This week on The Brief, hosts Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld interviewed two fierce women who are fighting for a progressive agenda through their work. This episode’s guests were Jill Barkley Roy, the Affiliate Director of Emerge America, a training organization that focuses on recruiting, training, and supporting Democratic women from all across the country to run for office at all levels; and Eliza Orlins, candidate for Manhattan district attorney.
Markos and Kerry opened the show talking about how Democratic strategy has shifted—and continues to do so—since Barack Obama left office. On bipartisanship and placating Republicans, both agree that this strategy is not only unnecessary—it also has been proven to be ineffectual. Markos believes the “fatal flaw” of the Obama administration was the desire to get Republican support on legislation in the hopes of seeming “bipartisan.” As Kerry explained,
I think it’s such a new day in Washington, because Democrats have been like, for decades, ‘If we just go the centrist route and get a few Republican votes, we will be seen as bipartisan, and that will win us elections.’ … But I’ll tell you what, the polling on Joe Biden’s agenda, in particular the rescue plan, but also other parts of it is so overwhelmingly supported, that there’s no reason [Biden has] to get Republican votes. If the voters like your agenda and you pass it, the voters are going to reward you. Just looking at polling from YouGov today, the $2,000 direct payments poll at 77% support. So no one is going to get their check and be like, ‘I wonder if any Republicans voted for this?’
Next, Jill joined the first half of the segment to discuss her work at Emerge America and why electing women remains such a priority for Democrats and the country as a whole. Since Kamala Harris’ nomination and victory as vice president on the Biden ticket, Jill said, there has been a significant increase in interest from women wanting to run who are connecting with the organization.
When it comes to running for office and winning, women are always told to wait their turn, but there are so many reasons why they shouldn’t wait, as Jill said:
When women get elected, we introduce more legislation, we have more cosponsors, we get more done. We bring more money back to our districts when we’re elected to Congress. So I think it behooves everyone in the Democratic party to think about parity at least, if not more.
Moreover, having more women, especially BIPOC and queer women, in office matters. On representation in politics, Jill said she didn’t think she could run “until I saw other lesbian women run for office. We figure out how to get to ‘yes,’ and that’s important to us.”
With threats of violence against women increasing, as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush experienced, Jill explained that it was also important to offer support to women of color who are running for or are in office: “It’s a network … when there’s more of us in office, this is going to have to change. Hopefully this doesn’t discourage women … but [ultimately we need to] change the culture.” Kerry agreed, and later noted the link between right-wing extremism and misogyny.
In the second half of the episode, Eliza came on to talk about her run for Manhattan district attorney. A candidate in a crowded race, Eliza believes her progressive chops and track record of truly sticking to her values are what make her stand out. The next Manhattan district attorney would likely take on the case to prosecute Donald Trump, so these will be big shoes to fill. A as public defender currently, Eliza noted that as a DA she would have power to create more change from within the system.
DAs have a lot of power. Right now, Eliza said, the system over-prosecutes and over-incarcerates, perpetuating a “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality that neither keeps communities safe nor creates systemic changes. She explained that as DA, she would decline to prosecute low-level offenses, drug possession, and sex work, and she would make sure that these minor cases that result in a huge impact on peoples’ lives are no longer coming through the criminal legal system: “[We need to make] sure people have the help they need for mental health issues or substance use disorder, and we’re not prosecuting people for crimes who are experiencing poverty. Meanwhile, we’re holding those who have wealth and power accountable.”
Many may wonder why they should be interested in a DA race that may be thousands of miles away from them, happening in a state they don’t even live in—but the stakes are high. Eliza noted,
Cy Vance could have prosecuted Donald Trump and his family in 2012, in 2013, and instead took massive, $25,000-plus donations from his attorneys and declined to prosecute those cases. Had he done so, we might never have had a President Trump. These repercussions are so wide-reaching, so huge … this race specifically has such unbelievable implications for criminal justice reform and for holding [the] powerful accountable across the nation and probably across the world.
Lastly, Eliza discussed the flaws in the way DA’s office currently collects metrics of success, which currently celebrates things like number of convictions and lengths of sentences:
For far too long, those [kinds of things were] celebrated as wins. And that should actually be the opposite. We should be celebrating every time we are able to keep someone in their home, with their family, putting food on their table. And the big metric of success should be when someone never, ever comes through the criminal justice system again … Those are the cases that should be measured as successes, and not how many convictions we can get, the length of sentences we can get.
You can watch the full episode here:
Source: Daily Kos
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