ourVoices

The United States is facing a severe housing crisis. 

As millions are laid off around the country, there is not a single US state where the number of affordable homes to let matches the number of low-income people looking to rent.

Where people can find shelter, three quarters of all extremely low-income families pay more than half their income in rent.

With eviction moratoriums now lifting across the country and Congress stalling over a new relief package, recent reports suggest that up to 43 million Americans could face eviction in the coming months.

In part one of our documentary podcast on the US housing crisis, we explored how racial discrimination is a foundational theme in the history of US federal housing policy, and examined the negligence of President Trump’s tenure in the context of decades of disinvestment and privatization by successive administrations.

In part two, we consider the failure of existing policy frameworks to deal with the housing crisis, and examine how popular movements are proposing radical new policies – reshaping the political discourse on housing in the midst of the 2020 US election cycle.

This episode is a conversation between ourEconomy’s Europe Editor, Laura Basu, and academic and author Gargi Bhattacharyya.

Jen Perelman is challenging former head of the Democratic National Committee and current Florida 23rd congressional district representative Debbie Wasserman Shultz in a primary election on August 18th.

Wasserman Shultz has held the Florida congressional seat since 2004 and infamously was the head of the Democratic National Committee, when she resigned after Wikileaks released emails revealing party officials sabotaging the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary.

Backed by Brand New Congress and former presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Marianne Williamson, Jen supports a progressive economic agenda of $2000 a month universal basic income, as well as Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.

This interview is part of ourEconomy’s series on the US election.

In the US today, the number of households who are renting is near postwar highs. Since the 2008 recession, home ownership has dropped by 6%. While 17% of households pay over half their income in rent, another fifth pay over a third. 

This housing crisis has been further exposed during the current coronavirus pandemic.  With record rates of unemployment, and 30 million workers collecting jobless benefits, the tenuous precarity of America’s housing market is on full display. But how did it get to this point? 

In the first part of our two-part documentary podcast on the US housing crisis, we dig deeper into the history of US housing policy, and place the negligence of Trump’s tenure in the context of decades of disinvestment and privatization by successive administrations. 

We are a small non-profit journalism outfit, not funded by dark money or lucrative sponsorship, so we depend on regular donations from our listeners. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to donate, click here: http://bit.ly/3bb06Os

This week’s guest on ourVoices is the billionaire philanthropist, environmental activist, and former presidential candidate, Tom Steyer.

Since leaving the corporate sector, Steyer has pursued an active political career.

In 2013 he launched the nonprofit organization NextGen America, which mobilizes young people to vote for Democratic candidates who back progressive positions on climate change, immigration, and education.

Last year, Steyer launched his own outside bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Running on a platform that forefronted the climate crisis, he also advocated for a wealth tax and reparations for slavery.

Recently named a co-chair of Vice President Joe Biden’s Climate Engagement Advisory Council – Aaron White and Freddie Stuart asked Steyer about Biden’s newly released climate plan, and whether there is a consensus forming in the Democratic Party around a bold environmental justice agenda.

Michael Brooks was a renowned journalist, intellectual, and political satirist.

Best known for his work with the Majority Report and for hosting The Michael Brooks Show, Brooks was an outspoken activist for social justice and human rights across the world.

Back in February, Brooks welcomed us into his home in Brooklyn where we recorded this interview as part of a documentary podcast on the US military industrial-complex.

We had only asked him for half an hour, but he insisted we stay as long as we wanted to discuss what he viewed as a vital topic – the history and future of American foreign policy.

Michael Brooks was a kind and generous person, and his voice will be missed by those he educated all across the world.

Here is our hour with the late Michael Brooks.

Vijay Prashad is a journalist, commentator and executive-director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. He is also the Chief Editor at LeftWord Books.

Kshama Sawant is a socialist member of the Seattle City Council.

Elected in 2013, Sawant has championed increasing the minimum wage and higher taxes on multinational corporations.

In 2018, Sawant was one of only two dissenting voices on the city council voting in favour of a Seattle head tax, which would have seen Amazon pay the city $11 million annually to fund public housing and homeless services.

In response, Amazon spent an unprecedented $1.5 million to defeat her reelection bid in 2019. Sawant ultimately beat this exorbitant campaign and is currently serving her third term in office. 

We spoke with Sawant about Covid-19 and the intersecting crises of homelessness and healthcare throughout the US.

We are connected on a planetary scale. The same process that has allowed the coronavirus pandemic to spread so far so quickly – globalisation – also means that all our resources, our infrastructure, our food, energy, clothing, our electronic devices, almost everything human-made that we see around us, contains some component that someone from somewhere else has worked on. Our economy is global. It affects not only every human but also every animal, our climate and every aspect of our environment.

Yet most media coverage of the economy focuses on the national level, and when problems like global inequality, poverty or underdevelopment do get attention, they are often treated as the result of natural forces, or as resulting from corruption or bad governance in developing countries.

In this episode of ourVoices, Laura Basu digs into the structures of the global economy to understand why it is that some parts of the world have so much more wealth and power than others. 

openDemocracy is a small non-profit journalism outfit, not funded by dark money or lucrative sponsorship, so we depend on regular donations from our listeners. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to donate, click here: http://bit.ly/3bb06Os

Lawrence Hamm is the chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress – an independent, community based association of citizens working for racial, social and economic justice, which he founded in 1983.

A graduate of Princeton University, Hamm has been a community activist in New Jersey for the last 35 years. He was the state co-chair of the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign in 1988, the president of the New Jersey Rainbow Coalition, and the coordinator of the Malcolm X Commemoration Coalition.

He was also the New Jersey state chair for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2020.

Hamm is running for the US Senate against incumbent Democrat Cory Booker – who ran for the presidency earlier this year. The primary election will take place on July 7th.

We asked Hamm about his life as an activist, his involvement in the Jesse Jackson and Bernie Sanders campaigns, and how he views the unprecedented nature of the Black Lives Matter movement across the US and the world.