Future Hindsight

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Neal Rickner joins us to talk about the American Values Coalition, a growing community of Americans who are empowered to lead with truth, reject extremism and misinformation, and defend democracy. Get some pointers to dialogue across political divides and across the table.

First, have the courage to have the conversation. As much as hiding in the kitchen sounds preferable, we're going to engage on the issues one relationship at a time. Begin the conversation with a thoughtful question, and then sit back and really listen. Since we rely on the news to understand what's happening in the world, our news choices frame our reality. In fact, media source is among the top indicators of political choice. Consult multiple news sources and bring more truth to the conversation.

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https://twitter.com/ourvaluesngo

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Read the transcript here:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/have-the-conversation-neal-rickner

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guests: Neal Rickner

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producer: Zack Travis

Thursday, November 16th, 2023

Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University and co-author of Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters are Turning Away from the Democratic Party. We learn how unions are true laboratories of democracy and why their demise has eroded our democratic culture.

Unions were at the heart of local communities well beyond bargaining for contracts. They were part of recreational and social life, and even the churches were aligned with unions. There was a sense of solidarity for fellow union members, pride in their work, and a natural alignment on politics. If elections are about voting for who is on your side, then politics is partly about who we are — and who they are. American democracy is at an inflection point and the question is whether the news who are engaged are willing to practice and defend democracy.

Learn More About Theda:

https://scholar.harvard.edu/thedaskocpol/home

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Read the transcript here:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/unions-and-democracy-theda-skocpol

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guests: Theda Skocpol

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producer: Zack Travis

Thursday, November 9th, 2023

Bernard E. Harcourt is Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University -- and he was also our very first guest on the podcast! Bernard's most recent book, Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social Theory, offers the blueprint for a society based on cooperation.

The idea of creating a space that benefits the stakeholders, rather than the shareholders, has a long history. Cooperatives offer a robust way of being. They practice self-governance among equals through democratic process. In fact, we could have democratic processes, democratic education, and democratic training in every aspect of our lives. We could even nurture a culture of democratic self-governance at work, which is traditionally one of the least democratic places in our daily lives. Cooperation democracy aims to extend the democratic culture to every facet of our lives.

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https://twitter.com/BernardHarcourt

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Read the transcript here:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/cooperation-democracy-bernard-harcourt

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guests: Bernard Harcourt

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producer: Zack Travis

Thursday, November 2nd, 2023

Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the author of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. We discuss the role of collective memory in the myth-making of American exceptionalism.

Collective memory is the way that we remember history and that becomes central to our idea of who we are as a people. It's a process of storytelling and the most central stories to who we are as a people. The civil rights movement has become one of the central collective memories in America's story of both who it is and who it wants to be. However, careful examination of the record reveals that the civil rights movement was a political project that was meant to actually dismantle multicultural democracy. Further, as the collective memory of Dr. King became sanitized and whitewashed, his legacy carried a lot of moral legitimacy, and his moral symbolic authority became ripe for manipulation.

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www.futurehindsight.com

Read the transcript here:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/shaping-collective-memory-hajar-yazdiha

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guests: Hajar Yazdiha

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producer: Zack Travis

Thursday, October 26th, 2023

Nick Suplina is Senior Vice President for Law & Policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. He was previously an advisor for New York State's Attorney General. We discuss how 10 years of grassroots organizing has changed the political calculus on gun safety legislation, starting with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

Although progress is slow, 15 Republican senators did vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022. This was made possible because of 10 years worth of pressure from constituents. Since Sandy Hook, grassroots organizing has made a significant difference. The notion that there is no point in fighting because nothing will ever change is false. As Nick told us, "Just because we can't get everything we want, doesn't mean we shouldn't act every way we can."

Follow Nick on Twitter:

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Learn about Everytown for Gun Safety:

www.everytown.org

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Read the transcript here:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/everytown-for-gun-safety-nick-suplina

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guests: Nick Suplina

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producer: Zack Travis

Thursday, October 19th, 2023

Sam Oliker-Friedland is the Executive Director of the Institute for Responsive Government and a former Department of Justice voting rights litigator at the Civil Rights Division. We discuss the promise of automation for good governance and democracy.

There is a lot of good pro-voter legislation being implemented in states from Nevada to Michigan, Pennsylvania to New York. The success of automatic voter registration laws are fertile ground for better public policy making and better governance across the board. Practical public policy is impact forward. It takes account of on the ground implementation and of the political reality in the states. And then it goes back to see if the policy did achieve the desired impact.

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https://twitter.com/SamOlikerF

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Sponsor:

Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight! Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/hopeful.

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Read the transcript here:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/making-government-responsive-sam-oliker-friedland

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guests: Sam Oliker-Friedland

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producer: Zack Travis

Thursday, October 12th, 2023

Steven Levitsky is Professor of Government at Harvard University. Together with Daniel Ziblatt, he is co-author of How Democracies Die and has just published Tyranny of the Minority. They argue that reforming American institutions to become more democratic will help us achieve a multiracial democracy—and in the process save democracy itself.

We are on the cusp of a multiracial democracy, but to get there we need to reform our constitution and end counter-majoritarian institutions. Majorities should be empowered to govern. If the majorities are not getting serious consideration in the legislature, something is wrong. For example, states with higher populations should get greater representation because democracy represents people, not territory.

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Read the transcript here:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/tyranny-of-the-minority-steven-levitsky

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guests: Steven Levitsky

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producer: Zack Travis

Thursday, October 5th, 2023

Jocelyn Simonson is Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, a former public defender, and the author of Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration. We discuss how certain radical acts of justice challenge the legitimacy of the criminal system and form the underpinning of a new collective legal thought.

The four pillars of this work comprise of court watching, community bail funds, participatory defense, and people's budgets. Bail funds are pulling the rug out from the system's justification for what it's doing. Defunding the system in this way shows that the combination of carceral and economic forces that we currently use to "do justice" is not inevitable. A big part of the power of these acts of justice is that they're done collectively. Abolition has two sides: breaking down and building up. Jocelyn shared that "we need to simultaneously decarcerate, stop spending our resources, and start building it out."

Follow Jocelyn on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/j_simonson

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Check out the Future Hindsight website!

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Read the transcript here:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/radical-acts-of-justice-jocelyn-simonson

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guests: Jocelyn Simonson

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producer: Zack Travis

Thursday, September 28th, 2023

Stephen Bright and James Kwak are co-authors of The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts. Stephen Bright has been an advocate for death row inmates for four decades and was the long-time director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, where James Kwak is the immediate past chair. We do not have a level playing field between the prosecution and the defense. Inequality and injustice in the criminal legal system is made worse by the widespread lack of capable defense attorneys for poor people. If you're accused of a crime, a good lawyer can tell you what your rights are and can conduct an investigation to uncover new facts that might show your innocence. Unsurprisingly, over 90% of convictions are acquired through plea bargains, instead of through trials.

Listen to our first conversation with Stephen:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episode/stephen-bright

Follow James on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/jamesykwak

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Check out the Future Hindsight website!

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Read the transcript here:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/the-fear-of-too-much-justice-stephen-bright-james-kwak

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guests: Stephen Bright & James Kwak

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producer: Zack Travis

Thursday, September 21st, 2023

Sara Schreiber is the Executive Director of America Votes, the coordination hub of progressive communities. We discuss expanding access to voting, modernizing elections, and getting out the vote up and down the ballot. The last three election cycles saw a real surge of voters: 46 million people who did not vote in the 2016 election, voted in 2018 or 2020. Unprecedented numbers of voter engagement and pro voter policies have also been implemented since 2016. New voters are young and diverse. More than half of them are 18 to 34; nearly half are people of color; and 56 percent of them are women. Although most of them think of themselves as independents, they are more progressive on the issues. They are in favor of abortion rights, gun violence prevention policies, and climate action. Democracy issues were also more salient in the election after the Dobbs decision. In the eighties, younger voters were not necessarily more progressive than older voters.

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https://twitter.com/SchreiberSara

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Check out the Future Hindsight website!

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Read the transcript here:

https://www.futurehindsight.com/episodes/america-votes-sara-schreiber

Credits:

Host: Mila Atmos

Guests: Sara Schreiber

Executive Producer: Mila Atmos

Producer: Zack Travis