December 4, 2025 • 26 mins
Today’s guest, Bobby Nichols is the former Phoenix Democratic Socialist of America's chapter chair and current member. He is also the founder of Arizona Works Together, a pro-union political action committee operating at the state level
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Civic Cipher Studios. Welcome to the QR Code,
where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes. I
am your host, Ramsay's job. Big shout out to q
Ward who is off to handle some very important business.
But have no fear around here. It is business as
usual and true to form. We have a special guest
(00:21):
in the building joining us today. He's been on the
show a few times. We hope to have him on
the show many more times, and now is a really
good time to have this conversation. He goes by the
name of Bobby Nichols. For those that are unfamiliar, I'll
give you a little bit of background. Bobby Nichols is
a former Phoenix Democratic Socialist of America Chapter chair and
current member. He is the founder of Arizona Works Together,
(00:43):
a pro union political action committee operating at the state level. Additionally,
Bobby Nichols works for the Office of the Arizona Attorney
General as a state attorney, representing Arizona's Departments of Child
Safety and Economic Security and superior and administrative court cases
involving the abuse, neglect, and exploitation of minor children and
(01:03):
vulnerable adults. So welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Thank you very much for having me, And if anybody
likes what they're hearing today, I'm also running for Tempe
City Council. Website is www dot Bobbyfotempe dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
There's a lot more you can learn there. I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I love it, and yeah, I've been kind of following
your campaign and I'm hoping that the conversation today will
indeed inspire other people who have been tuned in to
politics as of late, with some exciting developments, particularly in
New York that we're going to talk about a little
later on in today's show. But yeah, you are the
(01:39):
one person who can speak to and articulate sort of
a third way of thinking about things as opposed to
the binary that we're accustomed to. Now not only is
the right time to have this conversation, but I think
that you're the right person. So we appreciate you coming
on to this show and sharing your insights with our listeners.
(02:00):
Where we go any further though, as always, we're going
to start off with a feel good feature, and for
today's feel good feature, we're going to take it back
a bit. Normally, we like to talk about stuff that
is kind of current in the news. But Q thought
that this was a cool story, and we're like, hey,
you know what, we should let people feel good about
what's going on in the world. So this will be
our feel good feature, if you will. So today's Avenue Excellence.
(02:23):
We're going all the way back to two thousand and one.
I'm sharing this from nine to eleven Memorial dot org.
When the nine eleven attacks were carried out within the
boundaries of the United States, the impact of the event
touched every corner of the world. Victims represent over ninety nations,
and the attacks are estimated to have been witnessed in
real time by one third of the world's population by
a television in radio. But for some remote communities, news
(02:46):
of the attacks travels slowly, often carried by witnesses. The
true account of one such witness, a young man named
Wilson Kimelli Naoma, forms the basis of the children's book
fourteen Cows for America by Carmen Agri two thousand and one. Kimelli,
a Massi student with sorry from a remote village in Kenya,
(03:06):
was attending university in California. He witnessed the attacks from
the World Trade Center while visiting New York. When he
returned home to his village months later, he was the
first to share the story with his community. Deeply moved
by Kimelli's account of the attacks, an elder posed a question,
what can we do for these poor people? And response,
Kmelli decided to offer the United States an extremely personal
(03:27):
gift born from deep compassion, a cow. Massi culture, cows
are sacred symbols, as Kimelli explains quote to the Massi,
the cow is life quote. Inspired by Kamelli's generosity, the
other members came together to offer a total of fourteen
cows to the people of America, gifting them to a
(03:47):
visiting ambassador and a special ceremony. I don't know, this
is just a touching story, and I feel like I
heard a little bit about it when it happened. But
when Q, I was like, you know what we should
sell that share that that is a really special story,
and you know, we deserve to feel good from time
to time because we deal with some heavy stuff. All right,
Bobby Nichols, Let's get to the man of the hour. Okay.
(04:12):
So first off, I love that you're running or office.
That is just so special and I think that. I
don't know if it's too grand of a statement to
say that things are changing, but we certainly have seen
(04:33):
some small changes. They would have been unexpected maybe two
three years ago, and now they are electrifying and energizing
and most notably of course, since we last spoke. Last
time we talked, we were looking forward to the election
in New York with Mom Donnie kind of leading the polls.
(04:55):
But you know, anything could have happened. There was a
you know, there was a long runway head. Right now
that he's won, we're in a different world, right Yeah,
So did you expect him to win?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I was very confident it's our undred win.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Obviously, your Phoenix chapter in DSA, chapters around the country
had their little watch groups, and so I was with
a bunch of my comrades and friends, and there were
these moments where Cuomo's vote count would jump up a
little bit and then we'd have to check the apps
and be like, no, it's just Staten Island. They're just
reporting faster than everybody else. And then as time went on,
even before the election, I was very confident it's our
(05:33):
hundred win. He was running the best campaign he had
the most volunteers. He had the most policy positions that
were clearly intended to benefit the most people, and so
was he. If he was able to get that message out,
he was definitely going to win. And I think he
did a great job of getting that message out. But
you still, you know, you see the little ticks up
from like thirty nine percent to forty one percent, two percent,
(05:55):
and then back down to forty one percent, and then
you just, you know, your heart palpitates a little bit,
and eventually it all worked out perfectly. It felt really
really good. We had a you know, a giant moment
of cheering and screaming and victory. It felt incredible for
socialists around the country. And it's also really really cool
that there were socialists in other cities that won very
convincingly as well. In Atlanta, there's a Democratic socialist named
(06:18):
Kelsey Bond who won some sixty two sixty three percent
vote out there one in the first round. Yeah, also
ran an incredible campaign, one of the best socialist fundraisers
you could possibly imagine. And then down in Tucson there's
a woman named Miranda Schubert who also run her race
as essentially a Democratic socialist candidate.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
She's been a chapter.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Member for years, and the chapter was very engaged with
her effort, and they also just did incredibly well.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I want to stick with this just for a second,
and I apologize, but we have to assume that there
are people coming to this conversation that haven't heard our
conversations before, So forgive kind of the nature of this question.
But I think that this will account for people who
listened to our prior conversations and welcome new listeners to
(07:07):
this conversation as well. What is it that you think?
Let me start over. So Donald Trump famously called Zoron
Mom Donnie a communist, right, and this was kind of
the This was kind of how sounded during that campaign.
It was like, this person is just a a corruption
(07:29):
of our values and all that sort of stuff. It's
a asterdization of what it is that we espouse in
this country, democracy, that sort of thing. It just was
a whole who knows, man, I don't know kind of
what because it was nonsensical, right, So it's hard for
me to recall exactly what they were saying. But there
are people that associate a significant amount of negative energy
(07:52):
with the word socialism, right, So what I'm asking, not
is what is socialism? Because I feel like I've asked
that question one hundred times to you and maybe the
people know that now. But what is it that you
think happened with these campaigns around the country that while
it didn't surprise you, surprised a lot of people. There
was a lot of people that vote. I think that
(08:13):
was the highest election turnout in fifty years in New York.
Those people weren't just voting lesser of two evils. Those
people were excited to vote for mom Donnie. So what
was it about his campaign and other campaigns? Indeed, you
can talk about your own that you think is resonating
with people.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
So it was really successful.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
In my opinion about Zorn's campaign, about Kelsey BOM's campaign,
about Miranda Schubert's campaign, about these campaigns a Democratic Socialists
ran around the country is that they were based on
the real needs of real people. Sure, and they weren't
just saying I know what you need, I can do it.
They were out on the doors every single day. Okay,
And I'm out on the doors every single day as well.
(08:50):
I'm knocking doors, I'm talking to people, and I'm identifying
what they really need in their day to day lives,
and believe it or not, they need the world to
be more affordable. They need to have housing costs that
are lower, they need to have public trustation ops and
spending so much money on car culture. They need grocery
prices that are lower. How we do these things has
always been the question, but the needs have sort of
(09:12):
always been the same. And so when Zoron takes that approach,
Zoron is saying, I'm going to do these very specific
public policies and they are going to be what we
bring that affordability.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
We make the world more.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Affordable for everybody. Same thing was said by Kelsey Bonds.
Same thing was said by Miranda Schubert, same thing was
said by people around the country. It's affordability that's.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
On the ballot.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
It's building worlds that people can live in without feeling
like they have to break their necks at four or
five jobs, or if they aren't. Sometimes in some cases
they're doing that. They're saddled with debt, they're saddled with
crippling anxiety about having to get out and find something else.
The job market is down, and so people this is
something that I actually have talked about a couple of times.
(09:54):
And one of the reasons why I think Donald Trump
and Zoron have a little bit of a sh shared
pool of voters, it's because they start with the same argument.
That argument is the economy is not working for you,
and then Donald Trump goes into horrifying nightmare fascism and
Zoron Mom Donnie says, and we're gonna build public programs
that address that. We're going to change the economy and
(10:17):
the way that it's structured because we're gonna get union power.
We're gonna build union power by increasing union density. We're
going to improve lives for public servants by increasing wages
and reducing costs. And we're going to build out the
structures and the infrastructure that allow for everybody to work
good jobs, have childcare, get lower costs at the grocery store, whatever.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It may be.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
It's just meeting people where they are and then telling
them and meaning it that you know something that you
can do that will change that for them, and then
having a plan.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
And I'm glad that you connected Donald Trump with zon
Mom Donnie in terms of their campaigns, because you know
the way you describe vibed Mom Donnie and the other
elected officials around the country that espouse socialism the way
(11:15):
you explain, how they focus on the people and their
economics in their real world. That's exactly what Donald Trump
was doing. Except Donald Trump, as you mentioned, had these
like he was almost scaring people into them to voting
for him, as opposed to inspiring people to reconsider their
(11:39):
options insofar as their government is concerned. And I want
to put that at the intersection of another thing you said,
which I think again people first coming to this conversation,
if this is their first conversation where they're hearing from you.
You told me, and it's been burning in my ears
ever since, Like I was at the blackout protest in DC.
(12:02):
You know, I've had tons of conversations and tons of
really influential, powerful people, and it's your words ringing in
my ear. But you said that socialism is what should
happen on the other side of capitalism. In other words,
capitalism should lead to socialism, right. And as I consume
(12:25):
information about like a variable pricing models, you know, you
pay one price and I pay a different prices because
we can afford different things. And this is kind of
being rolled out around the country. As we talk about
ai and how AI is going to kind of reshape
the job market and indeed our future. We don't really
(12:47):
benefit from that as people, as citizens, corporations benefit from that.
And you would think, Okay, we're going to work less,
We're going to make more money, We're going to have
more of our lives to dedicate to things that we like,
not watching and meaning and whatnot, making art and music
and being people. Right, you would think that. So again,
the intersection of late stage capitalism naturally evolving in theory
(13:13):
into socialism and the success of these campaigns just you know,
your reflections on I suppose, how would you make a
person coming to this conversation feel like that is a
an outcome they should expect rather than what like further,
(13:39):
I guess, a further campaigns or capitalism in this country.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Sorry, I think it's interesting that you mentioned the AI thing,
and I'm going to try to get around to this. Yeah,
I know it was a lot, but one of the
things that is always intriguing about ai oka is who
it is benefiting, right, Because, like you're saying, like this.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Make it easier for all of us to work fewer.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Hours, we should go down to like a four day
work week, three or three day work week.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
We should all be able.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
To make the same amount of money because we're generating
as a society the same productivity. But instead all of
these benefits are going up to the people who own
the systems. And so one of the things that I
want to like sort of point out a lot is
I do believe that socialism is the next step from capitalism.
(14:29):
Think of it as an absolute inevitability. And the reason
why I struggle to think of it as inevitability is
as inevitable is because we have to get happen and
the people who currently own the AI, for example, don't
want it to happen like they know that too. They
know that the next step and societal evolution means they're
(14:51):
going to have less money. Elon Musk doesn't get to
be a trillionaire in a socialist world because that is
an equitable distribution of wealth. I'm going to do everything
I can to make sure that does not come to pass.
And the counter to that, though, is these campaigns are
reflecting the lived realities of everyday people. These billion are
so far out of touch from what we are experiencing
(15:14):
as people who work and have to like go to
the grocery store ourselves and ride the bus from time
to time. That's just not in their world. And so
they're not imagining what our experiences. They're just saying, I
want to protect my experience, got mine, essentially, And in
order to break that cycle, in the same way that
the capitalists had to break the feudal cycle, the feudalists
(15:36):
didn't just like lay down of it up. They had
to revolutionize their surroundings. They had to go out and
find a way to make that change happen. And so
I personally believe that doing these things, fighting for these policies,
achieving victories in this electoral space is a path to
that revolutionary change. And one of the things I like
(15:56):
talking about when I talk about the Democratic Socialists of
America and say are you a revolutionary organization? Are you
just a reformist organization? My thought is that we are
an organization that believes in the distribution of wealth based
on needs rather than based on ownership or birth or
grace or anything. That we reject a society built on exploitation,
(16:18):
and we intend to move to a world that is
designed to be cooperative rather than coercive and those are
revolutionary goals and we really shouldn't lose sight of that.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
I want to add something here because and I mentioned
this recently on I Forget which show? But I mentioned
it recently to add to that again for folks just
coming to this conversation. To add to that, there has
been a push in terms of like businesses to convert
(16:51):
all of their consumers to subscription models.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I follow business closely. I went to business school a
couple of business schools and graduated too, so so these
this is kind of the things that they make the
way to me. They're in my algorithms, that sort of thing.
So when I learned that, I thought, wow, how brilliant
is that for business? And how awful is that for people?
(17:21):
Because that means if you're not somehow generating income, then
you lose out on the capacity to enjoy life to
the fullest. And you know, it doesn't cost Netflix anything
if you are you know, use your aunt's account, right,
it doesn't cost them anything. But they are not exploiting,
(17:45):
they're not benefiting from your fiscal input, and they basically
already have like a hyper consumption of society. But they
further they turn us into what is the word I'm
looking for? They further relegate us to units of consumptions.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I like to think of it this way, like capitalism
is always seeking out new markets. They're always trying to
find somewhere and someone who can buy their goods and
somebody else who can make their goods foreper more cheaply.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
And that is what.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
The core of neotonialism is these days. Like our time,
our money, our our position as a possible consumer is
a colonization of our identities as people in our.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Lives are not in our lives. We are not going
to be what we want to be.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
We are going to be consumers, and that is being
dictated down at us from a very wealthy people who
want to think of us one way and don't want
to give us the ability to engage in our own realities.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
That feels like to people that push back against the
idea of socialism, that feels like all of the motivation
you'd need, right. But you know, people tend to associate
socialism with Venezuela, which is not an accurate representation of socialism.
Nor is the National Socialist Party the Nazi Party, because
(19:18):
that's not an accurate representation of socialism. Either socialism in
practice looks kind of like what Mom Donnie's campaign is,
which is, hey, some of these things can be free.
If they're made free, then people have more economic viability.
If they have more economic viability, crime drops, opportunities increase.
Everyone does better, even the wealthy people. They don't get
(19:38):
to be as wealthy as they would like to be,
but society overall does great. And these people still have
enough money to leave to their posterity, and everybody's going
to be okay.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And I think it is the difference between thinking of
the world as an individualist ecosphere versus a social project. Yeah,
And like if we're thinking of ourselves as you know,
we have to I have to succeed if I want
to see, that means you have to fail. If you
want to succeed, that means I have to fail. That
is sort of the model that we're living in right now.
(20:10):
That is an inherently self defeating, self cannibalizing model. Ultimately
will need to be replaced, and it does need to
be replaced by a model that prioritizes the whole whole, Yeah,
and the society over the individual.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Another one of the things I say on the show,
is what's the point of a government? Does an individual
need a government to serve his interests or is a
government to ensure the functioning of a society the health
of a society? Rightly, and so socialism certainly at this
point now that we're kind of at the tail in capitalism,
(20:47):
this great capitalistic run where we've kind of been in
the number one position for fifty plus years, seventy years
or something like that.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Right World War two going on eighty. So there we go.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
That's a better number now that we've kind of gotten
to this point. Rather than continue to squeeze the life
out of the human beings, we can use the systems
that we've built to benefit those same human beings. And
I think that there's some longevity to the people that
do own something in the world. I don't think people
(21:18):
lose the one percent of the one percent. They don't
lose as much as people think. And for so many
people to defend them as though they got it. Honestly,
I don't think billionaires exist without stepping on tons of people. Right,
all right, we got to move on another question I
wanted to. I just wanted to get your thoughts here, though,
Donald Trump and Mom Donnie. They had a meeting at
the White House. That meeting was unexpected by me, and
(21:44):
it went surprisingly well. Based on what I saw, your thoughts,
your reflections, I think it's.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Really interesting that Trump is now like dressing up like
Mom Donnie. I feel like this was one of the
most interesting examples of Mom Donny me as a person
like he is so charismatic, his ideas make sense. He's
really framing the I'm trying to take care of the
people in New York, and Donald Trump can then say, like,
wait a second, I lived in New York for a while.
Now I live in Florida, even though I say I
(22:13):
still live in New York, but like, I care about
New York City, and Mom Donnie has a clear vision.
I have no illusions that Donald Trump is going to
be anything but a thorn in Mom Donnie's side for
his entire administration. But I think this is a really
good example of how popular these ideas are with everyone,
and how much sense it makes to build a world
(22:35):
that works for all of us. Universal programs are intended
to be just that universal, and so if Donald Trump's
as a capitalist, Donald Trump could probably hopefully see that
at some point seeing the benefit of having a working
population that is well fed, able to get to work
on time, able to have their kids are well taken
care of. They don't have to be worried about leaving
(22:56):
or coming back or whatever the situation is. All of
these things are ended to benefit everybody because our goal
as a society is like to increase this productivity for
all of us. And if we have this, it's the
structures that we have right now which is making genuinely
impossible because they are not intended to benefit all of us.
That and the wages have not increased together, rents have
(23:19):
gone up, while at the same time wages have remained stagnant.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
One of the things I like to do is think
of things like parks, roads and sidewalks and things, because
those things are paid for and maintained by governments and
they benefit everyone. And so when a person where a
(23:45):
person draws the line at what is socialism and then
attacks that, I think they have to skip over things
like roads and you know, because I think that at
their core, the idea of socialism is that we are
all sharing this with This is shared ownership of this
road or this park or whatever. Everyone who is a citizen,
(24:05):
you know, and lives in this place or whatever it
gets to go here and take advantage of this library,
for example, or.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
You know whatever.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Right, I think that makes it easier for people to
see how they've been miseducated and to see that they've
been taught to fear something that isn't really that scary.
They've lived with these principles to some degree throughout their
entire life, and the world has not come to an end.
(24:36):
And so that's kind of where I start.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
You go ahead here, I got an interest on that.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I think one of the main ones that I try
to focus on is like firefighters, and there's a really
interesting connection between like capitalists firefighting and what we have now,
which is a socialist model of firefighters. We're going to
go back to like somebody who was a contemporary of
Julius Caesar. His name was Crassis. Crassis was a very
very wealthy Roman center. Roman centers at the time were
(25:01):
just like powerful, powerful, powerful people with tons and tons
of money. And Crassis made his money by owning a
firefighting brigade. It was a brigade of slaves that he
would go around and have them fight fires. And so
if somebody's house caught fire, Crassus would pull up to
their house with all of these people with water buckets
or whatever it is, and he would go to the
home owner and say, like, your house is screwed, maybe
(25:23):
you should let me buy it so I can put
out the fire. And then the comer would be like,
are you what do you mean my house is going
He's like, well, yeah, in a minute, it's going to
be worth nothing. But if you sell it to me
right now, I'll give you something like I'm then I
going to put out the fire and take care of
my own home.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
And that was the firefighting system back then.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
So like in the same way that that would suck
if it happened now, like if you're if my house
were to catch fire, I would not want somebody outside
my house. And I'm like, to me, become a renter.
I'll you pay me for the rest of your life
to live here, and in exchange, I'll put out the fire.
Even though I am currently a renter, I'm in a
hypothetical where I own a home and at this point, yeah,
but yeah, so that's the sort of that's one of
(26:01):
the main difference. So you can see a direct connection
with like, what is a capitalist model for a public
service which just doesn't work, yeah, versus the socialist model
public service which works for everyone.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
So I appreciate that we obviously have a lot more
to talk about. I want to talk about the shift
toward younger people as a number of things I want
to talk around I talk about rather, so stay tuned.
We're going to come back with more Bobby Nichols
Broadcasting from the Civic Cipher Studios. Welcome to the QR Code,
where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes. I
am your host, Ramsay's job. Big shout out to q
Ward who is off to handle some very important business.
But have no fear around here. It is business as
usual and true to form. We have a special guest
(00:21):
in the building joining us today. He's been on the
show a few times. We hope to have him on
the show many more times, and now is a really
good time to have this conversation. He goes by the
name of Bobby Nichols. For those that are unfamiliar, I'll
give you a little bit of background. Bobby Nichols is
a former Phoenix Democratic Socialist of America Chapter chair and
current member. He is the founder of Arizona Works Together,
(00:43):
a pro union political action committee operating at the state level. Additionally,
Bobby Nichols works for the Office of the Arizona Attorney
General as a state attorney, representing Arizona's Departments of Child
Safety and Economic Security and superior and administrative court cases
involving the abuse, neglect, and exploitation of minor children and
(01:03):
vulnerable adults. So welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Thank you very much for having me, And if anybody
likes what they're hearing today, I'm also running for Tempe
City Council. Website is www dot Bobbyfotempe dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
There's a lot more you can learn there. I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I love it, and yeah, I've been kind of following
your campaign and I'm hoping that the conversation today will
indeed inspire other people who have been tuned in to
politics as of late, with some exciting developments, particularly in
New York that we're going to talk about a little
later on in today's show. But yeah, you are the
(01:39):
one person who can speak to and articulate sort of
a third way of thinking about things as opposed to
the binary that we're accustomed to. Now not only is
the right time to have this conversation, but I think
that you're the right person. So we appreciate you coming
on to this show and sharing your insights with our listeners.
(02:00):
Where we go any further though, as always, we're going
to start off with a feel good feature, and for
today's feel good feature, we're going to take it back
a bit. Normally, we like to talk about stuff that
is kind of current in the news. But Q thought
that this was a cool story, and we're like, hey,
you know what, we should let people feel good about
what's going on in the world. So this will be
our feel good feature, if you will. So today's Avenue Excellence.
(02:23):
We're going all the way back to two thousand and one.
I'm sharing this from nine to eleven Memorial dot org.
When the nine eleven attacks were carried out within the
boundaries of the United States, the impact of the event
touched every corner of the world. Victims represent over ninety nations,
and the attacks are estimated to have been witnessed in
real time by one third of the world's population by
a television in radio. But for some remote communities, news
(02:46):
of the attacks travels slowly, often carried by witnesses. The
true account of one such witness, a young man named
Wilson Kimelli Naoma, forms the basis of the children's book
fourteen Cows for America by Carmen Agri two thousand and one. Kimelli,
a Massi student with sorry from a remote village in Kenya,
(03:06):
was attending university in California. He witnessed the attacks from
the World Trade Center while visiting New York. When he
returned home to his village months later, he was the
first to share the story with his community. Deeply moved
by Kimelli's account of the attacks, an elder posed a question,
what can we do for these poor people? And response,
Kmelli decided to offer the United States an extremely personal
(03:27):
gift born from deep compassion, a cow. Massi culture, cows
are sacred symbols, as Kimelli explains quote to the Massi,
the cow is life quote. Inspired by Kamelli's generosity, the
other members came together to offer a total of fourteen
cows to the people of America, gifting them to a
(03:47):
visiting ambassador and a special ceremony. I don't know, this
is just a touching story, and I feel like I
heard a little bit about it when it happened. But
when Q, I was like, you know what we should
sell that share that that is a really special story,
and you know, we deserve to feel good from time
to time because we deal with some heavy stuff. All right,
Bobby Nichols, Let's get to the man of the hour. Okay.
(04:12):
So first off, I love that you're running or office.
That is just so special and I think that. I
don't know if it's too grand of a statement to
say that things are changing, but we certainly have seen
(04:33):
some small changes. They would have been unexpected maybe two
three years ago, and now they are electrifying and energizing
and most notably of course, since we last spoke. Last
time we talked, we were looking forward to the election
in New York with Mom Donnie kind of leading the polls.
(04:55):
But you know, anything could have happened. There was a
you know, there was a long runway head. Right now
that he's won, we're in a different world, right Yeah,
So did you expect him to win?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I was very confident it's our undred win.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Obviously, your Phoenix chapter in DSA, chapters around the country
had their little watch groups, and so I was with
a bunch of my comrades and friends, and there were
these moments where Cuomo's vote count would jump up a
little bit and then we'd have to check the apps
and be like, no, it's just Staten Island. They're just
reporting faster than everybody else. And then as time went on,
even before the election, I was very confident it's our
(05:33):
hundred win. He was running the best campaign he had
the most volunteers. He had the most policy positions that
were clearly intended to benefit the most people, and so
was he. If he was able to get that message out,
he was definitely going to win. And I think he
did a great job of getting that message out. But
you still, you know, you see the little ticks up
from like thirty nine percent to forty one percent, two percent,
(05:55):
and then back down to forty one percent, and then
you just, you know, your heart palpitates a little bit,
and eventually it all worked out perfectly. It felt really
really good. We had a you know, a giant moment
of cheering and screaming and victory. It felt incredible for
socialists around the country. And it's also really really cool
that there were socialists in other cities that won very
convincingly as well. In Atlanta, there's a Democratic socialist named
(06:18):
Kelsey Bond who won some sixty two sixty three percent
vote out there one in the first round. Yeah, also
ran an incredible campaign, one of the best socialist fundraisers
you could possibly imagine. And then down in Tucson there's
a woman named Miranda Schubert who also run her race
as essentially a Democratic socialist candidate.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
She's been a chapter.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Member for years, and the chapter was very engaged with
her effort, and they also just did incredibly well.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I want to stick with this just for a second,
and I apologize, but we have to assume that there
are people coming to this conversation that haven't heard our
conversations before, So forgive kind of the nature of this question.
But I think that this will account for people who
listened to our prior conversations and welcome new listeners to
(07:07):
this conversation as well. What is it that you think?
Let me start over. So Donald Trump famously called Zoron
Mom Donnie a communist, right, and this was kind of
the This was kind of how sounded during that campaign.
It was like, this person is just a a corruption
(07:29):
of our values and all that sort of stuff. It's
a asterdization of what it is that we espouse in
this country, democracy, that sort of thing. It just was
a whole who knows, man, I don't know kind of
what because it was nonsensical, right, So it's hard for
me to recall exactly what they were saying. But there
are people that associate a significant amount of negative energy
(07:52):
with the word socialism, right, So what I'm asking, not
is what is socialism? Because I feel like I've asked
that question one hundred times to you and maybe the
people know that now. But what is it that you
think happened with these campaigns around the country that while
it didn't surprise you, surprised a lot of people. There
was a lot of people that vote. I think that
(08:13):
was the highest election turnout in fifty years in New York.
Those people weren't just voting lesser of two evils. Those
people were excited to vote for mom Donnie. So what
was it about his campaign and other campaigns? Indeed, you
can talk about your own that you think is resonating
with people.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
So it was really successful.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
In my opinion about Zorn's campaign, about Kelsey BOM's campaign,
about Miranda Schubert's campaign, about these campaigns a Democratic Socialists
ran around the country is that they were based on
the real needs of real people. Sure, and they weren't
just saying I know what you need, I can do it.
They were out on the doors every single day. Okay,
And I'm out on the doors every single day as well.
(08:50):
I'm knocking doors, I'm talking to people, and I'm identifying
what they really need in their day to day lives,
and believe it or not, they need the world to
be more affordable. They need to have housing costs that
are lower, they need to have public trustation ops and
spending so much money on car culture. They need grocery
prices that are lower. How we do these things has
always been the question, but the needs have sort of
(09:12):
always been the same. And so when Zoron takes that approach,
Zoron is saying, I'm going to do these very specific
public policies and they are going to be what we
bring that affordability.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
We make the world more.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Affordable for everybody. Same thing was said by Kelsey Bonds.
Same thing was said by Miranda Schubert, same thing was
said by people around the country. It's affordability that's.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
On the ballot.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
It's building worlds that people can live in without feeling
like they have to break their necks at four or
five jobs, or if they aren't. Sometimes in some cases
they're doing that. They're saddled with debt, they're saddled with
crippling anxiety about having to get out and find something else.
The job market is down, and so people this is
something that I actually have talked about a couple of times.
(09:54):
And one of the reasons why I think Donald Trump
and Zoron have a little bit of a sh shared
pool of voters, it's because they start with the same argument.
That argument is the economy is not working for you,
and then Donald Trump goes into horrifying nightmare fascism and
Zoron Mom Donnie says, and we're gonna build public programs
that address that. We're going to change the economy and
(10:17):
the way that it's structured because we're gonna get union power.
We're gonna build union power by increasing union density. We're
going to improve lives for public servants by increasing wages
and reducing costs. And we're going to build out the
structures and the infrastructure that allow for everybody to work
good jobs, have childcare, get lower costs at the grocery store, whatever.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It may be.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
It's just meeting people where they are and then telling
them and meaning it that you know something that you
can do that will change that for them, and then
having a plan.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
And I'm glad that you connected Donald Trump with zon
Mom Donnie in terms of their campaigns, because you know
the way you describe vibed Mom Donnie and the other
elected officials around the country that espouse socialism the way
(11:15):
you explain, how they focus on the people and their
economics in their real world. That's exactly what Donald Trump
was doing. Except Donald Trump, as you mentioned, had these
like he was almost scaring people into them to voting
for him, as opposed to inspiring people to reconsider their
(11:39):
options insofar as their government is concerned. And I want
to put that at the intersection of another thing you said,
which I think again people first coming to this conversation,
if this is their first conversation where they're hearing from you.
You told me, and it's been burning in my ears
ever since, Like I was at the blackout protest in DC.
(12:02):
You know, I've had tons of conversations and tons of
really influential, powerful people, and it's your words ringing in
my ear. But you said that socialism is what should
happen on the other side of capitalism. In other words,
capitalism should lead to socialism, right. And as I consume
(12:25):
information about like a variable pricing models, you know, you
pay one price and I pay a different prices because
we can afford different things. And this is kind of
being rolled out around the country. As we talk about
ai and how AI is going to kind of reshape
the job market and indeed our future. We don't really
(12:47):
benefit from that as people, as citizens, corporations benefit from that.
And you would think, Okay, we're going to work less,
We're going to make more money, We're going to have
more of our lives to dedicate to things that we like,
not watching and meaning and whatnot, making art and music
and being people. Right, you would think that. So again,
the intersection of late stage capitalism naturally evolving in theory
(13:13):
into socialism and the success of these campaigns just you know,
your reflections on I suppose, how would you make a
person coming to this conversation feel like that is a
an outcome they should expect rather than what like further,
(13:39):
I guess, a further campaigns or capitalism in this country.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Sorry, I think it's interesting that you mentioned the AI thing,
and I'm going to try to get around to this. Yeah,
I know it was a lot, but one of the
things that is always intriguing about ai oka is who
it is benefiting, right, Because, like you're saying, like this.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Make it easier for all of us to work fewer.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Hours, we should go down to like a four day
work week, three or three day work week.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
We should all be able.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
To make the same amount of money because we're generating
as a society the same productivity. But instead all of
these benefits are going up to the people who own
the systems. And so one of the things that I
want to like sort of point out a lot is
I do believe that socialism is the next step from capitalism.
(14:29):
Think of it as an absolute inevitability. And the reason
why I struggle to think of it as inevitability is
as inevitable is because we have to get happen and
the people who currently own the AI, for example, don't
want it to happen like they know that too. They
know that the next step and societal evolution means they're
(14:51):
going to have less money. Elon Musk doesn't get to
be a trillionaire in a socialist world because that is
an equitable distribution of wealth. I'm going to do everything
I can to make sure that does not come to pass.
And the counter to that, though, is these campaigns are
reflecting the lived realities of everyday people. These billion are
so far out of touch from what we are experiencing
(15:14):
as people who work and have to like go to
the grocery store ourselves and ride the bus from time
to time. That's just not in their world. And so
they're not imagining what our experiences. They're just saying, I
want to protect my experience, got mine, essentially, And in
order to break that cycle, in the same way that
the capitalists had to break the feudal cycle, the feudalists
(15:36):
didn't just like lay down of it up. They had
to revolutionize their surroundings. They had to go out and
find a way to make that change happen. And so
I personally believe that doing these things, fighting for these policies,
achieving victories in this electoral space is a path to
that revolutionary change. And one of the things I like
(15:56):
talking about when I talk about the Democratic Socialists of
America and say are you a revolutionary organization? Are you
just a reformist organization? My thought is that we are
an organization that believes in the distribution of wealth based
on needs rather than based on ownership or birth or
grace or anything. That we reject a society built on exploitation,
(16:18):
and we intend to move to a world that is
designed to be cooperative rather than coercive and those are
revolutionary goals and we really shouldn't lose sight of that.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
I want to add something here because and I mentioned
this recently on I Forget which show? But I mentioned
it recently to add to that again for folks just
coming to this conversation. To add to that, there has
been a push in terms of like businesses to convert
(16:51):
all of their consumers to subscription models.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
I follow business closely. I went to business school a
couple of business schools and graduated too, so so these
this is kind of the things that they make the
way to me. They're in my algorithms, that sort of thing.
So when I learned that, I thought, wow, how brilliant
is that for business? And how awful is that for people?
(17:21):
Because that means if you're not somehow generating income, then
you lose out on the capacity to enjoy life to
the fullest. And you know, it doesn't cost Netflix anything
if you are you know, use your aunt's account, right,
it doesn't cost them anything. But they are not exploiting,
(17:45):
they're not benefiting from your fiscal input, and they basically
already have like a hyper consumption of society. But they
further they turn us into what is the word I'm
looking for? They further relegate us to units of consumptions.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I like to think of it this way, like capitalism
is always seeking out new markets. They're always trying to
find somewhere and someone who can buy their goods and
somebody else who can make their goods foreper more cheaply.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
And that is what.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
The core of neotonialism is these days. Like our time,
our money, our our position as a possible consumer is
a colonization of our identities as people in our.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Lives are not in our lives. We are not going
to be what we want to be.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
We are going to be consumers, and that is being
dictated down at us from a very wealthy people who
want to think of us one way and don't want
to give us the ability to engage in our own realities.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
That feels like to people that push back against the
idea of socialism, that feels like all of the motivation
you'd need, right. But you know, people tend to associate
socialism with Venezuela, which is not an accurate representation of socialism.
Nor is the National Socialist Party the Nazi Party, because
(19:18):
that's not an accurate representation of socialism. Either socialism in
practice looks kind of like what Mom Donnie's campaign is,
which is, hey, some of these things can be free.
If they're made free, then people have more economic viability.
If they have more economic viability, crime drops, opportunities increase.
Everyone does better, even the wealthy people. They don't get
(19:38):
to be as wealthy as they would like to be,
but society overall does great. And these people still have
enough money to leave to their posterity, and everybody's going
to be okay.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And I think it is the difference between thinking of
the world as an individualist ecosphere versus a social project. Yeah,
And like if we're thinking of ourselves as you know,
we have to I have to succeed if I want
to see, that means you have to fail. If you
want to succeed, that means I have to fail. That
is sort of the model that we're living in right now.
(20:10):
That is an inherently self defeating, self cannibalizing model. Ultimately
will need to be replaced, and it does need to
be replaced by a model that prioritizes the whole whole, Yeah,
and the society over the individual.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Another one of the things I say on the show,
is what's the point of a government? Does an individual
need a government to serve his interests or is a
government to ensure the functioning of a society the health
of a society? Rightly, and so socialism certainly at this
point now that we're kind of at the tail in capitalism,
(20:47):
this great capitalistic run where we've kind of been in
the number one position for fifty plus years, seventy years
or something like that.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Right World War two going on eighty. So there we go.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
That's a better number now that we've kind of gotten
to this point. Rather than continue to squeeze the life
out of the human beings, we can use the systems
that we've built to benefit those same human beings. And
I think that there's some longevity to the people that
do own something in the world. I don't think people
(21:18):
lose the one percent of the one percent. They don't
lose as much as people think. And for so many
people to defend them as though they got it. Honestly,
I don't think billionaires exist without stepping on tons of people. Right,
all right, we got to move on another question I
wanted to. I just wanted to get your thoughts here, though,
Donald Trump and Mom Donnie. They had a meeting at
the White House. That meeting was unexpected by me, and
(21:44):
it went surprisingly well. Based on what I saw, your thoughts,
your reflections, I think it's.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Really interesting that Trump is now like dressing up like
Mom Donnie. I feel like this was one of the
most interesting examples of Mom Donny me as a person
like he is so charismatic, his ideas make sense. He's
really framing the I'm trying to take care of the
people in New York, and Donald Trump can then say, like,
wait a second, I lived in New York for a while.
Now I live in Florida, even though I say I
(22:13):
still live in New York, but like, I care about
New York City, and Mom Donnie has a clear vision.
I have no illusions that Donald Trump is going to
be anything but a thorn in Mom Donnie's side for
his entire administration. But I think this is a really
good example of how popular these ideas are with everyone,
and how much sense it makes to build a world
(22:35):
that works for all of us. Universal programs are intended
to be just that universal, and so if Donald Trump's
as a capitalist, Donald Trump could probably hopefully see that
at some point seeing the benefit of having a working
population that is well fed, able to get to work
on time, able to have their kids are well taken
care of. They don't have to be worried about leaving
(22:56):
or coming back or whatever the situation is. All of
these things are ended to benefit everybody because our goal
as a society is like to increase this productivity for
all of us. And if we have this, it's the
structures that we have right now which is making genuinely
impossible because they are not intended to benefit all of us.
That and the wages have not increased together, rents have
(23:19):
gone up, while at the same time wages have remained stagnant.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
One of the things I like to do is think
of things like parks, roads and sidewalks and things, because
those things are paid for and maintained by governments and
they benefit everyone. And so when a person where a
(23:45):
person draws the line at what is socialism and then
attacks that, I think they have to skip over things
like roads and you know, because I think that at
their core, the idea of socialism is that we are
all sharing this with This is shared ownership of this
road or this park or whatever. Everyone who is a citizen,
(24:05):
you know, and lives in this place or whatever it
gets to go here and take advantage of this library,
for example, or.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
You know whatever.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Right, I think that makes it easier for people to
see how they've been miseducated and to see that they've
been taught to fear something that isn't really that scary.
They've lived with these principles to some degree throughout their
entire life, and the world has not come to an end.
(24:36):
And so that's kind of where I start.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
You go ahead here, I got an interest on that.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I think one of the main ones that I try
to focus on is like firefighters, and there's a really
interesting connection between like capitalists firefighting and what we have now,
which is a socialist model of firefighters. We're going to
go back to like somebody who was a contemporary of
Julius Caesar. His name was Crassis. Crassis was a very
very wealthy Roman center. Roman centers at the time were
(25:01):
just like powerful, powerful, powerful people with tons and tons
of money. And Crassis made his money by owning a
firefighting brigade. It was a brigade of slaves that he
would go around and have them fight fires. And so
if somebody's house caught fire, Crassus would pull up to
their house with all of these people with water buckets
or whatever it is, and he would go to the
home owner and say, like, your house is screwed, maybe
(25:23):
you should let me buy it so I can put
out the fire. And then the comer would be like,
are you what do you mean my house is going
He's like, well, yeah, in a minute, it's going to
be worth nothing. But if you sell it to me
right now, I'll give you something like I'm then I
going to put out the fire and take care of
my own home.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
And that was the firefighting system back then.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
So like in the same way that that would suck
if it happened now, like if you're if my house
were to catch fire, I would not want somebody outside
my house. And I'm like, to me, become a renter.
I'll you pay me for the rest of your life
to live here, and in exchange, I'll put out the fire.
Even though I am currently a renter, I'm in a
hypothetical where I own a home and at this point, yeah,
but yeah, so that's the sort of that's one of
(26:01):
the main difference. So you can see a direct connection
with like, what is a capitalist model for a public
service which just doesn't work, yeah, versus the socialist model
public service which works for everyone.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
So I appreciate that we obviously have a lot more
to talk about. I want to talk about the shift
toward younger people as a number of things I want
to talk around I talk about rather, so stay tuned.
We're going to come back with more Bobby Nichols
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.