Transcript: ASTRA TAYLOR on Voting, Democracy, and People Power /206
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Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast, I’m Ayana Young. Today I’m speaking with Astra Taylor, a filmmaker, writer, and political organizer.
Astra Taylor “Elections matter but they're not synonymous with democracy, right? Democracy has to really exceed that level of engagement. And when we do talk about them, we need to somehow figure out how to do it that acknowledges the sort of anti-democratic and contradictory nature of our electoral system.”
Ayana Young Astra is the director of three acclaimed philosophical documentaries: What Is Democracy?, Examined Life, and Zizek!, all of which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
She is the author of the American Book Award winner The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age and her latest book, Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone -- is just out in paperback and audiobook. Named a “New Civil Rights Leader” by the LA Times, she co-founded the Debt Collective, a groundbreaking membership organization that has won over a billion dollars of debt relief for poor and working people.
Well, Astra, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm really looking forward to diving into conversation. So welcome.
Astra Taylor Thanks so much for having me.
Ayana Young So Astra, in preparing for the interview, a question I kept coming back to, is what is it exactly that our society wants? Do we truly yearn for democracy? Our current model of governance feels like a relinquishment of our power, we want to elect a small group of individuals we deem qualified as a way to absolve ourselves from the burdens of democracy, from having to reckon with our history, cycles of oppression, and systemic injustice. So I’m curious, in your time reflecting on democracy, what have you observed about our collective desire? How do we orient people towards democracy and encourage each other to make a commitment to a somewhat messy and difficult collective endeavor?
Astra Taylor Yeah, that's a good and deep question. To begin with, I mean, I almost want to back up a little bit and think about the word democracy itself, because I have to confess that that wasn't always a word that appealed to me in a deep way. I think even six or seven years ago, I would have been quite critical on the first blush of the word democracy. I came of age in the aughts, I was 21, when 911 happened, and George W. Bush made it his mission to bring democracy to Afghanistan, to Iraq, you know, and it was a terrible, terrible war that has unleashed so much human suffering, I mean, suffering on a scale that's unimaginable when you think of the lives lost, and also the forced migration that resulted. So democracy was not a word that really moved me. I was moved by words like freedom and liberation, equality, revolution, socialism, you know, many other words seemed more trustworthy than the word democracy, which was so corrupted. And it was through my engagement with Occupy Wall Street, the Occupy Wall Street movement and the movements of 2011, that, you know, now, I think, in this moment, we're in today, we're speaking June 2020, I mean, it's almost like 2011 kicked off this wave of social movement, energy that hasn't been able to be totally suppressed. You know, we're still feeling the echoes and reverberations around the world. People started rising up and chanting that word, we want democracy, we want real democracy, they were saying things like you don't represent us. And these movements kicked off in the Middle East, they kicked off in Europe, they kicked off in South America and where I was in New York City, you know, it manifested as this little occupation of Zuccotti Park.
And so in that moment, I said, okay, everyone's gonna use this word democracy, you know, from from the neoconservatives in Washington, DC, down to my anarchist friends here in Zuccotti Park, which was renamed Liberty Square, and it's my tendency to sort of mull things over and I thought, “Okay, well, if, if I'm going to use this word, I'm gonna really think about it. What does the word democracy mean?” And I made a film called What is Democracy? because I'm rather literal minded, I suppose. And then this companion book, and I really came around to the concept I mean, going back to the etymological roots of the word means “demos” - of the people and “kratos” - they have the power, they rule.
What I like about the word now that I’ve done all this, this pondering is, you know that those two aspects of the term can evolve, transform, and expand. Who the people are has expanded over, not just centuries, but millennia and how we rule can also change, we can rule more deeply, we can hold power, more profoundly. I think democracy is fundamentally quite a radical concept. And, and that's why elites have always feared it and tried to co-opt it and give it a much more constrained and limited meaning. And we know that from the history of this country, right, all the ways in which the proverbial sort of founding fathers tried to create an undemocratic system, they said, democracy is a bad word, they were very open about that. So I think we have to begin with that you know that democracy is very problematic. It's very paradoxical. My book is all about how paradoxical democracy is, and how full of inherent contradictions and challenges it is. But nevertheless, it's this sort of horizon that I think is worth struggling towards democracy is not in my view, something will ever reach and just have, so my, my thinking is that we need to aim to be not founding fathers, who set the rules of democracy and stone, but rather perpetual midwives trying to birth democracy and new.
And so that gets to your question, well, do we want democracy? One of the most foundational paradoxes of democracy is actually, I think, articulated very well by the philosopher, Rousseau. And it's sometimes called the Fermi paradox. And it's essentially, well, what comes first, the institutions of democracy or people oriented towards democracy, right? Because it would seem like you already need a kind of democratic people in order to create democratic structures, and yet you need democratic structures in order to cultivate democratically spirited people. So there's this kind of chicken and egg problem at the foundation of democracy. And so when you ask, you know, do people want democracy? I mean, I think, I think it's a it's a, it's both an open question, and that we see conflicting impulses. I mean, at this moment, where it's such an interesting moment to be talking about democracy, the most beautiful, you know, uprising of this last, you know, almost 10 years of social movements, I mean, these protests against white supremacy and police violence, and we're seeing this democratic engagement, right of people wanting to reclaim their power and to say we want we want to rule in a different way, we want to rule in a less punitive, murderous and discriminatory way, at the same time where we see, you know, impulses in the opposite direction, right? We see people gravitating towards populist, misogynist, xenophobic, racist leaders, we see the rule of the rich, we see competition. So we see, you know, that the evidence is contradictory. I think, part of the Democratic project, and I think it's also part of my personal, like, creative project is that the people is not set in stone, the people of democracy doesn't just exist. And we know this, that just from daily life, right? We know this, from our encounters with human beings, human beings change, we change individually, we change collectively. And so I think part of the optimism inherent in being both a person who engages in artistic practice and a person who engages in activism is that you think the people can be transformed, right, that we can have the capacity to become more democratic. And I guess my democratic hope is that, you know, we get further along the path to a more equitable, sustainable, and just society. And then future generations go even further and look back on us and think, gosh, those people weren't democratic at all.
Ayana Young Well, I’d like to explore our desire for leadership a little bit further in context to the pandemic and the technocratic future we seem to be on the precipice of...based off of your research and writing for The People’s Platform, what do you predict will happen should we quietly relinquish our power to a technocratic system? How is the total integration of technology in our daily lives an inherent commercialization of our existence?
Astra Taylor Yeah, I mean, so maybe, to define our terms, again, you know, what is technocracy? It's rule by technique or rule by experts. And I think, you know, it's always good to acknowledge what maybe was the initial positive impulse in something, right? So the idea is, well, if we could just have rule of experts, or just rule of neutral technique, then we could bypass some of the problems of democracy, right? The problem of the tyranny of the majority or unruly passions, mob rule, right? These are the problems that happen when you have people making decisions together.
The problem is that there's no perfect neutral technocrat right? Expertise is never neutral. It's always invested. It always comes out of power relations. And you know, and people often forget that even the term, the word technocracy/meritocracy are kind of you know, in my In my view, similar they're kind of twins, we forget that, that the concept of meritocracy actually begin from a satire that a man named Michael Young wrote, he was a Labour Party organizer in the UK. And he wrote a satirical book as a warning. And it was a society where those, the academic achievers ruled, and they believe like that they deserved to rule compared to everyone else. He wasn't, he was not naming this system of meritocracy as though it was a good thing he was warning against it. And yet, we're in a society that's very sort of attached to that as a, you know, a conception of a fair society. So, you know, technocracy then also manifests. Yeah, as you said, you know, in our technology, the idea that we're living in a world where so many of the, the tools we use, the platforms we use, the devices we use, are these interfaces that we you know, as just regular users have very little control over that we don't understand are, in fact made to be opaque, and untransparent, you know, so that we can't really see the way they work or who they're serving, we don't understand the algorithms determining what actually shows up in our feed. And, you know, so we end up ceding a lot of power effectively to algorithms, algorithms that are designed by people whose goal is to make profit, and to shape our behavior in ways that are beneficial to them.
So I think that's a very troubling scenario, what I outlined in the People's Platform, so that was a book, The People's Platform came out in 2014, at a kind of apex of techno utopianism. And there's a lot of talk, then it was very different than it is now there's a lot of talk then about how social media was going to democratize everything and get rid of middlemen. And no, and I never believed that. So I pointed out “No, well, no social media is, you know, actually isn't a middleman. All these platforms, be they Google, Amazon, Facebook, these are mediators, these are middlemen, and they're concentrating wealth in an absolutely egregious way.” I mean, the internet is designed as this huge wealth extraction machine, Google sucks up well from around the world and concentrates it in one geographic location, mainly in Southern California, in the hands of a handful of white men. So, you know, I was making these observations that now seem very, they seemed kind of edgy or cynical at the time, and now they're just commonplace. But my point was that the problem isn't so much the technology, it's the political economy that underlies them, it's the underlying business model. You know, the fact is, the idea of having a search engine like Google that organizes knowledge and makes it accessible to people in their homes, or wherever we are in our cars, on walks, you know, whenever we can look at our phones, it's a beautiful concept. But to keep itself afloat, Google has to engage in the most invasive forms of digital surveillance and, and advertising. And Google is effectively an advertising company, right? It's not really in the business of, of knowledge sharing, it's not a library. It's an advertising agency.
And so it's those business models are the core problem, and therefore you can't disconnect technology from broader social and economic concerns. So you know, I'm very concerned, with the path we're on I'm very concerned with the drive, or just the power that this corporate technocracy has, in this, the underlying motivations of these corporations that are so intimately entwined in our daily lives. But I think to solve the problem, we have to look beyond tech, and think about the business models and think about, what would it mean to make more of our, our digital lives truly public, you know, turn search engines into public utilities? What would it mean to make them into cooperatives, right? So why couldn't we have a ride hailing service like Uber, but that is controlled by a municipality and run cooperatively, like a food Co Op, or a bike Co Op? Right? It's not that the idea of being able to hail a ride is terrible, it's that it's it's happening under these extremely exploitative conditions. And so it's that kind of, I think, right now, we're in an interesting moment, because people are so cynical about tech companies. But what we still need is that sort of utopian spark or kind of ideas about how it could be redesigned to serve the public interest.
The other thing I would say, too, is not just taking things out of the private sector, but being willing to abolish certain types of technology. I mean, I think there are some forms of technology that shouldn't exist, like, in my opinion, we shouldn't extract fossil fuels, hydrocarbons, they should stay in the ground. And we should use solar energy. Like we also shouldn't. There's lots of personal data that we shouldn't extract, you know, facial recognition technology that's being used by employers. Just to essentially turn human workers into robots like that should be abolished. It shouldn't exist. So there's lots of technology that should be democratized, socialized, made public, however you want to frame it. And there's a lot of technology that just, we don't need if we want to have a better life.
Ayana Young Yeah, In Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, you write : “The problem stems, I believe, from the fact that democracy is something people rarely encounter in their everyday lives: certainly not during the media - and celebrity-obsessed, money-driven circus of national elections not at their jobs, where they are often treated like replaceable cogs in a machine and have to keep their heads down not at their schools or colleges, where they are encouraged to see themselves as consumers seeking a return on investments rather than as citizens preparing to participate in the common good.” So, I’d like to ask you, what does democracy feel and look like in our lived experience, and do you think actively practicing democracy everyday is enough to subvert the large scale, corporatized systems that are running society into the ground?
Astra Taylor Yeah. I mean, I think that that section that you read, came out of my experience of making the film, What is Democracy? And so these sister projects sort of had the same genesis, right? So I went out into the world, and I talked to people and I asked strangers, well, what, what is democracy? What does it mean to you? And then I edited the film. And once I was really familiar with the footage, and, and maybe three quarters of the way through the filmmaking process, I began to write the book. And what was striking to me, especially when talking to Americans was how unable people were to articulate a robust definition of democracy. I mean, people would say democracy was freedom or elections, and then they would tell me that they didn't feel like their vote counted, but they didn't have very in depth, little and personal, or passionate conceptions of democracy.
Now, there are some people, there are some exceptions to that. But they were people who tended to be involved in democratic projects, and whether as I say anything, whether as activists or because they were involved in electoral politics, or because they happen to work at a cooperative or something exceptional, but the average person, and instead of sort of saying, “Oh, this is just a sign that people don't care and are tuned out, or maybe even too stupid or disinterested, to deserve democracy,” I thought, well, this is a symptom of the fact that we don't have a democratic society. You know, when, when do people really get to experience self government, and we have a system based on voter suppression in the most profound way. A functioning American election is an election of voter suppression, there is no reason that people should have to jump through hoops to register to vote, you know, that you can't vote effortlessly and safely through a digital channel. We have pretty advanced technologies. If that was a priority, this country, we could do it. There's no reason that election day isn’t federal holiday, right? There's all of these ways in which we make it so difficult for people to do this pathetic baseline participation. And I just want to clarify and say that my definition of democracy is not just casting a ballot. But you know, that minimum threshold is one that we are sabotaging actively in the way that our society is structured. So that's where I kind of came to this position of, I would say, you know, having empathy for people saying, “Okay, well, this is I'm not blaming people for their lack of a passionate response to the question of what is democracy,” I'm looking at it as a consequence of the political structure that they're accustomed to.
And so I do think it's very powerful to create more democratic spaces. And, you know, I saw that, for example, both in the film in the book, I visit this amazing cooperative factory, it's one of the remaining, it's one of the few remaining textile factories in North Carolina, almost every other textile factory was shut down after the passage of NAFTA, when most companies took their factory works off of the border. It's run by Guatemalan immigrants, mostly people who fled the Civil War, which was a civil war that was precipitated by the involvement of the American government. So refugees, they are mostly Indigenous, in the factory, which didn't have that many workers. I mean, maybe 20 or 30 people, they spoke something like 20 or 30, Indigenous dialects with Spanish as their common tongue. And they had a very deep sense of democracy. They ran their company in a cooperative way. There was no boss, no single leader, they shared responsibilities, they shared the profits. And so this was a place where I could show democracy in action and also try to express to the audience or my readers that, you know, democracy isn't something that just applies to government to the state. In fact, if you go back a few hundred years, you know, the state wasn't democratic, right? People lived in an aristocracy, these people lived in, in, you know, if you were the ruling elite, if you were the royalty, you didn't care what the peasants thought it wasn't a democracy. So people had to fight for the state to become democratized to the degree it is. And now that's the public realm.
And now the private realm, in my opinion, is the next realm that needs to be democratized. Right? Why should we be subjected to a kind of authoritarian rule in the workplace, your boss can tell you what you're led to say what you have to wear, whether you can go to the bathroom, they can fire you, and thereby, you know, therefore, take away your healthcare and your livelihood. I mean, people have very few sort of civil liberties on the job. And I personally think that that's wrong. I think that's the next phase of that's one of the next arenas of democratic struggle.
You know, I think when we're thinking of huge social transformation, these little experiences do add up, right? I mean, one cooperative workplace in the American South, isn't going to take down corporate capitalism, or, you know, American liberal democracy. You know, in that sense, it's not the solution, but they can be profound when added up. So for example, this one factory is working on a larger project, that's called the industrial commons. So what if you start aggregating the power of these industrial cooperatives, right, to build them into a force, to start articulating the fact that, hey, if you want these good, well paying factory jobs to be in your community, but actually, you need to run your businesses in a different way. And also, you know, the immigrants who you're blaming for taking your jobs are actually the ones creating the good jobs, the only good jobs left in your community.
And, you know, I think if we want to change the bigger society, we have to have a much more articulated conception of power, and the power struggle and the class struggle that lies ahead. And this is why, you know, I think investing in and revitalizing the labor movement is really crucial. It's why in paying attention to the campaign's across the country right now to challenge the establishment democrats and sort of use the primary system to take over the Democratic Party are really important. I just wrote a piece that went up today, for the New Yorker about all of these socialists, who are managing to unseat incumbents in the Democratic Party and down ballot races, we have to look and see, well, where is their power that regular people are leaving on the table? How can they get organized and wield it? And how can we find solidarity and common interests? I mean, you know, it's, it's interesting, just the last couple weeks of protests, right, just breaking the mold going out in the streets, pushing the envelope rioting, if necessary, has had an effect. I mean, this is, that doesn't mean that that's the only method for change. I think what we need to do is sort of everything we need all kinds of unions, labor unions, tenant unions, student unions, we need social movements, movements against police brutality, movements for immigrant rights, you know, it's it's only when we do all of these seemingly little things, these individual actions, and then aggregate them that will have a chance of taking on these much bigger, more entrenched forces.
Ayana Young Never before has there been a period of time wherein we are thinking about democracy on a planet that is not promised. I know you’ve also written quite a bit about climate change and the relationship between present-day political actions and future generations, so I’d really like to ask you about what you think democracy means, or what it needs to look like under changing climate regimes and ecological collapse? Do acute ecological limits, or even just the mentality of possible dystopian futures somewhat hinder our ability to think about democracy?
Astra Taylor The climate crisis is the crisis of our time, because it's the crisis that limits the amount of time we have. Right? So we have very few years to address this, you know, it's common actually, to kind of frame the climate crisis as actually a problem of democracy, right to say, “Well, the problem is all of these individuals and their excessive freedoms, over consuming” and I'm quite resistant to that, that view because, you know, when we're trying to address something like the consumption of fossil fuels, or the greenhouse gas emissions, I mean, these are things that we can't, we can't adequately solve as individuals, because what we need social solutions, we need infrastructure, we need green infrastructure, we need green housing, we need to retrofit our existing buildings, and we need to revamp our food chains. Like this isn't something that we can do sort of one by one. And if you look at people's attitudes, if you look at the attitudes of the public, you know, I quote some of these statistics in the book, I mean, a majority of people would sacrifice economic growth for environmental sustainability. Which is remarkable to me, given the decades and decades of misinformation, and the sort of war on environmentalism that fossil fuel companies have been waging, right. So even even despite all of this, people, the average American is still, you know, concerned about ecology.
I think what we have is really a problem, the problem of anti-democracy, the problem of the greedy minority, the minority that is invested in environmentally destructive industries, that has sort of captured our political system, and has trapped us in this destructive, this destructive regime. Then once we let you know, I think with that understanding, then that kind of clarifies that the solution is it is a democratic solution, right? I mean, we want a solution where the majority of people and I mean, people beyond Americans beyond the the country that we're speaking in right now, you know, the majority people on this earth are not responsible for the excessive emissions that are causing climate crisis, you know, a minority of affluent people living in rich countries have caused this crisis. And so I think, you know, ultimately, what we want is a democratic solution where masses of people don't have to pay for the mistakes of a minority.
In the book, you hinted at this question of time, and in the book, I try to go beyond that and think about the fact that part of what is holding us back is that we have to challenge ourselves to think about democracy and our democratic responsibilities beyond the present. So it's like, what is the time scale of democracy? So in the book, you know, one chapter is about democracy and scale, you know, like we live in a global warming is global, we live in a society where what happened on the other side of the earth affects us. So how do we, how do we reconcile that fact, to the fact that democracy often works better in a kind of smaller, more intimate context, right, it's really hard to imagine making decisions with 7 billion people. So there's a tension there that we just have to grapple with.
And I think there's a temporal tension to democracy too. And for me, it's really embodied by the American Constitution. So what we have is this Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that were written by these white guys who were slave owners, mostly, with very different values, and they wrote down these laws and these principles, and now we, you know, are stuck with them. Right. I mean, it's like, the second amendment to me is the sort of dead hand of this slave owning class, constraining the present. So you know, the rules. So there's this group of dead men who have an enormous vote in our democracy today. And in all of the future generations, not just for me, of human beings, but future generations of all non human life to right life on this planet, that they basically don't they don't have a say they're not factored into our democratic calculus. And this is, you know, other societies, other forms of democratic self government have addressed this, a lot of Indigenous societies in the Americas mandated their leaders to think in terms of generations yet to come. And so this is, I think, a major failing of our sort of, you know, political philosophical tradition. And so I think we need to expand this idea of democracy, the people, you know, a system that's for the many, not the few to include future generations as well, and ultimately, I think people in the present would benefit from that, because we would be acting in a more sustainable way and a more generous way towards people who are here, right now. But it's certainly one of the main, it's a pitfall.
And it can seem a bit abstract or philosophical, but I think it has huge policy implications, right? That, especially when you couple the way we conceive of democracy in the sort of present sense with capitalism, which is all about short term profits, and also has this tendency that economists say is it discounts the future? Right? So for typical economists, they're going to say, “Well, you know, it's better to have economic growth, because then solving, we're gonna be richer in the future. And so solving our problems will be cheaper, right, so let's burn all this carbon now. Because in the future, we're gonna be so rich, we're gonna make some robots to fix it.” And it's literally called discounting the future. They mean it in terms of price. But it's actually like a moral discounting. It's like, it doesn't matter. And so I think when you have this huge hole in our political philosophy, the fact that we can't account for people who are not yet with us, and again, my people is like, not just human people, because that's my, you know, ethical framework. And then you combine that with an economic system that cares about nothing else, but short term returns on investment, then you have a suicidal system, because its sense of time is completely off.
Ayana Young Yes, to what you just said. And I'd now like to talk about voting, which is a topic that we could truly spend the entire hour on, but with an election year - it’s on everyone’s mind and people hold a lot of contested opinions. It’s been shown that in democracies around the world, the rate of people voting is decreasing. In recent US general elections, about 60% of the eligible population votes...We could certainly speak about how the State benefits off of us not voting, what mass engagement could accomplish, or explore why we don’t have compulsory voting….but what’s on my mind is what happened in Georgia this past month, where state-ordered voting machines were missing or malfunctioned, setting a dangerous precedent for this year’s presidential election in a state that might emerge as a battleground and has two competitive Senate elections…So I’d like to ask you, why is it important to vote and how do we do ensure that State’s dont get away with further disenfranchisement?
Astra Taylor The example of Georgia really breaks my heart because I'm a Georgian. So I'm a Canadian who grew up in Athens, Georgia, the sort of famous college down in the South. And, you know, I think as someone still so connected to that community. That's, that's my definition of home. That's my hometown, and my family's very embedded there. And Georgia has so much potential, right, it has so much potential to become a different state. And the South has always had that. I mean, if you go back to the history of reconstruction, right after the Civil War, it's astonishing to look at the statistics in terms of how many Vlack representatives were elected to office, the Fusion Coalition, right now I'm speaking from North Carolina and the Fusion Coalition that was formed in North Carolina, which was essentially a sort of multi-racial, populist movement. So you know, a movement for economic justice for public education for an alliance between working people Black and white. And these forms of social progress were violently suppressed. I mean, there was actually a violent coup, it was one of the only true coups, maybe even the only coup in the United States where the government was literally overthrown in North Carolina.
And then, in the emergence of Jim Crow, of all of these legal, but completely immoral methods of voter suppression. And we see, we see the same tricks being deployed today. I mean, this gets back to what I was saying, even a functioning American election is an election based on voter suppression. And then in Georgia, you see the things you outlined, which is just outrageous criminal behavior.
So I think it is really important to vote, so what I always try to resist is the sanctimony around voting. So if you want to piss me off, after one of my screenings, then be the old white guy. And he just always is, I mean, this is a guy and he stands up and goes, “your film is very well and good. But first, I don't understand why so many people are talking about things that aren't just, you know, democracy, like, you know, why are you having people talk about being poor and even healthcare or whatever, right?” Or being afraid. And then he says, “And don't you know, people just need to vote.” And, you know, it's like the sanctimony to be sanctimonious about voting is to deny all of the ways in which our system is anti democratic and has been set up to deny people the right to vote. I mean, we don't even really have the right to vote, right? The idea of one person one vote is not an American idea. It was articulated in the United States by John Lewis at the famous March on Washington. And he called it the “African cry” because it was the cry of South African anti apartheid activists. They're Marxists, it's an idea, one person, one vote. And it was one man one vote was the phrase they used then even in the 60s that came from the labor movement that came from Marxist, anti racist radicals. This is not an American idea. So let's not be sanctimonious. Understand that, that to embody that idea, we'd have to seriously revolutionize our society.
And so for me, I guess as someone who wants to build left power, voting does matter. So that's why I wrote this piece about these primary campaigns that I mentioned. And, and there are campaigns that are really pivotal. You know, I think sometimes those are presidential campaigns. I think this is a really crucial year, I personally, I would do anything, I would cut off a limb to have a different candidate running as the Democrat, but you know, also, most elections in the states are not competitive, we don't really have a choice between the parties. So the elections that are competitive in the states are primary elections, because our society is so gerrymandered, that typically whoever has the nomination from the party that kind of controls that district, right. So we know that you live in a democratic district, a Republican district, right? So I live in New York, New York, usually, like democrats are gonna win where I live. So the election that matters that the primary election is over, who's the Democratic candidate.
And, you know, I think it's very important for people to start challenging in those races, and essentially trying to capture the Democratic Party and push it to the left and insist on things like Medicare for all and a Green New Deal and defunding the police, reallocating money that is going towards violence and punishment towards the things that we need to survive and thrive. So I guess I just want us to think you know, about the uneven geography of our electoral system, and to think strategically about where it is that we could have a real transformative effect. I mean, voting in the presidential election should take like very little brain power, I mean, depending on where you live, it might be hard to do, because they make voting hard. And there might be shenanigans like there were in Georgia that then we need to really mobilize against and be outraged about. But there are other electoral campaigns that can be really pivotal. I mean, right now, we're in a moment where people are talking about policing and incarceration. That's mostly state and local budgets. Right. So I think that's a powerful example of why who's in charge in your municipality and your state really matters. And we saw that with Coronavirus too, who was your governor mattered a lot. So, I think elections matter, but they're not synonymous with democracy, right, democracy has to really exceed that level of engagement. And when we do talk about them, we need to somehow figure out how to do it that acknowledges the sort of anti democratic and contradictory nature of our electoral system, instead of reinforcing this sort of romance of the right to vote, which we've never had.
Ayana Young Yeah, it seems like democracy is suffering globally, with total declines in political rights and civil liberties around the world...I believe that Democracy Index rated the United States as a flawed democracy, not a full one, and I’m particularly interested in discussing the decline of democracy amidst period of anxiety, insecurity, and isolation in terms of the political ramifications of our society being pushed into these periods of instability? What is the connection between dominant cultural despair and the rise of tyranny or fascism?
Astra Taylor Oh, my gosh, there's a lot in there. I mean, where do I want to begin with that? I mean, I think it's true democracy, the American system was downgraded. It was downgraded to a flawed democracy. But, you know, the title of my book, Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone, I mean, it's, it's my view that we've never been a democracy. So the word decline is also, you know, a complicated one. It's like, we're living. This is 2020. So you know, the famous March on Washington I just mentioned, that was the early 60s. I mean, when was America, a truly inclusive, multiracial democracy, not just in terms of political rights, but but economic rights? I mean, I think for me, fundamentally, democracy is incompatible with capitalism, because capitalism is an economic system that concentrates wealth and power. So we have 600 billionaires in the world. And thanks to COVID-19 some of those billionaires are now on track to become trillionaires. And when you have that astonishingly outsized wealth you can buy political power. So study after study shows that regular people in America have basically no say over public policy because we don't own the political class. And you know, people are trying to break that now by campaigning and running on small dollar donations and trying to penalize politicians for taking corporate money and all that. And that's great, but great in a serious way. I mean that, like, that's the direction we need to go in. But on a deeper level, I think the question is, you know, can we ever have a democracy with this economic regime? And you know, I would say not, I think that's why the task ahead is a dual task of both democratizing the economy, and democratizing our political system.
That means we need to think about democratic socialism or think about some other way of describing the world we want to live in. So, you know, to your point, I think, yes, you know, we've never had democracy, but there does seem to be something whether it's a decline or something else, like something terrible is happening, we're seeing the rise of these authoritarian leaders. We're seeing people's despair be translated into, you know, support for despots. And for, you know, people basically, seeming like, they don't they don't want to be part of the Democratic project. Right? And that's really, I think, you know, it's, I don't know, I don't know, where it, where it comes from, or what the root roots of those impulses are. But I think, certainly, you know, I am of the opinion that various forms of inequality are contributing to it. I mean, everything is contradictory, right? So on the one hand, you go like, wow, this is a moment of incredible downward mobility. And that makes people really anxious and for some people, it makes them want to basically build a wall, right to protect what's theirs to blame people below them, to scapegoat and, and for others, downward mobility causes them to have empathy, right? And to say, “Okay, well, I guess we're all in this together. And, you know, let's have solidarity and let's mobilize, and let's not blame the people who are worse off, but look at the people who are hoarding wealth at the top.” I mean, despair can have different consequences depending on individual human impulses, but also what coalition's are organized to channel it, you know, and those coalition's I think, are really pivotal. And that's why the right wing in the US has spent the last 50 years just attacking unions and literally making solidarity illegal, right? I mean, solidarity strikes are illegal in this country. So I don't know, to me, the thing we have to do is like, how can we build organizations to rechannel despair, right to transform anxiety and shame into activism and solidarity? Right, like, that's the challenge ahead. I don't know which way it will go. But I do believe that, that that's where organizing comes in. Right? organizing can help us change the outcome and direct it in a more productive and democratic ways.
Ayana Young Well, Astra I’d like to talk about the presidential election specifically, and what you would say to those who are reckoning with the importance of ensuring Trump is a one term president while also being completely disenchanted with Biden as a guiding figure, and not wanting to legitimize, or further, a very harmful system?
Astra Taylor Yeah, yeah. I mean, God, you know, I don't like Joe Biden. I like Trump even less. Um, I mean, I have no illusions about Democrats. I mean, my organizing before Trump was focused on fighting the Obama Administration, right. I mean, if we look at the legacy of 2008, the Obama/Biden administration, completely mishandled the financial crisis, left 9 million homeowners foreclosed upon, totally screwed student debtors. That's a lot of where my work is. But, you know, you don't get to choose who your enemies are. And I think that four more years of Trump and emboldening the far right wing would be catastrophic on a much more profound level. So I think if you live somewhere, you know, and it's a swing state. I mean, to me, it's like, yeah, it's clear what way you should vote, and then we have to be ready to mobilize like hell against the Democrats.
I mean, in a way, I don't know one way of thinking about it is like, you know, vote for the enemy you'd rather have. And so I know to me, it was incredibly frustrating, right that the democrats squandered the fact that Obama had every you know, he had briefly control over all branches of government. But we managed to make a bit of progress under that administration by just relentlessly battling them. Whereas we have struggled so hard for the last few years to just this is again, just focused on my work around indebtedness and student debt. We've had to fight so hard against Betsy, like, I don't want to fight Betsy DeVos for another four years, that woman is evil. And so that's the choice we have. I mean, it's it. To me, it's just again, it's one of these things like, this is one of those things that doesn't take, it shouldn't take that much time. And people, people really go back and forth over it. And I'm like, to me, I'm gonna put my brain power in my organizing power into other things, right. Like, that's not the big dilemma. It's how do we, and here I mean we as the left, we as, as people who want deep transformative change, we as people who are anti capitalist, or socialists, like, you know, we need to work on building, building power, building membership organizations, figuring out where we actually have leverage, figuring out where we can disrupt the business's usual, like, these are the things that need our attention and creativity and energy.
So think, you know, there are rules of the game, and we're not in control of those right now. And the rules, you know, the rules suck. We're in a political system that enshrines minority rule, whether that's the Electoral College, whether that's the way the Senate works, right so each state gets to seats, no matter what the population of the state, so therefore, your vote counts for a lot more if you're in Wyoming, than California, because Wyoming has no people in comparison the way our districts are gerrymandered, I mean, it's not democracy. And so that's where, you know, we vote, vote and exercise what little democratic sway we have and figure out how to build power with the transformative long term strategic agenda. That's my view.
And I just think we kind of pay too much attention to voting. And I feel like part of it for me is that this will actually be the first presidential election I've ever voted in because I'm Canadian. And I finally claimed my American citizenship, which I'd never done before, I'm actually an American from birth, but in a complicated way. So I am a natural born citizen, but I didn't know it. And so it's very complicated. But anyway, so this is the first time that I'm, I will be allowed to vote. And I wish I was voting for Bernie Sanders, just to say it. But uh, you know, I think because I'm such a civically minded person, but I knew I couldn't cast a ballot that for me, democracy has always exceeded the electoral realm. You know, it was just like, “Okay, I'm not a citizen, but I'm still going to fight and work for the things I care about,” you know, and I think that's basically how I will continue to live, you know, I've got my absentee ballot, and I'm going to, I'm going to send it in, but I'm not going to spend my days fighting with people about whether or not to vote for Biden on the internet.
Ayana Young Right, well, you know, to be honest, I’m also worried that, if we do successfully elect Biden, we will never break ourselves open to conversations that recognize Trump, not as an anomaly, but a by-product of a very unique brand of American facism. Because it's still there. I mean, whether Trump wins or not.
Astra Taylor Mm hmm. I'm not sure that Trump winning the election again, would cause that epiphany either. I mean, because I think one thing Trump did was, you know, his victory allowed people to say, this is so anomalous, right? You know, this isn’t us, our democracy is being destroyed, right? Whereas my thing was like, “Well, hold on. This is actually rather predictable. Um, you know, George Washington was an incredible racist real estate speculator. Right?” I mean, Trump is so American. And, you know, our democracy was in decline before he was elected. Right. I mean, he's an acceleration of a much longer trend. And he's a continuation on that trajectory.
I think one benefit that stems from having democrats in office and having Democrats be our opposition is that we actually better see how the problems are structural. Right. It's not just the problem of the exceptionally bad president. Because when you have someone like Barack Obama in office, then I mean, I don't think it's a coincidence that it was actually under him that people started to turn towards socialism, right in this generation sort of started to break away from the kind of liberal status quo, because it's, it's sort of this thing like, “Okay, wow, you know, yeah, the Democrats can’t save us something's wrong with the system”, instead of the situation we get with, you know, a Republican or Trump where a lot of people just want to go back to the big the Democratic Party status quo.
I mean, I just wrote another piece about state budgets for The Intercept. And, you know, states are about to push enormous austerity on their populations, and they're going to blame the COVID crisis for that, and decimated tax revenues. But you know, the problem is that they're also, you know, not willing to tax people who have wealth, they're not willing to tax the rich tax corporations. They'd rather close the budget gaps on the backs of poor and working and disproportionately Black and brown people and in countless states, the obstacle to a just response to the economic crisis we're facing, the obstacles is Democrats, right? It's, you know, it's like Democrats control every branch of government, like look at Cuomo, he, you know, refuses to raise taxes on the rich and instead is cutting Medicaid and rolling back cash bail reforms and all this. So, you know, I think that's clarifying to have bad democrats in office, because it shows the limits of their politics and instead of getting in a situation where what many people want is just for them to be elected. It’s not very hopeful, but-
Ayana Young It is an interesting angle. And yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the protests that are steadily transpiring across the nation, and what they are revealing about our public spaces, protesting under an inherently violent administration, and the potential for active civil life, as well as an antidote to what we might have assumed would be a period of severe political disconnection and isolation. We are witnessing a mass reckoning in which Americans are being forced to contend with racism, far-right extremism, militarism, surveillance, poverty, and discriminatory practices. And the timing of this has been incredibly interesting as well...How do you see this moment shaping democracy? Can these moments of collapse and renewal be entry points for democracy?
Astra Taylor I mean, I think we're already seeing this moment, be it an entry point for democracy, right? I mean, who I find this moment, so remarkable that we're seeing this, the largest outpouring of civil rights, protests, anti-white supremacy, anti-racism protests that this country's ever seen. I mean, the scale. I mean, especially beyond this country, look at the actions that have been happening in solidarity. You know, I've seen the most beautiful images from France, Japan, New Zealand, right. I mean, it's just it's, yeah, it's this global moment. And I think it's a profound teaching moment. I mean, even for me, I'm working on another essay. And this moment has pushed me to think so much more deeply about the role of racism, I'm looking, I'm looking at the crisis right now in the university system. And I mean, even how I'm being challenged, to think more deeply about the role of anti-Blackness in destroying or subverting the expansion of truly public free higher education in this country. So I think that the conversation that's just being sparked is really remarkable.
And, you know, another thing that's been striking me is that this is, it's not following the model that a lot of experts thought so there was the kind of thinking, “Oh, public opinion, will react against this”, white public opinion, right. And what we're seeing actually is a sudden, incredible spike of support for the protesters and concern about the issues. They're raising a kind of realization that they're right. And it's undeniable. And so that's, I think that's hugely helpful. And, you know, I don't know what confluence of things lead to that. I mean, is it that, you know, maybe it is partly having this, the Trump administration and the fear that inspires, having an economic crisis, and the sense of, you know, sort of larger vulnerability people are experiencing, maybe it's partly the role of the internet and the fact that people can circulate images and messages without a handful of channels, you know, dictating what gets seen or the framing of it. But certainly something really remarkable is happening.
And, you know, I think what also is encouraging to me, as someone who's thinks a lot about economics and finance is that this call that, you know, was not the call of it was not the sort of primary slogan of Black Lives Matter, in 2014 and 15, but the call to defend the police, which is an invitation to think about where public money where our money is spent, where it goes, What's valued in our society, what gets resourced and what doesn't, in this moment of looming economic collapse, right. And I think that the way that it's weaving together, attention to racial injustice, and also economic injustice is just so incredibly powerful. So you know, it is a it's a it's a source of of intense hope and it's a reminder that yeah, you know, people there's no we don't know we don't know if these forces like we were talking earlier about you know, of of increasing inequality, precarity these things aren't predictable. Like, yeah, they can make some people more mean spirited and, and reactionary, but look at what's happening right now in the United States of America, it seems to be going in the opposite direction.
So it's kind of incredible. I'm hesitant to make any predictions because I feel like one thing last few months is, is that we don't know what the fuck is going to happen next. So, but man, you know, it's like, this is why I think to me, you look at, I look at people in the streets. And this is, you know, this is like, why I believe in democracy, most people want to be good, they want to live in a better place, you know, they don't want to live in a fucking violent, racist, you know, world where other people suffer, and that, you know, their little scrap of security only comes at the expense of somebody else, being exploited and abused, like, you know, I don't think I think people on the whole don't want that, and they're willing to go out into the streets. And, you know, and many people are risking their lives by doing so I interviewed the other day, Cory Bush, who's running for congress in Missouri, she was one of the organizers of the Ferguson protests, you know, six, six years ago, and she's like, you know, yeah, you can die in these streets, you can die of COVID, you can get shop by a cop, and all these people who have been traumatized and retraumatized are out there, and saying, you know, we've had enough like, we want something else that's really encouraging beyond words, I don't have I don't actually know how to express how much heart It's given me these last few weeks.
Ayana Young I feel the same way. You co-founded the Debt Collective, which grew out of your experience at Occupy, and powerfully reframes our debt as a collective tool to be leveraged against private collectors and government agencies. Society today seems to be much more class conscious, no doubt because debt is much more pervasive...yet, I was still surprised to learn that the average American dies with roughly $62,000 in debt. Can you talk about how exactly it is that our debt, which so often is accrued in the name of basic survival, is becoming our power?
Astra Taylor Yeah, the Debt Collective is based on that exact sort of epiphany, right? That the thing that oppresses us can be transformed if we act together into a source of power, a source of leverage. So collectively, in the United States, we owe $1.7 trillion of student loans, we see that as $1.7 trillion of leverage to demand a different system, a system where education is not a commodity, or a personal responsibility or a debt financed product, but a public good aimed at our collective enrichment, enrichment in the sense of intellectual expansion, not just you know, economic growth.
The Debt Collective emerged out of Occupy Wall Street because quite a few of us noticed that we and many, many others were attracted to the encampments, in part because we were burdened by debt. You know, I was, I had defaulted on my student loans, my parents home was underwater, like millions and millions of others in 2000, after 2008 after the mortgage crash happened, and people had medical bills, they couldn't pay, they had credit card debt that they were racking up. And, you know, our logic is that, you know, typically people who are in debt, are in debt because they’re denied basic goods.
So medical debt doesn't exist in countries that have universal health care. If you have free public education, then you don't have student debt dragging down generations of people, or having their social security garnished, or whatever happens to folks, you know, the way that they're penalized for being unable to pay. And so therefore, if you follow these chains of debt, that seem so personal, right? Like when you're struggling to pay your bills at the end of the month, or a debt collectors hounding you It feels really personal, I mean, feels shameful, you know, you're like, you get a call, there's a human being on the other line, and they're telling you that you're basically a deadbeat. You're bad. You need to pay up, you're going to be punished. You deserve to be punished. Maybe you're going to take you to court. And you know, we want people to recognize the personal is political, well, why are they able to charge you these exorbitant interest rates, because the banks in the 80s in the 70s, and 80s got rid of limitations on interest rates, they got rid of caps on usury, right so that they could exploit people. Why do corporate debtors likem following COVID-19, corporate debtors got trillions of dollars from the federal government and in fact, the chairman of the Federal Reserve a couple of weeks ago, called those corporate debtors, fallen angels. But why aren't regular people ever called fallen angels, right? We're just, we're just pushed further into the hole and have our credit scores ruined and we're punished and debtors in this country are taken to jail. There's been a revival of essentially debtors prisons, poor people taken to jail because they can't often pay their criminal justice, that's not quite the right term, like criminal punishment, fines and fees. So Black Lives Matter, for example, in Ferguson part of why Ferguson exploded when it did. A huge part of that was the murder of Michael Brown. But also the people of Ferguson were so frustrated because they were basically being taxed by the police department, you know, they'd have a broken taillight, and the police department would charge you a fee. And then people go further and further in debt to the courts. So there's all these ways in which debt is really unjust, it's certainly racialized in this country, and our idea is that if we form unions, so taking inspiration from the labor union movement, and we collectivise, then debtors can turn those bonds of debt into bonds of power and leverage. And so we launched the student debt strike in 2015, with students from a predatory for profit college, and we've won about a billion over a billion dollars of debt relief. And like I said, we're still fighting Betsy DeVos. We won changes to federal law, we put the idea of student debt cancellation on the national agenda, we were with Bernie Sanders and AOC and Ilhan Omar when they announced their College For All Act that would erase all student debt and make college free.
So in a small amount of time, our group has, you know, I think had quite an outside size impact, not just in terms of money that has been returned to struggling debtors, but in terms of the public imagination. And I think right now, given the realities of the economy, you know, what happens when people in America lose their jobs. So we know we're facing a mess in employment, you don't have your paycheck, you have to take on debt. Or if you're already in debt, you're going to default. So we are, I think, this movement from shame to outrage needs to be accelerated. I think at this moment, you know, there's the potential to really see, okay, our economic realities are not personal. They're part of this larger political condition. The economy is collapsing, you know, the federal government's bailing out corporations and giving lots of love to corporate debtors and punishing regular people. And let's get fucking mad because that's the proper response to this.
So we actually have a pamphlet coming out in a couple weeks called can't pay won't pay the case for economic disobedience and debt abolition. That is a kind of strategy. It's both an analysis of our, the historical aspects of debt. So going back to the beginnings of racial capitalism and debts long standing role as the sort of anti democratic force of social control. But then also, yeah, really looking strategically and saying, “Okay, well, what would happen? What would happen if people, as is happening right now in New York, refuse to pay their utility debts and demand sustainable green power instead? What would happen if mortgage holders got organized into unions, you know, in advance of the 2008 financial collapse? Would that have forced the Obama Administration to actually help homeowners instead of leaving them in the lurch? So could we organize around municipal debt? So we really try to imagine what's possible, and not just imagine, but actually sort of lay out what's possible. Because I think we need new forms of economic power, the labor movements are really crucial. I mentioned it a few times. But a lot of us are not in jobs, where we can actually unionize where we'll have the chance. So debtors unions are a form of association that could allow millions and millions of people to join organizations focused on economic justice. So I think that idea has so much power. And that's why my comrades and I have stuck with it for about eight years.
Ayana Young Well, Astra as we come to a close in this moment, I wanted to ask you one more question. And I’m thinking about how democracy and capitalism are incompatible, as well as this acute moment where injustice is everywhere, death is everywhere, corporations are getting richer, and, in many ways, the State is criminalizing solidarity...and so, I’d like to close by asking you what you think we need to organize under? So many of us are tired of either the banality of old ideals or find that they somewhat obscure the heartbreaking reality of what is, and so I wonder how do we generate and sustain momentum that is both visionary and honest?
Astra Taylor Yeah, I mean, I think one thing I like about being involved in social movements is that I'm always learning, right? I mean, I think for someone who loves to learn and is naturally curious, you know, this is the ultimate sort of school. So like, what strategies work, how is social change made? I mean, there's a lot of questions in this and as our society, our economy changes, the forms of power we might hold also change. So for example, The Debt Collective thinks a lot about the way our economy has transformed since the 70s.
So, you know, people talk about neoliberalism or financialization -it's a complicated way of saying, you know, a new way of organizing the economy emerged that emphasized finance that used the state to shore up financial interest and that the economy began to emphasize profiting from derivatives and rent in these sort of financial machinations as opposed to actually producing things, right. So you know, Wall Street makes more money than the actual production of widgets, for example. And for The Debt Collective, the epiphany is this new way of organizing the economy also created new ways of organizing regular people so that they would have power, right. So financialization forces us all into debt, because we have to debt finance to get access to these public goods, but then our debt is potentially a form of leverage.
So part of why we have to keep thinking, iterating, and reimagining and reconceptualizing is because the conditions are changing underneath our feet, that's, that's part of the challenge of effectively organizing, we can't just use a playbook from the past and be certain that it's going to work. I do think the one transcendent sort of piece of advice is that we need to work on public imagination, right, the realm of ideology. So in our work, people who are indebted and poor and unemployed are made to feel ashamed when they shouldn't be, so we work to undo that. And we work to cultivate a sense of entitlement, you're entitled to healthcare, you’re entitled to education, you’re entitled to a decent life. In my opinion, people are entitled to a decent life, whether or not they have a job. But then there's also the economic component. And so I think, for me, that's where we have to focus. It's where, where can we wield economic power. So people in the workplace have tremendous power, because they have the power to strike, they can walk off the job, they can stop production, and that's, the site from which all profit flows in our system, debtors have the potential to withhold payment and to impact corporate profits. So, where do we have economic power, renters can withhold their rent, and go on strike and have economic power there. So I think thinking through the question, like where the leverage is, is really important.
And there are these movement moments. I mean, it seems like we're in one now where there's something really magic, you know, and people are out in the streets. And there's this energy, and there's this potential, what that's a situation where what we could call mobilizing is important, you know, getting people out the power of numbers, disrupting business, as usual. And I think as a compliment to that we have to engage in a kind of organizing that, that, you know, when there isn't that kind of wind on our back. Right? And that can be a bit more of a long term, slow going, you know, process where you you recruit people into your, your group, you power map, you think about, you know, what your goals are, you know, do you want to influence your city council or influence your boss or influence your creditor?
And you know, what is your goal, and it's this kind of slow nuts and bolts, solid organizing, and in that organizing can take all sorts of different forms. But I think it's really, it's important to do it. And so for me that manifests in my life. On the one hand, I have my life as an artist, as a filmmaker, and as a, you know, as a journalist and as a writer. But it's, it's really important to me, if I act like I actually want to see social change, and so therefore, you actually have to do the sort of boring work of organizing too, which you know, is really about aggregating people into a social block so that we can have more power than we would have by ourselves.
Ayana Young Oh, Astra. This has been such an eye opening and important conversation. I appreciate your clarity and your passion and your directness with all of this. It's been just a wonderful conversation. And I don't know if we met at Occupy or exchanged glances across Zuccotti Park, but I also really love knowing that you're there and have been continuing to spearhead and be just so engaged and present in all of these movements.
Astra Taylor I love hearing that too. I mean, I always took inspiration from this book, Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit, which I read back in 2003. And she said, you know, you never know what's gonna happen, you might think that you're having the most pathetic little protests, you know, she told the story of these three, three or four women out in the rain, you know, with their signs against nuclear war in the, I don't know in the 50s or 60s, and how their action though, you know, inspired, ultimately inspired people who would sort of take the baton and advance the movement. So, you know, I think that was part of why I stuck with Occupy, right. It's like yeah, this maybe isn't the most strategic thing to do to camp out in a park but it's what people are doing and we don't we don't know what will come of it. And you know, I think that goes back to this idea. you don't know what's gonna happen next. And that can be frustrating, but also really, really exciting.
Ayana Young Thank you for listening to another episode of For The Wild podcast. I'm Ayana Young. The music you heard today was from Tan Cologne, and Leyla McCalla. I'd like to thank our podcast production team, Francesca Glaspell, Erica Ekrem, and Melanie Younger.