PUSHBACK Talks

In cities of all sizes across North America, legislation and policy are enacting violence on poor people. From housing policies that will see tens of thousands more people become homeless due to unaffordability to an ordinance in Los Angeles that makes it nearly impossible for the unhoused to find a place to rest, criminalization of homeless people is being dressed up as solutions

Fredrik and Leilani are joined by Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography at UCLA, Ananya Roy, and Dan Oudshoorn of #TheForgotten519 to unpack the root causes of the extreme cruelty being levvied against the most vulnerable, and discuss how legislation is making it easier to cage and control  people already suffering under the most dire circumstances. Why, when there's more money available to address housing and homelessness than ever before, does the death toll continue to climb and mass evictions loom on the horizon?

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The seasons are changing and the Filmmaker and the Advocate are back for season 5 of Pushback Talks! In 2020, amidst substantial social unrest, the people of Chile demanded a new constitution - the first since the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1980s. Now, two years later, division over the content of the new text led to it being rejected by 62% of voters.

Magdalena Sepulveda, Chilean human rights lawyer and the former UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty (2008-2014), talks about the writing of Chile's constitution by the common people, the impact of misinformation and business interests on the outcome of the vote, and the lessons learned from the rejection of the new constitution.

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It's summertime in Sweden and Canada, and that means it's time for Pushback Talks - Summer Series! The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For the next couple of months, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners curated podcasts from Seasons 3 & 4 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with recent news and a few personal reflections. No matter where you are - we hope you enjoy this year's Summer Series!

This week we revisit our conversation with Member of European Parliament and the woman behind ‘My Home is an Asset Class,’ Kim Van Sparrentak.

 The EU Commission cannot make laws on housing, so Kim decided to commission a report on all the aspects where the European Union does have an influence on the housing market. While researching for the report, she came across Push the film and realized that – not only was there a housing crisis throughout many countries in Europe – it was happening all over the world and being fueled by the same factors.

And so ‘My Home is an Asset Class’ was born. For the first time, it’s down on paper just how big the business of financialization in Europe truly is – and it’s still growing. Fredrik, Leilani, and Kim talk about meeting with Blackstone, staying motivated in the fight against corruption, and the importance of addressing the issue at every level of government. What kind of world can we create if we put people before profit?

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It's summertime in Sweden and Canada, and that means it's time for Pushback Talks - Summer Series! The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For the next couple of months, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners curated podcasts from Seasons 3 & 4 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with recent news and a few personal reflections. No matter where you are - we hope you enjoy this year's Summer Series!

Class is in session – The Filmmaker and the Advocate sit down with New York Times correspondent and author of powerful book Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World, Peter S. Goodman, to learn about the handful of billionaires that are dramatically re-structuring the world as we know it. 

In the two years since the pandemic began, the ten richest people on the planet have more than doubled their wealth, even while homelessness and housing inadequacy have increased at a rapid rate. And this isn’t just about housing, these people impact systems all over the world – health care, public health, sovereign debt, the list goes on. These billionaires hide behind a cosmic lie – that by giving them tax breaks and advantages everyone will reap the benefits – while creating the problems they are claiming to solve.

Goodman’s must-read new book, Davos Man, unpacks that cosmic lie by exploring who these people are and how they have manipulated laws and policies to uphold and perpetuate a system that proves, year after year, to primarily benefit the ultra-wealthy.

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It's summertime in Sweden and Canada, and that means it's time for Pushback Talks - Summer Series! The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For the next couple of months, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners curated podcasts from Seasons 3 & 4 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with recent news and a few personal reflections. No matter where you are - we hope you enjoy this year's Summer Series!

On 3 October 2021, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) published the Pandora Papers, a roster of almost 12 million confidential files that had been leaked to the organization detailing the offshore financial dealings of hundreds of politicians, public officials, and celebrities. This type of controversial uncovering of finances is nothing new; similar leaks to the ICIJ happened in 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2020. Despite this, outrage over the reveal that many politicians and public officials have secret offshore dealings worth billions has been surprisingly low. 

The Filmmaker and the Advocate sit down with Dr. Anna Minton, writer, journalist, academic, and author of Big Capital, to discuss the complexities of finance that keep the public from understanding the problems unfolding at a global level. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of taxes go missing each year – how do offshore holdings deteriorate the social contract we agree to, and contribute to a lack of available government resources that could change lives? 

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It's summertime in Sweden and Canada, and that means it's time for Pushback Talks - Summer Series! The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For the next couple of months, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners curated podcasts from Seasons 3 & 4 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with recent news and a few personal reflections. No matter where you are - we hope you enjoy this year's Summer Series!

For decades, real estate developers in China had access to cheap money, thanks to the property sector's role in creating household wealth. That is until President Xi Jinping used his "common prosperity" to establish new policies to limit the use of property as a financial tool.  The policies landed China’s second-largest property developer in a world of trouble. The world’s most indebted property developer, Evergrande found itself in debt to the tune of $310 billion with over a million flats that had already been paid for still yet to be built.

Revisit Leilani & Fredrik's conversation with Dexter Roberts, author of The Myth of Chinese Capitalism and former China bureau chief and Asia News Editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, and get an update on where Evergrande and the Chinese real estate market are now. 

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It's summertime in Sweden and Canada, and that means it's time for Pushback Talks - Summer Series! The Filmmaker and the Advocate are taking a break, but the podcast isn't.  For the next couple of months, Fredrik and Leilani bring their faithful fans and new listeners curated podcasts from Seasons 3 & 4 - episodes you may have missed that are definitely worth a listen. We've pared them down,  and updated each with recent news and a few personal reflections. No matter where you are - we hope you enjoy this year's Summer Series!

At the conclusion of COP26 – the United Nations Climate Summit - the international community was divided on the conference’s final outcomes. Coined “the most exclusionary climate summit to date”, advocates, activists, and leaders of developing countries were enraged by the dominance of wealthy nations and the watering down of outcomes, to benefit the economies of some countries while damning the future of others.

The Filmmaker and the Advocate sit down with UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, David Boyd, to discuss the important links between the right to housing and the right to a clean environment, and how human rights infrastructure is vital for both. He also gives examples of how climate change is being addressed at the local level, with scant resources but with a tremendous amount of creativity, courage, and commitment.
 

Produced by WG Film
Edited by Alexander Jemtrell
Music by Florencia Di Concilio
Social Media & Support - Kirsten McRae & Alexander Jemtrell

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New things are on the horizon! While the Filmmaker is off working on his latest film, the Advocate will be launching a long-awaited project at European Parliament! 

After over a year of work, Leilani and her team are debuting The Shift Directives -- the first-ever comprehensive framework for governments to effectively address the financialization of housing in accordance with human rights law.

Fredrik and Leilani sit down for a one-on-one conversation about the Shift Directives and why they’re so important, and give us a window into what it takes to draft and publish a global standard-setting document.

The Shift Directives launch will begin with a screening of PUSH at 9 am EST/3 pm CET on 2 June at the European Parliament in Brussels. Register here for virtual access to the entire event: http://greens.eu/3PnZLg7. 

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It's been five years since Grenfell Tower in London burned down, after polyethylene cladding installed to make the building look more attractive acted as an accelerant and rapidly spread the fire along the length of the building. In the years since, many of those affected by the fire have had their lives uprooted, and there has been no real accountability. Many people whose homes still have the cladding are being forced to bear the cost of removing the expensive material from their buildings (sometimes as much as £50,000), despite having no say in its installation.

Leilani and Fredrik are joined by Kareem Dennis, also known as Lowkey, a London-based activist, writer, and rapper for a history lesson on the Kensington neighborhood around Grenfell, and the attritional violence that came to a head that night in June when the building caught fire. What can be done when the corporations responsible have no body to punish and no soul to condemn?

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Sixty percent of voters in Berlin voted to socialize apartments owned by corporate landlords with more than 3,000 properties in the city, but what comes next? 

The Filmmaker and the Advocate catch up with Joanna Kusiak, spokesperson for DW enteignen, on what has happened since the September 2021 Berlin referendum that voted in favor of government expropriation of over 200,000 privately-owned apartments in Berlin to create a new system of public housing. 

After years and years of pushing for reform, the referendum made headlines around the world as voter support was spread across all political parties in Berlin. Fredrik, Leilani, and Joanna discuss what it takes to build a revolution that uses the legal system while simultaneously challenging it, and keeping momentum when a movement isn't making headlines.

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