Rising Up - Tuesday, June 9, 2026

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1. www.theatricum.com and at kpfk.org.
2. Hi, this is Jamie Cromwell.
3. You are listening to 90.7 FM, KPFK Los Angeles, and 98.7 FM, Santa Barbara.
4. 🎵
5. Welcome to Rising Up with Sonali, an independently produced, subscriber-supported program
6. syndicated to radio stations, free speech TV and podcast platforms.
7. On this show, you'll hear solutions journalism for social justice, fueling action, not despair.
8. I'm Sonali Kohatkar, host and executive producer.
9. This week, we'll break down New York City's newest proposal to tax the rich, a so-called pied-à-terre tax, to raise revenues from the second homes of the wealthy.
10. Emily Eisner of Fiscal Policy Institute will be my guest.
11. Then we'll turn to Steve Phillips, whose new book tackles the Trump administration's reversal of racial equity policies by turning the argument around.
12. Instead of wondering why people of color are kept out of positions of power,
13. Steve asks, why are white men so overrepresented in upper echelons?
14. His new book is called Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else?
15. Playing Offense in the Fight for Racial Justice in America.
16. And finally, we'll mark May Day with Amazon Labor Union co-founder and Vice President Derek Palmer,
17. who has a new handbook for modern day union organizing.
18. That's coming up in just a moment.
19. Thank you.
20. I'm Sonali Kolhatkar, host and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali,
21. an independently produced subscriber-supported program
22. nationally syndicated to radio stations, free speech, TV, and podcast platforms.
23. Our interviews are available to subscribers at risingupwithsonali.com.
24. New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani, together with New York Governor Kathy Hochul,
25. has proposed a new tax on non-resident second homeowners in the city.
26. The so-called Pied-à-Terre tax is a surcharge on homes valued at $5 million or more,
27. owned largely by people who don't live in the city year-round.
28. While the tax has wealthy homeowners up in arms,
29. some tax experts say it doesn go far enough to address the city major budgetary shortfall Among them is my guest Emily Eisner the Acting Executive Director and Chief Economist at the
30. Fiscal Policy Institute. Welcome to the program, Emily. Thanks so much for having me.
31. What is this tax? I gave the broad outlines of it. A lot of people who own second, third homes
32. in New York City aren't having it, don't like it. How badly would it actually impact them,
33. if we should even have that as a consideration? But what exactly is that tax?
34. Yeah, you know, some of the details of the tax haven't been ironed out yet. I think that the
35. mayor and the governor are in negotiations over this. What we do know is that they're aiming to
36. raise a total of about $500 million from the tax overall, and they expect to tax about 10,000 to
37. 15,000 units. Keep in mind that these are units that are worth, units, I mean, apartments that
38. are worth more than $5 million at the market rate. So these are people who own $5 million
39. apartments as their second homes or third or fourth. So I don't expect this to be a high
40. enough tax for people to feel a budget strain. And as you sort of said in your introduction,
41. $500 million is about a tenth of the budget gap that New York City has. So this is not
42. really that large a proposal in the grand scheme of things.
43. So we don't yet know how big the surcharge will be. Is that accurate?
44. That's correct.
45. We don't know yet what the tax rate will be
46. or what the dollar amount of the tax will be on these units.
47. And Mamdani has gotten into trouble
48. for holding up a particular billionaire
49. as a great example by recording a promo video
50. in front of a home that is owned by Citadel CEO Ken Griffiths
51. That home is a penthouse worth $238 million. Emily, I cannot fathom that somebody has a second home worth that much. That means that they're basically using New York City as their playground. To have a penthouse that's worth $238 million in the city, that I imagine it should be an easy sell, right, to say that we're going to tax homes like that?
52. Yeah, I think that, you know, a lot of us regular folk who are sort of middle or upper middle class, working class, all sort of feel the strain of the affordability crisis, especially in New York City, where prices have been really high and especially rents, home housing costs have been really high for decades now.
53. and they've only grown over recent years, for there to be these, you know, extremely ultra-rich
54. people who own homes in the city that are worth, as you said, like gazillions of dollars,
55. the proposal is to ask those people to pay their fair share. That shouldn't be a huge sell,
56. especially because we've seen a real growth and strengthening in the Tax the Rich movement
57. that has come along with Mayor Mamdani's sort of campaign and his proposals. But it sort of goes
58. back in New York to 2021, when we saw the first Tax the Rich campaign. There's been a lot of growth
59. in calls to, you know, create solutions to the dramatic inequality that we see.
60. So if this tax does get finalized and passed it expected to raise or at least the proponents the designers of it the mayor of New York City and the governor of the state hope to raise million billion I sorry
61. $500 million, yeah.
62. 500 million. So one tenth, right, of what is needed. What could it take to actually push that number higher? Because Mondani has been very clear when he came in that his predecessor essentially swept under the rug this massive budgetary shortfall, in large part because, of course, we've been letting the rich get away with paying fewer and fewer taxes and also spending cuts often target those at the very bottom echelons.
63. What would it take to have a tax or to generate revenue or to maybe, you know, have the budget math make sense that you suggest that you are proponent of?
64. Yeah, that's a great question. And and to your point, I think that there's been a long time coming budget issue in New York City.
65. And this really comes down to making sure that our tax system in the city is progressive and reflects the income distribution that we have in the city.
66. And the reality is that this is one of the most unequal cities in the country, maybe the most unequal country city in the whole country.
67. We have incredibly high earners in New York City and also incredible poverty and and and a struggling working and middle class.
68. it's reasonable to try to get the tax system in line with that inequality so that we have
69. high earners paying their fair share into the budget. What would it take to really close the
70. budget gap? Well, we need more broad-based taxation that really targets sort of the whole
71. upper class. I'm thinking specifically about households making $1 million or more per year
72. in the city. So the current policy that we're talking about, the pied-à-terre, you know,
73. that's really only taxing non-residents. But we really need to be looking at taxes that apply to
74. residents of the city if we really want to make up the budget gap. And actually, since I'm on
75. with you today, there was just today a proposal from the speaker of the city council and the
76. mayor. They're now aligned on a new proposal called the pass-through entity tax credit reduction.
77. That's a mouthful, but it's basically a way of increasing taxes on basically pass-through businesses, which includes hedge funds.
78. It can include law firms. A lot of high earners have businesses that are called pass-through businesses.
79. This would be a proposal to pretty marginally increase their taxes and raise about a billion dollars for the city.
80. This is the kind of proposal that we need to see more of if we really want to chip away at the whole five and a half billion dollar budget gap.
81. And so essentially, the pied-à-terre tax is sort of low hanging fruit, right?
82. The amount of whining that we're seeing from billionaires who are upset about taxes on their second or third properties, and of course, from low income conservatives who, for some reason, identify personally with these billionaires, even though they themselves might be worth so much less.
83. that mining is so disproportionate to what they're actually going to end up having to pay.
84. I wondering if the kinds of laws that we seeing in say Washington state are something that you might back more There a millionaires tax that will go into effect in 2028 a 9 tax on annual household incomes of million or more
85. that would essentially then go to fund the things that most other residents of,
86. the majority of residents of Washington state rely on.
87. Is that the kind of thing you want to see more of in New York state
88. and the city of New York? Yes. As I've been saying, I think that we need more progressive
89. taxation in New York, Washington, Massachusetts. And actually, it's kind of left people's minds.
90. But in 2021, New York State increased taxes specifically on millionaire households. And
91. it's really interesting that we have that recent example. We really put a small increase on
92. households making a million dollars or more per year. It's raised $3 billion annually for the
93. state. It has not caused any exodus of millionaires from the state. The data reflects the fact that
94. millionaires actually have grown in number since that tax increase went into effect in New York
95. and in New York City. And we'd expect to see the same if they implement another increase on
96. millionaire households' taxes. Zohran Mamdani has been proposing a surtax on households making more
97. than a million dollars a year, the Fiscal Policy Institute has also supported a tax change of that
98. nature for years. Now, Governor Kathy Hochul is taking a lot of credit for this peer-to-peer tax.
99. It seems to be something that, you know, a lot of mainstream Democrats are realizing is really
100. popular with their base. But just from where I sit, it looks like she's basically being pushed
101. by Mamdani and then realizing it's a winning issue and so sort of championing it together.
102. And Mamdani is limited by what he can practically push through as an individual leader. But in terms of what is viable or not viable, how viable is it for Mamdani to push for that sort of straightforward income tax and corporate tax that you're suggesting?
103. And I know that it's tough to ask that question because that's a question that mass media like to ask, usually with the implication that it's not viable and therefore shouldn't be touched.
104. But from a practical perspective, can he do it?
105. Well, I think that the Pieter Ter-Tax and this new push on the P-Tet, especially the Pieter Ter-Tax, the fact that Governor Hochul herself proposed the Pieter Ter-Tax indicates that there's a shift in the politics.
106. Governor Hochul, I'm never going to be hard on someone for changing their view in favor of more progressive taxation.
107. I think it's laudable that Governor Hochul has shifted towards wanting to ask high earners and extremely wealthy people to pay into providing the services that make New York City and New York State a great place to live.
108. I think that that's a really great move in the right direction.
109. And I'm really happy to see that she did that.
110. And I think that that does, as you said, reflect a lot of effort from not just Mayor Mamdani, but also a large movement of people from all over the income distribution that can see that there are high earners that are not paying their fair share, that we have a sort of regressive taxation in this country, and that we need updates to our tax system to make sure that we can raise the revenue to pay for our schools, to pay for our roads, to pay for the public services that we all rely on.
111. Do I think that an income tax or a corporate tax is likely in this state budget?
112. I don't know the answer to that question.
113. I think it's a very positive sign that the government is
114. has shifted and is supporting a pied-à-terre. And as I mentioned earlier, the city council is now
115. supporting this thing that is called the pass-through entity tax, which is a tax on
116. pass-through businesses, which are largely very high-earning businesses like hedge funds, law
117. firms, other types of financial firms. A tax of this sort could raise a lot of money. It's very
118. progressive, about 90% of the tax would come from high earners, those making over a million dollars
119. or more per year. It's completely within reason that the governor and the state legislature could
120. support it. In fact, both houses of the state legislature already do support it. So getting
121. the governor on board is the project. I don't have political insight besides the fact that
122. clearly the politics are shifting, the dynamic is shifting.
123. Give out a website where people can find out more about Fiscal Policy Institute.
124. Yeah, it's fiscalpolicy.org. Please come visit our website. You're also free to
125. shoot me an email, info at fiscalpolicy.org. We would love to hear from you.
126. Thank you so much, Emily, for joining us today. Best of luck to you.
127. My pleasure.
128. My guest has been Emily Eisner, the Acting Executive Director and Chief Economist at
129. the Fiscal Policy Institute. And I'm Sonali Kohatkar, host and executive producer of Rising
130. Up with Sonali, an independently produced, subscriber-supported program nationally
131. syndicated to radio stations, free speech TV, and podcast platforms.
132. I'm Sonali Kolhatkar, host and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali,
133. an independently produced subscriber-supported program
134. nationally syndicated to radio stations, free speech, TV and podcast platforms.
135. Our interviews are available to subscribers at risingupwithsonali.com.
136. President Donald Trump's central domestic agenda appears to be reversing gains made by proponents of racial equality and ensuring minority rule by white men.
137. In dismantling federal diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives, encouraging white men to sue for racial discrimination, and exclusively welcoming white South Africans into the nation via the refugee program, Trump has been overt about his racist, sexist agenda.
138. My next guest has coined a special term for Trump's white supremacist patriarchy and says it's time to go on the offense.
139. Steve Phillips is a columnist for The Guardian and The Nation.
140. He's also the host of the podcast Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips
141. and the founder of the political media organization Democracy in Color.
142. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller, Brown is a New White,
143. How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority,
144. and the national bestselling book, How We Win the Civil War,
145. Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good.
146. He now joins me to discuss his latest book called
147. Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else? Welcome to the program. Welcome back, I should say, Steve.
148. It so good to have you back with your latest book Thanks for having me Glad to be here And so the subtitle for your book is important Playing Offense in the Fight for Racial Justice in America Let start with how overrepresented white men really are in positions of power If
149. you listen to Trump and his allies, it seems as though white men are just being pushed out of
150. everywhere and they are the ones facing the most discrimination. How untrue is that?
151. Right.
152. Well, it's important to start with the baseline, right?
153. The white men, by the latest census data, are 29% of the U.S. population.
154. And so that's the baseline in terms of determining what is their representation in all of these
155. other different sectors of society.
156. And so you could start with presidents of the United States.
157. We all have been men.
158. All but one have been white men.
159. 90% of the CEOs, the Fortune 500 companies, 90% of the companies that receive venture capital startup funding, around 80% of the United States Senate.
160. And then across the board in like local organizations, college presidents, senior faculty on different campuses, most of the positions of power influence and decision making in our society are held by white men.
161. And they're certainly held by white men in significantly over representative numbers than their numbers in the population.
162. And you coined the term swamp.
163. Let's talk about that. When Trump came into power in his first presidential term in 2016, he promised to drain the swamp.
164. But you were talking about a different swamp. What is that?
165. Yeah, well, I think first it's important to realize in terms of the obviously this moment we're in, the intensity and the ferocity of the attacks and everything, diversity and everything non-white male is very intense right now.
166. and it is important to recognize that much of this began before this president came back into office
167. and that's really originally how I came to to write the books I was asking what happened to
168. the George Floyd commitments after George Floyd was killed in 2020 people you know said they
169. that black lives mattered and they made these pronouncements and so obviously we're in this
170. moment now where there's so much assault and everything DEI diversity etc and yet all of those
171. things are attacking the remedies. They're not addressing the underlying problem of inequality
172. and injustice, which everyone said they cared about back in 2020 and 2021. So that's what I'm
173. trying to lift that. And so in terms of going back on the offense, I want to try to help us reframe
174. this conversation. And then frankly, the irony of the moment, the historical moment, is that for
175. people who have been strong, forceful advocates for racial justice in the country, saw DEI as
176. an inadequate, insufficient measure, and even affirmative action as an inadequate, insufficient
177. measure. So that those things are now being seen as like the battering rams against white people is
178. historically ironic, at least. And so we want to change the framework, change the framework,
179. to change how people are actually thinking about this, to be able to see that rather than focusing
180. on the underrepresentation of people of color, which is historically how this conversation has
181. unfolded, that let's look at the over-representation of whites and the over-representation of white men
182. in particular, and which is a very different inquiry. So when you're looking at the
183. under-representation, it leads you to like, what's wrong with people of color? What's wrong with
184. women? They don't have enough education. They're not, you know, ambitious enough. Their families
185. are falling apart et cetera But when you change the conversation to why are so many white men getting positions it leads you in a different direction And that where we trying to lift up this concept we calling straight white American male preference And the acronym for that is SWAMP And so we trying to be able to
186. have us think about and understand that there is active preference being shown in a contemporary
187. fashion for white men. And then we at Demonstrating College just released a podcast series where you
188. have different academic experts talk about the social science basis of implicit bias,
189. how we stereotype naturally and logically in terms of how the brain functions.
190. And so when you shift the focus to why are we showing preferences to white men,
191. that's a very different conversation than, oh, try to protect the DEI programs that we've had
192. historically. And if you listen to someone like Elon Musk, who every other day, if not every day,
193. on Twitter is, you know, putting forward this myth that there is a white genocide,
194. it becomes easy to be swept up in a completely different reality. How important is storytelling
195. and the kind of media tropes around race and power that is important to address?
196. Right. And so that's why what we're trying to do is offer a tool to the movement around this conversation, because I've been like watching a lot of these different YouTube videos of the critics of DEI and they try to, and even the affirmative action case against, you know, Harvard for their affirmative action Supreme Court.
197. they try to find one anomaly of the implementation of a remedy it's like well it went in this way so
198. a certain person may have you know it's not the perfect example of justice or equality
199. and so they lift that up and they try to really take a wrecking ball to the remedy
200. but the the terms of this narrative piece if you change the conversation and rather than just
201. saying that, like, no, we have to protect this. This is important. Just to ask the basic question,
202. why are white men overrepresented? Why is the vast majority of venture capital funding going
203. to startup companies, going to white men? What is that about? And that's what I think could help
204. us go back on the offensive and really counteract some of the things that, you know, Elon Musk,
205. with all the money, literally the richest man in the world, and then the massive platforms that he
206. controls can just say things and say things without any empirical or evidentiary basis.
207. And so us switching this dynamic and this mode to actually asking them to explain the situation
208. rather than just kind of repeat these kind of very half-formed thoughts about the oppression
209. of white people, which frankly goes back almost 400 years from the first time that people came
210. into this country and held Africans in slavery, this notion about the threat to white people
211. has been core to the mythology and the ideology and the character and the culture.
212. They had slave laws in the 1600s that talked about the rapine nature and the savage nature
213. of Africans who were being held in slavery.
214. So that's what Musk is saying today really is,
215. certainly has a long tradition in terms of this country,
216. but rather than just try to refute it,
217. I think it can be more effective as a strategic fashion
218. to just turn it and ask the question,
219. well what your explanation for why so many white men or why so many of the positions of power and influence are held by white men And I glad that in the beginning of our conversation you pointed out that these attacks
220. on attempts at equity predate Trump.
221. All you have to even do is look at the New York Times, and they often have editorials
222. about women ruining everything for men and really taking for granted that white male
223. over-representation in positions of power is the natural order of things and never really
224. questioning that. So where can the cracks be formed? Where can that offensive begin?
225. Because as you say in your book, instead of talking about what is lacking in terms of
226. the demands for racial equity, how do we start dismantling that power imbalance being held by
227. white men. Where's the starting point for that? Well, anybody can start anywhere they are. And
228. so that's what we're calling for swamp audits. And so there's really a question around wherever
229. you are, if you're in a school, if you're in a corporation, if you're at a university or in a
230. school district, look at that organization and just do your own kind of informal swamp audit.
231. 29% is the baseline. If we had equality and meritocracy and white men were not in fact
232. smarter and they were just as smart as everybody else, they should roughly be 29% of the top
233. positions. And then if you see a gross imbalance, and spoiler alert, almost everywhere there is this
234. gross imbalance, then ask the question. You can ask the question through social media. You can go
235. to a city council meeting and you can ask who's getting the contracts. And then you can be a part
236. of the public speaking period. So whatever your sphere of influence is, you can do your own swamp
237. audit. And a swamp audit starts with 29% as the baseline number and looks at what percentage are
238. white men above that in whatever circle that you want to focus on. And then the critical part of
239. that is then to push the conversation. Ask the question, this is over-representative.
240. Why do we think that's the case? And then hopefully that can then lead to, okay,
241. what are we going to do about it?
242. Which is, that's when we really get to go back
243. on the offensive.
244. Is local government a good place to start?
245. Are local institutions and bodies
246. a good place to start?
247. I know you referenced Fortune 500 companies
248. and also the sort of startups funding and all of that.
249. But in terms of democracy and representation,
250. which is something you've written so much about
251. and studied so closely,
252. should racial proportionality and gender proportionality really be something that we
253. audit in our local institutions of power because we're so close to them, school boards and city
254. councils, etc. Yes, and that's an excellent area to focus and then to also go deeper. Because of a
255. lot of the diversification of the country and the diversification even of different urban areas,
256. Some of the surface numbers may actually seem more in proportion to what the balance in society is, but you need to go deeper to where are the positions of power.
257. And so like within a school district, you often see a skew by the high school professors or high school teachers tend to be less represented,
258. white men overrepresented there than like kindergarten, you know, that situation playing itself out.
259. And then one of the most important things, even if you have an entity like a school district, and I served on a school board in San Francisco, or you have a local government that has a lot of people of color in the elected positions, positions of power.
260. Or who controls the money?
261. There was a study by the Knight Foundation, which looked at asset management.
262. And it found that 98% of all of the money in the country being managed by asset managers is managed by white men.
263. Not even just white people, but white men.
264. And that those white men don't outperform other people.
265. And so that's immediately an area.
266. in the local government, in your city council, in your school boards, your school districts,
267. where do they put their money and where do they store it? And then where does they get invested,
268. particularly in the school cities and counties and their pension funds and who's managing that
269. money? And that's often where you find, like San Francisco has $35 billion in pension funds,
270. largely managed by white men. That's something where a local person can go to the board of
271. supervisors and go to your local city council, ask for that information, and then ask the question
272. about why it is the way that it is, and then push to actually take some steps toward diversity. And
273. that will get us some momentum on this struggle. I'm reminded of the film, I think it was about a
274. decade ago, by Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You, a Black worker centered on a Black protagonist who
275. is a worker in a company and who basically ends up code switching to sound white so that he can,
276. you know, which helps him make more money because the system is so skewed toward
277. people who sound like they're white men. It's a great movie. I highly recommend it,
278. but that's neither here nor there. What ultimately does need to happen, again,
279. to stay on the issue of democracy? Because that's where government is where you can enact
280. policy changes, right? You said DEI didn't go far enough, affirmative action policies didn't go
281. far enough. And even those very modest places where there were some changes being made at the
282. edges are being dismantled now. And yet, I know, Steve, you've also written about how people of
283. color are the new, you know, majority, they are certainly demographically going to be the majority
284. very in just a few, less than a few decades. And so that is also what this is a backlash against.
285. Some people have called it a white lash. Is that something that that ultimate democratic power
286. can can help us reverse that trend of or reverse that stranglehold that white men have on power?
287. Absolutely. And so it's underappreciated how much influence governments have in terms of actually the resources that can actually be moved.
288. Right. And so from the federal level, we saw this in 2020, 2021.
289. And so after the work that Stacey Abrams had led in Georgia to bring people of color into the voting booths, into the electorate,
290. It changed the composition of the voters who then elected two different senators, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff. Warnock preaches from the same pulpit where Dr. King preached. And that flipped the whole United States Senate and the whole United States Congress's balance of power.
291. and they were able to move trillions of trillions of dollars
292. because they had a different kind of a composition of the Senate.
293. They passed the first like $2 trillion measure in the context of the COVID relief.
294. Somebody tweeted out, so we could afford reparations.
295. And so at that level, you see that.
296. You also seeing this in New York with what Mamdami is doing is marshalling the power of the local government to be able to make people lives better looking at providing child care to everybody within the city of New York
297. These things can be done.
298. In the richest country in the history of the world, we have the resources and we have the
299. capacity to end poverty, to house everybody, to have excellent schools for all people,
300. to create the conditions for the flourishing of human potential and ability.
301. if we have the will. And so that's where the democracy part comes in, in terms of having the
302. electorate reflect the composition of the population and be responsive to that population.
303. Then you can use the public resources to build the kind of society that a lot of us have wanted
304. to see for a long time. And there's been a massive repudiation of this administration as Democrats
305. That's a one all across the country in 2025 and even in the 2026 in these elections.
306. So the numbers are there if the people in the leadership positions will invest the resources to mobilize and will lift up an agenda that inspires and speaks to that multiracial majority that addresses racial justice, gender justice, creating a society of no discrimination, inclusion of LGBTQ communities, repudiation, all these attacks on trans,
307. and has the true, inclusive, beloved community that we wanted to see in the civil rights era,
308. the numbers are there to create that kind of society if we will lean into it and believe in it and invest in it and work for it.
309. Thank you so much, Steve, for joining us today.
310. And best of luck to you with your new book.
311. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Enjoyed it.
312. My guest has been Steve Phillips, columnist for The Guardian and The Nation,
313. Also, the host of the podcast Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips and the founder of the political media organization Democracy in Color.
314. He's written bestselling books and we've been discussing his newest one, Are White Men Smarter Than Everyone Else?
315. I'm Sonali, everybody else that is.
316. I'm Sonali Gohutkar, host and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali, an independently produced subscriber supported program nationally syndicated to radio stations, free speech TV and podcast platforms.
317. Thank you.
318. I'm Sonali Kohatkar, host and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali, an independently produced, subscriber-supported program nationally syndicated to radio stations, free speech TV and podcast platforms.
319. Our interviews are available to subscribers at risingupwithsonali.com.
320. The retail giant Amazon announced more than $200 billion in quarterly sales in its latest figures to investors.
321. The company has become a massive monopoly, employing more people worldwide than any other company with the exception of Walmart.
322. For years, workers attempted to unionize Amazon.
323. And today Amazon Labor Union whose co has written a manifesto for modern union organizing explains how he and his fellow workers bested Amazon founder Jeff Bezos The book is called Handbook for the Revolution and its author Derek Palmer is the vice president and co of the Amazon Labor Union
324. which in 2021 successfully unionized an Amazon warehouse
325. for the first time in the company's history.
326. Derek now joins me from Staten Island, New York,
327. where he continues to work as an employee
328. in the Amazon JFK8 warehouse there.
329. Welcome to the program, Derek.
330. Thank you for having me.
331. Now, you say in your book that you never started out thinking that you would be a labor leader and an organizer.
332. What was your breaking point?
333. What led you from anger into activation after you'd already been working at Amazon for a number of years?
334. I don't know. That's a good question.
335. I feel like, honestly, it was like built up for a while.
336. You know, just my experience being at Amazon was, first off, I started off at a New Jersey warehouse before I transferred to Staten Island.
337. And it was like mirror image, you know, the same crazy working conditions.
338. the rates you know the rate system was very harsh and it it pretty much um it allowed workers
339. to kind of like create their own their own little um culture there if that makes sense
340. everyone was kind of like against what amazon was doing and i was one of them um but you know it was
341. really um at that point where i was just like kind of complaining and not really doing anything
342. about it. And I think gradually, as I started working at Amazon, I kind of became more of a
343. leader because people kind of gravitated towards me. I started to speak out and I started to,
344. you know, speak out against management and, you know, the way the system is built.
345. And what really set the tone for organizing was really in the pandemic. The pandemic when,
346. you know, New York was the epicenter. You know, we had the most cases in the United States
347. and a lot of people were getting sick, you know, and we didn't even have the proper equipment
348. in the facility. And there was no social distancing implemented. There was no type of
349. policies or anything in regards to COVID. And we're also, as Amazon workers, we're sending,
350. we're shipping these products out to other people. So it didn't make sense how we didn't
351. have the actual protection for ourselves. So, you know, once we figured, once we found out that
352. someone close to us got sick, Amazon and the management, they tried to hide the fact that
353. someone got sick. And Chris Smalls, who was my supervisor at the time, he attended a meeting
354. with management and management told him, listen, you know, we got everything under control.
355. Don't tell anybody about the person that got sick. You know, it's okay. Everything's going to be fine.
356. mind you they didn't have the protections in place so how is you know how is everything okay
357. and they didn't do anything about it so you know he immediately told me after that meeting
358. and you know after that you know we left we immediately left the building and we were like
359. you know we we have to do something about this because uh you know people are already looking
360. at us as leaders like i mentioned before and we just felt it was just our time to our time to do
361. something about it and that's exactly what we did you know we decided to go to go to work the next
362. day but not actually work. We sat in a break room on the first floor of the facility and
363. we told every worker that came inside of the break room about how Amazon was hiding the
364. cases and how people were getting sick So ever since then you know we had workers we had a group of workers on each day four days for 40 hours straight go to management and tell them that they need to shut the building down with pay sanitize it and also be more transparent about the coronavirus
365. Of course, they refused. And now we knew we had to take this to another level.
366. You know, we decided that, you know, it was best to do a walkout. And when we did that walkout, you know, we got a lot of media attention, you know, from New York Times, ABC, NBC, everything, you name it.
367. And, you know, that's what we did. We had a walkout on March 30th, 2020. And, you know, it was it was very successful.
368. We had workers walking out. And as a result of that, you know, they disciplined all of us.
369. They disciplined everyone that was involved, including myself.
370. I received a final right, a final write up. And they said that I violated quarantine policy.
371. I mean, no, I'm sorry. They said I violated the social distancing policy, which they didn't have.
372. So it was clearly targeting us against our organizer.
373. and they fired Christian Smalls as a result of that.
374. And then the following week,
375. they fired another organizer, Gerald Bryson.
376. He was actually another co-founder
377. of the Amazon Labor Union as well.
378. And that really lit a spark in the labor movement
379. so much that people in Alabama,
380. the Amazon workers there,
381. they actually decided to form a union.
382. And they were the first people
383. to actually have an actual election
384. with Amazon in regards to union.
385. Of course, a lot of people know that they lost that,
386. which is unfortunate.
387. But me and Chris, we went out there.
388. We drove from New Jersey all the way to Alabama.
389. And that was like our homework.
390. We studied what they did, the positive things they did,
391. and also the negative things that they did.
392. And we decided to start our own efforts in Staten Island.
393. And the rest was history.
394. you know, April of 2021 is when we started. You know, we led a nice one-year campaign.
395. We had an inside-outside approach where current Amazon workers who were, you know, at JFK,
396. organizing like myself inside the building and then people who were involved with ALU who were
397. terminated would stay outside across the street at the bus stop. And, you know, we made history.
398. You know, we did everything that that everything imaginable, you know, as pure 100 percent grassroots campaign.
399. And, you know, the union is founded by four black men.
400. And a large part of what you write in your book is that the working conditions are terribly racist.
401. You experienced it personally. And of course, the statistics do, of course, bear that out.
402. how important was it to what Amazon Labor Union became that it was founded by, you know, by Black
403. founders. And for that reason, I think for that one reason among others, it has become and remained
404. an independent union because we know organized labor has an ugly history of racism, even if today
405. they're doing better.
406. Yeah, yeah.
407. You know, it's very important for us to lead that fight.
408. You know, just the fact that we like all the founders, we all had a good relationship with workers inside the building and a lot of them respected us because of how outspoken we were.
409. You know, so it made 100 percent sense for us to, you know, to start it.
410. And of course, along the way, you know, we recruited.
411. other people from different states, you know, from Florida, from Arizona, and, you know,
412. New Jersey as well. So, you know, we really created a nice culture, a diverse group. Of course,
413. we let it, but, you know, we were open to bringing in everybody, and that's what we did. And,
414. you know, it was a beautiful thing. I think the culture of the ALU reflected the workers inside
415. the building. And what made us so strong was the fact that we were actually still currently working
416. at the company. You know, when Amazon had these captive audience meetings, they would
417. spit out this union propaganda. They would say, oh, you know, we're third party. And that didn't
418. apply to us because we're literally sitting, I'm sitting in the meeting and you're telling me I'm
419. third party, but I'm packing items and make sure that they're getting shipped out of the facility.
420. It didn't make sense and it didn't resonate. And, you know, us being outspoken in those meetings kind of that was like the turning point in the campaign, because, you know, traditionally these captive audience meetings are are very successful.
421. But it didn't it didn't happen that way.
422. So you did a lot of homework in leading up to this. You studied under the late, great labor organizer, Jane McAlevey, who I had the honor of speaking with, and she would run these schools for labor organizers.
423. And I would love to get to the very practical aspects that you really outline in your book, because this book is considered a handbook for people who want to unionize their workplace and don't know where to start.
424. Right. Because there are there's a strong desire.
425. Polls show there's a strong desire among American workers to unionize.
426. and unions are extremely, the idea of unions is extremely popular, but still a very small minority,
427. especially in the commercial private industry workspace, very small percentage are unionized.
428. And, you know, can you get into the nuts and bolts down to the point of authorization cards,
429. what those are and why those need to be signed by workers? You know, how does one get started
430. if one is bewildered and working in an environment where you really feel like you could benefit from
431. Union. Where do you start? Yeah, I mean, really, you know, you really want to get a core group of
432. organizers that are completely dedicated to the cause. You know, of course, you're not going to
433. know if everyone is going to be dedicated, but you do need like that solid group that no matter what
434. is going to be there, you know, through thick and thin. And, you know, that's what we did.
435. Got to have that. You have to study labor law. You know, you have to go on the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board website, you know, study what you can and cannot do.
436. You know, as far as your campaign goes, you want to find yourself a labor lawyer.
437. We were fortunate enough to have one that that worked pro bono, you know, in the beginning of the campaign.
438. Seth Goldstein, amazing guy. And, you know, you really you really just have to think outside the box.
439. Got to think outside the box with your approach before you start.
440. You've got to be outspoken on social media. You've got to try your best to reach out to as many news outlets as possible and let them know because you want a public campaign.
441. You don't want to work privately. I know that can be intimidating, but, you know, that that works for us, you know,
442. and it can work for you
443. and whatever company you decide to unionize as well No So and also the authorization cards those are very important you know because those signatures protect the workers you know from getting fired during the campaign
444. because that's what Amazon likes to do.
445. They like to target people who support the union.
446. So you know, you have to do all these things and, you know, consistency.
447. We're very consistent.
448. We were out there for 365 days. You know, I would literally work my 10 hour shift and be organizing on my 30 minute break.
449. And then after my shift was over, I would go across the street and, you know, pass on more cards and, you know, and pass out T-shirts or food or merch, whatever we were doing.
450. You know, we were very consistent. And those are the main components.
451. And also, you know, don't get discouraged. A lot of a lot of organizers get discouraged and you lose your confidence because you're trying to talk to workers, but you don't even feel in yourself that you're going to win.
452. And confidence is key to any anything in life, but especially for organizing.
453. And you're up against these very well-funded, you know, corporate lawyers who have endless resources, right?
454. I mean, they hire law firms who specialize in union busting and pay them even more than it would cost to simply pay the workers and meet their demands because the idea of a union is so anathema to them.
455. So that's what workers face and must be so difficult to keep persevering in the face of that relentlessly day after day while you're working, you know, a low paid job in terrible conditions.
456. yeah exactly um but you know we we feel as though like once they start bringing in the um the union
457. busters it backfired on them because you know these guys are coming in there you know with
458. fresh suits on like very expensive suits on they're driving in nice cars and amazon has them
459. staying at the hotels across the street that a lot of workers can't really afford so they're
460. telling us that we shouldn't fight for 30 an hour we shouldn't fight for more protection
461. but they're already set.
462. They probably have pensions
463. or they have stocks.
464. They're very invested in the company.
465. It really
466. backfired on them.
467. The people went with the people that's
468. representing them.
469. Actually, another
470. union buster actually
471. slipped up and called one of us
472. thugs when we weren't
473. around. They mentioned his name is Bradley
474. Moss. There's actually a public
475. record about this.
476. And that didn't sit well with a group of black and brown people.
477. That's a very racialized term, right?
478. When you use the word thugs to describe, yeah, very racialized, very racist term.
479. What is the lesson that you can share with people who want to potentially organize their union about whether to go it on their own or join a pre-existing established union?
480. I imagine there's pros and cons either way.
481. Yeah. Oh, man, the cons. I mean, I feel as though, honestly, when we started our campaign, it was it had to be grassroots.
482. We had to do it our way. Being that we're veterans, you know, I'm a 10 year, almost 11 year veteran at Amazon.
483. A lot of people on the executive board were with Amazon for years.
484. So it just made sense for us at that time to do it that way Had we went with established union they might have had a different approach and they probably wanted to control the way we operated But you know this was something that was beautifully built and a lot of culture and a lot of passion was involved in this
485. So we knew that this was the right way to go.
486. You know, but but, you know, other other other workers that want to unionize their company, they're more than welcome to, you know, to get to go through an established union because they have good funding.
487. You know, we didn't have that funding. We were fortunate to be media savvy and we were able to utilize that with our GoFundMe to raise money to even organize.
488. Now, other groups that want to follow in our footsteps, they may not be as savvy, which is OK.
489. You can have you can have a major union come in and give you that support.
490. But you just you have to understand that you have to have organized inside of the facility in order for any campaign to be successful, regardless of what company you're working for.
491. What are the immediate advantages to having a union now?
492. I mean, and also what is the future of the Amazon labor union there?
493. So it's clear, you know, there's plenty of studies showing that people working unions have higher than average wages and have better benefits simply because they're fighting for them and end up eventually getting them if they persevere.
494. And so have you seen that difference at the warehouse that's been unionized?
495. And what are the prospects for expanding it?
496. Because Amazon is a very large company.
497. Yeah, there's definitely been a huge difference after the victory.
498. I can say that, for one, Amazon kind of switched up their approach of how they would union bust.
499. I mean, there's still going to be union busting regardless. That's going to happen.
500. But what they did was now they're trying to be they're trying to have like a nice approach.
501. They're trying to be friendly to workers and, you know, they're giving them snacks and holding little small carnivals inside the facility.
502. and passing out food as, you know, mimicking what we did, thinking that it's going to be the same authenticity, but it's not.
503. So they've been they've been doing that quite often, actually, especially during during like elections.
504. And, you know, just union activity that's going on inside the facility.
505. That would be like their counterattack. Also, there was a law called the Warehouse Worker Protection Act,
506. which was passed in 2023. And that requires management to disclose the actual rates of not only the worker that's being disciplined,
507. but the rest of the workers and compare and compare to to ensure that that worker actually fell within that threshold to initiate that write up or discipline disciplinary feedback.
508. So there's been also a lot of, you know, more organizing inside the building, you know, at the break rooms, which we were doing prior to the victory and continuing now.
509. And also the latest, April 1st, 2026, Amazon has been issued a bargain order from the National Labor Relations Board.
510. So, you know, we you know, we won initially April 1st, 2022.
511. But now, you know, four years later, after Amazon exhausted all their appeals out,
512. now Amazon has to come to the table and negotiate with the Amazon labor union.
513. So you know that is the future You know getting Amazon to that table which legally they have to do And you know we know that Amazon hard headed but we going to force their hand and get them to come to the table
514. And they have to lose money in order in order for them to really respect what we're doing.
515. And that's what we plan on doing. Right. The ultimate goal is a contract.
516. But even in the getting there, you can force the company to start improving its conditions, as you were just saying,
517. because there's a sense of accountability from below that they didn't have, perhaps.
518. Derek, I want to thank you so much for joining us.
519. Where can people follow your work?
520. Of course, the book is called Handbook for a Revolution.
521. And I'm wondering if, yeah, just give out the ways in which people can find you online
522. and also support the efforts of ALU because, you know,
523. every other person is a consumer of Amazon these days.
524. Yeah, we have.
525. My Instagram is true, double underscore, T-O-S-E-L-F, true to self.
526. My ex, Twitter, Derek Palmer underscore.
527. Facebook, Derek Anthony.
528. And TikTok, Derek Palmer underscore.
529. And also, if you want updates on the union, it's AmazonLaborUnion.org.
530. And also Twitter, AmazonLabor.
531. And, yeah.
532. Also, Handbook for the Revolution is out on all platforms, especially on, please support Bookshop as well.
533. But it is on every platform you can think of.
534. And I also did my audio as well.
535. So you can support the audio version as well.
536. Thank you again, Derek.
537. Good luck to you and your fellow workers.
538. Thank you.
539. I appreciate you.
540. Thank you for having me.
541. My guest has been Derek Palmer, vice president and co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union, which in 2021 successfully unionized an Amazon warehouse for the first time in the company's history.
542. His new book is called Handbook for the Revolution.
543. I'm Sonali Kohatkar, host and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali, an independently produced subscriber supported program nationally syndicated to radio stations, free speech TV and podcast platforms.
544. electric guitar solo
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