This is Jacobin Radio, I'm Suzy Weisman. On today's program, we begin with an update

from Alan Minsky on the state of play in passing the build back better reconciliation

and infrastructure bills. The progressives are using their leverage because the bill

is connected to the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill, the centrist favor, but want to

whittle down to tout as their accomplishment. Media coverage as mischaracterized this as

a split in the Democratic Party, rather than as the LA Times did, on Saturday, getting

it right, there are two holdouts while the rest of the Dems are behind Biden's agenda.

It's all riveting and we get Alan's analysis of what lies underneath, which players have

more weight, the tactics employed, and what he sees as the possible outcome. We then spend

the rest of the hour with our own Melissa Figueroa lead author on the new dispatch from

pandemic research for the people called to live and die in Los Angeles, COVID-19, structural

stress, and the path to a more resilient public health. The dispatch identifies the ways

COVID merged with and reinforced existing crises generated by a neoliberalized economy

with labor precarity, house instability, homelessness, psychosocial stress, lack of health care

and social safety net access, all contributing to the tenacity of the pandemic and pointing

to the social vulnerability to future pandemics and natural disasters. It's a comprehensive

analysis, focusing on what LA County has done right and what more has to be done. All

this, when our program returns, in just a moment.

This is Jacobin Radio. I am Suzy Weisman and I'm very pleased to have Alan Minsky back

with us. He was just with us a week ago, but there's so much that is ongoing that I decided

that we need to not finish but continue the conversation. Alan is the executive director

of PDA, which is the progressive Democrats of America, and a long time political essayist

...