BRANCACCIO: Now, a conversation about democracy here at home and getting it to work for everyone.
Constance Rice is a lawyer who's the driving force in many a fight to help poor people in California. She uses the courts to force changes in the system, from education, to prisons, to the police force.
Rice is now co-director for the Advancement Project in Los Angeles and is committed to tearing down barriers between those with the lowest-incomes and the American dream.
Connie Rice, welcome to NOW.
RICE:
Oh, it's great to be with you, David.
BRANCACCIO:
You've argued that current policies have ground the poor into the dust. Given that, what is the message that you'd like passed up the chain of commands into our political structure?
RICE:
We can't, it's not even passing it up the political structure. It's getting, first, the African-American, Latino, progressive communities to take responsibility and to say, "This is actually gonna be on our agenda." Right now, you know, you've got environmentalism, you've got women's rights, you've got the civil rights, you've got gay rights.
And we've got these silos. But there isn't anybody who's actually arguing, "Look, folks, we as African-American middle class folk have completely left behind the folk Martin Luther King was marching in the street for." And, in a way, that's complete. It's undeniable.
I'm interested in the folk who have been written completely out of the script. And we had just had the biggest generation of wealth, the Gilded '90s, and it was a golden age. We created more wealth than any other economy in the history of woman. And the people I represent never even got closer to the table.
So I wanna reframe the entire debate to say what kind of economic systems and engines do we need to really include poor, rural white people who have the highest rate of poverty, increasing poverty in this country. Poor African-Americans who are in the underclass and really what we have for them is prison.
Poor Latinos. Poor children across the board because we're not doing it.
BRANCACCIO:
It may be possible to have a dialogue with people who don't necessarily always share your political views. There may be ways for you to create coalition.
RICE:
Oh, absolutely. I do it every day. I mean, most of my cases are done with moderate Republicans. And I sue Democrats. I mean, Democrats won't claim me. Most of the people I sue are Democrats.
In fact, almost every single case I've done has been done with unlikely allies. Because that is exactly the kind of political leverage it takes to pivot people out of the paralysis of the extremes. You've got folk on· entrenched in one view, entrenched in another. And they're ready to go to war.
And no problems get solved. So, you're absolutely right. To solve problems, big, public policy problems, it takes folks who say, "We're gonna use our public wealth, our common wealth, and we're gonna use it strategically to fix this problem."
You're absolutely right. These unlikely alliances are exactly what it takes. And my point is not so much about· there are a lot of moderate Republicans want to spread wealth more broadly. They understand that when you lose your middle class, you lose your democracy.
BRANCACCIO:
If you lose the middle class, you lose Democracy?
RICE:
That's right.
BRANCACCIO:
In what way?
RICE:
You cannot have a democracy, a multi-racial, multi-class democracy without a middle class. If our gaps between the haves and the have-nots get too extreme, you don't have a democracy. Because the folk who have that· the haves have such entrenched and concentrated power, that even the votes of the have-nots don't matter. Because it's just sort of a referendum, and a ratification of whatever the haves have put on the table.
And it takes the middle class, and the civic institutions, thousand points of light. One way to put this is that, you know, I believe in the thousand points of light, too. You and I are one of the thousand points of light, the individuals and the civic organizations, from Catholic charities, all the way to the feminist groups, environmental groups.
Our civic infrastructure; we're the thousand points of light. But David, a thousand points of light can't replace the sun. And the government, and the big institutions that we need to spread and create commonwealth, that's the sun.
BRANCACCIO:
Tick off for me, just for a moment, some of the programs that you see getting defunded in this environment.
RICE:
Remember welfare· we're gonna end welfare as we know it. Well, the child care costs are being cut.
All of the subsidies for transportation are out the window. So, everything that would allow that to work, even at a marginally functional level for the poor, it's all out the window now.
Is it a total pulling of the plug? No. But if people don't understand what the real agenda is here, once you get a judiciary and a federal House and Senate, and a President, who are very strongly in favor of valuing states' rights over individual rights, think that the War on Terror gives them a right to completely throw out a lot of the Bill of Rights. In fact, Justice Rehnquist said, and what Americans don't understand is that a lot of the rights they think are guaranteed aren't necessarily, aren't absolutely necessary under our constitution.
They've just evolved. But we don't have to keep them. We need to understand that it can radically go in a in a much more deeply, and entrenched way, to a point where we won't be able to recover a lot of what we take for granted.
BRANCACCIO:
The odd thing though about concerns about national security, and balancing our rights with the need for security, in California where I lived until recently, there was, I seems one set of priorities, in terms of how we should approach this national security issue. I've recently moved here to the east coast, to a town that actually lost too many people when the World Trade Center came down. Maybe what is necessary is a government that is very aggressive in pursuing our national securities' interest. And in fact, tilting the balance a little bit away from civil liberties.
RICE:
You know, I used to work on the 82nd floor of the Tower Two·
BRANCACCIO:
Did you?
RICE:
·when I worked for the New York State Department of Law. And I lost three of my NYU law colleagues in the World Trade Center. And I'm a military brat, and moved almost every year.
Nobody is arguing that we should submit to a cult of assassins. And you don't negotiate with assassins. There's nothing to negotiate. Our question is are we really becoming more secure?
Because I hope the President's right. He's made a choice that says, and I have no doubt about his motives in trying to keep this country safe. I don't question that at all. What I'm questioning is the effectiveness. These cults, these underground, shadow networks that are somewhere in between organized crime and nation state war, we've never seen anything quite like this.
So, we don't really have a way of fighting it. So, it's all gonna be experimental. And I give him a lot of leeway for that. But if you respond with nation state war apparatus to an underground, secret network, cult of assassins, my question is, does that make sense? I'm talking about TAC, MAC and SAC. Tactical, ability and strategic air command is what my dad did. And so, when I look at those kinds of frameworks, I'm saying, you know, tactically and strategically, have we played into their hands? My fear is that we've done everything Osama Bin Laden wants us to do, thinking that we're making ourselves more secure. I have no problem with getting a tighter reign, and choking off their funds, no problem going after the people who have declared war on us.
I have no problem. I can even go so far as when you absolutely know someone has attacked us, and killed 3,000 of our people, take 'em out. My civil libertarian friends are probably cringing right now. I have no problem with that. I'm asking a fundamental question about what's the smartest way to put these folks out of business? And do we understand who the real audience is here?
What are we doing to build up moderate Muslims? This is a fight for the soul of Islam. And we can't fight it. We've got to be the wind beneath the wings of the folk who have got to forge a modern vision of Islam.
Right now, if you go to Indonesia and Southeast Asia, which is where the real, new engine, that's the new site is, according to the C.I.A., and all of the Interpol analysis, and you go, there are moderate Indonesians are feeling sympathy for Osama Bin Laden, we're doing something wrong.
BRANCACCIO:
Connie, you raise fascinating, interesting issues concerning national security. Some might debate them. But you have a special road to expressing these questions, and trying to open up some minds in the White House. You have kin in high places. I think the National Security Advisor of the United States is Condoleezza Rice, is what your first cousin?
RICE:
She's a second cousin. Yes.
BRANCACCIO:
She's a second cousin?
RICE:
Second cousin.
BRANCACCIO:
So, I mean, I've got my cell phone. Should we call her? We could·
RICE:
She wakes up every day, and consults with me about national security.
BRANCACCIO:
It must make for some interesting chatting at Thanksgiving.
RICE:
Well, let's put it this way, I deeply admire my cousin. She's a wonderful woman. I put it this way: I'm working on trying to close the gap between the under class and the poor. She's just working on closing the gap between the millionaires and the billionaires.
BRANCACCIO:
I think you gotta call now, Connie.
RICE:
It does make for interesting, for interesting talk. But, fundamentally, different paths to building this democracy. Condoleezza is on the end where you concentrate on wealth, and you concentrate, and you invest in the few who create wealth.
I'm at the other pathway. I believe you invest in the many. You enrich the many, not the few.
That's how we created and engineered our middle class with the GI Bill. We subsidized home ownership. We subsidized a lot of stuff to create the middle class. I believe you ought to invest in the many to create upward mobility and the government has a role. There's a different vision and I think that the people in charge and who dominate the political machinery, they have a different vision.
They don't think that government should be in the business of investing in the many. They think that's a waste of their tax dollars. And they think the government should have very limited roles: defense and a few other things. They're a little bit hypocritical about it because they end up rigging all the tax systems and everything to benefit the super rich, in my unbiased opinion.
But the real debate here which nobody ever comes out and says because they can't say, "Guess what, America? Our vision is to take away all this machinery that's helped you become middle class. And we wanna put an end to it. And we wanna move to another vision that values wealth more than work. And we wanna invest in the wealthy because they create more jobs."
Valid view. But I happen to disagree with it. I don't think Americans don't understand that choice.
BRANCACCIO:
Well, the approach may also be a valid one. Cut taxes. Grow that economy. And that will accrue to the many, as you put it. Remember in the 1990s in Los Angeles during the great sort of economic boom of the 1990s. Violence, murder rate in that city where you live fell. So it's clear that by making the economy grow, some of these social problems will retreat.
RICE:
Yes, cutting taxes. And the questions is for whom. If you cut taxes for the middle class and the working class you grow the economy much faster. And you also grew jobs. Now, I'm not gonna lay the blame on this regime and this administration and this party for the fact that jobs aren't· there are a lot of factors internationally.
We don't quite know how to respond to international trade. And neither party is putting forward a vision. But the bottom line is you can't talk about growing the economy and creating upward mobility and leaving no child behind and all that great rhetoric and compassionate conservatism at the same time you're completely defunding the systems that make all that stuff possible.
BRANCACCIO:
Given your convictions though, your palpable convictions on these issues, what do you do to move the debate forward, other than talking about them, say here? Do you take to the streets?
RICE:
Well, you know, there is a role for taking to the streets. But it has to be strategic. It can't just be this emotive, you know, just all over the map on the unstrategic·
BRANCACCIO:
It has to be focused and strategic.
RICE:
Has to be focus. And it has to be part of a much more sophisticated plan. First, you have to identify what's really going on, which is what we're even just approaching here in this conversation. You hear very few conversations about what's going on behind the third curtain on the stage. And the Kabuki dance that's happening in the front of the stage, I know has nothing to do with reality.
I'm talking about three curtains in, and lifting it up so the American people can see what is really going on. There's no way they can know.
BRANCACCIO:
But you don't think this will come out in the wash in November, at the Presidential election? That the American public will have that choice·
RICE:
No.
BRANCACCIO:
·and they can decide.
RICE:
No. And you wanna know why? Because you can't take these deeper issues, and reduce them to sound bytes. And I think that the Democrats, you know, there's really no Democratic party. You've got a vehicle for raising money for elections. But there's nothing that continues in between.
There isn't a party. And that's part of the weakness of the folks who have my vision. And in that context, while you have the Presidential race as a good arena for venting some of the macro frustrations: frustrations with war, frustrations with this ridiculous budget, that is just absurd on it's face, those big sort of screaming, neon issues people can see. And so, the candidates glom under those, cause they can talk about 'em. They can put 'em in sound bytes. They can put 'em on bumper stickers.
And· but the stuff that you and I are talking about is hard to reduce to a bumper sticker. And they don't know how to explain it. They don't know how to explain it. And they don't know how it will play with the electorate. Is it totally unbelievable to the electorate that the tax system, and all of the distribution of power, and the mechanisms of power have been so calibrated, recalibrated, and reprogrammed to benefit so few?
You map that. And people's eyes glaze over. So, it's very hard to make it listenable. It's very hard.
BRANCACCIO:
Let's move on. I've been asking you these macro questions, grand, global questions. What about your personal work to address some of these? Give me a sense of how you're actually out there, on the street, trying to address some of these issues.
RICE:
Well, you know, David, in the realm of Los Angeles which is fourth behind Calcutta in wealth disparity. Meaning it really is a third-world. A first-rate, third-world city. You've got enormous issues of poverty and immigration and language and race and how do you bring up a population that is so far behind to a point of middle class Americana?
And our business is trying to make LA work for the poor. So what do we do? We sue to make the bus system work so poor people can get to their jobs. We challenge the prison systems. I sue people who don't produce results with our public money.
You cannot take $10 billion of money for the Los Angeles Unified School District. $10 billion, David. They can't even tell you what they're doing with it and the kids are illiterate. No. Unacceptable.
We try to· it's almost Robin Hood law.
We take lawyers and policymakers and think tanks. We put them together with grass-roots leaders and we create teams that either file a case or do an election, something that attacks a big problem that can't be solved, that's paralyzed.
I mean, our cases have transferred, I'd say, about $6 billion worth of public wealth into systems for the poor. And we do that with an incredible range of the best grass-roots folks who know their neighborhoods, who are forging multi-racial coalitions to fix problems.
BRANCACCIO:
But if you do, as you say, practice Robin Hood law, any affluent viewer looking in on us is gonna go, "Gulp." A person of more modest means is gonna say, "I'd love to be the beneficiary of that redistributed wealth." How do you create what even you argue are necessary coalitions with people of different classes?
RICE:
You know what? I get money from people who are the super rich because they understand that it's actually in their interests to have an engine that's creating upward mobility. Their wealth is more secure in a country where people have hope and know they can move up and know there's a future for their kids.
And that, in fact, the more educated the people are around them, the better fed, the better, you know, they understand that when the folk around them are doing well, they do even better. So you're actually enriching the rich. But by enriching the many as opposed to enriching the few. They get it.
BRANCACCIO:
Well, Connie Rice, thank you so much for sharing these views on NOW.
RICE:
And thank you for having me.
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