28 - Buddy, Essentialize This! (w/ Tom Sexton & Analilia Mejia)
Hear the Bern
Bernie 2020
4.8 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 15 October 2019
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does it feel like to have the full, diverse spectrum of your political concerns reduced to a single issue? Briahna takes on the media and political establishment's habit of essentializing voters from two different angles.
First, she talks to the Analilia Mejia, the campaign's national political director, about why Bernie's agenda appeals to Latinx voters in part because of its holistic approach.
Then, Tom Sexton of the Trillbilly Worker's Party podcast explains why the notion of "Trump country" doesn't even begin to explain the perspectives of Appalachian communities.
Trillbilly Worker's Party on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-972848621-463073718
Analilia on Twitter: https://twitter.com/analilia_mejia
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So I've been thinking a lot about how we talk about politics versus how we should talk about politics. |
| 0:09.0 | At the debate so far, the topic of K-12 education has technically been covered, |
| 0:14.5 | but it was raised primarily as a question about Joe Biden's record on school segregation |
| 0:18.6 | and Kamala Harris' objection to that record based on her own personal experiences. |
| 0:23.8 | The millions of students who attend schools that are as segregated now as they were 30 years ago, |
| 0:29.5 | they weren't really part of the conversation at all. |
| 0:34.4 | Now, admittedly, I noticed this because I was eager for Bernie Sanders to have an opportunity to discuss his Thurgan Marshall education plan, which was described in the nation as, quote, the most progressive and equitable public education agenda of any presidential candidate in the modern history of the United States. He actually has an integration plan. |
| 0:57.0 | But my personal frustrations aside, |
| 1:00.0 | sometimes it seems like the people who run the news |
| 1:02.0 | are less interested in eliciting information that would be |
| 1:05.0 | useful to voters, people who really worry about their children's education, then about creating viral moments. |
| 1:16.3 | While education is framed as an interpersonal dispute, healthcare is framed as an accounting |
| 1:22.3 | question, rather than an ethical one. How will we pay for that, Rather than, can you ever put too much value on a human life? |
| 1:31.5 | And when it comes to so-called identity politics, well, it feels like we're having increasingly |
| 1:37.4 | reductive conversations. |
| 1:40.1 | Myriad headlines opine on a given candidate's ability to capture the interest of Latinx voters. |
| 1:46.0 | Reporters ask me, what is the campaign strategy to, quote, attract black students in particular? |
| 1:51.7 | Asian American voters are completely invisibleized, despite making up enormous percentages of populous states like California and New York. |
| 2:01.5 | And Native American voters are more often than not treated as a footnote, |
| 2:05.8 | their symbolic value counting more to cynical politicians during election season than their |
| 2:10.7 | electoral weight. |
| 2:12.9 | These groups are treated monolithically, and our interests are assumed. |
... |
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