The Rhode Island Political Cooperative

Current Affairs

Comedy, Government, News, Culture, Politics

4.4 • 645 Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2020

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

The Rhode Island Political Cooperative is a grassroots organization that just ran a slate of 24 progressive candidates across Rhode Island's state legislature, of which two-thirds either won their primaries or ran unopposed. Even if you don't live in Rhode Island, their strategy provides an exciting blueprint for transforming state governments. To learn more, Pete interviews Cynthia Mendes, State Senate candidate for Rhode Island District 18, and Matt Brown, co-chair of the Rhode Island Political Cooperative. Ryan Grim: "Rhode Island's Progressive Wave Was Four Years In The Making", The Intercept - https://theintercept.com/2020/09/11/rhode-island-democrat-primary-progressive-wave/ https://ripoliticalcoop.com/ This episode was edited by Dan Thorn of Pink Noise Studios in Somerville, MA.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone. It's your host, Pete Davis, and welcome to a very special episode of current affairs.
0:06.3	Lost in the news back in September was a very, very exciting thing that happened in America's favorite tiny state, Rhode Island.
0:17.0	Bold, justice-minded challengers won eight primaries in Rhode Island State House, in what
0:23.5	Ryan Cooper is called, quote, the start of a serious political realignment in the state
0:28.6	and another instance of the left chipping away at a corrupt democratic establishment
0:33.9	that has completely lost touch with its voting base. Do waves like this come out of nowhere?
0:40.5	Never. There's always a story of dedicated individuals working hard over a long period of time to make
0:47.2	things like this happen, to make the impossible become the inevitable. So I wanted to find out about
0:53.3	the story behind this wave in the hopes
0:55.8	that we can all learn something about how we can make similar waves happen in other states.
1:01.8	So today we have one of those challengers. Cynthia Mendez is the senator-elect for District 18
1:09.8	in Rhode Island, a part of this wave. Welcome, Cynthia.
1:13.9	Thank you for having me, Pete. So glad to have you on. And we're joined also by Matt Brown,
1:18.5	who is one of the co-founders of the organization behind the wave, the Rhode Island Political
1:24.8	Cooperative. So before we jump into this very exciting story of how y'all shook up the
1:31.0	Rhode Island State House, I want to just kind of set the scene and orient our listeners to
1:35.4	what was the state of Rhode Island government that inspired the need for this wave? And that's a
1:42.1	question for both of you. Like, what was your experience of the machine in Rhode Island that you wanted to take on? Well, you sort of nailed it in
1:49.3	the intro. Pete, deeply corrupt, totally self-interested, anti-people, anti-environment, anti-woman,
1:57.5	anti-people of color, anti-working people.
2:19.3	I mean, just people from outside of Rhode Island, it's hard to understand when you see that it has been long been essentially a super majority Democratic government, that this is a government that was anti-women's reproductive freedom, anti-doing doing anything about climate change,
2:23.7	wouldn't pass a $15 per hour wage.
	...

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