the global dominance of energy, with China,” Kunce told Mundo. Add clean energy to the list of sectors—including rare earth elements and pharmaceuticals—that he fears are controlled by Chinese producers.

In raising concerns about foreign capital penetrating American markets, Kunce is reviving an old script. The People’s Party, which merged the China-hawkish Union Labor Party with the Farmers’ Alliance in the 1890s, once organized Missourians against the interests of railroads, corporations, and national bankers. Populists combined leftwing, pro-worker views with strident protectionism, arguing in an 1892 platform for giving Native American land freely to settlers while banning foreign ownership of land.

On the campaign trail, that’s now an applause line. In Greene County, it hits home with James Tucker, a corn, cattle, and soy farmer who counts himself lucky to be in business. He is a sixth-generation independent farmer—a lifestyle that now needs routine cash transfusions. USDA data shows that most income for family farms now comes from somewhere other than farming.

Tucker is concerned that Chinese firms are buying up farmland. Kunce homes in on the issue, pointing out that the 2013 buyout of Smithfield Foods—which left its Chinese parent company raising 1 in 4 hogs in the United States—was organized by bankers at J.P. Morgan.

James’s father, Jim Tucker, is also worried about China’s rise. But he is less thrilled about Kunce using “elite” as an insult. “The royals had cross-eyed kids, but they were informed people. We’ve given choices over to the citizens of this country. So you’ve got to have an informed electorate,” he tells me privately, adding that he has worked on promoting agriculture around the globe with

In 2006, Missouri had five statewide elected Democrats. Today, state auditor Nicole Galloway is the only one, and she was demolished in a 2020 run for governor.

England’s Princess Anne, who is a farmer.

“Don’t go picking on elites.”

He eventually raises the issue with Kunce, who explains that, by “elite,” he doesn’t mean any schoolteacher or professor that’s gone and gotten a college education.

He just means the unpatriotic owner class of monopolists and bankers—oligarchs, you could call them. Tucker seems unconvinced.

You might say the same about Missouri.

Galloway highlighted foreign ownership of farmland in her bid for governor. Widely thought to be sharp and sensible, Galloway lost by 17 points. Democrats have a toxic brand.

Local Democrats aren’t thrilled with Kunce, either. Many view him as an unknown quantity. Another telegenic veteran, Jason Kander, came within three percentage points of unseating Blunt in 2016, when Donald Trump carried the state by a 18.5-point margin. Kander, Missouri’s former secretary of state who had put in years at the state capitol, was criticized as an outsider who spent too much time on the Kansas side of Kansas City.

Virvus Jones, the former comptroller of St. Louis and father of current mayor Tishaura Jones, won’t entertain Kunce’s claim to be a “populist.” Jones sees a “Reagan Democrat,” the latest in a string of candidates willing to alienate the party’s African American base to pull in intolerant rural Missourians.

In Kunce’s hawkishness toward China, Jones hears the latest iteration of McCaskill’s anti-immigrant promise to protect borders.

“That’s not where the base is. I don’t know who’s telling him that the base has some kind of Chinese fetish. I talk to a lot of people, and I have not talked to anybody who tells me the problem in this country are the Chinese. And to me, it’s a xenophobic kind

of approach. Truth be told, we opened up China, China didn’t come to us,” Jones said.

Maybe Jones is a Kunce supporter who doesn’t know it yet. In March, he condemned a liberal law firm for “promoting spending a million dollars to attract immigrants from Afghanistan & $0 to recruit or retain black people to STL.”

4. Wizards of the Coast

Kunce played Magic: The Gathering throughout his tours of duty overseas. At the facility in Afghanistan, one of the communications Marines—“the data nerds”— ordered a box of cards from the makers, Wizards of the Coast. (Now it’s a subsidiary of Hasbro, Kunce notes, “because everything’s consolidated.”)

Inspired by role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, Magic is a fantasy trading card game in which players summon creatures or cast spells using sets of cards with names like “The Orzhov Syndicate,” “Elite Spellbinder,” and “Subtlety.” It is a game of strategy whose developer has a Ph.D. in combinatorial mathematics, and involves a heavy dose of chance. Some commentators have argued that possession of land early in the game makes play strategy too dependent on luck.

Kunce has played Magic in every place he’s lived. “There’s always Magic people, everywhere you go,” he says. I joke that it must be the only globalist community he’s a part of, and he clarifies that he has only really played with Americans.

These days, he plays on Friday nights

when he’s home in Independence, at a game shop around the corner from his home. He takes me on a Tuesday, but the regulars still recognize him. One player tells me his play style is highly controlled: “It’s mostly reactive. He wants to see what we’re doing and try to beat that. But mostly, he just stops us from doing our thing.”

In tight spaces, Kunce tends to hunch.

Six-foot-two with a lantern jaw, it is sometimes unavoidable. He looks very Captain America at the fantasy card shop and seems to feel it, tilting his body forward, scrunching up. He’d rather just be a war nerd.

The next day, walking on the street where he grew up in Jeff City, full of small houses and empty lots, Kunce is more at ease. He made this same walk last year for a campaign announcement video called “Home.”

Kunce played Magic: The Gathering throughout his tours of duty overseas and in every place he’s lived.

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 33

Kunce with Hayti Heights, Missouri, mayor Catrina Robinson, whom he texts with frequently. “He don’t care whose toes he step on,” Robinson says.

“This is where we build our future. On the cracked streets, in the forgotten neighborhoods …”

Josh Hawley, the senator Kunce would serve alongside if elected, begins his speeches invoking similar imagery. Quoting scripture, he said in November that it’s the job of men to “build up the ancient ruins … repair the ruined cities.” But Hawley frets that governing a republic calls for “manly virtues,” and America’s men are withdrawing from society to watch pornography and play video games.

Others in the race are tripping over each other to provide thick models of masculinity. Mark McCloskey, a personal injury lawyer who shot to fame brandishing an AR-15 outside his St. Louis mansion, has just joined the race. Hawley’s preferred choice, Rep. Vicky Hartzler, has made banning transgender athletes from women’s sports a key campaign plank.

Kunce can’t quite bring himself to rehearse cultural scripts ascribed to Middle America. He likes Clint Eastwood movies—and 34 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

Star Trek. What does he watch while lifting weights? Netflix’s most frivolous rom-com, Emily in Paris. His campaign wardrobe, endorsed by his two young sons, emphasizes animal print: button-downs embroidered with lemurs, butterflies, and dinosaurs. He thinks people should figure out their private preferences, and politicians shouldn’t be in the business of moral edification.

“Whether you want to frame it positively as a guiding light, or negatively as a controller,” Kunce says, the government should never seek to steer individuals’ moral choices. It should just give people the resources to figure out their own lives. Government should be a “self-determination freedom provider.”

What about issues like abortion, guns, and trans rights, where the boundaries of self-determination are disputed?

In his 2006 campaign, Kunce opposed abortion. Today, he cautiously supports a woman’s right to choose, and stresses the language of individual choice, framing anti-abortion laws as another area where

elites are passing “Big Brother” laws to keep Americans weak and divided. He refers to a Texas law that relies on private citizens for enforcement, pushing neighbors to spy on one another.

“If you’re one of the people who’s profiting massively off our economic system and want to keep the status quo,” he explains, “it’s great to fund culture war stuff, on either side, because you keep everybody distracted.”

Since he was a teenager, Kunce has played computer games like Sid Meier’s Civilization. (He once retorted to Hawley that he and his fellow Marines played video games between missions.) But unlike family-values conservatives with highflown talk about the decline of masculinity and a looming clash of civilizations, Kunce knows the difference between battleground and fantasy.

“Globalists have these ideas like they’re playing a computer game, and they don’t even know what’s going on in their own backyard. Or if they do know, then they’re

Kunce wants to rebuild a state torn up by the violent invasion of markets. particularly evil,” Kunce says. What about Hawley’s vision for reviving American manliness?

“That’s Star Wars Clone Wars crap,” Kunce says. “Does he want us all in his image? I wouldn’t want to be like him. To me, that would be emasculating.”

5. Realism

Democrats build handsome careers these days losing long-shot campaigns in red states. McCaskill and Kander, the last two high-profile Democrats to fall short in Missouri, are now frequent contributors on MSNBC, where Kunce’s star is rising. Several Democrats, convinced the state is irretrievably red, suggested that he could be running for a book deal.

If that’s the gambit, he is playing masterfully. Nearly everyone who meets Kunce is charmed. The bigger worry is not that Kunce’s honest intentions will fail to come through, but that his authenticity may be beside the point. If he makes it past a field of seven primary challengers—including one former state senator who is basing his candidacy on electability—Kunce may not get a chance to make his general-election pitch to voters, because Missouri, like the nation, is deeply divided.

With each passing year, fewer and fewer Missourians think of themselves as temporarily estranged Democrats. The state is drifting right, so the question is less whether you have a perfect message, and more where that message breaks through. Americans increasingly consume their news on Facebook, where inflammatory culture war content plays best.

He may have the resources to overcome that. Despite not taking corporate PAC money, Kunce has consistently outraised not only his own fellow Democrats, but all the Republicans in the race, which includes two sitting members of Congress, the current attorney general, and a former governor.

Given his new role as a media gadfly, it may not be surprising that a large share of

Kunce’s grassroots contributions come from out of state. Does that make him, in the old populist lingo, a carpetbagger? “Money isn’t in Missouri,” is his response, since “what’s happened in Missouri over the past 40 years is basic economic warfare.”

In 2012, McCaskill held onto her seat when she faced down an opponent who dismissed the likelihood of getting pregnant from “legitimate rape.” If Kunce wins, it could be because he’s dealt the right hand. Former Missouri governor Eric Greitens, currently the Republican favorite, is a Navy SEAL with a Ph.D. from Oxford in refugee studies.

Greitens is ethically challenged. Frequently likened to Trump, the candidate has been embroiled in a scandal surrounding the misuse of a donor list to his veterans charity, and was found by a state panel to have tied up and sexually assaulted a woman in his basement. Before resigning as governor, Greitens said, “This is exactly like what’s happening with the witch hunts in Washington, D.C.” Scott Faughn, a Republican newspaper owner, said that in a race between Greitens and Kunce, he would probably support Kunce. He can’t bring himself to back Greit­ ens, he said. “I’m just not part of the basement wing of the party.”

What about Kunce’s campaign as a positive case study for populism? Can a Marine who loves Magic unite mainline Democrats and disenchanted workers?

Kunce doesn’t talk about it in those terms.

He’s not rustling up team spirit, but identifying a common enemy. He may be reluctant to name his coalition because its members wouldn’t want to be found at the same campaign after-party. Some might suspect each other of being racist whites, politically correct Blacks, or temporarily embarrassed yuppies. His insistent focus on the looting of the American heartland allows him to be many things to many people.

Moderate Democrats, for instance, are forever rediscovering the idea of running brawny veterans in red states, hoping that Republicans get whipped into such a patriotic fever that they accidentally vote blue.

They might get more than they are bargaining for. Blandly handsome Kunce has repackaged progressive ideas as sensible plans for investment in green manufacturing, and thunders proposals for trust-busting to cut the investor class down to size.

There is also a growing appetite among national pundits for someone fiscally pro-

gressive and socially conservative who can articulate a vision of revived American greatness. That is, in fact, who I thought I would be meeting. Someone who had been to D.C., read the room, and replanted himself in the no-till soil of Independence, Missouri, to refute globalization and the delusions that marketization and growth would be peaceful, and offer a counter-vision for America’s new role in a multipolar world. Instead of managed decline, this would be a vision in which American power is spent more sparingly, but is no longer a dirty word.

“He believes in the project of America,” Matt Stoller had told me. “He wants to wield power … He’s saying, ‘I’m an optimist.’”

Actually, Kunce is a realist. He doesn’t have much patience for abstract cant about the American project. And he is a conservative, but not the same kind as Hawley’s speechwriters. He wants to rebuild a state torn up by the violent invasion of markets. The friend who seemed to know Kunce best was not Stoller but Robinson, the mayor of Hayti Heights, who was most struck by his neighborliness. When he has visited, Kunce has helped her refill the gas generators and prime the sewage pumps.

That surprised her. “Most people, they’ll be deterred by the smell.”

Faiz Shakir, a former Bernie Sanders adviser, wrote a recent article with Sarah Miller, Kunce’s boss at the American Economic Liberties Project, diagnosing Democrats’ failure to project muscularity. Even amid a surge in bold proposals to curb corporate power, they say, Democrats are still delivering a shaky pitch, “deferring valuebased judgment and leadership.”

Kunce wants to revive public investment and patrol elites. That would seem to be what Shakir and Miller are looking for: building a political coalition around a set of shared values. Kunce suggests otherwise.

He’s betting that if you identify a common enemy, your allies are implied.

For her part, Mayor Robinson says she is not a political person. Kunce’s focus on restricting the power of elites is rousing.

“He don’t care whose toes he step on,” she says. She especially likes his proposal to ban congressional stock ownership. “The people who own all this money in stocks— they started getting richer, while the poor are getting poorer. I agree with that. Stop making them get rich. They pick and choose when their stock can go up and down—it’s not fair. I agree wholeheartedly.” n APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 35

36 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

Justin Bibb’s election signals a new era in Cleveland, but it remains unclear how his progressive rhetoric will translate into governing.

By Marcia Brown

The Fixer

PHILIP BURKE

I

In January, just weeks after Justin Bibb was sworn in as Cleveland’s 54th mayor, a massive snowstorm rolled in, a typical occurrence in this city on the shores of Lake Erie. The municipal response was less than robust. Unplowed streets and sidewalks, especially in poor neighborhoods, left residents unable to get to jobs and medical appointments. Even the city’s public transit briefly shut down. In a Midwestern city, it was a mayor’s clichéd trial by fire.

The alt-weekly Cleveland Scene lampooned Bibb for being in Washington during the storm for a national mayor’s conference. Bibb blamed the poor response on a woefully underprepared snow removal system inherited from his predecessor Frank Jackson, who served as mayor for 16 years, the longest tenure in Cleveland history. But to residents, it was just another example of the mediocrity they have come to expect from city government.

A few weeks later, another snowstorm hit; this is Cleveland, after all. This time,

the mayor was ready. When residents called to complain about unplowed streets, the city dispatched a snowplow. And there was a technological addition; Bibb launched a new Snowplow Tracker to inform residents which streets were passable and where plows were headed, updated hourly to track the progress in every block of the city.

“I think it’s important for voters to recognize that change takes time. Structural change takes even more time,” said Bibb in an interview. “But I think the kind of leader that I want to be is, own the problem, but come back with a solution and be transparent about what we’re doing to be better.”

Bibb ran for mayor on a promise of change.

And while he has been bold on several fronts—including endorsing a new oversight commission for the city police department, despite being pilloried as anti-cop during the campaign—sometimes change just means getting the streets plowed. He ran on his competency as an executive willing to work until he finds what works.

Ask ten people about Bibb’s governing philosophy and you’ll get 12 different answers. But in a city that has settled for less for so long, basic competence is progressive.

Treating poor people with dignity, governing humanely and with accountability, is progressive. Weaving that ethos into the fabric of city governing is meaningful. Can Bibb pull it off?

Cleveland is the poorest big city in America and is in desperate need of basic services, both for working-class families and for the poor. The shocking loss of the tax base can be seen in the census figures: In 1950, the city was home to over 900,000 residents, but the population declined to just 372,624 in 2020. The median annual household income as of 2019 was just $32,053 per year, and nearly one-third of Cleveland’s residents live in poverty.

Residents struggle to secure well-paying jobs, pay rising utility bills, and find affordable housing and even healthy food. These APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 37

problems push down hardest on the city’s plurality-Black population, which closely corresponds with the city’s poor. Yvonka Hall, executive director of Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition, called the status quo a “food apartheid” for Cleveland residents. COVID vaccination rates in northeast Ohio range from 30 percent in Cleveland’s poorest neighborhoods to near 90 percent in the city’s wealthier suburbs, a disparity illustrative of national trends.

Chris Martin, an advocate with Clevelanders for Public Transit (CPT), emphasized that 25 percent of Clevelanders don’t have a car. “There’s a lack of urgency at RTA (Cleveland’s Regional Transit Authority), and most folks don’t realize that in the last 15 years we’ve lost 40 percent of services and fares have doubled, so we pay more for less,” he explained.

Public officials, including in the 16 years under Frank Jackson, did little that would reverse this suffering, or even give residents the faintest hope of a better future. “We’re coming from a previous administration where the mayor was in a bunker to avoid the bombs or complaints that would come for a lot of the bad things that happened under his watch,” said Kareem Henton, Cleveland Black Lives Matter co-founder.

“There was this somber, defeated attitude where there were complaints, but they were just that, just complaining.” Jackson’s informal motto was “It is what it is.”

The circumstances of Bibb’s landslide 63-37 general-election victory over Kevin Kelley, then Cleveland City Council president, embodies this. Fewer than 60,000 people voted in that election, about 23 percent of the electorate, the lowest total in the last 50 years. Just 16 percent of eligible voters selected Bibb and Kelley from the earlier crowded primary. But even that number was an improvement from the 13 percent in the 2017 primary when Jackson was running for his fourth term.

Such low turnout, activists say, illustrates the doubt Clevelanders have that their government represents them or will even listen to them. Only recently, for example, did residents win the opportunity for public comment during city council meetings. And popular ballot measures to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, or a grassroots effort to bar taxpayer funds from being used in expensive renovations at Quicken Loans Arena, were blocked by the city council. “These decisions we made as a city don’t 38 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

give people confidence that your vote actually matters,” Bibb said.

Bibb’s very biography represents a break with the city’s political sluggishness. He’s only the fourth Black mayor in Cleveland’s history, and at 34, he’s the second-youngest.

In contrast, his predecessor is 75. (The youngest was “Boy Mayor” Dennis Kucinich, who won in 1977 at 31 and, interestingly enough, was one of the opponents Bibb defeated in last year’s primary.) With his black-rimmed glasses and close-cropped haircut, you could easily mistake Bibb for a college senior. He had no prior experience with running for office, though he did intern in 2007 in the office of a senator named Barack Obama.

And his interest in politics was apparent from a young age; in his high school yearbook, Bibb was known as “The Senator.”

This new energy and forward motion were actually part of the critique against Bibb. He was criticized in the campaign for never holding a job for longer than two years. His experience in the corporate world as a KeyBank executive also raised questions for progressives.

Indeed, Bibb never called himself a progressive during the campaign; instead, he ran, like the senator in whose office he interned, on change. His endorsement list, attracted by the hope of shaking up Cleveland, looked like the “big tent” politics some Democrats champion. He won the support of establishment names like former Cleveland mayors Michael White and Jane Campbell, along with Cleveland’s Black churches and local unions; he also garnered endorsements from progressive groups like Our Revolution Ohio and from Bernie Sanders surrogate Nina Turner.

Bibb recognizes the balancing act: “[I’m] the guy who worked at a bank who got endorsed by Our Revolution,” he said.

In February, Bibb endorsed the re-election of Shontel Brown, the county’s first-term incumbent congresswoman, who defeated Turner in a 2021 special election and faces her again in a 2022 primary rematch. In response to criticism, Bibb tweeted, “Purity politics will not get the Democratic Party anywhere. Building a bigger tent is in the best interest of realizing equity and justice for the communities we serve.” He added a hashtag: #ANewWay. “What I learned running for mayor in the poorest city in America is that voters, number one, want their elected officials to listen,” Bibb said. “Voters want their elected offi-

Cleveland is the poorest big city in America, with onethird of its citizens living in poverty. cials to find ways to get stuff done. And voters want, if you make a mistake, admit the mistake and just keep getting better every day. And when we silo our thinking to say, I’m either pro-police or defund the police, I’m a progressive, or I’m an establishment Democrat. That doesn’t serve us at all as a party. And as a party, we have a branding problem right now in this country where we don’t have a consistent vision on what we’re doing to deliver for the American people.”

It’s true that just being visible to the community exemplifies progress in Cleveland.

“You have someone who has such a high social media presence, is so accessible, is always out being seen,” said Henton, the BLM co-founder. “That’s something folks aren’t used to, so there’s a sense that things are different now.”

But to make a real difference in Cleveland, Bibb will have to do more than be seen. He will have to make strong choices and deliver concrete results.

Cleveland City Hall was completed in 1916, when the city was nearly twice as big and significantly wealthier. Its exterior projects the wealth and grandeur of an earlier era. Near the security check, two signs demonstrate the challenges of extricating city government from a 16-year predecessor: One welcome sign bore Mayor Bibb’s name, the other Mayor Jackson’s.

The mayor’s suite is grand and ornate, featuring high-ceilinged rooms for staff and cabinet meetings. The portraits of former mayors gaze down at their successors, with Jackson’s portrait twice the size of those of his predecessors.

When I met with Bibb, he wore a tie and polka-dot socks, though he lacked his usual suit jacket. As we spoke, MSNBC played on mute behind him. Prominently displayed in the office is his late father’s yellow Cleveland firefighter’s helmet.

“You think about my background, poor Black kid growing up in the southeast side of Cleveland,” he said. “I come from a blue-col-

PATRICK SEMANSKY / AP PHOTO

Bibb, 34, is the second-youngest mayor in Cleveland’s history. In his high school yearbook, he was known as “The Senator.”

lar family. My dad was a cop and a fireman.

My mom’s a social worker. You know, both my grandparents were in unions. I was able to go to good schools, get a good education.”

Sometimes Bibb’s inexperience comes through. He loves aphorisms, perhaps revealing a still-evolving governing philosophy. He seems unsure what language best embodies his vision, instead substituting others’ sage reflections. On his administration: “As my grandmother would say, the proof is in the pudding.” On the pandemic: “As Rahm Emanuel once said, never waste a good crisis.” On navigating big-tent politics: “I truly believe that well done is better than well said.” On building trust with the city council: “Change moves at the speed of trust.”

But running a community-oriented campaign—his relentless door-knocking wore out shoes and left the already-skinny mayor ten pounds lighter when he entered office— gave Bibb insight, through intimate conversations with voters, into what new ideas he should test out.

For example, Bibb was the only candidate in the primary to unflinchingly sup-

port Issue 24, an amendment to the city’s charter that would give a citizen committee disciplinary and investigative power over Cleveland police officers. Since 2014, the city has been under a federal consent decree in response to police brutality and a lack of accountability. But voters thought the decree was ineffective and decided to take matters into their own hands.

Cleveland was the home of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy playing in a city park with a toy gun who was gunned down by police officers. The city police also hold the distinction of being the force that led a 23-mile, 60-officer uncontrolled high-speed police chase that ended when officers fired 137 bullets into a car, killing Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, in 2012.

Kelley, a longtime city council member embraced by the city’s business interests, ran hard against Issue 24, saying that it would make Cleveland neighborhoods less safe. During the campaign, a super PAC supporting Kelley was accused of circulating a racist attack mailer, which darkened Bibb’s skin and which some said was made to look like a mug shot.

“The Kelley campaign did the old-time religion of ‘Let’s scare the white folks’ and stuff like that and it didn’t work,” said Randy Cunningham, founding member of the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, which also endorsed Bibb.

Issue 24 passed resoundingly, 59-41.

Bibb’s administration has already allocated $1 million to the commission. The money goes through the law department, part of a $3 million increase in funding for the police as well as to community programs. But a substantial chunk of that money is going toward reform and accountability.

The question is whether the citizen committee will serve as window dressing or have real power to rein in abusive practices. The commission will give citizens the ability to investigate and discipline police, barring police from holding their own (un)accountable.

Also on the agenda is a commitment to public health. Bibb has made a point of pushing to raise Cleveland’s vaccination rates. When the city hosted NBA All-Star weekend in February, he stationed a pop-up vaccination clinic downtown offering merAPRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 39

chandise giveaways and “special appearances.” Bibb’s first city budget, which advanced in March, funds two mobile health clinics. Tackling the city’s overlapping publichealth crises while fighting flare-ups from the pandemic demands a grassroots effort, Bibb said. It’s about “really bringing government to the people.”

Yvonka Hall says this modus operandi is key to advancing the mayor’s priorities. Her organization has hosted several neighborhood pop-up vaccination clinics. “They see my Black face outside saying hey and then they see workers on the inside that look like them and that makes people less apprehensive,” she said. The pop-ups offer boxed lunches in the middle of the month when people who are receiving public assistance experience dwindling resources.

“The mayor has probably the most recognizable face in the city right now and he has an opportunity to use his bully pulpit to talk to people about vaccination,” Hall said.

40 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

The ongoing health crisis of lead poisoning in Cleveland also demands a new approach to health care in the city, activists say. Although testing for lead poisoning dropped dramatically throughout the pandemic, testing has been falling since 2016, said Hall. Bibb needs to reverse this trend, she said, and should hire a lead czar to coordinate the city’s response.

Advocates and journalists have long pointed to the irony of some of the nation’s best hospitals sitting just steps from some of Cleveland’s sickest wards. “What is the American dream if an American can’t have it?” asked Aisia Jones, a Cleveland organizer and erstwhile city council candidate. “Our mayor has the opportunity to fulfill parts of the dreams of Americans as it pertains to decriminalizing poverty, decriminalizing homelessness, having better support for our small businesses and … increasing testing [for lead].”

Asked what their metrics would be for

measuring Bibb’s success, activists gave a laundry list of Cleveland’s needs. The biggest theme, however, was a desire for more involvement in city government. LaTonya Goldsby, Cleveland Black Lives Matter cofounder, said she is part of a coalition pushing for a participatory budget, with input from the community. Bibb already declined BLM’s demand for a new public-safety director, a decision his administration attributed to a need for department continuity. But Goldsby was part of the mayoral transition and made public-safety recommendations she thinks the administration is heeding.

Not only did Bibb attempt to involve local leaders and experts in the transition, but his administration has demonstrated a responsiveness inside the halls of power— a profound departure from the previous administration. “Even here at City Hall, I think some people are surprised when the mayor asks their input,” said Ryan Puente, Bibb’s campaign manager and now chief

TONY DEJAK / AP PHOTO

Bibb was the only mayoral candidate to support Issue 24, which will create a citizen committee with disciplinary and investigative power over Cleveland police officers.

Like mayors across the country coming out of the pandemic, Bibb is staring down opportunity and uncertainty. government affairs officer. “I just think in the previous administration, it wasn’t happening in the last couple of years.”

Bibb said that he publishes his calendar weekly, attends community events, and is working to revamp the city’s 311 call center, an essential upgrade in a city where, without functional avenues for city services, residents call their councilmembers to get trash picked up. But it’s still early.

“We needed some time to just get settled,” Bibb said, “to build the foundation so we can deliver on the mandate of improving basic city services while at the same time being as accessible as possible.”

Like mayors across the country coming out of the pandemic, Bibb is staring down opportunity and uncertainty. The shift to remote work for many corporate offices has put a serious strain on downtown business districts, not only hurting local shops and restaurants, but reducing tax revenue from downtown workers who are instead staying at home in Cleveland’s suburbs. The trend may also significantly shrink Cleveland’s payroll tax revenue this year by millions of dollars, which the city can ill afford. Lack of transit ridership into downtown has sapped ticket revenue and made it difficult to justify expansion.

At the same time, cities see opportunity from the American Rescue Plan, which earmarked billions of dollars for state and municipal governments. Similarly, the bipartisan infrastructure bill could be positive for cities like Cleveland, with funding earmarked for mass transit and the removal of lead water pipes.

Bibb has other policy ambitions, around affordable housing and the decriminalization of both marijuana use and transit fare evasion. He wants to create the infrastructure for an office of economic recovery, and has committed to raising $5 billion in capital over the next decade to improve Cleveland’s neglected East Side.

But beyond the long-term policy goals,

Bibb’s promises signal an intention to tackle the mundane work of basic city services with gusto. In our conversation, he returned to the issue of snowplowing. “At the end of the day,” he told me, “if that doesn’t impact the daily lived experience, then I’m not doing my job. That will always be my greatest test. And doing it as fast as I possibly can.

And managing the expectations of people around that process.”

Even basic services floundered under Jackson. Trash collection was spotty and inconsistent. Potholes remained unfilled and plow service was unreliable. Not to mention a recycling contract snafu, where Jackson administration officials were sending material in the city’s blue recycling bins to the landfill—all carried in recycling trucks maintaining the “illusion of a legitimate curbside program,” as Cleveland Scene put it.

In Bibb’s first budget negotiations, councilmembers voiced strong opposition to certain items but ultimately approved the budget, generally agreeing that Bibb should get the benefit of the doubt. One of the biggest points of contention was the salaries of new City Hall staff, some approaching $200,000. Bibb defended the salaries, arguing that he needs to pay talent enough to lure them away from successful careers and the “perks” of the private sector.

The city has sometimes been criticized for the size of its city council, and some say its excessive numbers create dysfunction. In 2018, Clevelanders put a measure on the ballot to shrink the size of the council from 17 to 9, arguing that it was a “rubber stamp” for Jackson’s administration, unresponsive to constituents, and—at salaries of $80,000— too expensive. The measure failed.

Though establishment councilmembers remain, Rebecca Maurer, a local organizer and public-interest lawyer, joined progressive Stephanie Howse on the council in January. But just one incumbent councilmember endorsed Bibb for mayor. Nevertheless, he said he has an open-door policy and has met with each member individually, and the council’s approval of his budget seems to indicate cautious support.

that he has won, they face an age-old challenge between activists and policymakers: how to hold Bibb accountable while maintaining a productive relationship with him.

Jones said she supported and voted for Bibb. “I’m going to hold his feet to the fire,” she said. She called out a lack of grassroots workers in the administration. “I want to make sure that those of us that have been working in the community have been heard and acknowledged.”

Some worry that a mayor who characterizes himself as a businessman may become captive to Cleveland’s business interests, or that the city’s nonprofit-industrial complex may overtake his good intentions. “As a grassroots organization, we have no permanent allies or friends, only a permanent alliance with the community,” BLM’s Henton explained. “We can advocate for you, but if you start going contrary to what’s in the best interests in the community, we’re going to come at you full force.”

Bibb has embraced a can-do attitude for local government and a willingness to work with anyone. “As a mayor, no one cares about progressive or Democrat or Republican,” Bibb said. “They want the snow plowed.

They want the trash picked up.” But standing for certain principles still matters. Without a guiding conviction, it might be easier for a leader to lose his path.

To Milo Korman, a member of Cleveland Democratic Socialists of America, it’s wrong to “map progressivism” onto Bibb’s candidacy or administration. “It’s more about the old-guard machine politics versus the new version of machine politics,” he said. The Jackson era separated citizens from the levers of power. The new machine signals a new opportunity, a new chance to be heard. And maybe for utility bills to decrease, and the bus to arrive frequently, and for an end to the scourge of child lead poisoning.

Whether Bibb is a progressive remains unknown, but what he is offering to Clevelanders amounts to a radical change in how their government treats them and engages with them. In Cleveland, in 2022, that may just be progress. n

For many progressives and grassroots activists, Bibb was their candidate, even though he eschewed the progressive label.

One activist compared him to President Biden, co-opting progressive ideas while distancing himself from the moniker. But now

Marcia Brown is a former Prospect writing fellow who is now a correspondent for The Capitol Forum, a subscription-based corporate investigation outlet. She has also written for The Intercept, The New Republic, and The Progressive.

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 41

A Dangerous Pla HOUSTON—Christmas was around the corner, and he needed money for gifts. As he sized up the job, though, he was worried. There wasn’t the right equipment to climb the tree and he also wanted someone to hold the ladder as he climbed. He had worked for a tree-cutting firm, so he knew about safety.

But the contractor, who had offered him the job cutting down a tree at a condo, wouldn’t agree.

And so, Raymundo Mendoza took the chance.

The ladder slipped, sending him plunging downward, landing on his back. The contractor fled the scene and has never been seen again. A passing public bus driver saw him lying on the ground and called an ambulance. At the hospital, they told him he was paralyzed.

That was 13 years ago. Today, Mendoza is a volunteer and one of the leaders at a small nonprofit here that provides free wheelchairs, medical supplies, and support to paralyzed immigrants and refugees, among them workers like him. The organization was founded about 17 years ago when Harris County was cutting its budget.

42 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

ace to Be Latino Texas, the only state without universal workers’ comp, leads the nation in workplace injuries and deaths. It’s Latino workers on unregulated construction sites who fare the worst. By Stephen Franklin and Abel Uribe

Edwin Hernandez, 43, powers his way to his wheelchair-inaccessible apartment. Nine years ago, he fell from a ladder while painting and permanently injured his spine.

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 43

Fixing donated wheelchairs and handing out medical supplies over the years, Mendoza has watched a steady march of Latino workers with bodies broken like his. And hearts too.

Without papers or health insurance, Mendoza didn’t think he could survive. Depression overcame him initially—as is the case for many undocumented Latino workers injured on the job. “It’s a 360 turn on life,” he said. “I could do many things from one day to the next. Now, I can’t do anything.”

What he has seen also leaves him little hope for others like him, he explained from the offices of the Living Hope Wheelchair Association. “It’s the same thing. It’s a lack of [safety] equipment. It’s sad that so many of our people are the most common victims of accidents.”

Statistics bear out his grim observation.

The toll of Latinos killed or hurt on the job has steadily grown across the United States, particularly in low-wage jobs where Latino workers predominate—construction,

meat processing, landscaping, farm work, and warehousing. They’re injured or they die in collapsed ditches; they fall off roofs, ladders, and scaffolds; they lose their lives in accidents where machines mangle their bodies. Excessive heat overwhelms them when they don’t get water or rest breaks. In meat processing plants, according to a hearing by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, their lives have been ended from exposure to the COVID virus.

In meat and poultry processing plants across the U.S., Latinos came down with 56 percent of the COVID cases, although they were only 30 percent of the plants’ workforce, according to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study in July 2020.

But disproportionate Latino deaths was a pre-existing condition. While workplace fatalities have shrunk or stayed the same for other demographic groups, the number of Latino deaths has actually increased.

The numbers: There were 1,072 Latinos killed on the job in accidents or unsafe situations in 2020 in the U.S., a 43 percent increase over 2011.

The workplace fatality rate for Latinos nationally in 2020 climbed to 4.5 per 100,000, up from 4.2 the previous year. Meanwhile, the rate for whites was 3.3, and 3.5 for Blacks; both numbers declined in 2020.

Latinos accounted for 16 percent of all workplace deaths in 2011 nationally, but

In meat and poultry processing plants, Latinos

came down with 56 percent of the COVID cases, although they were only 30 percent of the plants’ workforce.

Edgar Moreno, 39, fell from a roof over a year ago, severely injuring his heel. Despite the pain, after several months he returned to work to pay the rent and send money to his family in Mexico.

44 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

Daniel Puente, 42, with his wife Leticia Castellanos and their youngest daughter, Daniela.

He was hospitalized for 100 days following his accident in 2019, and has had multiple medical interventions since.

the number steadily grew to 22.5 percent in 2020.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said, “We understand Hispanic workers play a critical role in our nation’s workforce but face an increased risk of injuries and illnesses on the job. That’s why we are placing special emphasis on our enforcement efforts to focus on underserved workers in the highest risk industries like construction. No worker should have to put their paycheck ahead of their safety, so we are committed to doing everything we can to make sure employers are doing their job so that workers can safely do theirs.”

Texas has long been a dangerous place for all workers. From 2010 to 2019, it led the U.S. in the number of workplace deaths—5,171.

In 2020, another 469 lives were lost there in workplace accidents.

In Texas, workers struggle with an unusual workers’ compensation system that leaves some workers without protection, and lets some companies set their own

5,179 workers died on the job in Texas during

the decade of the 2010s—more than in any other state.

Two-thirds of those who died on construction sites were Latino. compensation rules. While employers have cut costs at workers’ expense, the state has been home to a construction boom with unchecked workplace dangers. An increasingly right-wing legislature has steadily refused to provide protections.

Texas topped the nation in 2020 with 221 deaths among Latino workers, followed by California (home to millions more Latinos than Texas) with 214, and Florida with 82.

Texas has led the nation in Latinos’ workplace deaths for 13 out of the last 20 years.

As was the case throughout those years, nearly two-thirds of the Latinos who died on the job in 2020 in Texas were born outside the U.S. The data doesn’t tell us how many were undocumented.

One of the most deadly jobs for Latinos is construction, accounting for just over one-

third of their workplace deaths nationally in 2020. In Texas, there were 129 construction deaths in 2020, the nation’s highest toll for construction workers. Latinos made up two-thirds of those who lost their lives on these construction jobs in Texas. Latinos account for about 39 percent of the state’s population, but make up more than half of the state’s construction job workers.

Houston is where this reality has been playing out for many years. The city’s longrunning boom has been a dream for some Latinos, but a nightmare for some of those who build the highways, malls, and upscale housing in the nation’s fourth-largest city.

It’s been especially nightmarish for jobhungry Latinos who take the low-wage, high-risk construction jobs that come their APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 45

way—though these jobs may last only a few days, and getting paid is not a sure thing.

Forty-five percent of Latinos in the Houston area could not cover a $400 emergency expense, and 41 percent had no health insurance—rates that exceed those suffered by the area’s Black residents, a recent survey showed.

Many of the undocumented Latino workers interviewed by a Latino worker advocacy group said that, since they didn’t have insurance, they went to hospital emergency rooms when they were sick. Because they are denied most federally funded health services, undocumented workers in Houston rely on a “a patchwork” of health care facilities, according to the recent report by Fe y Justicia, an organization that serves low-wage workers in Houston.

At Harris Health, however, one of the Houston area’s largest health care facilities, one official said the undocumented are not turned away for care because of their legal status. The problem, he suggested, is that they fail to meet the income requirements or do not complete the applications.

One of those just scraping by is Edwin Hernandez, a migrant from El Salvador, who fell off a ladder on a construction job nine years ago, leaving him paralyzed. His life ever since has been an example of what can happen to a worker without papers and few resources.

For much of the time since his accident, Hernandez has lived in a shelter run by a church in Houston’s suburbs or in a dingy apartment. He has eked out a living fixing cars from his wheelchair, but just getting around his apartment poses challenges. He has trouble lifting up and maneuvering his wheelchair to enter the narrow doorway, and he’s had to remove the bathroom doorway so he could access that room.

The apartment—its rent paid for by the church—is in a low-income housing complex like many that sprawl across Harris County.

Nearby garbage bins overflow. With high fences and gated entrances, some of these developments feel like prisons. The Houston area has the second-lowest percentage of housing available for the very poor among the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, a recent study showed.

Depression has overcome him at times,

46 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

but Hernandez talks nonetheless of feeling proud. “No matter what, I have never panhandled for money,” he says.

The numbers on workplace injuries don’t tally the onset and persistence of depression. They do not tell us about the lingering illnesses, or the emotional and financial losses suffered by the injured and their families and loved ones. Even the tally of the injuries themselves is incomplete: Many firms and workers do not report injuries to OSHA, government reports show. (OSHA officials could not say how many of their inspections in Texas focused on incomplete injury logs alone.) That’s why the fatality figures are such an important and horrifying gauge. But fatality numbers are only the “tip of the iceberg,” explained Kevin Riley, director of the UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program.

Jose Avalos, 36, an undocumented migrant from Mexico, can testify to the uncounted aftereffects. Renovating a house five years ago, he fell through an opening, landed flat on his back on the floor below, and was paralyzed. He has since relied on family support because he has neither health insurance nor workers’ compensation benefits. He was working for a contractor, a relative, who provided some weekly compensation to him for two years and then stopped, he said.

Not long after his accident, his marriage dissolved. He sank into depression, and family members paid for his counseling. “I still have hospital bills and I have no idea about [how to pay] them,” he said, sitting in an SUV outside Raymundo Mendoza’s wheelchair organization, where he had come to pick up some supplies. For no cost, the paralyzed can get gloves (for their wheelchairs), catheters, adult diapers, and donated wheelchairs that have been repaired.

Sitting in a car adjusted for a paralyzed

driver, Avalos doubted that others like him could avoid his fate. “It’s not fair. It’s because we are immigrants that is what we end up doing,” he said.

Why do so many Latinos die on the job? The explanations are many.

It’s the lack of English, making it harder to understand safety instructions or ask for them. It’s the lack of safety instruction, equipment, or training. It’s the need to work a huge number of hours to steadily send money back home to families that need it to survive.

It’s the reluctance of men coming from traditional societies, who do not admit their limitations, or are accustomed to unsafe working conditions. It’s the fear of being deported that drives them to take risks.

It is a fear, workers in Houston say, of speaking up to bosses, who tell you that you can’t go home until the job is done but only pay you for eight hours when you’ve put in more, who don’t tell you how much you are being paid at the start of the job, or who threaten to turn you over to immigration if you make problems.

Overall, Latino workers across the U.S., researchers say, tend to be younger and more inexperienced, lack training in the job, earn lower wages, and work for small outfits. They take jobs in sectors that others avoid. They clean up after hurricanes and disasters, at their own peril. They also make up most of the nation’s roofers, a job with a well-known high injury rate. They accounted for 56 percent of roofer deaths in 2020.

They face dangers others won’t.

For Vanessa, her past five years as a drywall finisher have been full of dangers and exploitation. (At her request, we’ve changed her name to protect her, as she explained, from “being blackballed” by contractors.) A contractor had recently fired her for raising

Austin and Dallas have required rest

breaks for construction workers, who work outside during scorching Texas summers. Republicans in the state legislature have tried to nullify those ordinances.

Vanessa (not her real name) holds some of the tools she uses for taping drywall. Last year, she fell from her metal stilts and injured her shoulder, which still hurts when she works.

complaints at a safety meeting, she said, and she could not afford to lose more jobs.

Last year, standing on several foot-high metal stilts so she could reach higher spots while doing drywall, she fell down and hurt her shoulder, an injury that still pains her.

She fell, she explained, because debris covered the construction site and she stepped on it while wearing the stilts. Stilts are banned on construction jobs in California and Massachusetts.

“I’ve seen people bleeding, but they don’t say anything because they are afraid of getting sent home,” Vanessa said. Not long ago, she worked a 16-hour day and, exhausted, felt as though her head was in a dangerous fog by the time she quit.

Edgar Moreno, 39, mainly works as a drywaller, but as a day laborer he takes whatever he can get. That’s why he was working on the roof of a house in November 2020, when he slipped, fell, and badly injured his heel. He pulled out a photo to show how badly swollen his heel was at the time. The

contractor didn’t have the commonplace equipment such as a harness that would have prevented the fall, he said. Since the accident, he said, he has tried reaching the contractor to ask for help with his medical bills, but he’s been unsuccessful.

An emergency clinic told him he needed surgery, but he doesn’t have insurance and cannot afford it. Worse, he hasn’t been able to work for the last few months. “The only thing I can do is rest,” he said, sitting in a ramshackle small house near a row of refineries where he rents a bed for $300 a month.

When he is working, he sends money home to his wife and three children in Mexico.

He’s eager to get back to work, he said, even though his foot hurts him.

Going home to Mexico, where he was a miner, is out of the question, he added.

“Those mines pay less, and they are much more dangerous,” he said.

He is like many workers in Houston, who say they are victims of bosses who vanish as soon as someone gets hurt. It’s a familiar situation to Ruben Rendon, a longtime

workers’ compensation lawyer in Houston.

“Those are the guys who really get railroaded,” Rendon said. “Instead of putting them on an ambulance they put them on a plane to go home. I had a client who was in the hospital, and the employer sent his brother to the hospital. He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be better to send him home?’ The doctors protested … the airline wouldn’t accept him because he was bleeding, and his sister called me and put him back into the hospital.”

Going after employers who abuse their workers isn’t easy, said Sean Goldhammer, director of employment and legal services for the Workers Defense Project, a nonprofit that serves immigrant construction workers across Texas. He said many immigrants work for contractors who don’t provide workers’ compensation—largely because of the downward pressure to subcontract in order to cut costs and minimize any responsibilities toward their workers. “As you go down the line of contractors, you will almost never see workers’ compensation. You will APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 47

see wage theft and not providing safety equipment,” Goldhammer said.

The Workers Defense Project often pursues employers who fail to pay their workers. But workers represented by the organization get their money in less than 50 percent of their cases, he said. “They [contractors] will change their names and disappear, and then there’s no hope of judgment,” Goldhammer said.

An official with the Texas Workforce Commission said in an email that the agency had ruled that $11.8 million in unpaid wages was due workers in 2020–2021. But in a reply to a public information request for this article, the state admitted it was able to collect only 7 percent of “total unpaid claims” in 2021 of claims dating back to the 1990s because the businesses no longer existed and claims not paid in full are considered uncollected.

Being stiffed on pay feeds into a downA taper uses metal stilts to reach the ceiling at a residential worksite.

48 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

ward spiral that leads workers into ever more vulnerable lives. Without money, they sink into depression and bad decisions come fast. They take whatever job they can get—and that often means the riskiest jobs.

They don’t eat well or rest and their health declines. “As long as these conditions exist, you’re going to have the problems of workers exposing themselves to dangers, without safety precautions, because they need to support themselves and their families,” said Maria Eugenia Fernández-Esquer, a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston.

In this system, being a conscientious contactor can still leave you vulnerable to being exploited by other contractors. Eliezer, 39, a short, muscular immigrant El Salvadoran, has suffered from falls and cuts on the job.

Eliezer, who asked that his full name not be used here, has found some success, however,

by becoming a contractor himself. That has enabled him to find work for 13 family members and friends. They do drywall installing and tapering. Lately, however, he himself has been stiffed, he said, by two contractors, who owe him about $13,000.

He has paid his workers by taking the money out of his own savings. He doubts that he will get the money owed him. He said he had talked to a lawyer, who didn’t want to take the case. He tried everything he could think of, he said, but nothing could help him get the money he was owed.

What are the chances of workers winning more on-the-job protections in Texas?

In a state that prides itself on being business-friendly, workers can’t expect much help from state agencies, the state’s business groups, or its Republican-dominated legislature, say union officials and worker advocacy

Texas is the only state where employers can set

their own workers’ compensation rules. One state study showed that a full quarter of those employers don’t pay death benefits to families of workers who died on the job. groups. And while the state’s largest cities have become increasingly liberal, the legislature and the courts have frequently blocked their attempts to make workplaces safe.

In the last few years, Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio all passed ordinances requiring sick pay for employees. The ordinances were quickly challenged by business groups with the support of the Texas attorney general. The issue worked its way up in the Texas courts until a federal district court judge in Texas struck down the Dallas ordinance last year, leading the way for undoing the other ordinances.

Republican lawmakers had also pushed unsuccessfully in 2021 to sweep away local ordinances in Austin and Dallas that require rest breaks for workers. Publichealth experts, unions, and worker advocacy groups have campaigned for rest break regulations across the state. Nine states today require rest breaks.

Austin passed its rest break ordinance in 2010, and Dallas followed in 2015. Citing the extreme summer heat in Texas, safety advocates point to the high rate of workers overcome by heat; they cite in particular the death of Roendy Granillo, a 25-year-old Latino worker, who had put in 14 hours in blistering heat installing a floor in a house in a Dallas suburb. His contractor had reportedly turned down his request for a water break.

Dr. John Corker, an emergency room physician, told the Dallas City Council in a letter at a hearing for rest breaks that he had regularly treated construction workers suffering from heat distress, and that regular water and rest breaks would easily solve the problem. Corker, who has since moved to Ohio, said recently in an interview that by the time he saw Granillo, his organs had shut down and he could no longer be saved.

A frequent opponent to rules such as rest breaks is the Texas Public Policy Founda-

tion, an influential conservative group with views often warmly embraced by Gov. Greg Abbott and the state’s conservative Republican lawmakers. But Robert Henneke, executive director and general counsel for the organization, rejected complaints that workers’ interests get a low priority in the state. “Texas is a pro-worker state in that it allows the freedom for workers to negotiate for terms that are best suited for them instead of mandates that fit all,” he said.

Henneke led the lawsuit to strike down the sick pay ordinances in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio. He described the campaign for rest breaks as a “red herring, fear mongering tactic.”

But government statistics and research indicate otherwise.

Last fall, in the first year of the Biden administration, OSHA began the process of creating a standard to protect workers in excess-heat situations, a protection long sought by unions and public-health experts.

Spelling out its reasoning for the rule, the agency noted that there had been “31,560 work-related heat injuries and illnesses involving days away from work” between 2011 and 2019. It added that the figures on heat-related illness and deaths are considered underreported.

In Texas, unions and worker advocacy groups have called for the state to set up its own OSHA, as 22 other states have. They say a state plan would do a better job than the federal government’s, and some research shows this to be the case. At best, they say the federal government isn’t doing the job.

The effort, however, has gone nowhere in the legislature, according to the Texas AFL-CIO. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has about 99 inspectors in Texas, according to estimates from the AFL-CIO. Dean Wingo, a former OSHA inspector in Texas and currently a publichealth consultant, says the federal effort there is overwhelmed and unable to do pre-

ventive work. “It is like a doctor trying to practice preventive medicine in an emergency room.”

An OSHA official in Dallas said that the agency has not carried out any studies focusing on the high rate of injuries or deaths among Latinos in Texas, but added that the agency had reached out to consulates in Texas that help immigrants and several years ago set up a regional effort to help employers and employees impacted by heat-related health problems.

Workers’ compensation in Texas neither saves nor protects workers, say unions and worker advocacy groups. Texas is the only state that doesn’t require employers to provide workers’ compensation. The result is a stew of options that saves money for employers at workers’ expense.

One option is for employers to sign up for a state-supported system and to follow its rules and regulations. About 70 percent of the state’s employers belong to this system.

Another option allows employers to operate outside of the state system and set their own rules. Texas doesn’t monitor these employers. Their benefits are reportedly more limited, and the criteria for employees to qualify more strict. One-fourth of employers in this group do not pay death benefits to decedents’ families, according to a state study in 2018.

And then there are the employers who do not offer any workers’ compensation whatsoever to their employees. A 2018 study by the state estimated that about 6.5 percent of the state’s private-sector workers had to cope with this reality.

A major flaw with the setup is that few employers outside the state-supported system comply with a requirement to report all worker injuries, according to the state Division of Workers’ Compensation, a part of the Texas Department of Insurance. This makes it difficult to measure the extent of worker injuries and set up prevention efforts.

Saying that Texas workers need more protections, the Texas AFL-CIO has pushed to make workers’ compensation mandatory for all workers. But Rick Levy, a lawyer who serves as the group’s president, said that is highly unlikely “until we make some political changes.” Unions have little political clout, he explained, in a right-to-work state, APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 49

and in fact only 3.8 percent of Texas workers belong to unions, a number that has steadily declined in recent years.

Richard Pena, a longtime workers’ compensation attorney in Austin, bemoans the workers’ compensation system’s burden on workers. “One time I went to a hearing, and I made an argument about fairness. I said this is not fair and the judge said don’t use that word again in court,” recalled Pena, a former president of the State Bar of Texas and the Travis (Austin) County Bar Association.

He complained as well that the system was redesigned years ago to “drive out law yers and to limit payments.” A 2017 study pointed to a higher rate of injuries among uninsured workers and widespread underreporting of injuries.

Hispanic workers were more likely than others to be uninsured, and their workplace injuries wrongly recorded by hospitals, according to the study.

The failure to win statewide changes for workers hasn’t stopped some activists from trying. There have been wins, big and small.

“We recognized that it is incredibly difficult to pass things at the state level,” said Jessica Wolff, deputy director of Better Builder and policy for the Workers Defense Project (WDP). So the WDP turned to cities.

After a campaign by the WDP, Austin in 2016 and Travis County in 2018 approved the Better Builder program, which requires city-funded projects to boost workers’ wages, requires builders to meet federal safety standards, trains workers and employers to meet those standards, and relies on the WDP and local government employees to monitor construction projects.

Last fall, Harris County officials agreed to set up an Essential Workers Board, the nation’s first public body that gives workers a role in determining health and safety policies. The workers will come from the WDP and other worker advocacy groups.

Whatever changes will come, they may be too late for Daniel Puente.

Puente, 42, is a strapping, muscular man, six foot, five inches tall, who fills his wheelchair. An undocumented immigrant from Monterey, Mexico, he had been working in Houston for over 15 years, mostly on regular

50 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

jobs, and was on a new job for a few weeks in October 2019 at Turner Coatings, in the city of Spring, a small community about 20 miles north of Houston. Given a few minutes’ notice, he was asked to take a job in a sandblasting booth to work on a crane boom, he said.

According to an OSHA report, the boom, weighing about five tons, “was placed on horses that sat on the uneven surface of the booth. The load was not secured from movement to prevent it from coming into contact with an employee.”

It flipped over and pinned him, Puente said.

“The floor of the sandblasting booth is not level and is in need of repair,” said notes from an OSHA inspector after the accident in a report obtained by a FOIA request. A company official told the OSHA inspector that “the issues with the floor in the sandblasting area have been brought up to him by employees” and that the company was “planning to move to a new location and did not have plans to repair the floor.” The report added that “the floor in the sandblast booth has needed repairs for years.” The company was fined $9,446, but that was reduced to $6,612. Another inspection nearly a year later found other violations totaling $20,781, but again, in a settlement with the company, the amount was reduced to $8,906.

Despite emails and phone calls to the company’s office, it has not replied to requests to comment on the situation.

Life quickly unraveled for Puente after the accident. He lost his savings, his truck, his furniture, and his house. He and his wife moved with their five children into his mother-in-law’s small bungalow. He hired a lawyer to file a claim with the state’s workers’ compensation system, but he eventually let the lawyer go, saying he could not afford the lawyer’s fee. The attorney’s law firm would not discuss the case.

Puente said he has looked for another lawyer and admits he doesn’t understand how the system works. Workers’ compensation lawyers typically take their fees out of the compensation payments given to workers. Puente grumbled that he gets about $600 a week. “How can we people live on that?” he asked, lifting his arms.

He spent 100 days in the hospital after the accident, and his woes began to spiral.

He was depressed and thought about taking his life. He developed lesions and then blood and urinary tract infections. He lifted his shirt to show where he has had repeated surgeries. “I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve gone back to the hospital,” said his wife, Leticia Castellanos, 36. She gave up a job as a school custodian to look after him.

Puente developed diabetes, but the company’s insurer wouldn’t cover the medical expense, he said. Attorneys explain that insurance companies in Texas will only pay for expenses they consider related to workers’ accidents.

He wanted the insurer to pay for a new doorway to fit his wheelchair, but it refused to. He was in a hospital for 20 days in December for health problems, when apparently he had a stroke, although he is not sure what happened. Leticia said he sometimes cannot remember words. He knows that he needs a complex heart operation, but he does not know what kind. His physician told him that it cannot take place until his blood infection is healed. His physician has also urged him to seek counseling, but Puente said the insurer rejected that too.

“It feels like I’m a child, not a man,” he said in a low voice, as his wife sat close by, tightly clutching his hand. n The Sidney Hillman Foundation provided support for this reporting.

Abel Uribe is an independent Mexican American photojournalist based in Chicago, where he specializes in long-term projects, editorial, and food photography, and teaches a photojournalism class at Loyola University Chicago. He was previously a staff photographer at the Chicago Tribune and the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Stephen Franklin is a former labor writer for the Chicago Tribune and has been an adjunct instructor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, he is the author of Three Strikes, an account of global corporations’ efforts to destroy worker agreements and protections.

CULTURE

A Personal History Along Route 28

Danica Roem, the nation’s first openly transgender state legislator, triumphed by owning her story and focusing on what voters care about.

PHILIP BURKE

By Toby Jaffe Burn the Page: A True Story of Torching Doubts, Blazing Trails, and Igniting Change

By Danica Roem Viking “The facts of your life are what they are,” writes Virginia state legislator Danica

Roem in the introduction to Burn the Page, her new memoir. “The question is: Are you going to tell your own story about them, or are you going to let other people do that for you?”

In an age of celebritized digital mass media, where just about anyone can define and perceive you, there is something audacious and even a little subversive about a politician such as Roem so honestly reveal-

ing herself the way she does in Burn the Page. She writes with real vulnerability about her hard-drinking, hard-rocking twenties; about her sex life; about her lifelong struggles with gender dysphoria before her transition in 2012; about nuanced familial tensions and trauma. It’s the kind of stuff most holier-than-thou public figures would get “canceled” for.

In America, Roem argues, it is possible to succeed “because of who you are, not despite it.” Not that succeeding is easy, especially in a political environment where personal stories can come into conflict with artificial narratives about “electability.” But Roem is a living testament to overcoming such obstacles. She won as a trans woman and first-time candidate in a district represented by a Republican for 25 years. Roem has now held that seat for three terms, making history as the first openly transgender individual serving in any legislature in America, while helping to flip a region Democratic in an enduring way. “[Electability] keeps so many people who have been historically unrepresented in our politics—LGBTQ+ people, women, Black and Brown people, non-Black or Brown people of color—out of power,” Roem writes. Given this, she argues, telling one’s personal story and owning it is a deeply political act. But that’s not the only reason why Roem has been so successful; she’s been able to find what can move voters and colleagues to her side, even in the most banal or unglamorous corners of politics.

Roem was born in Manassas, Virginia, in 1984, the younger of two children. When she was three, her father committed suicide in the family’s backyard. Roem was told at the time that he was killed in an accidental fire, and she would not learn the truth for many years. Roem’s mother was left to take care of Danica and her sister alone, as well as Danica’s maternal grandparents.

In all, Roem’s mom Marian had to take care of four people, pay a mortgage, and work a “full-time job that was twenty-plus miles away with a horrendous commute,” as Roem puts it. Despite whatever personal and political tensions would develop between them, Roem makes clear that her mother’s resilience, patience, and toughness were hugely influential to her.

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 51

CULTURE It is in these early descriptions of her childhood and adolescence where we get some of Roem’s best writing, a treat for anyone feeling nostalgic for the 1990s, heavy metal music, or the culBooks ture of Northern Virginia (one really gets the sense, reading this book, that Roem bleeds NoVA). In particular, we learn about Roem’s early-life gender dysphoria.

As she writes in Chapter 2, “I wish I could look like her … was the lamenting, driving thought in my head all day, every day, as I saw my classmates in skirts and wearing their hair long.” Roem notes that she spent her middle-school years alone in her room in agony, desperately plotting strategies to avoid having her pantyhose showing

room, on the baseball diamond, or at home in her bedroom, Roem encountered a culture of normalized—and sometimes internalized—homophobia, misogyny, and bigotry, which she took part in as an act of survival. “If someone asked you what you thought of fill-in-the-blank girl’s looks,” Roem writes, “you either agreed that she was hot or you put her down. You didn’t describe how her French braids looked or even remark on her personality … Doing that neither helped nor hurt me. It just kept me from outing myself, insofar as a child internalizing toxic masculinity to achieve that objective allowed.”

Roem credits metal music and the early internet for beginning the process of free-

embrace our flawed humanity not in shame but as something that connects us. There is an organic populism to Roem, embedded in the underground, DIY culture of the music scene, that is heartening. It is the flip side of the ugly, hypermasculine braggadocio practiced by figures like Donald Trump.

That said, whereas the intersection between Roem’s personal story and a larger political narrative is clear in the early chapters, it could be difficult at times to find overt political value in the hard-rocking middle chapters. As entertaining and salacious as they may be, there are just so many sex, drinking, and rock ’n’ roll stories in this section of the book that after a while they can begin to feel redundant and muddled.

during recess (solutions were hard to come by) or how to wear makeup without getting “caught” (the answer, for a while, was to wear colorful Chapstick). She became a sports obsessive as a way of hiding her queer- and transness from boys and men.

Baseball, in particular, connected her to her maternal grandfather, a die-hard Yankee fan from the Bronx who idolized Joe DiMaggio.

Whether in her Catholic school class52 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

ing herself from the shackles of a violent culture that sought to erase her. Metal finally allowed her a sense of individuality, to let her hair down, so to speak. On the internet, Roem found other like-minded metalheads and was not constrained by gender expectations.

Not many (if any) politicians with a national profile would so openly admit to the kind of drunken, bloody debauchery that Roem does. She challenges us to

The most egregious example of this may be Chapter 6, entitled “Vagabond,” which brings to mind the famous helicopter sequence toward the end of Goodfellas. Roem writes about a tour of the U.K. and Ireland her metal band Cab Ride Home embarked on in 2012. The play-by-play includes minute descriptions of Scottish bars and Northern Irish hotels, in frenzied, tense, and woozy detail. Roem concludes the chapter by encouraging readers to live out their wildest

KEVIN WOLF / AP PHOTO

Roem had never sought elected office before 2007, and was asked to do so after becoming active in lobbying for trans rights in Richmond.

Roem credits her journalism career as a “hack” for giving her the tools to understand intricate issues and events. dreams, doubters be damned. One understands the temptation to tell entertaining stories, nor should an autobiography merely focus on the depths of agony and trauma.

It just takes too long to get there through the tawdry information overload, and you wonder why you had to wade through it to reach that understanding.

By contrast, Roem writes about her transition with refreshing vulnerability. She resists the temptation to self-aggrandize or go Hollywood on the reader, instead portraying the whole experience as a beautiful, complicated, and messy process that enabled her to live her truth. “I’d love to tell you that it all clicked for her and she gave me a big hug and told me she loved me for who I was,” writes Roem of the tense evening she came out to her mother as a trans woman. “[I]t was hard for her, as it is for a lot of parents … But in some way, that moment started us on a path to a bigger understanding.”

Mom gradually came around, and Roem pleads with queer people for patience with parents who may not initially understand them, unless parents are aggressively toxic and abusive. At the same time, Roem writes, “Parents of queer and trans kids need to recognize the courage of their children and the trust they’re placing in them by being authentic and real to them.”

Another important aspect of Roem’s story is her professional history, which is sprinkled throughout the book. She worked in various small newsrooms in Northern Virginia, often covering local politics. To make ends meet, she often worked multiple jobs, sometimes even working full-time for two newspapers at once. Roem credits her journalism career as a “hack” for exposing her to the ways of politicians and for giving her the tools to understand intricate issues and events. But it was a tough road; by the time Roem decided to run for the Virginia House of Delegates, she was supplementing her

meager income by working as a delivery person for an Afghan restaurant.

Roem had never sought elected office before 2017. She only ran because she was looking for a career change and “was asked.”

During the mid-2010s, by then out as a trans woman, Roem became active in lobbying for trans rights in Richmond, while still working as a print journalist. She caught the attention of statewide organizers such as James Parrish, then of Equality Virginia. In particular, a successful effort led by Roem to overturn a discriminatory policy by the Prince William County school board convinced both Roem and local Democratic Party organizers that she had a talent for organization, strategy, and policy.

Roem knows her political strengths and how to implement them. “Quality conversations. Quality conversations. Quality conversations. It’s a mantra I repeated over and over in the campaign,” she writes.

Outhustling and outorganizing her Democratic Party opponents, she emerged from the primary with an 11.5 percent victory. Up next in the general election would be Bob Marshall, a notoriously anti-transgender delegate who had represented the district for well over two decades.

Starting off as a heavy underdog, Roem sought to build personal connections with voters and run a persuasion campaign, something seen as a lost art in American politics. Roem wasn’t going to win in a traditionally Republican district by sticking to Democratic Party boilerplate. Instead, Roem strictly campaigned on matters that directly affected the voters of her district— traffic, jobs, schools, and health care. (Especially traffic: fixing Route 28, a highway that bisected the district, became such a mantra that after the victory Roem remarked to reporters, “We’ve now made Route 28 worldfamous.”) Roem and her team of staffers and volunteers hit as many houses as humanly possible for one-on-one conversations.

All the while, Marshall and his campaign went through the motions, not bothering to make nearly the same kind of effort and putting out lazy, transphobic rhetoric that only served as a negative contrast to Roem’s disciplined style and focus on the issues that mattered to voters. The bet paid off; Roem won by nearly eight points.

The book’s final chapter details Roem’s experiences in the Virginia House of Delegates. She spent the first two years in the minority party and describes being put on a

GOP “kill list”—a list of newly elected Democratic delegates from swing districts whose bills were to always be killed in committee.

Roem describes the trauma that comes with such legislative games. She writes about a woman named Kim Fleming, who had fought for a bill that would require suicidal ideation training for teachers after her son committed suicide. When the bill went down in committee, Fleming cried in Roem’s arms.

Roem took those first two years as a big learning experience. She went above and beyond to work with her Republican colleagues, even driving three and a half hours to one of her GOP colleagues’ homes to discuss a bill. Though such hard work did not necessarily pay off immediately, it enabled Roem to get a lot done after Democrats won the majority in 2019. A particularly proud accomplishment came in 2020 when Roem helped pass a major LGBT equality bill, giving a passionate, fiery speech on the debate floor in the process. And though the wheels of policy move slowly, a Route 28 widening project has begun and a four-lane bypass is now in the design and engineering phase.

Roem helped to kick-start these efforts.

I completed Burn the Page longing for more. I would love to read a more overtly political book by Roem, in which she outlines her overarching philosophies and specific thoughts and solutions about the crises we face. It is not sufficient to just be open and vulnerable about your personal journey, you must also speak your political truth.

I didn’t always sense that Roem felt comfortable doing that, certainly not on wider issues like U.S. imperialism or the climate crisis, and it undermined the overall message of the book. She references drawn-out school board meetings, localized anti-trans discrimination, and the need to fix Route 28, but she never quite gets into the nittygritty of policy.

That is not to take away from Roem’s story or Burn the Page. There is a lot of value in the book. It is a worthwhile read for LGBT folks wishing to find their voice, as well as anyone interested in running for local office. There is power in storytelling and more so in the conviction that persuasion and conversation is still possible in American politics. n Toby Jaffe is a writer from New Jersey and has appeared in The American Prospect, The New Republic, and The Progressive magazine.

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 53

CULTURE

What Common Good?

Adrian Vermeule has a new constitutional theory that hides its religious foundations.

By Micah Schwartzman and Richard Schragger Common Good Constitutionalism

By Adrian Vermeule Polity Just as the Supreme Court is poised to achieve many of the stated aims of the conservative legal movement, including overturning Roe v. Wade and striking down affirmative action, leading conservative thinkers are hotly debating alternative approaches to interpreting the Constitution.

Originalism—the notion that the words of the Constitution should be read according to some version of their original historical meaning—has Books been the standard-bearer for decades, promoted initially as a strategy to undermine national economic regulation and limit the protection of civil rights.

54 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

But a conservative competitor to originalism has recently emerged in “common good constitutionalism.” For its leading proponent, Adrian Vermeule, a Harvard law professor, the point of constitutional interpretation isn’t to discern what the Founders thought or what some legal text meant to ordinary readers when it was enacted.

Instead, the aim is to promote the “common good.” Vermeule claims that within the “classical legal tradition”—which extended from the Roman Empire through early modern Europe—political officials, including judges, understood that the purpose of the state is to secure the goods of “peace, justice, and abundance,” which he translates now into “health, safety, and economic security.” But in Vermeule’s telling, American conservatives have lost sight of that tradition and its influence on our own legal system. They have been blinded by originalism, which has become a stultifying obstacle to

promoting a “robust, substantively conservative approach.”

In criticizing originalism, Vermeule borrows rather liberally from what he calls “progressive constitutionalism”—the view that the Constitution should be read with its purposes and principles in mind. He argues that progressives get some important things right about the nature of legal interpretation. Indeed, throughout his book, Vermeule relies heavily on Ronald Dworkin, the most influential American legal philosopher of the 20th century and a liberal critic of originalism. Dworkin argued that our legal system comprises much more than the Constitution, statutory texts, administrative regulations, and executive orders.

All those different types of laws are created against the backdrop of often unwritten legal principles, which are drawn from our best understanding of political morality. When judges interpret the law, they are always trying to explain its meaning in a way that is justified by those principles.

Vermeule thinks that Dworkin was right about the importance of moral principles in understanding the law. He just thinks Dworkin had the wrong principles. Vermeule claims that progressive constitutionalism is motivated by a liberal political

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CULTURE morality that misconceives the common good in favor of an ever-expanding conception of individual autonomy. His primary examples here involve gay rights. Vermeule heaps scorn on the Supreme Court’s decisions in Obergefell v. Hodges, which constitutionalized a right to same-sex marriage, and Bostock v. Clayton County, which read federal law to protect against workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. These opinions, in his view, reflect a “liberal political theology” that works tirelessly to dissolve the traditional moral foundations of political and legal institutions in the West.

For Vermeule, then, originalism is fatally flawed because it is cut off from political morality. Progressive constitutionalism doesn’t make that particular mistake; its sin is to idolize individual autonomy at the expense of the community’s general welfare.

Vermeule argues that the classical tradition solves both problems by connecting law to a political morality of the “common good.”

But what, exactly, is the “common good”?

Despite declaring repeatedly that promoting the common good is a “proper function of the political authority,” Vermeule never adequately explains what it is. He tells us that it is not a matter of aggregating individual preferences or satisfying demands for individual autonomy. He does cite the ragion di stato (“reason of the state”) tradition, which describes “justice, peace, and abundance” as the legitimate ends of government, but that explains precious little.

No one is opposed to those ends, abstractly stated, and Vermeule doesn’t offer an interpretation of them. Instead, he claims to provide a “framework” rather than a “blueprint’ for thinking about the common good. And yet, almost entirely without argument, he insists that these ends require some specific policy outcomes, including a constitutional right to life for “unborn children,” most likely a prohibition on gay marriage, bans on pornography and perhaps blasphemy, and restrictions on various forms of dangerous or false speech. We know what policies Vermeule likes and dislikes, but the moral basis for his views—beyond vague invocations of the “common good”—remains obscure.

That is because Vermeule’s “substantive vision of the good” is tied to a specific religious view that he nowhere mentions in this book. It is a striking and telling omission, about which Vermeule seems 56 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

rather defensive. He says that nothing in his account turns on “supernatural” or “ultimate ends,” but it’s difficult to take this claim seriously. Reading Vermeule’s efforts to avoid stating his own conception of the good is like listening to the director of Hamlet offer justifications for failing to cast the prince.

Why leave out Hamlet? Because most readers are likely to reject Vermeule’s religious views as quixotic and reactionary. In recent years, Vermeule has written extensively in defense of Catholic integralism, a radical view that calls for the establishment of a religious and explicitly Catholic confessional state. He has spoken favorably of illiberal Christian regimes like those of Hungary and Poland. And he has been vague when asked about how an integralist state might treat religious minorities, saying only that “nothing bad” would happen to them. But that is far from reassuring. What might seem bad, or unreasonable, to religious minorities—denials of equal citizenship, coerced conversions, suppression of public expression of faiths deemed to be heretical or blasphemous— might be “good” within Catholic integralism. Incredibly, Vermeule says nothing in his book about religious liberty and its place, or lack thereof, in his account of the common good.

None of this should be surprising. In prior work, Vermeule has been clear about his “Christian strategy,” which aims to capture existing political and legal institutions and to “reintegrate [them] from within.”

And that is harder to do if people equate Vermeule’s theory of law with his anti-liberal religious views.

Readers should not be gullible about what common good constitutionalism represents. It is not merely a revival of an ecumenical “classical legal tradition.” Nor is Vermeule’s argument merely for a moral reading of the Constitution—an argument progressives have been making for some time. It is an argument that underwrites a dangerous shift in jurisprudence on the right, and one that serves Vermeule’s larger goal, which is the establishment of a state integrated with—or, more accurately, subordinated to—religious ends.

The emergence of common good constitutionalism raises two further questions: First, why is this happening now? When conservatives control the Supreme Court,

The late justice Antonin Scalia was the intellectual godfather of originalism, which Vermeule deems fatally flawed and cut off from morality. why is Vermeule busily undercutting their most successful theory of interpretation?

And, second, how should readers—especially liberals and progressives—respond to a theory proposed by an author who has advised acting strategically to advance an esoteric theory of the good?

The answer to the timing question—

and one Vermeule is explicit about—is that originalism has “outlived its utility.” It was instrumental in casting doubt on liberal precedents, like Roe v. Wade, and in convincing the American public to support the appointment of conservative justices. But now that the Court is firmly in conservative hands, the justices don’t need to talk the rhetoric of originalism or walk its supposedly restraining walk. They can remake the state in service of the common good, defined, ultimately, in terms of religious authoritarianism.

But there is another and more profound reason for Vermeule’s rejection of originalism. Modern originalism was born in the Reagan era, and it was used to fight against the administrative state. Social conservatives and libertarians worked together to fight the welfare state, limit the power of unions, curtail civil rights, eliminate environmental protections, and so on. With Trump, the conservative legal movement has achieved success at the Supreme Court.

It now has an overwhelming 6-3 majority, which is already moving into a deregulatory posture, invalidating vaccine mandates, restricting the president’s immigration authority, and hinting at far-reaching limits on administrative agencies.

The originalist program of deregulation is, however, less appealing to a new intelligentsia on the right that calls itself “postliberal” and that includes Catholic integralists like Vermeule. What postliberals want is more government, not less. They want to use the administrative state to promote patriarchal family policy, protectionist labor and economic policies, morals/vice legislation (bans on porn, blasphemy, offensive speech), restrictions on LGBTQ rights, and public support for religious observance, including the reinstatement of blue laws—all explicitly modeled on the illiberal Christian democracies of Poland and Hungary. (It’s no accident that Tucker Carlson has been broadcasting

Trying to find common ground with common good constitutionalism is a form of political and intellectual appeasement.

from Budapest. His brand of conservatism is a crude popularization of this postliberal intellectual vanguard.) And “common good constitutionalism”—as developed by Vermeule, the postliberals’ legal theorist—will be the newest front in their assault on the conservative legal establishment built by Reagan-era originalists.

So how should liberals and progressives respond to all this? As postliberals war with originalists, some progressives may be attracted to Vermeule’s defense of a moral reading of the Constitution and to his arguments for deference to the administrative state. They might also view the conservative legal movement’s fragmentation over the legitimacy of big government as an opportunity. As conservatives fight, why not use postliberal arguments to protect against deregulation and the dismantling of the social welfare state?

Other liberals and progressives might decide to throw their lot in with libertarian originalists. Although libertarians are no friends of progressive economic policies, at least they don’t favor a religious state and are less enamored of government impositions of morality. What liberals might get from a “liberaltarian” deal is a check on the ambitions of the far right, and what libertarians would get is the same. Both have a common enemy in authoritarian, populist, and theocratic government.

Which option should liberals and progressives choose? Neither is attractive.

The first would be a highly speculative and unstable dalliance with religious antiliberalism, with outcomes that are morally dubious and that risk legitimating extreme factions within the conservative legal movement. It would mean jettisoning most of the civil rights protections that progressives have spent generations defending.

Trying to find common ground with common good constitutionalism—in effect, the legal arm of Catholic integralism—is a form of political and intellectual appeasement, pinning the hopes of the administrative state on compromising with authoritarians and praying that they don’t succeed. If one had to choose, the option to side with oldfashioned, Reagan-era libertarians might be morally preferable, but it faces the very real danger of legitimating and thereby capitulating to the threat posed by the current Supreme Court.

The problem, of course, is that legal progressives are on the sidelines. The Supreme

Court will be deeply conservative for the next generation. So, too, the intellectual apparatus that justifies and legitimates the work of that Court will partake of whatever theory of interpretation does its bidding. The more likely outcome is a politics that marries the worst of both originalism and common good constitutionalism—an administrative state that is increasingly corporatist and authoritarian. That is the pattern we have seen play out in repressive and autocratic regimes around the world, including in the states that postliberals seem to admire most.

When it comes to progressive politics, the old saying is wrong. For liberals and progressives, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Instead of throwing in with postliberals or accepting an alliance with libertarians and originalists, liberals and progressives should abjure these false friendships and make their own case for a moral reading of the Constitution that points to a more open, humane, tolerant, and decent society.

Vermeule’s book has a striking cover that depicts three ancient gold coins. Each has some standard abbreviations from Roman imperial currency, including one marked with the phrase fides publica (“public faith”). If you look closer, the first coin shows a bespectacled man holding a glass vial; the second a concrete mixing truck; and the third has two hands cradling a plant or tree sapling. These are reassuring images, much like those adopted by Roman emperors as propaganda for their coinage. Perhaps Vermeule’s coins represent scientific expertise, industry, and “environmental stewardship”—all domains in which he counsels deference to the administrative state in its efforts to promote the common good. But if the front sides of those three coins stand for the temporal ambitions of secular empire, we can’t help but wonder about what religious images are on the other side of them.

It’s those symbols—the ones that integralists and postliberals don’t want readers to see—that are crucial for understanding what the “common good” really means in their constitutionalism. n Micah Schwartzman is the Hardy Cross Dillard Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Richard Schragger is the Perre Bowen Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 57

CULTURE

The Cure for Hate Speech Is Not More Speech

A new book considers how colleges and universities should deal with committed racists.

By Ryan Cooper It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom

By Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth Johns Hopkins University Press For the last several years, American colleges and universities have been one of the principal culture war battlegrounds. We’ve all heard stories of how students, who lean to the left in most schools, have mobilized in various ways to confront their schools’ history of complicity with slavery, white supremacy, colonialism, or other atrocities.

This sometimes takes the form of ostracizing faculty or guest speakers deemed to be offensive or insensitive. Conservative writers like Bari Weiss, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and Ben Shapiro have seized on a handful of such events in which students demonized their opponents Books to craft a narrative in which “woke” college “snowflakes” are carrying out “cancel culture” instead of debating scholarly topics using facts and logic.

Even the most exaggerated version of these protests doesn’t bear comparison to what conservative state legislatures are doing to suppress discussion and research, however. Across the country, Republicans are proposing or passing sweeping legislation that attempts to prohibit teaching which examines the history of racism or sexism, or calls into question the nobility of the American founding, or promotes LGBT equality.

It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom, a new book by Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth, offers new insights about academic freedom and free speech that are both incisive and 58 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

broadly relevant to American society as a whole. Both authors are professors, the former at Pennsylvania State University and the latter at Portland State University.

Bérubé and Ruth were motivated by the Trump years and the George Floyd protests to reconsider their previous views on free speech and academic freedom. They carefully elaborate and rebut several unsatisfactory positions on these questions. One bad argument (often heard within the academy itself) is that the two things are identical— that tenured professors should be protected from any consequences of speech, no matter what they say. As they note, this view doesn’t survive contact with the case of James Tracy, a former communications professor at Florida Atlantic University who loudly promoted the conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a false flag, and took to harassing the victims’ parents before he was finally canned.

Another argument, coming from Martha Nussbaum and others, is that academic freedom has nothing at all to do with free speech. By this view, academics should be protected when they are commenting on their area of specific expertise, and be treated as private citizens otherwise. This doesn’t work either—first, what counts as expertise is necessarily a subject of debate; second, scholars often develop real expertise outside their areas of explicit training (like Noam Chomsky); third, such a standard would mean scholars fearing for their jobs every time they said anything not strictly relevant to their field.

Instead, Bérubé and Ruth argue that the way to think about speech and academic freedom is by judging comments both inside and outside the classroom by whether they cast doubt on a professor’s fitness to participate in intellectual life. Academic

freedom should protect professors’ ability to say controversial things and start hard discussions, but it comes with an equally important responsibility that those statements be grounded in serious thought and research—and in reality. The authors suggest the “purpose of institutions of higher education is not to ensure that all views be heard, but to determine, by careful and impartial review, which views merit a hearing and which serve no conceivable educational mission.”

So what does that mean in practice? The authors draw on the work of scholars like Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Charles Mills, who have showed many ways that racists have exploited ostensibly liberal norms to perpetuate bigotry. They combine that work with the critique of free speech from literature scholar Ulrich Baer, who argues that when free speech protects “speech that proposes that some humans are innately inferior to others, and thus undermines the baseline assumption of human equality … free speech degenerates into an exercise in domination.” Explicit racism, defending slavery or colonialism as good for the subjected peoples, arguing that homosexuality is a disease, or similar bigoted views thus have no place in the university.

Many liberals instinctively resist this idea. It sounds like censorship, and in a sense it is. But virtually no one actually believes schools should always consider every idea under the sun. Aside from Professor Sandy Hook Truther above, there are dozens of ideas that are de facto banned from the academy: f lat earth theory, geocentrism, phlogiston, and so on. The authors provide a handy list of additional indefensible guest lecture topics, like “the Jews had it coming,” “vaccines cause autism,” “climate change is a hoax,” and “phrenology has much to teach us.” (For the latter lecture they offer to measure the skulls of audience members to determine “who among us is most likely to become a perpetrator of violent crime.”)

Once one has admitted that certain

beliefs are out of bounds in an academic setting, the only question is where and how the boundaries should be drawn. Critically, they argue that a thorough commitment to anti-racism is important in an academic context not because racism harms minorities (though it does do that), but because it leads to poor scholarship. For instance, for the majority of the 20th century, the historiography of the Reconstruction period was dominated by the Dunning School—a

the South were more or less full voting citizens—a status protected by federal power.

This power was eventually withdrawn by Northern white elites, and Black citizenship in the South was then destroyed by white supremacist terrorism. That in turn set the stage for Jim Crow: an apartheid system enforced by a constant threat of psychotic violence to any Black person who stepped out of line (and many who didn’t).

White intellectuals then made up a

ly preposterous and baldly racist delusion invented to assuage the conscience and ego of white society.

One of the reasons that W.E.B. Du Bois’s book Black Reconstruction is so impressive is that he almost single-handedly took on an entire hegemonic historical consensus supported by dozens of academic departments and hundreds of practicing scholars, and eventually prevailed. But the fact that it took half a century, with his College classrooms have become one of the main battlegrounds of the culture wars over the past several years.

straightforward racist fraud. This school of thought, advanced by Columbia University’s William Dunning and his acolytes, advanced a white supremacist view of the period after the Civil War. In reality, as is now fairly common knowledge, from about 1865 to 1876, Black men in

bunch of comforting lies that Reconstruction was a mistake and a failure because the multiracial governments were corrupt, thanks to the influence of ignorant Black voters who didn’t deserve the franchise.

This wasn’t a contestable interpretation, or a different angle on events, but a complete-

argument being reinforced by several brilliant white academics (most notably Eric Foner), for that victory to be consolidated, is also telling. It proves that an academic system can be set up on putatively open lines where anyone can advance any argument, and then total crackpot nonsense APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 59

CULTURE that doesn’t survive a moment’s hard scrutiny can be held up as consensus truth for 50 years.

In short, the truth will not out, at least not by itself, because of racism. An academy open to any question gives a golden opportunity for bigots to worm their way into the discourse and establish a false consensus through the use of power. Just consider the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Amy Wax, an open racist who also insists that her Black students get worse grades than her white ones. It’s not hard to imagine how this might have happened. The reason the Dunning School survived for so long is the same reason why it’s seemingly impossible to stomp out quack neo-phrenologist arguments from people like Charles Murray: racist bias.

The authors’ solution for how to approach academic freedom is typically academic: a faculty committee. This sounds a little ridiculous, but I was convinced that it’s the best possible approach. The foundation of the modern university is tenure and peer review—a collective process whereby one’s peers critically judge each other’s fitness and work, from a sternly anti-bigotry standpoint.

As they write, “this is what differentiates academic freedom from free speech: this horizontal work of peers policing one another.”

No doubt there would be many problems with such committees in practice. But at the very least, they would be a huge improvement on the extant “diversity, equity, and inclusion” offices that exist in most schools on the administrative side. These simultaneously tend to be heavily influenced by the diversity consultant industry, whose borderline-abusive seminars have been shown to backfire in some studies, and subject to the cowardice of administrators who are a lot more concerned with money and reputation (and hence fear deep-pocketed white professors with political connections) than with academic freedom. And DEI doesn’t address, much less solve, the fraught question of which crackpot or racist views should be excluded.

This is relevant for lay readers for a few reasons. First, campus politics and the associated discourse about racism, free speech, and “wokeness” are going to be with us for the foreseeable future. As I was writing this piece, yet another New York Times op-ed about allegedly censorious campus leftists was published. In addition to providing a concrete, realistic way to process these questions, the authors deserve great credit 60 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

for thoughtfulness and plain common sense throughout. In the social media age, it is entirely too easy for writers and scholars to fall into inflamed thinking and hysteria over events that are shorn of context, exaggerated, unrepresentative, or simply invented out of whole cloth. And a lot of events that spark huge controversy, like professors insisting on saying the N-word in class, could be avoided with some simple common courtesy.

What’s more, as the authors note, their points about speech are not limited to the academy. The most widely applicable part of the book is a more general consideration of free speech itself. Baer’s case against libertarian free speech dogmatism holding that any restrictions on speech whatsoever are prima facie illegitimate, and that more speech is always the best cure for hate speech, is highly relevant today. The Trump years and social media have proved that false beyond any question. If one doubts the power of propaganda, just consult the many websites dedicated to archiving the social media feeds of conservatives who post anti-vaccine Facebook memes and Fox News clips only to catch COVID and die in gruesome agony.

The increasing prominence of fascist and open neo-Nazi groups poses an even more stark challenge to free-speech absolutists. It is simply naïve to think that argument will convince people intent on leveraging liberal tolerance to seize power and murder their political opponents.

If I had to levy a criticism of Bérubé and Ruth, it would be here. On the question of whether there is any hope for even modest government action on speech, they throw up their hands. “There is, we are finding to our collective horror, a destructive and potentially murderous libertarianism baked into the country’s very foundation,” they write. But this is entirely too pessimistic.

While it surely is hard to imagine any kind

Free speech and free discussion are public goods that require regulation to preserve just like any other kind of public good.

of speech regulation akin to the ban on publishing Holocaust denial or Nazi slogans in Germany (and several other nations) in the U.S., there are quite a few more modest measures that are much more consonant with American history. There are still considerable regulations on political spending, for instance, and the Supreme Court decision that gutted the previously more-strict regime is deeply unpopular.

Indeed, it’s quite plausible to argue that such regulations are necessary to ensure the American people actually enjoy the benefits of free speech. The idea that the best argument will naturally win out in the “free marketplace of ideas” is every bit as ridiculous as saying that financial deregulation will improve the efficiency of investment. Free speech and free discussion are public goods that require regulation to preserve just like any other kind of public good. Absent regulation, ruthless ultra-rich monopolists and their flat-earth allies will barge in and befoul the collective speech commons.

For instance, we might consider antitrust policy to break up vast social media or broadcasting empires as a sort of indirect speech regulation—not directly affecting individual speech, of course, but greatly limiting the propaganda reach of malevolent billionaires. Increased taxes on the rich would have the same effect.

Or we might consider reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and thus allowing people to sue large platforms for content posted on them by third parties, which would force them to radically scale down their operations or heavily moderate inflammatory content or both. As Josh Marshall has written, “Facebook is like a scofflaw nuclear power company that makes insane profits because it runs its reactor in the open and dumps the waste in the bog behind the local high school.”

At any rate, this is a minor quibble.

Bérubé and Ruth have written a great book that does what conservatives say they want: take on a sacred cow of liberalism with facts and logic. I look forward to them being canceled by Fox News. n Ryan Cooper is the Prospect’s managing editor, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The Week. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, and Current Affairs.

A socially distanced homeless encampment at San Francisco’s Civic Center, from May 2020

Homelessness Meets Cluelessness Michael Shellenberger applies conservative culture war clichés to the housing problem.

By Peter Dreier

NOAH BERGER / AP PHOTO

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

By Michael Shellenberger Harper Americans love people who find redemption by acknowledging their sins, see the light, and change their lives. Michael Shellenberger claims to have once been a progressive, but that the failure of so-called progressive cities (particularly San Francisco) to solve the crisis of homelessness turned him into a conservative. Now he’s become an evangelist for conservatism. San Fransicko is his confession.

Despite its many endnotes, this is not a scholarly book. The author distorts and misuses facts when it suits his arguments.

San Fransicko is a tirade against permis- its opposition to nuclear power and fracking. siveness—cities that allow homeless people In 2016, he started Environmental Progress, to live and sleep on sidewalks, in parks and which launched campaigns to keep nuclear tent encampments in residential neigh- power plants in operation, testified in Congress borhoods and business districts, polluting in favor of nuclear energy, and worked with the those spaces with drug needles, urine, feces, Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby empty bottles of alcohol, and unkempt peo- group. In a TED Talk, Shellenberger argued ple unmoored from reality. that switching to renewable energy sources like Shellenberger argues that homelessness is solar power and wind is destroying the envinot primarily the result of poverty and the ronment. In 2018, his unsuccessful campaign shortage of affordable housing. It is, he claims, for California governor garnered only 31,692 really a problem of mental illness and sub- votes. Three years later, he backed Kevin Faulstance abuse. He blames what he calls coner, San Diego’s Republican former “pathological altruism”—progressive mayor, in his failed bid to unseat Gov. Books municipal officials and do-gooders who Gavin Newsom. Then on March 10, he refuse to enforce vagrancy laws that would announced that he’s running as an independent candidate against Newsom. bring order and civility to urban streets.

Shellenberger made a name for himself as a critic of the environmental movement for No big city in America—whether governed APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 61

CULTURE Homelessness Is Especially High in More Expensive Rental Markets

HOMELESS RATE (PERCENT)

by conservatives, liberals, or progressives—has solved its housing crisis. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s “Out of 0.5 Reach” report, “In no state, metropolitan area, or county in the U.S. can a worker earning the federal or preNew York 0.4 vailing state or local minimum wage Los Angeles afford a modest two-bedroom rental San Francisco Seattle home at fair market rent by working 0.3 a standard 40-hour work week.”

Boston San Diego Rents have been rising faster than Portland, Or. incomes, especially at the bottom Tampa 0.2 half of the labor market. According Washington, D.C. Minneapolis Baltimore to a report by Harvard’s Joint CenSan Antonio Phoenix Miami ter for Housing Studies, in 2019 (the Chicago 0.1 latest data available) more than 80 Riverside Detroit St. Louis Dallas Orlando percent of renters earning less than Houston $25,000 paid more than 30 percent of 0.0 their incomes just to put a roof over $700 900 1,100 1,300 1,500 1,700 their heads. Most paid more than Median Rent half of their income for rent. Even 70 percent of renters earning between SOURCE: “THE STATE OF THE NATION’S HOUSING,” HARVARD JOINT CENTER FOR HOUSING STUDIES $25,000 and $34,999, and nearly 50 percent of renters earning between $35,000 recent survey I co-authored of over 10,000 tize new luxury housing, hoping that the and $49,999, paid more than 30 percent of grocery workers in Southern California, the increase in supply will trickle down to help Seattle area, and Colorado discovered that low-income renters find decent apartments. household income for rent.

But that approach never works. Instead, Before the COVID pandemic, more than 14 percent had been homeless during the a quarter of all unhoused Americans lived previous year; even 9 percent of full-time rents trickle up, as owners of existing properties raise rents closer to the levels of the in California, which has 12 percent of the workers suffered that fate. nation’s population. Almost three-quarters newly built apartments. Landlords evict of the state’s homeless people—and 73 per- America’s homeless crisis is not primarily a lower-income renters, many of whom wind cent of San Francisco’s 8,124 homeless resi- problem of personal pathology. The initial up on the streets or in cramped and overdents—are unsheltered, a higher share than surge of homelessness in the 1980s result- crowded quarters. A 2019 report found that in any other state. ed from the combination of closing the 70 percent of San Francisco’s homeless peoCalifornia has the nation’s highest “hous- nation’s mental hospitals (without provid- ple once had a home in the city. ing wage”—the income needed to afford a ing the promised funding for communityThe only way to create new housing that typical apartment. The typical monthly rent based treatment settings) and the Reagan secretaries, garment workers, day care for a two-bedroom apartment in California administration’s cuts in federal funding workers, janitors, nurses, schoolteachers, is $2,030, so a family needs to earn $39.03 for low-income housing. When more low- and hotel housekeepers can afford is to per hour to avoid paying more than 30 per- rent housing was available, including many provide government subsidies to builders, cent of its income for rent. In San Francisco, rooming houses since lost to gentrification, homebuyers, and tenants. Cities don’t have that wage is $68.33. even people on society’s margins could that kind of money and Congress has not Typical of Shellenberger’s disingenuous- afford a roof over their heads. come close to restoring the federal HUD ness, he writes that “Palo Alto and BevContrary to Shellenberger’s argument, San budget to pre-Reagan levels. Today, only erly Hills have mild climates and expensive Francisco, like most California cities, has been one-quarter of households eligible for fedhousing but don’t have San Francisco’s run by business-friendly Democrats, not pro- eral rental assistance receive it, due to homeless problem.” But both are wealthy gressives. Since the late 1970s, San Francisco funding limitations. Unlike food stamps, suburbs with few low-income residents who has only had one progressive mayor—Art housing assistance—such as subsidized are likely to fall into homelessness.

Agnos, who served from 1988 to 1992. apartment buildings or housing vouchMost cities have pursued a strategy of pro- ers—is not an entitlement. It is more like a Contrary to Shellenberger’s argument, a recent Harvard report found direct correla- moting construction of new office buildings lottery. In most cities, there are long waittion between median rents and the size of and hotels, often via tax breaks, to encourage ing lists for housing aid—so long that many high-tech, finance, insurance, health care, cities have stopped accepting applications. the homeless population.

The combination of low wages and ris- and tourism businesses. The huge influx Most poor families are at the mercy of the ing rents leads many working people to of highly paid employees, along with many private rental market. wind up sleeping in their cars, on friends’ low-wage workers, exacerbates the widenShellenberger seems unaware of various couches, on the streets, or in shelters. A ing income divide. These cities also priori- state laws that preempt California cities’ 62 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

ability to address their housing crises. He decries California’s “high taxes,” but doesn’t even mention Proposition 13, a 1978 ballot measure that dramatically limited local governments’ ability to raise property taxes on homeowners, landlords, and businesses, depriving municipalities of revenues they need for basic municipal services, let alone subsidies for affordable housing.

Nor does Shellenberger mention the Ellis Act, a 1985 state law, sponsored by the real estate industry, that allows landlords to evict tenants in order to remove housing units from the rental market. As California’s housing market has heated up, speculators have abused the law by purchasing and then demolishing older buildings in order to build newer, expensive market-rate projects. Under the law, San Francisco has lost 4,576 rent-controlled units, while Los Angeles, with almost five times as many residents, has lost 27,000. For years, housing activists have tried without success to get the state legislature to repeal the Ellis Act. Even more glaring is Shellenberger’s failure to mention the 1995 Costa-Hawkins Act, another real estate industry–backed law, that prohibits cities from regulating rents when a unit becomes vacant. This creates a perverse incentive for landlords to evict tenants, often by illegal means, including harassment, so they can raise rents on new tenants. The result: a steadily declining number of apartments covered by rent regulation in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other cities.

Progressives have successfully pushed some cities to adopt inclusionary zoning laws and linkage policies to require developers to help mitigate the cost of rising rents caused by market-rate development, but these are Band-Aids, not fundamental solutions. In contrast, a coalition of Los Angeles labor, housing, and social service activists recently launched a campaign to

Shellenberger refuses to acknowledge that mental illness and addiction are often caused or at least made worse by being homeless.

increase taxes on real estate transactions over $5 million. This would raise over $800 million a year to fund permanent affordable housing and to provide emergency relief for renters at risk of eviction. The measure will go into effect if more than half of voters approve it on the November ballot.

Shellenberger claims that “homelessness exploded” in California around 2009 after the state stopped making housing assistance conditional on sobriety. But he ignores the reality that California, like the rest of the country, was then reeling from the biggest housing crash since the Depression—a catastrophe caused by banks’ reckless and illegal behavior. Many middle-class and low-income people lost their homes.

Echoing Reagan, Shellenberger argues that most homeless people are homeless by choice. He thinks the poor, homeless, or addicted should make better choices. And progressives should stop making excuses for them by blaming their plight on broader economic and social forces.

Shellenberger condemns “housing first” approaches that offer homeless people a secure roof over their heads, without requiring them to first get sober or get treatment for mental illness. He wants local police to arrest homeless people who use drugs, abuse alcohol, and beg on the streets. In fact, a growing number of cities have recently begun removing homeless people from encampments and other public spaces in response to complaints from business groups and local residents. When San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a crackdown on street crime and drug dealing last December, Shellenberger claimed vindication. He even urges California to create a new agency, Cal-Psych, which would institutionalize people who live on the streets. To make his case, Shellenberger claims that European countries have moved away from progressive “harm reduction” approaches to utilizing arrests and mandatory treatment in dealing with homeless people, but he gets that wrong, too, as Maia Szalavitz and others have shown. Coerced treatment and criminalization don’t work, said Laura Thomas of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. “We don’t have enough services, we don’t have enough housing, we don’t have enough shelter beds.”

Shellenberger ignores the evidence that people with addictions and mental illness are more likely to improve their situations

when they have unconditional access to stable housing. For example, that approach has cut chronic homelessness among military veterans by about half. Of course, “housing first” is easier to adopt in cities without sky-high rents, such as Houston, where the approach has been successful.

For the 32 percent of unhoused Californians who are chronically homeless, and whose plight is exacerbated by disabilities, the solution is stable housing with wraparound support services, according to a justreleased study by the California Budget & Policy Center. In recent years, Los Angeles has moved about 9,000 homeless people into hotel rooms, but the overall homeless numbers didn’t decline because an even larger number of people fell into homelessness after getting evicted. The same is true in San Francisco, where the head of the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing pointed out that for every person who exits homelessness, three fall into it.

Shellenberger refuses to acknowledge that mental illness and addiction are often caused or at least made worse by being homeless. Losing your job, getting evicted, and winding up homeless and living on the streets, or moved from shelter to shelter, are traumatizing experiences.

Similarly, as one research team recently found, “the association between homelessness and drug use is bidirectional, and homelessness itself plays a role in drug use and overdose risk.” Consider West Virginia, which ranks first in drug overdose deaths and is ground zero in the opioid crisis. That state has one of the nation’s lowest rates of homelessness, mostly because housing is inexpensive (the typical monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment was $771), and a housing wage of $14.83.

Religious zealots are not persuaded by facts and rational arguments. Shellenberger had a conversion experience and now he wants to convert liberals and progressives to atone for their sins. Shellenberger, meanwhile, has violated one of the most important commandments: “Thou shalt not lie.” n Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics at Occidental College and co-author of two new books: Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America and Major League Rebels: Baseball Battles Over Workers’ Rights and American Empire.

APRIL 2022 THE AMERICAN PROSPECT 63

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MEN IS s sia N ot o s le st ) . s tin ART E XERC y Ru u t. N s im p e wars ble! , Pu h a t s lo ok Ru DEP S ten b that’s o no mor e s e ia nne s s n a Fur u Writ he t o , nt th s o t TLES y e yo ap R us ker. eme Fair k . So k y, s n a ni mak P O IN impl cessive he wee ling che crac haikovs ar Plum n with i t d can z x N ut o c n t z i g If we lves of e l not las k to gu rope, a ghout The Pyotr T f the Su obsess olls. c l u r u d o d ur s e t ba to E n wi . thro e o l p o s e D a n c e c ha rge o o de n o to ill b e e s essi e’ll all g ands oi n pre-K on Ear th w e ly ays s agg r w a mor ak k in g xu a l h it w , t r h o r w ti n o g time f er th g ta r d se ut-crac ich m rble f enou xpor tin 5s rath waning Pu weir e nc e ln e ” wh H , h e c r a m d o u g h, r i n g -3 ’s e wa tte. roulette e a hig play us s g a s , i ng i n F a n k i n d m at b n oule n nd e d r sour u u ade l a e g h t vest of hum e wo ic m r te d w yo n i sian “Americ hat cou th with e in d e m f u s s t a m i g ht b a n d h o o m est Rus as spac e. W de a pan r o n c s i the r l d n The . Some And you p Russia l guide f es know ore se f life an ny pub is e o r. a ia m o cop xerc to st into of fic a wa way a me Kon y ted can do y. This intless E o in g es g st a r e d b ome a s t a k im p l y g f Po c war e lop ti n p t you lfs e v ? wh a a k e P u r t m e n t o n ew e a r s de ctors b rably se than d States is a l m . a a It wa le e can .S. Dep to help ber this t of nuc reat ng. i to help as into u, Jared U ni t U act i th k rea em e ll ere s d h e t yo h v t w m o h th e a a t l e s h E ) is t’s re e th stl y a s our Met n Stanis acters a Looking .

(DoP of f, le , wher d co r ti urg e a a n h g s. a t c is se n i s Fi r s t i t a l a g e u r e l y a s e c a n p r o u g h th e i r m a n b e ot b e m ill d ig s th is s if w n u f u ll y d o n l e d. S o s i a n n e s t t a c k s w w ill fo r a us h a s e ag e d e r i o hi s o n e s Arm ing canc ce of Ru , Putin’s .T s a e Leto of b f any tr anction ng halt: r yo i s wn t s lives of self- a grind o he to o d t o n t m o re M roun com e ou t u’re irls, no ly g n yo s ur e W h e w i th th e es . er a g s he d B ev g e t s l o o in g t

—By Francesca Fiorentini

64 PROSPECT.ORG APRIL 2022

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Ukraine’s Ukraine’s iron iron will will against against Putin’s Putin’s barbarism barbarism

By Randi Weingarten, President

By Randi Weingarten, President AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS

a two-page text informing students that a two-page text informing students that Russia is currently undertaking “special Russia is currently undertaking “specialand peacekeeping operation” in Ukraine… peacekeeping in Ukraine… and that the Russianoperation” government is committed the Russian government is committed tothat “peace” and “freedom,” and “is not going “peace”anything and “freedom,” and not going totoimpose on anyone by“is force.” to impose anything on anyone by force.”

Countering that kind of disinformation is part of Countering kind of disinformation is part of the fight for that self-determination and democracy. the fight for self-determination and democracy.

Amid the chaos and carnage of war, Ukrainian Amid thehave chaos and carnage of war, Ukrainian teachers continued teaching their students in teachers havecan—in continued teachingand theirsubways studentsasin any way they basements any way they can—in basements and subways as they seek refuge from bombings, using messaging they like seekTelegram, refuge from messaging apps andbombings, in refugeeusing resettlement areas. apps like Telegram, and in refugee resettlement areas.

According to the United Nations, nearly every second According to the United nearlychild every since the atrocities began,Nations, a Ukrainian hassecond since thea atrocities began, a Ukrainian has has become refugee. The teachers union inchild Poland become a refugee.

The teachers union in Poland turned its conference center into a home for morehas turned conference center and into unaccompanied a home for more than 100itsUkrainian orphans than 100and Ukrainian orphans and into unaccompanied children converted its offices temporary children and converted its offices into temporary residences for women and children.

Teachers for women and children.

Teachers inresidences Poland, Germany, Romania and Slovakia are in Poland,toGermany, Slovakia are preparing integrateRomania refugee and children into their preparing to integrate refugee children into their

Democracy, Democracy, independence independence and and freedom freedom are are not not to to be be taken taken for for granted. granted.

Photo: Michelle Ringuette Photo: Michelle Ringuette

U

kraine has always loomed large in my life. kraine has always large in my life.

My grandfather fledloomed near-certain death My grandfather near-certain from the pogromsfled that massacreddeath Jews in from theearly pogroms Ukraine in thethat last massacred century, andJews he in earlyof in his theand lastmy century, and he was able toUkraine bring most grandmother’s was able bring most of histoand my grandmother’s family fromtowestern Ukraine America.

Many family from western Ukraine to America.

Many Jews who survived those pogroms later perished survived those inJews the who massacre at Babi Yarpogroms

by Nazi later forcesperished and in thecollaborators. massacre at In Babi Yar Ibywent Nazitoforces andon a their 2014, Ukraine their collaborators.

In 2014, I wentleaders to Ukraine on a solidarity mission with other labor shortly solidarity mission with other labor shortly after dozens of demonstrators wereleaders fatally shot after during dozensaofpro-democracy demonstratorsuprising. were fatally shot there The uprising there during a pro-democracy uprising.

Theand uprising ousted Ukraine’s Russian-backed president ousted Ukraine’s Russian-backed president and ushered in a new era of freedom and democracy ushered in a new era of freedom andwanted. democracy that the Ukrainian people have long that the Ukrainian people have long wanted.

Like so many, I have watched with horror at Vladimir Like sobarbarism many, I have horror at Vladimir Putin’s andwatched with awewith at the Ukrainian Putin’s barbarism and with awe Putin’s at the Ukrainian people’s determination and will. forces people’s determination and will. Putin’s forces are now killing civilians—bombing kindergartens, are now killing civilians—bombing kindergartens, hospitals, and people waiting in line for food or hospitals, andtopeople in line food or trying to flee safety. waiting But instead of for these Russian trying tobreaking flee to safety.

But instead of these Russian assaults their will, the Ukrainian people assaults breakingthem theirwith will,staunch the Ukrainian people have confronted resistance, haveasconfronted them staunch even the carnage andwith suffering areresistance, mounting. evenis as the carnage and suffering mounting.

This a battle for people’s lives andare homes, and This is a battle for people’s lives and homes, and for freedom, self-determination and democracy. for freedom, self-determination and democracy.

Oleksandr Sushko, the executive director of the Oleksandr Sushko, the executive director of the International Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine, International Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine, urges, “The voices of Ukraine’s civil society sector urges,be“The voices as of Ukraine’s sectorof must protected, we know civil thesesociety defenders must be protected, as we know these defenders of democracy and freedom are high on Putin’s kill list.” democracy and freedom are high on Putin’s kill list.”

Teachers and trade unionists are among Teachers and trade are As among those “defenders of unionists democracy.”

Jeffrey “defenders As Jeffrey C.those Isaac, a professorofofdemocracy.” political science at C. Isaac,University, a professor of political science Indiana Bloomington, writes at University, writes inIndiana the Albert ShankerBloomington, Institute blog: in the Albert Shanker Institute blog: Education is a dangerous thing for authoritarian Education a dangerous for freeauthoritarian leaders andisregimes, for it thing nurtures leaders and regimes,capable for it nurtures thinking individuals of askingfreethinking individuals of asking questions and seekingcapable their own answers. For questions and seeking their own answers. this reason, teachers have long been on theFor this reason, teachers have been on the front line of the struggle forlong democracy. front line of the struggle for democracy.

In the U.S., teachers are facing a wellIn the U.S., teachers facing abywellorchestrated political are campaign the far-right politicalofcampaign by the far-right toorchestrated limit the teaching certain subjects and to limit the teaching certainallsubjects perspectives in public of schools, in the and perspectives in public schools, all in the name of a “patriotism” that is manifestly name of that multi-racial is manifestly hostile to aa “patriotism” multi-ethnic and hostile to aand multi-ethnic and multi-racial democracy a well-educated citizenry. … democracy and a well-educated citizenry. … … As Human Rights Watch reports, teachers As Human Rights Watch [in…Russia] will be required to reports, read outteachers loud [in Russia] will be required to read out loud

school systems, implementing a dual-language model school a dual-language model used to systems, educate implementing students fleeing the war in Syria. used to educate students fleeing the war in Syria.

The AFT is raising funds to help resettle teachers The children AFT is raising fundsbytothe help resettle teachers and displaced war in Ukraine.

The and children by the warofinwhom Ukraine. generosity of displaced our members, many areThe not generosity our members, of whomEvery are not paid a livingofwage, has beenmany tremendous. paidwe a living beentotremendous.

Every cent raise wage, will gohas directly these refugee cent we raise will go directly to these refugee efforts. In addition, many AFT pension trustees are efforts. Inpension addition, manyfrom AFTRussian pensioninvestments. trustees are divesting funds divesting pension funds from Russian investments.

Much of the world is in turmoil—from COVID-19, Much of the world is in turmoil—from to climate catastrophes, to humanitarianCOVID-19, crises in to climate catastrophes, to humanitarian in Afghanistan, Central America, Haiti, Southcrises Sudan, Afghanistan, Central America, Haiti, South Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere. As Ukrainian President Yemen andZelenskyy elsewhere.

As in Ukrainian President Volodymyr said his address to the U.S. Volodymyrlast Zelenskyy said in his address to the U.S. Congress week, we need new alliances to stop Congress last week, we need new alliances to stop conflicts and keep peace. World leaders must call conflicts keep peace. leaders mustconflict call for an endand to hostilities in World Ukraine and other for an and end they to hostilities in Ukraine and othercountries conflict zones, must work both to stabilize zones, andare theynot must work to stabilize countries so citizens forced to both flee and to resettle so citizens are not to flee and to resettle refugees whose onlyforced recourse is to leave their homes. refugees whose only recourse is to leave their homes.

I think many Americans believe that the survival many Americans believe survival ofI think our democracy is a given.

But that todaythedemocracy our democracy is aingiven. democracy isofimperiled not only placesBut liketoday Ukraine, but by is imperiled not are onlyworking in placestolike but by forces here that limitUkraine, voting rights, forces here that are working to limit rights, spread disinformation, manipulate thevoting outcome spread disinformation, thetransfer outcome of elections and preventmanipulate the peaceful of power elections and prevent the peaceful transfer of after legitimate elections.

Zelenskyy of power us after legitimate elections.

Zelenskyyand reminded that “democracy, independence reminded are us that “democracy,ofindependence and freedom” the foundation the United States freedom” foundation of the United States and are notare to the be taken for granted.

Defending and are notistonotbesomething taken for granted.

Defending democracy we can leave to others, democracy not something leave us. to others, as Ukraine’sisfreedom fighterswe arecan showing as Ukraine’s freedom fighters are showing us.

Weingarten in Kyiv’s Maidan Square in March 2014, after pro-democracy Weingarten in Kyiv’s Maidan Square in March 2014, after pro-democracy demonstrators were killed there. demonstrators were killed there.

Follow AFT President Randi Weingarten: twitter.com/RWeingarten Follow AFT President Randi Weingarten: twitter.com/RWeingarten

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