Episode 118 – The Web of Progress with Jen Perelman

I don’t know another way to do anything and I’m not going to just do nothing. Right? So this is the menu right now. How do you sleep better at night? Do you sleep better knowing that you’re working on the side of justice, or do you want to just say we can’t win, so forget it?

Macro N Cheese – Episode 118
The Web of Progress with Jen Perelman
May 1, 2021

[00:00:04.380] – Jen Perelman [intro/music]

What’s so infuriating is that not only do people want to live in an echo chamber, but they completely chastise you and shame you when you dare to step outside of it. Now, I personally don’t care, but I do think that it prohibits conversation and therefore is a deterrent to progress.

[00:00:25.310] – Jen Perelman [intro/music]

I realized that in order to be involved in this nonsense political game, you have to have a small ego and thick skin and most people have one or the other, but not both. It’s difficult to find that. But you can’t have a big ego because it has to be about the solution and not you getting credit for it.

[00:01:35.200] – Geoff Ginter [intro/music]

Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:01:43.090] – Steve Grumbine

All right, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Folks, I have been doing the social media, alt-media round-robin through the different groups, through the different platforms. And I was on with Mike Figueredo. I was on with Jimmy Dore, and I was on with my next guest, Jen Perelman, who has her show, JENerational Change. And it was one of the most fun interviews I ever did.

And for those of you who don’t know who Jen is, she ran against Debbie What’s-her-name Schultz. And she’s down there in the beautiful state of Florida where DeSantis is doing everything he can to make it look bad. But here she is coming on my show. Thank you very much, to allow me to talk to her because I am celebrating every time I find another candidate, another media person, someone that gets MMT.

And she had me on to discuss it. And it was just a really great conversation. Jen is just a fantastic person. She had me in stitches the entire time. Her show is just fantastic. So if you guys get a chance, please check it out. We’ll make sure you get links in the description. With that, Jen, thank you so much for joining me today. Welcome.

[00:02:57.400] – Jen Perelman

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. That was hands down, I think the best introduction I’ve ever gotten. And also, you have a really good audio voice. You have a really good radio voice.

[00:03:09.140] – Grumbine

Well, thank you. I enjoy podcasting

[00:03:12.370] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:03:12.370] – Grumbine

So much more than the video. And I do video and I will get back to video. But the joy of doing audio is that you can really focus on the content and all the other affects like somebody doesn’t like the way your eyebrows are. They don’t like the fact that you’ve got a white beard. You look like Santa Claus. I am looking like his doppelganger. I could put the red and white suit on and start delivering presents. The belly’s in the right shape. I’ve got it all going on – the dad bod. Good to go.

[00:03:45.100] – Perelman

So you’re hiding is what you’re saying. You’re hiding on the radio?

[00:03:48.780] – Grumbine

Exactly. I look great on radio.  Anyway, so, look, when we were talking, one of the things that I found really refreshing was that you did run as a Democrat when you were running and you do have all the progressive ideals, but you ran against the establishment. You ran against the buzzsaw of Debbie – I always say, What’s-her-name Schultz, because it’s more fun – but Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is a favorite within the Democratic Party, at least in the establishment realm, and it never turns out well. But I am curious. Tell me about your experience running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz. What was that like?

[00:04:31.960] – Perelman

First of all, I’m a little older than your typical squad person. So when people are looking at someone like, let’s say, AOC, it’s a very different position in life. Right? So I don’t need this job and I don’t need this money. And so for me, it was really just a matter of taking a stand against her. And the truth is, she’s only five years older than me, so she’s my peer and we’re only one degree removed.

I’ve seen her at the supermarket. She’s not somebody that scares me. And I’ve been a Democrat my entire life. I Demexited in 16 after the Bernie fiasco. But the reality is in Florida, we have closed primaries and I live in an extremely gerrymandered blue district. And the only way to beat Debbie Wasserman Schultz is in the primary. That’s it.

There’s no other way to do it. The numbers just aren’t there. And so it’s a strategy. We don’t really have any other option. But that’s not my platform. I don’t affiliate with the Democrats in theory and in policy or any other way.

[00:05:38.800] – Grumbine

Well, you’ve been amazing to me because when we look at the way the tribalism is, and that’s a word that I know some people bristle at and how partisan the world has become and the contradictions within each of the parties and the battles that take place not only in social media, but quite frankly, in the mainstream media where they put on this dog and pony show of “you’re bad and, hey, don’t look at my closet.”

There’s not a lot of solutions even in the alternative media world right now. You’ve got a lot of people taking shots. They’re just throwing out all the things that are wrong and they’re really not focusing on the solutions. But you’ve been very much a solutions based person this entire time. Talk to me about what it’s like to live in a world where people have stopped using critical thinking, they’ve stopped discussing things and they’re living in a bumper sticker world of negativity.

[00:06:39.400] – Perelman

Yeah, it’s quite unfortunate. You know, it’s almost like for those it’s really very matrix-like sometimes. I feel like red pill, blue pill. And those of us that are trying to have a civilization in Zion and again, that has nothing to do with the state of Israel and Palestine, I’m specifically referencing the matrix of fire.

Those of us that are just trying to live our lives in the reality have to constantly be contending with the people that refuse to see what has happened over the past 40 years. And that has been this gradual shift to the right, but also in a very authoritative way. And that’s when it freaks me out when people are just so willing to just accept a government narrative and just go along with the program.

And the tribalism is really bad as far as the partisan part of this is concerned, you know, that’s a good word for it. It’s very tribal. It’s our team, our team, our team. They’re not willing to use critical reasoning skills and they don’t realize that the party stands for nothing anymore. They stand for nothing. They don’t propose anything. They’re constantly just setting it up or presenting a situation where we just have to fight the Republicans.

We’re always on defense even when we have a majority. It’s this constant battle when it doesn’t even need to be and that should be a sign to people that they’re not fighting for anything. They’re doing nothing. And yet I’ve always looked at this is my campaign was a service-based campaign. We run a little service organization here, but we’re just doing things that need to be done, obviously predominantly at a local level. But I’d love for that to be a paradigm.

[00:08:19.370] – Grumbine

It’s funny you say that because you and I have lived through our entire lives in the neoliberal era, you realize that? We have known nothing other than the neoliberal era from the minute we were born.

[00:08:31.340] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:08:31.790] – Grumbine

To this very second and that service idea and being able to serve the community. This is rare. This is not normal. We’re trying to look beyond just the partisan world, but yet that is all you’re getting fed from media. We’ve got mutual friends where the party is all that is talked about.

[00:08:54.260] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:08:54.890] – Grumbine

And we’ve got a climate crisis. We’ve got a health care crisis. We’ve got a pandemic we’re still clawing out of. We’ve got a vaccine distribution set up that was just absolutely reactionary instead of proactively done. I feel like everything we’re doing right now, no matter how bad it is, it will be finger-pointed back to the other guys, did something we didn’t like. So it’s wrong.

[00:09:19.650] – Perelman

Yeah, they’re not interested in finding solutions. There’s two things going on from within the political world. Obviously, they don’t want to do anything because they all answer to the same corporate special interests so they can just sort of keep stirring the pot and not actually cooking anything. Right? Like they could just sort of look like they’re doing something.

And then from the perspective of people that are outside of that, we put so much emphasis and idolization on political electoral politics. Like that’s such a small aspect of how our world should work. It shouldn’t be the be-all-end-all. And I think that people do that because it almost alleviates personal responsibility. You’re not having to do anything or it’s not your fault. It’s the government. It’s an easy solution. It’s an easy answer.

OK, the reason things are wrong is because the government screwed up and that is a problem. Don’t get me wrong, that’s definitely a problem. But electoral politics is just one element of what we need to be doing in terms of a real revolution. That’s just part of it. And I think people just get very hung up in that. And we tend to take a very local approach and just try to be making differences as much as we can locally. But people just want to sit there and bicker with each other and point out problems.

[00:10:35.910] – Grumbine

You bring up a great point, the idea that somehow or another we are going to have a revolution by voting our way there. It’s unfathomable to me how many people just expect the Democratic Party to suddenly do what they want it to do or to suddenly have a third party out of nowhere that’s just going to make an electoral solution possible. And what are the seeds of revolution?

What are the things that need to be there in order to even sustain direct action, forget even revolution? Let’s just talk about real honest to God in the streets, direct action that doesn’t fizzle out as soon as your vacation time dries up and we don’t have the systems, the mutual aid, the legal aid, the shelter in place. We don’t have any of the things that it would take to really fight back against a corrupt system, to meaningfully sustain a long-term direct action to take the country back.

[00:11:33.690] – Perelman

Right.

[00:11:34.230] – Grumbine

And it just seems to me part of that is that local care work that you’re talking about doing.

[00:11:39.594] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:11:39.810] – Grumbine

You can’t have revolution without having those systems in place behind the scenes to support those revolutionaries that are willing to put it all on the line. And we just don’t have that flavor in this country right now.

[00:11:53.160] – Perelman

No, and I think a lot of it is by design. A lot of it is by complacency. I don’t know if you’re familiar with “Beau of The Fifth Column.”

[00:12:00.960] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:12:01.590] – Perelman

I love him. He’s my Mister Rogers. One of the things that he’s always talking about and very much so preaches is this idea of forming coalitions and networks and creating this sense of who is your team, who are your people and starting to build that. And I think that that’s so important. And it’s funny because you’ll have people that are so pro-Second Amendment because we need to be able to rebel against the government.

But yet you’re OK with them taking away so many of our other rights and keeping us from being able to assemble. We’re really being stifled in so many ways right now. And so the only way around it is to build coalitions. I look at it like a spider web, and every time you make another connection, it just makes it stronger.

[00:12:50.250] – Grumbine

Hmm.

[00:12:50.850] – Perelman

And I’m just trying to be like a center of the web and just constantly building connections and trying to make each policy something that we have a lot of people behind. And that’s the other thing as I do it per policy. And whereas most of the left is you’re either on our team or you’re not on our team. And I don’t work that way. I work on who’s willing to support this issue and get on board with this and let’s do this.

[00:13:14.670] – Grumbine

It’s funny you say that. Stephanie Kelton, who we’ve talked about on your show.

[00:13:19.050] – Perelman

Sure.

[00:13:19.860] – Grumbine

She has a stake and she actually put it to AOC and regardless of whether folks love or dislike AOC, she made a great point. So the issue isn’t whether or not we can finance a bill. Financing is the easy part. It’s a matter of whether we can resource the bill, whether we can get the votes, whether we have the people that will actually support this legislation. And what you’re saying is building coalitions by policy.

[00:13:46.830] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:13:47.340] – Grumbine

Versus by team jersey. And I think that’s a really profound statement because it goes hand in hand with what both Stephanie and AOC have put forward, which is we need the votes. We need the resources to do this stuff.

[00:14:02.460] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:14:03.240] – Grumbine

Echo chambers aren’t going to get that done.

[00:14:05.250] – Perelman

No, and what’s so infuriating is that not only do people want to live in an echo chamber, but they completely chastise you and shame you when you dare to step outside of it. Now, I personally don’t care, but I do think that it prohibits conversation and therefore is a deterrent to progress. But for example, at a local level, I have become friendly with a gentleman in the Republican club here.

He’s old school Republican. But one of the things that they are very, very big supporters of is Everglades restoration. And I met him at a protest against an oil drilling situation that we were having in the Everglades. And so that’s an ally on that. And yet every time I’ve been seen assimilating or talking or whatever, I’ve had people on Team Blue talk to me about, you know, he’s such and such and such and such and he supports Trump.

And I’m thinking this is why we cannot have nice things. That is the reason we can’t have nice things. And it’s very frustrating. And I’ve said it before. I will go on any platform, talk with any person, work with anybody whatsoever if I believe that it will help move things forward. And that’s just how I play.

[00:15:20.760] – Grumbine

Well, it explains why you’re on this show cause at least I’m willing, no, I’m just joking. I think that it’s funny. The thing you brought up just now is really powerful because Bernie Sanders, who everybody loves and loves to hate.

[00:15:32.520] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:15:33.060] – Grumbine

Bernie Sanders has made a career of doing these little amendments and working across the aisle. And one of the issues and I want to be very clear on this. It’s one thing to work across the red-blue aisle. But there is another thing that I think sometimes gets mixed up in the sauce, and that’s the red-brown alliance versus the red-blue.

And what I mean by that is Adolf Hitler seemed to have a pretty good plan on how to get the VW Bugs manufactured quickly. Right? Let’s work with Adolf Hitler to build cars. Well, maybe not. Maybe we’re not going to go that route. Right?

[00:16:13.550] – Perelman

Right.

[00:16:13.960] – Grumbine

And that would be that red-brown alliance. And that was the difference between what you’re saying and what I think a lot of people mistakenly confuse with a red-brown alliance. But what you’re talking about is you’re not suddenly becoming a red-brown. You’re talking about getting shit done.

[00:16:30.370] – Perelman

Yeah, it’s per issue. It’s like build your team on whatever the issue is because you find that there’s very unlikely bedfellows in different things. As much as people would like to label us and put us on teams, everything’s more of a spectrum. And people for the most part in the bell curve, if you’re looking at it, support the things that we’re supporting.

For the most part, people support that. So then why can’t this get done? Well, you’ve got electoral politics and people that are bought and paid for that are standing in the way. And then you have this tribalism that keeps everybody wanting to just be on a team. People like to be on teams. People like to have an enemy.

There has to be a bad guy. People are very simple-minded. And so, again, we are in a society lacking some serious critical reasoning skills. It’s very frustrating. And I just feel like I must stay the course. So it’s hard. We’re fighting for Zion, and again, not having anything to do with Israel and Palestine.

[00:17:28.120] – Grumbine

It’s so funny you say that because I have gotten myself into audiobooks. My eyes have started failing me.

[00:17:34.630] – Perelman

Same.

[00:17:35.440] – Grumbine

And you remember that scene where Neo has the thing popped into the back of his neck? And he goes, “I know jujitsu.”

[00:17:42.130] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:17:42.700] – Grumbine

“I know how to fly an Apache helicopter.” I feel like information is available for people to learn. We could be learning and changing the narrative.

[00:17:53.740] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:17:54.400] – Grumbine

There’s always somebody smarter than you, more well-read than you. And

[00:17:58.870] – Perelman

Thank goodness!

[00:18:00.400] – Grumbine

So there shouldn’t be an ego thing. I think that one of the key issues that we didn’t touch on that we did peripherally touch on is it goes beyond just the us versus them thing. It also comes down to ego.

[00:18:15.160] – Perelman

Oh, yeah.

[00:18:16.150] – Grumbine

And the fact that you don’t want somebody to know something that you didn’t already know.

[00:18:21.020] – Perelman

Yeah. It’s just wanting to be right as opposed to wanting to be happy.

[00:18:26.380] – Grumbine

That kind of brings me to the subject that I hold dear, and that is the MMT side. Years ago, I started walking on the shoulders being lifted up by these giants that did this stuff when nobody was paying attention. You could count the number of people doing MMT on one or two hands. Now you’ve got it in the mainstream. You got Stephanie Kelton’s book The Deficit Myth on the New York Times bestseller list.

People are out there going to book clubs to learn about macroeconomics. Who does that right? And now it is becoming a thing. And one of the things that drew me to you, obviously, is the fact that you’re open to this, that this is something that you feel is important. And I started watching what you did on social media more and while we had some disagreements over UBI, ultimately, it was really powerful for me to see you have such a positive, uplifting disposition.

[00:19:17.080] – Perelman

That’s so funny. Most people that know me would probably never say that. That’s really . . .

[00:19:21.430] – Grumbine

But I heard you laughing when we did our interview. So that changes everything. You really put off a very positive vibe and being able to see somebody like yourself. We had so few people that were running for office that were even willing to talk about these things. And there’s a slew of people now.

We’re watching some really good folks stepping up into that range and talking about the broad possibilities of what we could do. Now, granted, it’s the 11th hour. Climate change isn’t waiting for us to figure this out. What got you to even know about MMT? To me, this is a really exciting thing.

[00:19:58.630] – Perelman

Yeah, actually, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have learned it anyway or heard about it anyway. You were one of the people that I first heard talking about it, actually. This was probably I want to say like 2015ish. And so I had heard about it, but really I’m very thankful that I was a Brand New Congress candidate. And one of the things that they had for Brand New Congress was there was this summit and we all got together in Washington and they had brought in experts to talk on different topics.

And one of those topics was MMT. And so that was when I really got it from a lecture standpoint, like a real thing. But I’m pretty open in general to anything involving us being screwed over because I just feel like at this point, that’s the obvious answer. So when I see that you can pay to be in war 24/7, we can afford all of those things, but yet we have people living on the streets that can’t eat.

So there’s obviously something wrong there. Again, critical reasoning skills. So I think that to me, you could have called MMT whatever you called it. You could have called it blah, blah, blah, and said, this is how we’ve been living and you’ve been being lied to for your whole life. And I’d be like, yeah, that sounds about right.

And so it really wasn’t that far of a stretch for me. Anything having to do with the idea that you’ve been being lied to, we’ve been doing it wrong. Obviously, we can have better things, but we don’t want you to. That to me is the basis of everything, that’s how I see the universe. So to me, the theory of MMT is secondary to me knowing that clearly we’ve been being lied to all this time and we can have nice things.

[00:21:46.690] – Grumbine

So you just nailed it. So it’s funny because I serve often as a bridge between these brilliant academics and the public, right?

[00:21:56.080] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:21:56.590] – Grumbine

They’re using critical theory, which I am just not a genius at at all.

[00:22:01.180] – Perelman

We have limitations.

[00:22:02.800] – Grumbine

Yes. And I found mine. But the thing is, though, that this is an important juxtaposition here. This is where I think the meat of our discussion needs to go because on one hand, I’m working with people that have a career goal of redefining the relationship we have with people and money and understanding how to use it for the benefit of society.

But at the end of the day, folks like yourself and myself who are dealing with regular people that don’t have 16 hours to invest in some deep dive in philosophical debates, we just know we’d like to eat. We just know that we want to have a roof over our head. We want to be safe. We don’t want to be living under a bridge trying to figure out how we’re going to get medical help.

And so the divide of needs versus theory breaks down pretty quickly. But what has happened, and I think this is the other critical part to that, is because we have been lied to and propagandized for our entire life. How do you as a candidate talk to people so that they understand that you’re fighting for their needs and that you don’t get held back by their diminished expectations because they don’t understand that, yes, the federal government can, in fact, spend on anything we need as long as the real resources exist to back that up. How do you make that case?

[00:23:34.870] – Perelman

It’s hard. And I often also use the term that you use, which is a bridge, because I feel like I am definitely a bridge in my little spiderwebs scenario like I’m trying to connect as many people to as many people by talking about issues. For me, I’m just me, you know, I just talk how I talk. I’m not a politician. I’m just a person. And so I just generally talk to people and meet them where they are.

It’s funny because I’m not particularly social. I’m like this antisocial extrovert. So like, I’m a very good socially, but I just don’t particularly want to be social. But it’s really a matter of meeting as many different kinds of people and as different places that you can, more so than being in the echo chamber. And I think that that’s what most people do.

When you’re dealing with electoral politics, you’re dealing with a very certain subsegment of the population that’s even involved in electoral politics in the first place. We have very low participation here. So most people are not even in that world. They don’t even necessarily know who their representatives are.

So I generally focus a lot more on reaching those people that don’t have this sort of tribalism, that are just people that, yeah, they want to know how we can build a community garden and how are they going to be able to afford not working for two months and they don’t have health care. So I try my best to really focus locally, at least outside of political electoral politics. But dealing with those people is challenging. It really is. I find it challenging.

I generally just do what I’m doing. I also think a big part of it for me is communicating just by how I live and what I do and just putting out there as much information as possible. But there’s definitely a certain category of people that are too far gone that will not be able to wrap their head around it for a lot of reasons. One is I think primarily they can’t fathom that they’ve been being lied to their whole life. It’s very Truman Show-like.

[00:25:37.600] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:25:37.600] – Perelman

People don’t want to know.

[00:25:51.500] – Intermission

You are listening to Macro N Cheese, a podcast brought to you by Real Progressives, a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching the masses about MMT or Modern Monetary Theory. Please help our efforts and become a monthly donor at PayPal or Patreon, like and follow our pages on Facebook and YouTube and follow us on Periscope, Twitter, and Instagram.

[00:26:40.490] – Grumbine

It’s crazy you say that because I have very low tolerance to be fair, for people that whine and complain about the way things are. And just like a boss that his employee comes up to him and whines and complains. I’ve always been trained by what I consider to be good leaders, that if you come to me with a complaint, come to me with a potential solution. I don’t want to just hear you whine.

And when I bring MMT to people who say, listen, there’s a reason why this is playing out the way it’s playing out, and MMT is a part of that story. It’s not the whole story, but it is a large part. It’s a tool that has been used against us, this false idea that we’re broke and we can’t do nice things. And so the lie is self-perpetuating.

We then in turn put the idea of the household budget scenario where you can’t spend past your credit card limit. These are the moments that everyone is inundated with and we are run ragged. We are lied to. Think about all the silly propaganda Russiagate. And unless you disconnect from that, you’re going to continue to consume toxic non-knowledge.

And so I can understand skepticism. I really can. But I guess the question is, when you understand power dynamics, you understand how the U.S. came to be. How do you feel we as people can overcome entrenched powers? We’re looking to Congress to write laws, but they are bought and paid for by those lobby firms. How do we overcome that stranglehold that makes it so these things are less and less possible?

And I will tell you, as bad as Joe Biden’s career has been and as bad as many of his stances are currently, for example, refusing to legalize marijuana, you’d have to be an absolutely brain-dead zombie to say that. And that’s where Biden sits. So that tells you what I think of him. But they’re still talking about how are we going to pay for infrastructure.

So I guess my question to you is, with the propaganda so strong, with the powers that be entrenched, how do we make moves when we’re looking at electoral politics and these people that are getting elected using this money? How do we overcome them?

[00:29:11.690] – Perelman

We are doing that. That’s the thing. I think that this conversation, your platform, my platform, all of that. Think about how much that has changed in the past five years and where we are in terms of the amount of people that do know versus where we were. So this is what we have to be doing because it can’t be done just through electoral politics. That’s an element of it.

Again, I support doing all of these things simultaneously. That’s one of the things that’s so frustrating is that then people sort of judge each other based on what their strategy is to help problem solve. And when you’re saying how do we overcome this narrative, I don’t think there’s one way. I think we’re all doing that in our own way.

And we need to support each other instead of punch sideways a lot of the time and worry about how other people are trying to help. And you work on how you’re trying to help. And I do believe that if everybody was kind of doing that, eventually it would all get connected up. If everybody is all working to help people, but again, there is the ego issue.

We were talking to Lauren Ashcraft last night on our show, and she’s sensitive. She’s a very sensitive person. She doesn’t have the thickest of skin. And I realized that in order to be involved in this nonsense political game, in order to be successful, you have to have a small ego and thick skin. And most people have one or the other, but not both. It’s difficult to find that. But you can’t have a big ego because it has to be about the solution and not you getting credit for it. So for me, I think that what we’re doing is the solution right now and just keep doing it. But we have come very far.

[00:30:55.850] – Grumbine

Yeah. In some ways you’d have to be lying to yourself to not think that it’s clear because you do see that kind of awakening happening. I think, though, that where the struggle comes in is once the awakening occurs, then, OK, so now what? And then my fear is that as we’re radicalizing people with the truth.

[00:31:17.360] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:31:17.960] – Grumbine

Once that wake-up call happens, how do you keep them from getting depressed and checking out because they see power as so firmly entrenched and they don’t see the kind of progress that they want to see? What will be your words of encouragement to someone that sees the world like that?

[00:31:37.350] – Perelman

You know, it’s hard because I see this in two different ways. One, it’s that sort of Chris Hedges, we don’t fight fascists because we know we can win. We fight fascists because they’re fascists. I don’t know another way to do anything and I’m not going to just do nothing. Right. So this is the menu right now, right. How do you sleep better at night?

Do you sleep better knowing that you’re working on the side of justice, or do you want to just say we can’t win, so forget it? And maybe that’s true. Maybe we can’t. Maybe we’re just sort of running on a hamster wheel and we can’t. But for me, I know that at a minimum that I’m doing things locally that it’s helping people. So that’s why I think it’s so important for people to be involved locally.

And I always tell people, especially young people, find whatever issue that you’re passionate about and align yourself with some organizations that are doing work in that because the way to stay positive is to see that you’re making a difference and you’re really only going to see that locally in terms of really seeing satisfying results. That’s generally something that you see. So I think that getting involved locally is the key thing for people to maintain some sense of satisfaction in what we’re doing.

[00:32:51.180] – Grumbine

We have two nonprofits, Real Progressives, Inc. and Real Progress in Action, and both of them serve two different purposes. Real Progressives is designed to educate and work in the policy space to help break down the brilliant work of these geniuses that come up with this stuff and then turn it into useful stuff for regular Jane and Joe Sixpack. That’s side A.

Side B is Real Progress in Action, which is designed to help out with the political space and advocating and lobbying and organizing on the other. And so in one fell swoop, and I tell you this all in one sentence sort of because I think that if you understand where I’m going with this, it’ll put it in better context.

As a former Republican, the one thing that I loved about the Republicans was that you never had to kick them in the ass to get them to jump in and do stuff because they were committed to whatever it was that they were committed to. The left, not so much. The left talks a good game. They put their fists in the air. They bring out the signs to the protests.

But when it comes time to do the behind the scenes work, I think that we have a dearth, a lack of participation not only within the electoral space, but really within the organizing space. There’s far too many people that expect to walk into Google or Microsoft and have everything already laid out for them. They sit down, here’s your computer, here’s your phone, here’s your business cards.

Go change the world as opposed to in a grassroots world where you have to come in and you actually have to be the one that does the brainstorming session. You’re the one that has to write the stuff down. And I think that it’s that moment where why are we getting our butt kicked constantly? Well, damn it, they’re organized. We’re not.

[00:34:42.000] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:34:42.630] – Grumbine

And what does it mean to be organized? Do you think it just means knocking on a few doors? No, it’s a lot more than that. To get to the point where you knock doors, you had to write up the brochures. You had to do the campaign. You had to plan the fundraising. You had to all that stuff in the back seat. And I think people really expect to just wake up and walk in. And if it’s not ready there for them, they lose interest. And that’s a shame.

[00:35:05.190] – Perelman

Yeah, I see that. And I also think that we talk about the left and the right in terms, yeah, the Republicans will fall in line every time, and they’ll get behind whatever they need to get behind. And they are organized and they do have a much better sense of what they’re trying to do because they actually have a platform that they’re working toward.

I don’t agree with their platform, but they exist and they work it. The problem is, is that we don’t have a left. There is no Labor Party in this country. So let’s say we view the Republican electoral centrist government as the center of their thing. They actually wield power for a Republican agenda and then they get their minions to fall in line and that trickles all the way down to the guys in the pickup trucks with the Trump sign.

The problem is there is no left that’s doing that. There is no central structure of power on the left. There’s nobody on the left that’s really disseminating any sort of movement. So the left is therefore left with the only option, which is building from the ground up. And that is hard to do because it relies on people taking initiative and a certain amount of people with leadership skills and not just ideas.

And there’s a certain skill set involved. So the reason the Republicans are successful is that they have a hierarchy that’s in place with the central form of government essentially to themselves that they disseminate. There is no left. So we don’t have that. And that’s the biggest problem.

[00:36:41.000] – Grumbine

I’ve been spending a lot of time digging into both the fraud structure of Wall Street through our program called The New Untouchables: The Pecora Files, but also in preparation for a new podcast we’re going to be doing probably starting in June, July time frame called The S Word. And it’s all about helping regular people get over the propaganda of what struggle wires and what socialism is and just give them an education that they don’t reject, that they don’t push back from.

We were joking about it the other day that if we were really going to try to break out Marx’s capital and all the other Marxist writings from the Russian Revolution and Rosa Luxemburg and all the others from back in the day, we’d be in tough shape because that’s some deep water. And nobody’s going to build a movement based on things that require a Ph.D. level understanding of it’s not realistic.

There’s a reason why there’s only a few Ph.D.s out there. Part of it is the way society is structured to make it impossible for some to get it. But the other reason is not everybody’s called to do it, not everybody wants that. And so how do you create a movement based on using words that are so foreign to the average person that they just reject you no matter what the content is, because you’re framing in such a way that it is elitist, that it is beyond them.

And quite frankly, they got 10 minutes to give you and they don’t want to hear the shit. How would you bridge the divide in terms of creating that left space? Because you realize critical theory and all the stuff the great philosophers do is very important in its own right. It frames how you think through problems. But for other people that are living more hand-to-mouth, how would you create left with that army?

[00:38:36.810] – Perelman

To some extent, that’s what I feel like we’re doing here on our platform, and I very much believe that any successful revolution in this country is going to be based on labor and that what we really need is a huge labor movement and a general strike. And then what you’ll have is people coming out in support of labor. I mean, ultimately, that is the backbone of this country and that is something that has been completely disregarded and abused for so many years.

So the way to do it is to form people based on economic struggle and strife and oppression and not tribalism and get people to see that we are all in the same club. And unless you’re in charge, you’re in our group. Right? This is how it works. And I think that the way that is done is through labor. And this is my contention about the idea of forming third parties.

And I’ve said it many times, and this is also the problem with the Green Party and why they can’t get any sort of momentum going is it’s too niche. It’s a niche thing. Even just the name of it, the Green Party. Anybody who is, let’s say, a right more conservative populist type person isn’t going to go join the Green Party with the hippies. But would they join the labor movement?

Yeah, they very well might join the labor movement. Any effective progress revolution or third party in this country is going to need to be based on labor. So we spend an inordinate amount of time. We have a segment on our show called Uplifting Labor, talking about a lot of these issues. But that’s what I want people to understand. We need people in yellow vests in this country.

[00:40:15.810] – Grumbine

Yes, we have a guy on our team named Eric Kestner who works with Yellow Vest America, and he’s a guy who is on our activist team. And I’m excited about seeing where this takes us because we’re struggling, right, to get people to stop trying to be big fish in small ponds and trying to get them to fold in and work together.

[00:40:35.970] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:40:36.360] – Grumbine

And we’ve taken the time to build these things would be great if we could fill them up with people that really want to make change.

[00:40:42.930] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:40:43.800] – Grumbine

What is it like as a woman in this space, in particular, trying to make change? Are you feeling people are listening to you? How does it work?

[00:40:53.040] – Perelman

OK, first, let me clarify that as a woman and I do not know another adult woman that has not been violated in some way and by violated, it’s a spectrum of things ranging from just pervy jokes to forcible rape to Bill Cosby rape. But other than those kinds of things I’ve never felt talked over. So for me, I’m just me and I’m just going to do my thing and let the chips fall where they may.

I very much believe that we are only as strong as our weakest link. I very much believe that when everybody’s doing well, everybody does well. That’s just how I see it. And so I will bring up anybody who is wanting to be in the direction of progress. Anybody who is wanting to contribute to what we’re doing is somebody that I will promote because it’s not about me.

That’s the thing. And this all comes back to the ego thing. And I think that that’s very hard for people. People like their credit. And there’s also a difference when we’re talking about women that are being successful. It’s funny. I see this in relation to men and women and also in relation to black and white race issue. You can be a successful woman, but are you being successful in a man setting and having to conform to a certain paradigm in order to have that success?

Sort of like a black person in a white business? Yes, they’re successful and they’re black, but there are still confined and working within this paradigm. And so my goal and how I’m choosing to live is I’m just sort of in my own little paradigm. I refuse to accept any of that nonsense. I look at Congress as my employees. I don’t feel threatened by them. I don’t feel intimidated by them. I feel generally irritated that they’re so insubordinate. So I guess I don’t intimidate easy is the answer.

[00:42:48.740] – Grumbine

So I want to just say this. So, there’s two big things that come to mind here. There is a lady named Lua Yuille, who is a professor at Kansas, and she talks about how economics is a man’s sport, so to speak. And it’s interesting to watch the women that have risen to the top because they’ve had to master the role of being male. They’ve got to master the space of being male. So they not only have to bear the weight of being a woman, they also have to bear the weight of the culture and the language and the framing.

[00:43:19.370] – Perelman

Exactly.

[00:43:20.000] – Grumbine

And so you bringing that up is so amazing. This brings me, though, to another completely nonpolitical, I guess it could be political but nonpolitical thing that is even more fascinating to me. All right. And for those of you who have been on this little journey with me, you’re going to appreciate this. So I’m a metalhead, but I also am a Grateful Deadhead, and I like all kinds of music. I’m all over the map and I’m wearing right now as we’re recording, I’m wearing a Steal Your Face sweatshirt.

[00:43:46.680] – Perelman

Excellent. Most excellent.

[00:43:47.300] – Grumbine

But I happen to be absolutely 100 percent bona fide obsessed with a band named Jinjer, J I N J E R.

[00:43:56.150] – Perelman

OK.

[00:43:59.900] – Grumbine

And they are led by one of the most dynamic, powerful, awesome attitude ladies you’ve ever seen in your life. And she can growl exactly like Lamb of God or Slayer. And then without even changing, she can immediately go to a high soprano note, clean like beautiful. She could be your Mr. Rogers, so to speak.

[00:44:23.440] – Perelman

Right.

[00:44:23.960] – Grumbine

And for me, I really enjoy it. Right, because I enjoy things that are different. I like people that are really good at what they do. And I enjoy watching beautiful art in whatever form it comes in. And it cracked me up because, see, our intro song to this is written by my brother and one of the volunteers.

His name is Tim Yeomen’s and Tim is the singer and is a homespun song. And the song is called See Through, and it’s talking about the lies you tell me. And it’s like busting through the lies. Well, that’s what the entire show is about. And so I get this. Oh my goodness. It’s like acid in my ears.

[00:45:01.895]

[laughter]

[00:45:01.940] – Grumbine

I can’t fast forward 20 seconds to the intro to get to the meat of this incredible podcast. Let me tell you the back story. When I was drinking and I used to be a drunk, I’m talking about the blackout drunk, OK? And during the time where I got sober, this was the music my brother was playing. He was writing this music. This music was all about peeling back the lies.

And so as I’m looking at Jinjer, I didn’t take the time at first to realize, well, these are Ukrainians. They have been hopping from place to place because they’re in war-torn Ukraine. They’ve got people on the rooftops with sniper rifles. They’ve got planes coming through bombing. They’ve had to leave and go all over the place. And they’re singing anti-war music, damn it. If they’re not a revolutionary band.

[00:45:48.920] – Perelman

Yeah.

[00:45:48.920] – Grumbine

And listening to the fact that they’re singing an anti-war message. This is one song, ‘How’s your view at the top,’ as they watch a rich CEO hanging from the rafters. And it’s just incredibly class-based economic warfare, total revolution, and it’s led by a woman and dang gone, if she doesn’t sound angry one minute and singing lullabies the next minute. It’s just incredible. If you get a chance, check it out.

[00:46:13.550] – Perelman

I will.

[00:46:14.300] – Grumbine

It’s just one of those things where you kind of remind me of her.

[00:46:18.020] – Perelman

Oh, my God.

[00:46:19.040] – Grumbine

Well, she’s my hero. So this is a compliment in the most thorough way. OK?

[00:46:22.820] – Perelman

Oh, that’s so sweet.

[00:46:24.800] – Grumbine

There’s this one part where she steps out on the stage and right when it goes to kicking it. If you’re a metalhead, folks, you know what I’m talking about. Right when the breakdown happens, your hair starts standing on end. This is what happens. And as soon as she does, she kicks her leg like a judo kick.

It drops into “rah, rah, rah, rah.” And I’m like, what the heck did I just see? This is the best thing I’ve ever seen. But she does it with so much swagger and so much strength and so much confidence. You ask, how do you go to sleep at night? I listen to Jinjer.

[00:46:57.170] – Perelman

And really that’s ultimately at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters to me is and I say this all the time, the only person’s opinion of me that matters is mine. So if I’m good with me, then we’re good and that’s it. I try my best not to concern myself with it and just do my thing. It’s all I can do.

[00:47:17.300] – Grumbine

Well, your thing is really pretty awesome. And I got to tell you, I do my best to try and check out the differences. I do a lot of things with Jordan Chariton at Status Coup. I’m frequently on with the folks at Sputnik Radio on Political Misfits with Bob and Michelle. I’m also on with Jamarl and Shane Stranahan with the Faultlines and kind of regular contributors.

And so in that sense, I’ve got my own little echo chamber. And then, of course, we’ve got Patrick Lovell and Eric Vaughan from The Con that we work with for the New Untouchables. But this spider webbing, I want to connect more webs with you guys. I want to build more networks.

[00:47:54.420] – Perelman

Yeah, that’s sort of what we’re working on. So last week we had Wendell Potter on as a guest. Are you familiar with Wendell?

[00:48:01.550] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:48:02.090] – Perelman

1. And so the next thing you know, the other day he called Peter, my partner. And Peter is now helping him work on basically pushing for single-payer in Pennsylvania like Whole Washington or what they’ve got going in New York. They’re going to start pushing in Pennsylvania. And it was just this amazing connection that happened. So that is the revolution. This is the revolution.

[00:48:24.830] – Grumbine

Very good. Well, I tell you what, do me a favor, please. If you can think of people that I need to connect with, don’t be afraid to do a warm transfer because I really want to be more involved, more connected. I want to do the best I can to do the same.

[00:48:41.180] – Perelman

And this is what I told Lauren because Lauren Ashcraft just started a podcast called Biting Commentary because it’s her kind of giving biting commentary, and then it’s also food-based. But I told her and I’ll tell you the same thing, if you look at any of the people that we’ve had on our show, if you go back and look at our podcast and anybody seems interesting to you, I’d be more than happy to make a connection.

[00:49:03.230] – Grumbine

You are a rock star because I’m going to take you up on that.

[00:49:05.750] – Perelman

Absolutely. That’s the whole point. Our new website is going to be going up any day. And one of the things that it’s going to have is the Changemaker section, which you’ll be on there, anybody who’s been a guest, and it’ll be like your picture and links to your stuff.

[00:49:20.210] – Grumbine

Oh, that’s nice.

[00:49:21.080] – Perelman

Yeah. So like we’ve had authors on, so it’ll be like a link to get the book or whatever it is. And so that’ll essentially be what I’m offering you right now. It’s not up and running, but anybody who we’ve done a podcast with, I can connect.

[00:49:35.600] – Grumbine

Let me just say, because I know our chief operating officer, Julie Alberding, is also our webmaster. And one of the things she created was something very similar to this, which is our RP Bookshelf. So we’re in the process of expanding that. So it sounds like we’re all kind of marching in the same direction. That’s really awesome.

[00:49:54.140] – Perelman

Exactly. See, that’s the thing I do. I think that and I’m like you, I’m kind of a geek and I spend hours researching, going down rabbit holes and figuring something out. And I spend hours a day and most people don’t have that time to do that. But one of the things that I do is when something’s interesting, I’m like, oh, I’m going to have a panel on that. 

Right now I’m in the process of forming an Israel Palestine panel based on me needing to have a girls intervention kind of situation. So I’m talking with Rasha (Mubarak) and just trying to get it set up. But yeah, everything that we do to provide information is a step in the right direction.

[00:50:30.530] – Grumbine

This is just amazing. So this is a great way to end our time here together. Tell the people that are listening where they might be able to find you and other stuff you’re doing.

[00:50:40.100] – Perelman

Yeah. So we have a podcast called Jenerational Change that’s generational with a J and that is on YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes. And then we’re available on social media. We’re usually updating what we’re up to on Facebook. It’s Jen Perelman and on Twitter and Instagram, we’re @JenFL23 and we have our local stuff.

We want local people to get involved. Like this afternoon we’re doing a food distribution. So there’s just different things that we’re doing locally with our Jen Corps organization. And then all of the money that comes in through JENerational Change is going into JENCorps.

[00:51:17.780] – Grumbine

From a nonprofit to a nonprofit kind of world. Let’s find a way to do some work together.

[00:51:22.430] – Perelman

Absolutely. I’m still waiting to get my official and I’m not a 501 (c) 3 because we endorse candidates and I’m waiting and waiting and waiting. And every time I check the IRS, it’s like we’re still backlogged from April from last year. And I paid them. I paid them my $50 to get my little 501 (c) 4.

[00:51:39.980] – Grumbine

Just be careful. Remember one thing, the thing that they love is fines, fees, and penalties.

[00:51:45.410] – Perelman

Oh yeah.

[00:51:45.980] – Grumbine

Just make sure you dot your I’s and cross your T’s. Well anyway, I want to thank you so much for joining me, and I hope we can do this again real soon.

[00:51:56.320] – Perelman

Absolutely, Steve. Always here.

[00:51:59.290] – Grumbine

Awesome. Folks, Steve Grumbine, Jen Perelman, Macro N Cheese. We’re out of here.

[00:52:11.210] – Ending credits

Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Mindy Donham. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to

Check out JENerational Change

Follow Jen on Twitter @JENFL23

Mentioned in the podcast:

Zion (from The Matrix)

Beau of The Fifth Column

Brand New Congress

Lauren Ashcraft

Professor Lua Yuille

Steal Your Face

Jinjer

Political Misfits

Jen with Wendell Potter

Biting Commentary with Lauren Ashcraft

The RP Bookshelf

Rasha Mubarak

• Download Audio (mp3)