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1. You're listening to KPFK, 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 98.7 FM Santa Barbara, 93.7 San Diego, and
2. 99.5 Ridgecrest, China Lake.
3. Thank you.
4. Welcome to Rising Up with Sonali, an independently produced, subscriber-supported program syndicated to radio stations, free speech, TV and podcast platforms.
5. On this show, you'll hear solutions journalism for social justice, fueling action, not despair.
6. I'm Sonali Kohatkar, host and executive producer.
7. This week, as legions of soccer fans from around the world continue their focus on the
8. 2026 Men's World Cup, we'll examine how FIFA engages in sports washing, a term that my
9. guest Jules Boykoff uses to expose the greed and corruption surrounding the game.
10. Then we'll go to Illinois to learn how organizers successfully passed a new law taxing the ad
11. revenues of digital tech giants like Google and Amazon.
12. Carlos Fernandez, Executive Director of Grassroots Collaborative, will be my guest.
13. Finally, on the 250th anniversary of the U.S.,
14. civil rights attorney Portia Allen Kyle reflects on how a fairer tax system in general
15. could help repair the fractures of American democracy.
16. That's coming up in just a moment.
17. So
18. so
19. I'm Sonali Kolhatkar, 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.
20. My interviews are available to subscribers at risingupwithsonali.com.
21. When a U.S. men's soccer team player was called out for foul during a World Cup 2026 match, the player was penalized from playing one game.
22. But President Donald Trump reportedly personally called Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA, to protest, and the foul was reversed.
23. For those who've closely studied FIFA and the corruption of organized sports, this was not surprising.
24. A new book by former U men Olympic soccer player Jules Boykoff traces the troubling history of FIFA According to sports analyst Dave Zirin who wrote the book foreword quote this book is for leftists who love soccer and may even plan on watching the 2026 World Cup
25. who want to understand how authoritarians like Trump use the people's game to engage in sports
26. washing. Jules Boykoff now joins me. His book is called Red Card, the 2026 World Cup, Sports
27. swashing and the FIFA greed machine. He also has a new memoir out called Kicking about his former
28. life as a professional footballer and his current life as an academic critical of sports. And he's
29. also written six books on the politics of the Olympics, most recently What Are the Olympics For?
30. His writing has appeared in outlets such as The Nation, The Guardian, The LA Times,
31. The New York Times and more. And he teaches political science at Pacific University.
32. Welcome to the program, Jules. Thank you, Sonali. So glad to be with you.
33. So it shouldn't have surprised us that Trump was just able to call his buddy and get this foul reversed.
34. But for people who were watching the game thinking that there ought to be this fair standard,
35. that in sports it's just about the rules and about sportsmanship and playing, it was shocking.
36. How buddy-buddy is Trump with Infantino?
37. And why did this not probably not shock you?
38. Well, there's no question that this was the rescinded red card heard around the world,
39. and it got a ton of attention. And just like U.S. President Donald Trump wanted,
40. it put him at the center of attention at the world's most popular sporting event.
41. Now, for those who've been following Mr. Trump in the lead into this tournament, you're right,
42. it wasn't a huge surprise. We've been expecting him to jump in, perhaps even more than he has
43. to this point to try to avail himself of the power of this tournament for his political advantage.
44. Let's not forget that Donald Trump is the president in recent history in the United States
45. that has used sports to his political advantage more than any other. He's the guy that held the
46. big UFC mixed martial arts battle three days into this World Cup on the White House South Lawn.
47. So he weighs in. He clearly knows nothing about soccer, unfortunately, and that became
48. immediately clear when he said it wasn't even a foul at all. I can tell you as a soccer person,
49. And I not only thought it was a foul, but I actually thought it was a red card offense.
50. The bigger point is that President Trump has a penchant for using sports to his advantage.
51. And he really tests the idea that you can be more politically effective by being less explicitly political.
52. And sports provide the perfect vehicle for testing that theory.
53. And that is a good segue into asking you to define sports washing.
54. It sounds like that's basically what you did, this term sports washing that is in the subtitle to your book.
55. It's basically using sports to further one's political agenda.
56. I would go a little further.
57. So I think sports washing is when political leaders use sports to deflect attention from chronic social problems and human rights woes at home in order to make themselves look important or legitimate on the world stage.
58. while at the same time setting up political opportunities, economic opportunities, and diplomatic opportunities.
59. The term sportswashing was used widely ahead of the Men's World Cup in 2018 in Russia
60. when everybody was saying that Vladimir Putin was engaging in sportswashing.
61. The term was used widely in 2022 when Qatar was hosting the Men's World Cup.
62. And I agree, it should have been used.
63. Both of those groups were trying to use sports to deflect attention from things going on at home
64. to look important on the world stage and set themselves up for political and economic opportunity.
65. But a lot of people when they use the term sports washing quite frankly use it in an ethnocentric and even xenophobic fashion as if it could only happen over there with those other countries Whereas in the book that you
66. mentioned at the top of our discussion here, I make the argument that sports washing can happen
67. anywhere if you define it in the way that I do. And it's definitely happening in the United States
68. as President Trump not only makes his way through this World Cup and the UFC fight I mentioned
69. before, but also the upcoming Olympics in Los Angeles, he has made it clear every step of the
70. way that sports are really important to his political legacy. And last point on this, you
71. know, when people ask whether sports washing works, they usually mean does it work on an
72. international audience? Is an international audience convinced that, you know what, maybe
73. Vladimir Putin or what's going on in Qatar isn't that bad of a thing? And sometimes that is the
74. audience for sports washing. And you could even look at Qatar in the 2022 Men's World Cup, and you
75. could argue sports washing worked in the sense that tourism went up after the 2022 World Cup there.
76. And Qatar really fortified itself as an important diplomatic force in the region as well. With the
77. situation in the United States and Donald Trump in the 2026 World Cup, the international audience
78. has almost nothing to do with it. What Trump is doing is he's very much talking to a domestic
79. audience. You can engage in sports washing while primarily talking to a domestic audience.
80. The crucial MAGA vote and Republicans more generally ahead of the midterm election. Quite
81. frankly, he doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks of him. I think he's made that
82. abundantly clear with his actions, but he does care about the upcoming midterms. And this gives
83. him an opportunity to engage in sort of performative security theater when members of the Uzbekistan
84. team are getting sniffed by dogs as if they're going to carry contraband into the country. That
85. is not for the wider world. That is for the domestic base ahead of these elections.
86. And I understand that there was even a referee, a sport, a soccer referee from
87. one of the African nations that I am now not remembering, who was not allowed into the United
88. States, actually turned back from entering the United States. Yeah. Omar Abdul Qadir Artan is
89. his name and he's from Somalia. He was the best referee in all of Africa for men's football in
90. 2025. And the Trump administration said that he had some kind of shadowy ties, which of course
91. they would never explain to terrorist organizations in some manner, terrorist individuals, just a
92. general kind of he is, he knows terrorists kind of thing. And they kept him out of the country.
93. When he went back home to Somalia, he was greeted by soccer fans. Everybody was cheering for him.
94. You know things, Sonali, have gone totally sideways when soccer fans are cheering vociferously for a referee.
95. And that shows how Trump has really just overturned things when it comes to sports and politics.
96. Now, it's not just that Trump has subverted the World Cup to suit his agenda, but in FIFA, he has found a willing and enthusiastic partner.
97. Let's talk about that. And I think that a lot of your book focuses on that.
98. I mentioned Gianni Infantino. This is a man who famously invented a peace prize so that he could hand it over to Trump, who was sore about not being chosen for the Nobel Peace Prize.
99. You know, I suppose it's just this different world that Trump lives in in his own head where such things make sense.
100. but who is Infantino and what is his agenda?
101. I mean, FIFA is a sports institution.
102. It is gouging enormous amounts of money.
103. It acts as though it its own private corporation Who is Infantino and what is his leadership of FIFA done Gianni Infantino is a Swiss man who has been running FIFA in the wake of the huge corruption
104. scandal that happened in 2015 that led to the indictment of a number of FIFA officials for
105. bribery, for corruption, for all manner of illegality. A lot of people thought that when
106. Infantino took over, he was going to change things for the better. But unfortunately, he has
107. absolutely not done that. In fact, he sort of fortified some of the worst elements of FIFA
108. moving forward and really kind of solidified their money game where they take in billions of dollars.
109. This World Cup alone is supposed to be $11 billion plus in revenue for FIFA, more than any
110. sporting event in the history of humankind, that is, in terms of revenues. And then he spreads a
111. chunk of that money out to these football associations, soccer associations around the
112. world, and they take those millions of dollars, and it's an incentive for them to be quiet and
113. not push back against any of the wild ideas that Infantino might have, such as his $6 million
114. salary. If that's not enough of a clientelistic patronage network to keep everybody in line,
115. there's 37 people on the FIFA Council, powerful FIFA Council, that could theoretically be a check
116. on Infantino's power, who are paid between $250,000 and $300,000 a year to attend roughly
117. two to four meetings. I mean, pretty sweet work, Sonali, if you can get it. So there's a real
118. network of silence, and it's really run through money. Now, you mentioned that Infantino has a
119. real penchant for kissing up to President Trump. But the truth is, Infantino has long been an
120. enabler of sports washing. In 2018, he went to Russia where he played football with Vladimir
121. Putin and others on the Red Square ahead of the tournament in 2018. He received a
122. Order of Friendship medal from Putin afterwards and said it was the best tournament in the history
123. of FIFA. 2022, Infantino moved himself to Qatar where he ran interference around the horrific
124. human rights violations that were happening there. Some 6,700 workers died constructing things to get
125. ready for the tournament between 2010 and 2021. And he said, oh, no, not a big deal, nothing to
126. see here. But you're right. He's taking it to the next level here with Donald Trump in 2026 with
127. that ridiculous peace prize. And I don't say ridiculous simply because Donald Trump doesn't
128. deserve a peace prize. I mean, don't get me wrong. He does not deserve a peace prize. But it was also
129. ridiculous in terms of strategy, because if Infantino were thinking strategically, he would
130. have said ahead of the tournament, gee, I'm going to give a FIFA Peace Prize at the very end of the
131. tournament, not months before it, but at the very end, thereby potentially putting in check some of
132. Trump's worst instincts to take center stage. But instead, of course, as everybody knows,
133. and you just alluded to right there, he gave it to him early in December 2025. So Infantino is a
134. key figure in how all this happens. And he has really hitched his wagon to Donald Trump here
135. in a big way. He even attended the opening of Bologna. That's how serious he is in terms of
136. kissing up to Trump. Right. This is the documentary about the first lady that Jeff Bezos was seemingly,
137. you know, kissing up to Trump with. Let's talk about the infrastructure around the World Cup.
138. you mentioned in Qatar, the labor violations around building big stadiums and other infrastructure.
139. And often these global sporting events involve such things and local opposition to them gets
140. generated by or sparked by the fact that huge amounts of tax dollars and subsidies go towards
141. These massive, hulking stadiums that, once the World Cup or the Olympics has gone away,
142. are just a blight on residential neighborhoods and are used for nothing.
143. At the same time, money is taken away from things that actually keep people safe and help them to thrive.
144. Now, for the 2026 World Cup, it doesn't seem as though the U.S. really built any major infrastructure
145. because I believe it already has enough stadiums.
146. there was some converting of American football stadiums into soccer stadiums.
147. So did that same sort of pattern apply?
148. You're absolutely right that there was no new stadium construction in the United States for the World Cup.
149. And not only is that a source of spending in most sports mega events, but it's also a huge source of carbon dioxide emissions.
150. nevertheless this is the most polluting world cup in the history of world cups not because of the
151. building but because of all the people traveling and then once they get here having to travel
152. through by airplane because the distances that people need to cover to go to the next match
153. and because of the fact that it's three countries and just a huge geographical expanse and because
154. of the fact that the united states has a pretty weak train system that makes it basically impossible
155. to get from like Kansas City to San Francisco in a decent amount of time. And so there are always
156. trade-offs with these sports mega events. We should be glad that they didn't have to build a bunch of
157. new stadiums for this, but that doesn't mean that there's not endemic downsides. You know, one of the
158. other ones that you just mentioned there was, or alluded to, was displacement of local populations.
159. So when all the journalists arrive from around the world, the last thing that organizers want
160. them to see is unhoused people. So we've seen folks being moved from places like Vancouver in
161. Canada, but for many cities. You also see the militarization of public space, the intensification
162. of policing. The big, beautiful bill or law that became Trump's signature legislation had a billion
163. dollars in it for security for this World Cup, a billion dollars. And you can rest assured that
164. they're not going to put those weapons back in the box after the World Cup and say, we did our job
165. and you can have them back now. No, they become part of normal policing, which in the United
166. States, of course, means racialized policing in the wake of the World Cup. And so a lot of these
167. chronic problems that not enough people, quite frankly, are talking about when it comes to
168. events like the World Cup and the Olympics are right here in your face with this World Cup in
169. 2026. Finally, Jules, how do you, what advice can you give to people who love the game and hate the
170. politics of the game and the way in which the game has been politicized? I imagine this is a conundrum
171. you find yourself in the center of often.
172. I think your new memoir sort of dives into that a little bit.
173. But for people who love soccer and, you know, what happened with the reversing of the decision
174. around the U.S. men's soccer team player turned so many people off.
175. Some people even sort of decided to boycott watching it and others wanted to watch it
176. anyway.
177. And of course, in the end, the U.S. lost that particular game.
178. But what advice can you give people who want to enjoy the game but have a conscience?
179. Well, yeah, no, I've been wrestling with this for a very long time, and I think about it a lot.
180. And I think everybody's line is going to be slightly different.
181. But for me, as a lover of the game of soccer that's given me so much over the years, including friendship, camaraderie,
182. a base upon which I been able to engage in political activism with people that I know from the soccer world I don want to just give it up because the FIFA greed machine has taken over my and our beloved sport
183. Wouldn't Gianni Infantino love it if you just decided not to run any segments about it, to just like vacate the space and boycott it?
184. Wouldn't he love it if all the critics just shut up and went home and boycotted even talking about this event?
185. It would make Gianni Infantino's life a lot easier.
186. The bottom line for me is that I decided not to spend any money on tickets.
187. I didn't attend any matches and won't attend any matches of this World Cup because I don't
188. want to give a single dime to FIFA and they're raking in loads of money through ticket prices.
189. I have been going to stadiums.
190. I've been around protesters in Toronto.
191. There were some pro-Palestine protests giving the red card to FIFA over their treatment
192. of Israel.
193. So I went and hung out with those folks and tried to understand where they were coming from. Really interesting group. I talked to people right outside the stadium that had a sign that said FIFA equals greed squared. This guy was actually picked up by the police just for holding a sign peacefully there outside the stadium in Toronto.
194. And so I think that I'm trying to support those folks, learn from those folks, try to amplify what they're doing,
195. and to use sports, this most popular sporting event in the world, to sort of amplify the messages for justice.
196. It just doesn't seem to make sense to me to vacate the space and give it all to FIFA and the big greed machine.
197. I think football is worth fighting for, and I'm going to link arms with people who feel the same way
198. and fight back for a more just world through football or soccer.
199. Jules, I want to thank you so much for joining us today.
200. Good luck to you with your new book.
201. Thank you.
202. It's always good to talk to you.
203. My guest has been Jules Boykoff, author of Red Card,
204. the 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine,
205. and Kicking, a memoir about his former life as a professional footballer
206. and his current life as an academic critical of sports.
207. He teaches political science at Pacific University.
208. I'm Sonali Kohatkar, host and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali,
209. an independently produced subscriber-supported program
210. nationally syndicated to radio stations, free speech TV and podcast platforms.
211. I'm Sonali Kolhatkar, host and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali,
212. an independently produced subscriber-supported program
213. nationally syndicated to radio stations, free speech, TV and podcast platforms.
214. My interviews are available to subscribers at risingupwithsonali.com.
215. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker in June of this year signed a bill into law that slaps a tax on tech companies' ad revenues.
216. The movement that led to SB 3019 was many months in the making
217. and involved a coalition of grassroots organizations working to mitigate the damage
218. of the federal government's tax cuts on corporations and cutting of social services.
219. When enacted, this tax is expected to bring in $800 million or so in revenue for Illinois.
220. Joining me to explain to us how it all happened is Carlos Fernandez the executive director of Grassroots Collaborative a coalition of Chicago labor and community organizations who worked together for racial
221. and economic justice for over 25 years. Welcome to the program, Carlos.
222. Thank you for having me, Samar.
223. I explained in very broad terms what the tax is, but why don't you tell me, you're obviously
224. a lot more familiar with it than I am, what exactly is this tax? When will it get enacted?
225. Well, there's a couple of scenarios for when, but as far as the what, this is a tax on the digital advertising revenues of the largest corporations that sell digital advertising.
226. So the great majority of this would be paid by Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google, Meta, parent company of Facebook, Amazon, which does a lot of digital advertising.
227. and similar corporations, right, that sell to other corporations mostly,
228. but to all sorts of businesses and individuals,
229. the ability to advertise on their platforms,
230. Instagram or what have you, right, Google search.
231. And so in Illinois, most services are not taxed.
232. And so this is a tax on the revenue that those companies generate, right?
233. So whatever portion, I'm forgetting right now the exact,
234. It's a small amount. It's a small percentage of every dollar that they generate.
235. So it really is only significant for those companies that sell millions or hundreds of millions in advertising.
236. And it's only on their revenue in Illinois.
237. So these are platforms, just to be clear, these are platforms that make money from other companies advertising on their platforms.
238. So because Google being the most popular search engine, it throws up a lot of ads in response to people's searches.
239. It gets money from those ads.
240. And are you saying that currently those revenues are not taxed or they're not taxed enough?
241. They're not taxed.
242. Right now, the taxes that these companies pay are mainly on their profits, which they have lots of ways to reduce or hide some of those profits.
243. Depending on the company, like Amazon, it might be property taxes.
244. Those go to local bodies.
245. But Illinois and several other states, I don't remember the number, doesn't tax as far as revenue.
246. Right. You have to pay a tax when you buy a meal or buy gas or buy some groceries.
247. But generally, you don't have to pay taxes on a haircut. Right. Lots of services.
248. And they treat this digital advertising as a service. So they are paying no taxes on these digital advertising. Right.
249. And they're just and the profit margins on this stuff is, you know, astronomical.
250. So this is one way to try and get these corporations that are just making windfall profits every year, growing their cash savings, right?
251. And using some of that cash savings for really nefarious purposes, buying out competition, funding Trump's inauguration, and worse, right?
252. And so this is a way that we've sought to challenge that sort of concentration of wealth and revenue and that escape from responsibility for the common good is by imposing this one tax that they can easily pay.
253. Right And so this would start next year but we expecting it to be challenged in courts There a couple of other states that have implemented past similar laws and they been challenged We benefited from
254. those court cases, right? So when we wrote this, and I say we, the collective we here in Illinois,
255. progressives benefited from learning from other states what would hold up in court. So we are
256. expecting a court challenge, so this might be delayed till 2027 or 2028. But we're confident
257. that they're going to have to start paying a little bit more taxes towards our state budget.
258. $800 million sounds like a lot of money, but when you look at the scale of state budgets,
259. it's still not that much money. And in a piece written by some of your colleagues for Truthout
260. about this particular tax, it suggests that it is still not nearly enough to fill the gap to
261. adequately cover the cuts to social services. But still, it is a victory for, you know, toward
262. justice. Let's talk about how it happened and what prompted it. It's a lengthy story, I think,
263. that builds on previous movements. But it seems as though the big upshot of it was that groups
264. got together, all of you with limited resources, and pressured using inside-outside strategies,
265. allies on the inside who are members of elected office, and pushed from the outside using
266. creative protests. Is that the sort of nutshell of it? That's right. I mean, we've been bringing
267. together different strands of the work over the years, right? For a long time in Illinois,
268. progressive forces were very isolated, were small in number. And we really had to work to
269. build some progressive champions on the inside. And there's a couple of legislators,
270. Robert Peters in the state Senate, Norma Hernandez in the House, who are somewhat new.
271. Well, not Robert Peters. He's been in a few terms now. And they've been working on this, right?
272. but it's been a slow, hard fight for them from the inside.
273. And so we've tried to build a people pressure on the outside
274. by speaking to legislators,
275. educating voters in legislators' districts.
276. And this year, because of the Trump administration
277. and its big, beautiful bill
278. and how it was hurting our communities
279. and the role that corporations had in that,
280. we took an additional step
281. of really going after the corporations
282. and their role in not just maintaining the status quo,
283. but allowing these additional cuts and harms
284. to our communities to happen, right?
285. So while Amazon is making new levels of profit,
286. it is supporting a regime
287. and supporting taxation policies that hurt our communities.
288. And so we took it to their doorstep.
289. So more creative actions.
290. We did protests at their offices,
291. but we also did some civil disobedience
292. at one of their largest delivery hubs in Chicago,
293. just to show that even small forces can make an impact
294. on these global corporations.
295. And it did, it made an impact.
296. And what it mostly did was bring attention to the disparities
297. and made some room for our progressive champions
298. and some of the more moderate legislators to say,
299. hey, I'm willing to take a stand with these people
300. over these corporations and make the taxation
301. possibly a little bit fairer.
302. Right. And that's
303. Such an important point that these legislators who normally would feel fearful of taking on a big corporation or just not necessarily feel the need to do it are now feeling the pressure from grassroots organizers and maybe more emboldened.
304. And that's so interesting because I think when many Americans think about, OK, our democracy works when you elect somebody to represent you in office and then your only other job is to assess them four years later or two years later, as the case may be.
305. But in the meantime, those people who are in office are pressured by all these other moneyed interests because money, because they have the money and the time, the wherewithal to do it.
306. And they know that they benefit a lot when they push these elected officials to write tax codes in favor of them.
307. And so that process of democracy must happen all year round.
308. Right. It's not just about voting them in, but holding their feet to the fire when they're in.
309. right? That's right. And it takes the slow, patient work of education and outreach and
310. getting ready for elections, but also in certain moments like today, right, drawing some lines and
311. being creative about showing, you know, who's with you and who's against you, right? So
312. civil disobedience, it doesn't take civil disobedience, but sometimes you need to be
313. that dramatic. But just like creative protest, loud protest is an important ingredient in
314. changing the dynamics from the status quo, from that stasis that you were talking about.
315. How did the storytelling around the campaign take place? It's not something that necessarily
316. is easy to fit on a placard. I would like to see big corporations pay more taxes on their digital
317. ad revenues. It sounds wonkish. How did you distill the message to link this change to the tax code
318. to people's needs? Yeah. Well, we've learned that folks don't trust government, right? So
319. we've never just talked about give government more money or create new taxes, right? We've
320. always talked about the needs that had to be filled. And again, the Trump regime with the
321. Big Beautiful Bill Act was, you know, creating for just for Illinois tax cuts that would cost
322. our state $800 million, right? The amount of the digital ad, that's just a coincidence. It wasn't
323. by design. So we were able to talk to people about losing SNAP, right? Losing healthcare,
324. healthcare costs going up, right? Losing housing programs and connecting all of these to a sort of
325. first an authoritarian federal regime, and then a set of corporations that were pillars of support
326. for that regime that profit from a taxation policy that is easy on them, right? And so we were able
327. to say there's these needs that have never been fully funded, like schools and higher education.
328. There's cuts happening, right? And at the same time, corporations are getting tax cuts,
329. right? And so we could talk then about, we had four different proposals for taxing corporations
330. and taxing wealthy billionaires right And this was one of the biggest ones and that the one that passed but there a whole set of solutions that we talk to different working class communities communities of color about their needs and how the money is
331. there, the resources are there to meet their needs. But certain forces are hoarding those resources.
332. And then how can other states look to what Illinois did? If every state, because the tax
333. is obviously, the state of Illinois can only collect those parts of the taxes on those digital
334. revenues that apply to the state of Illinois. There are 50 states in the country. Can other
335. states do something similar? And are there various ways to do it? I imagine that if it's possible,
336. some states might consider ballot measures that everybody can vote on, right?
337. Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll be watching what happens in California with their wealth billionaires
338. ballot measure for sure. Which is a different type of tax, but nonetheless is a tax on
339. billionaires. And as somebody in California, let me tell you, there's a big fight brewing over it.
340. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I know it's a complicated fight. And I think that what I think
341. we have to do in these moments is take back the power that we have. And this is at lots of
342. different levels, right? So we're talking about a state policy, a state taxation policy, and
343. there are a bunch of levers there, right? And we're pretty limited in Illinois. Illinois system
344. is pretty, is the eighth most regressive taxation system, right? For a blue trifecta kind of state,
345. it's surprising, but it's written in our constitution that limits our ability to tax
346. wealthy folks, corporations differently from average folks, which seems utterly unfair.
347. So I think that states that don't have that limitation have a lot of room for maneuver.
348. And I guess it means that if Illinois could do it, certainly others could.
349. Exactly. And I think we just have to go at it from different angles,
350. keep building the pressure. Ultimately, we need to reverse some of the tax cuts at the federal level,
351. right? We do need federal solutions. We need to get some of that offshore
352. havens for corporate profits and individual profits recaptured back into our taxation
353. system. There's lots of things to do, but the main thing is to show people that we can fight
354. and that there's a way that any individual's action together collectively can make a difference
355. and can chip away at the power of these corporations.
356. It doesn't seem as though culture shifts can necessarily influence judges, but they do.
357. The prevailing culture of the time does play an impact.
358. And so with the legal challenge to the law that so many people like yourself worked so hard to enact,
359. How are organizers keeping up the pressure, making it clear, you know, I suppose indirectly to the state judiciary that this is something people want and need?
360. Yeah, well, I think number one is I think courts need to understand the impact of their decisions.
361. I think some do, but maybe some do better than others and some understand it and don't care.
362. I am hopeful about our court systems here, but and our federal district, right?
363. At least we're not in a federal district like Louisiana or Texas.
364. But there are some parts of this that are going to be a challenge And so I think that while our sort of champions in the legal arena will do the best that they can do what regular folks community
365. organizations, labor organizations need to do is bring attention to it, both so that the justice
366. system understands that people are watching them and are impacted by their decisions. And so that
367. people understand who else is trying to intervene. Because these corporations are going to have their
368. lawyers, they're going to file their briefs, they're going to do what they can to influence
369. those decisions. And we want to make sure that our communities, our members understand
370. that where they shop, the corporations they buy things from, or they watch on their phones,
371. is trying to shape their taxation policy, right? In the courts, just like they tried to do it in
372. legislature. And I think that all helps build the consciousness of our communities
373. and encourages them to make their opinion known. And I think that influences judges and the justice
374. system, and hopefully the conscience of some of these corporations. Well, I want to thank you,
375. so much for joining us today. We'll post a link to the Truthout piece that covers this story.
376. Thank you and good luck to you. Yeah, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
377. My guest has been Carlos Fernandez, Executive Director of Grassroots Collaborative, a coalition of Chicago labor and community organizations who have worked together for racial and economic justice for more than 25 years.
378. And 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.
379. Thank you.
380. I'm Sonali Kolhatkar, 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.
381. What does the nation's tax code have to do with the U.S.'s 250th anniversary?
382. It turns out quite a lot. How we collect and distribute our collective resources remains trapped in a familiar and unjust pattern.
383. Civil rights attorney and racial justice leader Portia Allen Kyle writes in a new piece in DAME magazine, quote,
384. a fairer tax system could help repair the fractures of American democracy.
385. Portia Allen Kyle now joins me.
386. She's also a tax fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the former interim executive director at Color of Change.
387. And she's the author of the forthcoming book, From Write-Offs to Riches, How Tax Policy Perpetuates the Racial Wealth Gap and Undermines Our Democracy.
388. It's going to be published under the new press.
389. Welcome to the program, Portia.
390. Yes, thank you so much for having me.
391. And congratulations on your new book.
392. When we think about taxes often in our popular culture people think of it negatively right They don like the fact that their paychecks get shortened that they have to get gouged
393. at the grocery store because their bill is higher than they expected because of sales
394. tax, all sorts of taxes that are collected from ordinary Americans.
395. We have a negative response to them.
396. But is that because we've sort of forgotten about what taxes actually do, the role they're meant to play in our society, a sort of redistribution of resources, of our resources?
397. Yeah, I think, you know, to your question, the reaction that folks have is not necessarily wrong, but the, you know, I'd probably say it's more of a attribution error. The problem in general is not necessarily that we all pay taxes. And in fact, healthy democracies, everyone pays in and pays their fair share.
398. Our problem here in the United States is that we have a system that essentially favors the wealthy, allows them, you know, through loopholes, etc., to not pay their fair share, and instead have this very regressive system of taxation that falls the hardest on people that have the least, when the reality is that corporations and the very wealthy just need to do more.
399. You point out in your Peace and Dame magazine that contrary to popular belief, the Boston Tea Party, which of course, you know, is something very relevant to this 250th anniversary, was less an anti-tax protest than a reaction to the preferential treatment for the British East India Company.
400. And does that sort of exemplify how our tax code today remains skewed toward the rich and toward corporations?
401. It's, I suppose, varied over the 250 years of this nation's existence.
402. But in general, there's been few times where the tax code has taxed corporations enough or fairly enough, right?
403. Absolutely.
404. And, you know, it's ironic, I think, thinking back to the Boston Tea Party and, you know, what the issue actually was.
405. And so, again, this preferential treatment of the British East India Company during a moment where average everyday people were paying high tariffs on tea.
406. And that was part of the reason why folks were upset and rising up in response.
407. And when we think about, you know, the kind of correlate to today and how we have, you know, essentially multinational, multibillion dollar corporations that pay lower tax rates than your teachers and firefighters and nurses and, you know, everyday working folks, you know, here at home.
408. especially in the context recently of, you know, the decision to levy high tariffs on, you know,
409. goods coming from certain countries. And when the tariffs were found to be illegal,
410. corporations got their refunds, but everyday folks that paid more for the goods and services that
411. they, you know, needed have not received refunds yet. Right. And so, you know, you still have this
412. situation today where those who have power, those who have wealth, also then leverage that power and that wealth for the benefits through the tax code and through preferential political treatment.
413. I love this line in your piece, as our nation aged, our democracy did not mature. And I suppose one of the immaturities of our democracy is the fact that we have this persistent
414. racial wealth gap. It may not be apparent to the white supremacists in our midst, to the people
415. who support Donald Trump, who feel like they're the ones being wronged, but statistics prove
416. there exists a persistent racial wealth gap. And if you believe that all people are created equal,
417. then the only reason there would be a persistent racial wealth gap would be if there was a systemic
418. design in the system, right? So how do you relate our tax code to the racial wealth gap?
419. How are those two linked? Yeah, you know, the tax code certainly didn't create the wealth gap by any
420. means, but it is definitely the primary mechanism at this point that continues to structure and
421. cement that gap into, you know, generational existence. And so, you know, you have a
422. tax code that preferences wealth over work. And so preferences, old money, wealth that is held
423. through stocks and corporate ownership and, you know, things of that nature. And taxes that more
424. favorably and so taxes that, you know, in other words, taxes it at a lower rate than everyday
425. working folks who, you know, go and earn a paycheck and receive a W-2, you know, come tax time for
426. their living. And so you, you know, have this situation where even though the tax code
427. ostensibly seems that it is race neutral, you know, on its face, actually structures by the
428. way it treats different types of wealth and different types of, you know, work, how you earn
429. your money, that helps cement, you know, the inequity and, you know, that shows up as the
430. racial wealth gap into a permanent state. So what are the ways in which the tax code could be fairer?
431. How can the next 250 years be different in a way that helps our democracy mature?
432. Yeah, you know, in order for our democracy to, you know, really mature and become that thriving multiracial democracy that so many folks say that they want, we really need to think about redistribution.
433. You know, the desire to tax the wealth, to, you know, tax millionaires and billionaires and corporations is actually really popular policy.
434. But it's a starting place. It's not the ending place.
435. We would also need to, you know, be thinking not just about making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share, but how, you know, do we think about, you know, taxing wealth perhaps more harshly than we, you know, tax work, for example.
436. How do we think about policies that provide tax breaks to working families and parents and, you know, renters that isn't about, you know, you shouldn't pay taxes at all. We should all be contributing. That's what a functioning democracy means. We're all participating and contributing.
437. but instead, you know, that we are investing in the things like families, like children,
438. like education, like healthcare, and using our tax code as a source to provide for public goods
439. and services for everyone as opposed to you know a site of benefits for the few you know and a site of unfairness and inequality for the many We often hear people compare the United States to Europe
440. and I want to sort of bring up a nuanced issue.
441. When we hear folks in Scandinavian countries
442. talk about how they're perfectly happy
443. taking home a smaller paycheck
444. because they never have to worry about healthcare,
445. They never have to worry about, you know, being ending up on the streets, basically, if they lose their job.
446. Is that something that can be applied to the United States, that if everybody is helped in a way that deserves to be, you know, everybody is helped universally, then even those who are the most vulnerable rise up?
447. Or does the United States need something more targeted on top of that to address the racial wealth gap?
448. You know, I think fundamentally where the United States differs from some of the Scandinavian countries is like in our very particular racialized history.
449. And how that manifests itself, you know, in the present day is this idea that if some people have nice things and other people's things have to be raggedy by definition.
450. And so you here in the United States, you have people that would rather, you know, there's an old saying, like, you know, don't cut off your nose despite your face, right? You have people that would rather be nose-less than see other people have the same things that they have. And even if that means that what they have, you know, could be better.
451. And so part of, I think, the work for the United States is like just this change in cultural beliefs around capitalism, around racialized capitalism.
452. Is this an issue of individualism that we just don't think as a collective?
453. I think that's absolutely right.
454. And a more collective approach to the provision of public goods and services can really go a long way towards addressing inequality.
455. But it starts with redistribution at the tax code level.
456. Yes, you're right that some of these Scandinavian countries are essentially fairly homogeneous, racially speaking.
457. But that is changing. There is increased migration from the global south to Europe.
458. And it is changing the racial fabric of these countries.
459. and that has, of course, prompted in other Western European nations,
460. in particular white supremacists,
461. to echo some of the same language that we see here in the United States.
462. So just going back to the tax code,
463. because all of these things,
464. we're talking about white supremacy, the racial wealth gap,
465. and they are linked to the tax code.
466. I'm wondering if you think that the fact that our tax code
467. is also terribly complex is part of the problem.
468. There have been so many loopholes carved out of it,
469. generally in favor of the rich and already wealthy and corporations. Can we think about
470. a simplified tax code that would actually be beneficial to the majority of people?
471. Oh, I mean, we absolutely could and should. I mean, I think, you know, some of the most recent
472. statistics say that about 90% of people take the standard deduction. And while many view the
473. increases since the Trump tax cuts,
474. like the increases to the standard deduction
475. as being a kind of very positive thing,
476. what it functionally means is that we have this complex
477. tax code that really only applies to about 10%
478. of the population and corporations right Everybody else is pretty straightforward in the ways in which they file their taxes And so you know we can absolutely streamline that But
479. you know, part of it is, instead of having this code that essentially, you know, writes the rules
480. of money and power in favor of money and power, we can have a tax code that rewrites the rules
481. of money and power in favor of redistribution, in favor of eradicating poverty, making rights real
482. and providing more for the public good, but also investing more in our nation's families.
483. What are some of the ways in which these changes can happen? I have been covering state-level tax
484. changes and responses to the federal government's gutting of social safety nets and reducing taxes
485. on corporations. States are trying to make up the shortfall and enact their own separate taxes.
486. But a federal tax code, a unified centralized federal tax code, really needs that overhaul,
487. Right. So where does one begin? I suppose it has to begin with Congress, our elected representatives.
488. You know, I actually think it begins with some of the cultural and organizing work around how we collectively think and portray taxes,
489. because we won't be able to like while Congress needs to pass the law or a new tax code.
490. I'm not sure that can collectively happen until we really interrogate, and an anniversary is a great time to interrogate, what exactly is the social contract?
491. Like, what do we think that, you know, we all should be provided by virtue of, you know, being residents and citizens in this nation?
492. and revisiting that social contract, you know, that people, if we believe in life, liberty,
493. the pursuit of happiness, for example, well, does that include, you know, a right to shelter,
494. like access to, you know, quality healthcare? If we wanted to, we could do a universal income
495. through the tax code to make sure that, you know, no one falls beneath the level of a living wage.
496. If we wanted to, we could use the tax code to address the many, you know, concerns of rising educational and college costs. We can, you know, better use it to address healthcare. We can, you know, think of ways that are perhaps spot fixes on the pathway to an overhaul and a, you know, more equitable redistribution of, you know, wealth and money in our society.
497. But there's a lot of options and, you know, a lot of possibilities.
498. It's interesting to think about how a fair tax code can exist alongside billionaires.
499. And right now we have the world's first trillionaire in the United States, which is just mind-boggling.
500. Can a fair tax code enable billionaires to even exist?
501. You know, many people say billionaires should not exist.
502. Full transparency, I am one of those people.
503. And when the cost of billionaires existing is the sacrifice of tens of millions of folks
504. barely scraping by, I just don't think that tradeoff is worth it in really human terms.
505. And so where redistribution of resources can really provide for some of the very basic needs you know in making real very basic human and civil rights I think the trade to tax billionaires out of existence is a perfectly
506. reasonable pathway forward. The narrative would have you believe that the wealthy don't use public
507. services, services such as private airports that are really for the few, they are public
508. public goods subsidized by our tax dollar that regular everyday people will never use. It is
509. only exclusively used by, you know, the wealthy. And so telling those stories about what it,
510. what billionaires really cost society, what they really use from society, what they're not
511. contributing to, telling the stories about, you know, how government works for people, for example,
512. telling better stories about the IRS telling and not, you know, just making things up out of thin air,
513. but, you know, telling the stories about how the IRS tried to provide a free, you know, filing service that was universally loved and easy to use.
514. And, you know, just really telling truth in response to distortion, I think, is a way to start on the narrative and cultural change.
515. And all storytellers can be engaged in that.
516. Well, Portia, I want to thank you so much for joining us today.
517. Good luck with your new book, and we'll link to your Dame Magazine article from our website.
518. Thanks for coming on.
519. Thank you so much for having me.
520. My guest has been Portia Allen Kyle.
521. She's a nationally recognized civil rights attorney and a tax fellow at the Roosevelt Institute
522. and former interim executive director at Color of Change.
523. Her piece in Dame magazine is called The Tax Code America Needs for the Next 250 Years.
524. And her forthcoming book is From Write-Offs to Riches, How Tax Policy Perpetuates the
525. Racial Wealth Gap and Undermines Our Democracy.
526. It'll be out from the new press.
527. I'm Sonali Kohatkar, host and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali, an independently
528. produced subscriber-supported program nationally syndicated to radio stations, free speech
529. TV and podcast platforms.
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