Hi, everybody. We have a moral crisis in this country. I want to start with a quote of Franklin Roosevelt from his second inaugural address in 1937. He said, quote, the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. You can hardly even imagine a president, even if he felt that way today actually saying that we live in an age where there's not only this obscene glorification and exaltation of the obscene, wealthy, but even more dangerously, there is this demonization of the poor that has taken hold of our national consciousness and is codified by the policies of this administration. I'm reminded also, of course, of the new colossus, the brilliant poem by Emma Lazarus, on the Statue of Liberty, where she said, give me your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Well, obviously, we may as well just get rid of that poem, because we don't mean it anymore, in terms of to come to the United States. There's so many of our own parents and grandparents and great grandparents did. But also with what's happening now, we're seeing the same kind of cruel treatment, not only against immigrants, but against people here in the United States. I heard an interview the other day with Margaret Atwood and she said apparently the United States has decided it doesn't need its poor. So we have now gotten to the point where we have a president who basically is leading the charge against what he considers and what people like him consider throw away people. I live in Washington, DC. We're seeing what's happening, not only with the soldiers who are here, you know, as we've

been talking about, we have a 30-year low in crime in Washington, D.C., so that's not what's really going on. This has to do with the militarization of the streets of the United States, not just Washington, but also the behavior towards the poor, really the criminalization of homelessness in the United States. So I'm always on the lookout for people who know what they're talking about these things. The other day I saw an Instagram posting by Jessie Rebinoet.

Here's a national homelessness in the United States. So I'm always on the lookout for people who know what they're talking about these things. The other day, I saw an Instagram posting by Jessie Rebenowitz. He is a National Homelessness Law Center's campaign and communications director. He has spoken across the country on topics such as advocacy to end homelessness, the connection between white supremacy and anti-Semitism and how to build local budget campaigns. Jessie, first of all, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. There were a couple things you said that I want to start with. First of all, the couple of lines you said, right on, you said locking up people you don't like or that you don't want to see is textbook authoritarianism. And you also said his targeting of homeless folks in DC, that population is over 85% block. He said, you said that's intentional. Trump's path makes housing more expensive, makes more people homeless, then locks people up, living in a country with no affordable housing. So I want to talk about the Authoritarianism here. I also want to talk about something else.

You touched there.

And that is that a lot of people saying, well, we do have this homelessness problem. What are we supposed to do about it? Well, you and I, and certainly most of our listeners would agree, well, not supposed to just get rid of them. He says he's giving them, you know, this is such a problem I have not only with the immigrants, but with homeless and so forth. us and so forth. Where are these people going? They're essentially being disappeared.

So over to you, what's going on in Washington? How do you see this as part of a larger agenda

of the Trump administration? What should we be doing about homelessness and how we're going to stop all this? Those are great questions. I want to back up and say that none of this is surprising. None of this is surprising. Donald Trump during his campaign talked openly about rounding up homeless people and forcing them into government-run detention camps. Last year, there was a Supreme Court ruling that Johnson versus Grant's past case, which said that cities can arrest people or give people tickets for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go. And since that ruling, over 260 cities have passed laws that make it illegal to be homeless. There is a far right-wing billionaire back to think tank out of Texas called the Cicero Institute, which has been peddling racist cookie cutter laws aimed at making it a crime to be homeless across the country and they now have the ear of the Trump administration. We are seeing these billionaires that are so out of touch that they actually think that homelessness as a choice that they actually think people are choosing to live outside and we know nothing could be further from the truth The average cost ever one bedroom in DC is $2,300 a month Most people can't afford that when rent goes up homelessness goes up And that's why we see people sleeping outside in DC and sleeping outside across the country. We should not be surprised by this. And as Donald Trump said, what starts in DC will spread to the rest of the country. He has specifically called out that he was going to export his scorched earth homeless policies to Chicago, to New York, to Baltimore, to LA and Oakland. Notably, those are all cities with black mayors. This is part of his white supremacist authoritarian agenda. None of this helps anybody. I was there on Thursday night, went over 30 federal agents, surrounded a homeless and came in and foggy bottom. And I was there on Friday when people had their possessions and tents and belongings thrown away. That doesn't get anybody housing, that doesn't get anybody help. And the fact that the most powerful person in the world is using his position to throw away homeless people's belongings is just shameful. That's not leadership, that's just being a bully. You know when you you said repeatedly that none of this is surprising. There are two issues here. Number one is not surprising because throughout this campaign, as you said, they talked about things like mass deportations. He talked about things like getting rid of homelessness the way you said. But also, it's not surprising, given the accumulation of $50 trillion in the hands of the top 1% that had not existed there before over the last 50 years. So much of this is a consequence of the particular strain of amoral capitalism that gave rise to all this, right? What do we do now? What do we do now? How do we change any of this? First of all, how do we change our economic system so that more people could get into the system, definitely, into housing? But also, how do we stop this authoritarian, I think, really, at this point, bordering on totalitarianism, a wave of governmental policy that's upon us now? Absolutely. When you did treat housing as a need, something that everybody needs, just like food and oxygen, instead of treating housing like a tool for people to accumulate wealth, everybody needs to say place to live. That is true. Indicides that is true across the country, but at this moment in time, half of renters struggle to pay rent. One in four people worry about, imminently becoming homeless, and one in five people spend all of their income on rent. That is not a housing program. That is not a housing platform that works. It is not sustainable. It will not last. We need to re-imagine housing in this country and ensure that everybody, regardless of where they're from, what they look like, who they love, what they do, has a safe place to live. Because we know that if we actually care about safe communities, we need to get folks housed and we need to get, and we need to get folks the resources they need to thrive. What do we do next is a good question. We know that Donald Trump is planning to export these anti-homelessness policies across the country, and that might include using the federal government and federal police to make it a crime to be homeless. We need people to support congresspersons, jai appalled and frosts, housing not handcuffs act. This act was introduced recently and prevents the federal government from making it a crime to be homeless. If this were in place in DC, we would not see federal agents harassing people experiencing homelessness. We also need this law to be passed at the state and local level to ensure that nobody is thrown in jail or giving a ticket for sleeping outside. In a country where nobody is thrown in jail and no one was, where nobody is thrown in jail and when nobody is given a ticket for sleeping outside in the country, where housing is just too expensive. So, you said that Pramala Jaya Paul and Maxwell Frost, two congresspeople, they have already submitted a bill and this would be called, would you say, housing not handcuffs? So everybody you can call Congress, call your Congressperson and definitely make a call, definitely. We've made it easy for folks to housing not handcuffs.org and we have their emails ready to go so you can shoot them in email and share on social. We've really need this act to pass right now. OK.

Handcuffs, I mean, housing. Not handcuffs.org. Housing. Not handcuffs.org. And we'll write that down below. But also, even though Jesse said that they have emails ready to go, write in your own words. You know the thing that particularly gets to me every time. First of all, they're around what? 7800 thousand homeless people in the United States, Jesse.

And a hype number of those are actually people who work full time. Correct. Definitely people across the country are working in Ken MacKenzie meet. Right, and they have their children with them. In many cases, correct? Sometimes. So, so everybody when you're talking about just getting rid of their belongings, think what that means and things what it would mean to you to be living in a tent, the little that you have. I mean the the personal trauma of this, the personal trauma of this, so don't hesitate to write in your own words, your feelings, how you feel about this. Because I think that that really makes a difference when individual Congress people read those things. And also, in addition to sending the email, please call, say this is a constituent call. Because don't think it doesn't make a difference. Because the Congress person will hear at the end of the day how many people calls, how many calls you've got about this. And it actually does make a difference. If you're in a Democratic district, you say, well, my Democratic Congressperson already would be for this, you can't be sure of that. And even if they're for it, you want them to be vocally in support of it, because they're having to decide what to concentrate on and what to focus on. And obviously, if it's a Republican, you need to do that. So we've got that bill.

That was the first thing you said to pass that bill,

to try to pass that bill.

I'm sure there will be extraordinary Republican resistance

to passing the bill.

But you know, anytime we can get even,

there's still a raise or thin majority that they have.

So there's hope in the air.

And I think a lot of people are at least

feeling the public pressure.

Because this is normalized cruelty

that we are talking about here.

Jesse, tell me where these people are going.

The people have been rounded up in Washington.

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