Okay. All right, so let's get started. Welcome everybody to our panel on the Teamsters in the UAW. Sorry, I disappeared for a second. You know, zoom, it's a beautiful thing. My name is Jonah Furman. I am a staff writer and organizer for Labor Notes. If you're not familiar with Labor Notes, we're a media and organizing project. We say we're putting the movement back in the labor movement. We try to connect people across unions on a rank and file member level, learn from one another, tell each other stories, and organize together. So in that spirit, we have a panel tonight that's going to feature leaders and activists in the movements to transform the United Auto Workers Union and the Teamsters Union. We have some amazing speakers tonight. I'm honored to be on a call with them, people who have been active in this movement for decades, people who are still working on the shop floor and organizing today. And just to set the stage, we're in the midst of two historic votes in these unions, which is why we wanted to have this panel, one in the United Auto Workers is a referendum on changing how top leaders are elected through a direct voting system, a delegate election system, and we'll hear all about why that's so important. And another is an election of the top officers in the Teamsters Union to elect new leadership after 23 years of James P. Hoffa running that union. So I'm going to kick it to each of our panelists and we'll hear just for one minute on, you know, who they are, how they came to the movement, what they do today. And we can start with our Teamster side. Ken, if you want to start us off. Okay, good evening. Well, I have a long history with the Teamsters Union, and the insurgent reform movement within it Teamsters for Democratic Union to you. After working for a, as a truck driver in the 1970s and Cleveland Ohio local 407 I, I started working full time for the reform movement to do you as our first staff person. We named the national organizer we have a small staff that has grown a bit. And I stepped down from that position. Just recently weeks ago I'm on the national board our national steering committee of Teamsters for a Democratic Union and with us today is sister Karthi Boston who is brand new member of our national board. We have a long history we're a durable rank and file movement that's what we call ourselves we don't call ourselves a caucus in 1.3 million member Teamsters it's a good union to be in because it's potentially the most powerful union with in the logistics transport and distribution industries. We know how strategic they are over that long period we've had our share of defeats and we've had some, some good victories one I want to just mention at the start is, we won the right what we call the right to vote. In the UAW they call one member one vote, where you directly elect the international officers rather than having the local officers go to a convention. And in the teamsters it's every five years. That's the maximum allowed by law so naturally they landed on that. And we have a direct election now which is going on right now in our union. Great. Thanks Ken. And yeah Karthi, tell us what you do how you came to this call into this movement. Thanks Jonah good evening Karthi Boston out of Washington DC. I'm pretty much I'm a teamster, I would say a 15 year teamster with ups. I started out at local 177 in Jersey and then transferred into local 639 also and now in DC area. I actually worked on the preload I'm now a preload shop steward. I'm also involved in T du aggressively on the ground, pretty much getting involved in the campaign as can just alluded to I was just elected to the International Steering Committee. And as you know, T du is pretty a pretty aggressive grassroots organization pretty much bolted in various capacities. I would say I'm across the country, trying to get people out to vote currently you asked me what I'm doing now is trying to mobilize to vote. It's a critical turning point in the union standpoint to get people to vote. There's a lot of a stress going on on the ground and trying to just mobilize that so I've been doing a lot of underground movement giving up my vacation time. My days to actually get into different locations to mobilize to vote on the ground so I would say, pretty much widespread at the moment. Thanks Karthi. Now let's, let's move to the UAW side of things. Mike you want to start us off. My name is Mike cannon. I'm a retired international representative with the United Auto Workers Union out of St. Louis. I joined the UAW in 1970 so I've been a dues paid member for 51 years now. And I'm a member of UAW local 282 a small malware made a local union in the St. Louis, Missouri area. I held a number of positions in the UAW on the local level Stuart committee man and chairman in my local plan for nine years. And then I was appointed to the UAW international staff and I worked as a servicing representative in the St. Louis area predominantly for 24 years on negotiating contracts and also arbitrating grievances. I was a member of the UAW new directions movement in the 1980s and 70s, and I served as an assistant to Jerry Tucker who was one of the founders and regional director in the UAW. Now, I am a member of the steering committee for UAWD that's unite all workers for democracy. I'm currently advocating for the passage of one member one vote or what we call now on the ballot, the direct voting system. Thank you for having me today. Thanks Mike yeah and Scott maybe you can tell us what you do in UAWD and where you work and how you're organizing today. First of all I want to say thank you for having having me on the panel and it's great opportunity labor notes has been, you know, just an inspiration for many of us activists in the labor movement. Yeah, I work at Ford Chicago assembly plan I'm a member of UAW local 551 for 32 years. I'm a rank and file electrician. I've held some offices in my local union, Vice President, Secretary treasurer and alternate committee men. Now, my role is chair of the steering committee for unite all workers for democracy UAWD for short. And we are right now in the fight for the life of our union, the life blood of our union is its members, but the members have been pushed to the guidelines in recent decades, and it's time for UAW members to take our union back and take back control of it through direct voting system. That's what we're fighting for right now and it's a historic moment in the in the UAW that there will be, you know, plenty of words written about this, this moment. But yeah, I totally agree. And I just want to make a note for everyone, you can type a question into the Q&A box that you see at the bottom we're going to have some time later on to take those so if there's something that you particularly want to ask just put it in there we'll try to get to some questions near the end. So now I just want to go a little deeper on each of these, you know, I think Scott's totally right there's a historic moment in these two unions. We're at the stage for people who aren't deeply involved in in these unions and what's happening both how we got to these points, and what are people what are members doing about it today why does it matter for them. So, let's start again on the teamster side. Ken if you could just tell us what's going on in the teamsters election, you know what's what's what how would you tell the story for someone who's not involved and how, how do we get here what's the run up to this moment. Well, the teamsters, as I said have we have direct election for international officers ballots were mailed to 1.3 million members on October 4, and every member gets a vote. There are over 100,000 votes in Washington already that have been returned. And we'll close on November 15 and I'll start counting them by local union will know the counts by local, the way you know the count by precinct in a in a civil election, and it will take a few days to count it. So we're hoping before Thanksgiving will be have a lot to be thankful for because we do look to be winning the election, the election pits. James Hafa, not the real Hafa he died in 1975 but the junior Hafa, who was born on third base but still dreams that he hit a triple. He has been the president for over 20 years, and he, he has been able to win elections against us give him what his do we to you was able to put up a formidable opposition and to raise critical issues and to combat two tier agreements and so on but we could not defeat him. Five years ago that started to change these teamsters United Slade headed by Fred Zuckerman back by to you got 49% of the vote and one six positions. The regional position so we swept the ones in the south and the central region of the union didn't give these vice president international vice presidents any power often didn't give many jobs, but it's signaled to the members hey this guy's days days are numbered. And there became a sort of an opening in the union at that time furthermore one of our things we organized at that time to was from vote no to vote them out. Vote no in the national agreements teamsters majority of teamsters are under local agreements but a significant majority are under national agreements and trucking contracts, United Airlines T force freight, yellow freight and United Congress which is the largest labor agreement United States with 350,000 teamsters in every single one the members rejected the national agreement negotiated by the Hoffa administration and it ups a majority rejected it and then they imposed it anyway. They used a loophole in the Constitution, which they might have thought was a smart move but that really was the last nail in the coffin in some ways. And what happened was, there was a break, a more militant teamster on the Hoffa team, Sean O'Brien broke with him. Several years ago by 2018 he was working with us in the vote no movement and help lead the vote no movement. And that formed the new teamsters United slate, which is headed by Sean O'Brien and Fred Zuckerman. As I say the voting is ongoing now. I think I can say more about that I would say that for TD you our goal we've been doing this for a long time. We believe in that we've succeeded in in continuing and growing because we stick to principles not personalities we stay close with the members we organize from the bottom up, and the election is very important but even more important is what happens afterward. We feel it's an open door then for people to push up from below and build a new generation of leaders and a new direction in labor. Yeah, that's great. Thanks Ken. Dorothy, maybe you could talk to us about what that means. What are you doing day to day around the vote what's your activity like in detail, you know, tell him, tell him about your trips tell him about what the conversations are like and what your coworkers think of this stuff. Oh you muted sorry. Well the trips are pretty exciting if I'm I start about that. Well the trips across the country have gathered a lot of things. People are excited about the vote they always knew about the vote when we got to plans facilities wherever we went they always knew that there was a vote coming up. However, there was a lot of Ken alluded to there was a lot of blowback as it relates to the two third vote for those of you who don't know what the two third vote is again that was the loophole that passed the contract the last time when members voted it down. So when we got to a lot of the facilities members were like why should I vote. Why should I vote this time I trusted you it's an active betrayal that we voted and we didn't get what we voted for. So I think when we went to various facilities it was trying to encourage people to vote that this time around that loophole has been closed because at the convention, that was changed and that was voted again to change that rule. So there was a lot of discontent about members talking about that. And second, the discontent came about talking about the contracts for example the 22 fours a lot of members talked about that. But those of you don't know what the 22 fours it's sort of a two tier system of wages as well a lower lower form of driving at UPS drivers at UPS. And members were discontented about that saying that it's a divide and conquer situation with the union. So there was a lot of discontent about that across the country again the voters are out there we're talking to them on a daily basis and text messaging we've done text messaging banking on Saturdays and Sundays, calling people directly on their phones I mean it's a huge union 1.3 million voters. There's a lot of people to reach so I think the ground campaign boots on the ground is highly effective I think if it's one thing that I gather from T du is their ability to get people out there I think all of us are actively engaged in being out at hubs giving up on vacation time and showing our presence and I think when we visited facilities people were always saying, we wish we can see you guys all year where the union activists were they you know so we realize the the necessity to be out on a frontline when there's either an election or there's an important vote to be done is so important to show your face. That has been happening so we've been doing a whole lot of things besides just going to buildings, reaching out to members, carrying ballots every day I mean this morning I was out in a parking lot, giving out flyers and reminding people. If they didn't get their ballot they should call the 1-800 number and what are the steps and how to vote and sort of directing people about to go through that process, because there might be change of addresses that have happened over the years and people have not updated the systems. So important to do that double checking to make sure that the vote count. So that has been going on and to again push that vote to get it count to get that count to get it counted, because people hold on to their ballots don't throw it in. Absent mind I just forget about it so that's been critical and as you know, the voter turnout might be a little bit low because people are discouraged from the last vote and that was again the pushback from the last time so we really are doing, you know, great job to get out there to remind people. Guess what that loophole has now been plugged. Thanks, Karthi. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, Mike, tell us about the UAW maybe talk to us a little bit about like Ken was talking about with Hoffa talk about some of the concessions we've seen in the past, you know, 25 years and some of the corruption and how that led to this referendum. Well, you know, it's, it's been a very dire situation in UAW as it relates to concessions. You know, back in the back 35 years of doing new direction, we, we advocated a position where we should not get close to the corporation, we should not have joint programs with the corporations. And that was going to in effect corrupt our union and certainly it certainly did. And it let us put us in a downward spiral because of our close relations with the auto manufacturers in the United States. We began to, they began to chip away at our collective bargaining agreements and now we are faced, we have in our agreements you know two tier multi tier wait systems. We have different benefit tiers for workers based on when they are employed by the employer. So we've got in our auto plants to basic contracts. I mean it's one contract, technically, but that one contract provides different levels of wages and benefits for workers. So, you know, it's, and that certainly is not in the interest of union members, right, because we're all supposed to be about unity and, and being in represent each other and being a part of the profits that corporation makes. So, so that is the problem. Now, where the corruption occurs. And that cozy relationship with the automobile manufacturers led to corruption on massive scale in the UAW on different fronts to and the individuals involved, we're 15 individuals, three from Chrysler Corporation now the Linus Corporation and 12 UAW top leaders to former presidents, former presidents, three vice former vice presidents, regional director and a host of administrative assistance engaged in a multi level corporate car corruption scheme in the UAW to defraud the membership to still union dues money and benefits. Luckily, it was, it's been prosecuted by the US Justice Department, and all of those individuals are either serving time now or will be serving time to have been sentenced and will serve that time in prison for for the embezzlement and the, in the fraud that they engaged in. But you know that old. That sad chapter in our history just brought forth the need to make a big change in the UAW before we use the convention delicate system to elect a top leadership of the Union, and that system was controlled and has been controlled by the administration caucus for 70 years 70 years seven decades 13 people basically decide who's going to occupy the top positions in the UAW. So because we created this system of entitlement to these positions on the top leadership of the UAW. These individuals felt comfortable enough that they could then steal money and not get caught because no one was going to tell the government that they were still in money. The result of all of this the consent decree was agreed to between the UAW and US Department of Justice. And as a result of that, we have now a referendum vote. That's a creature of that consent decree which gives the UAW membership and retirees the opportunity to vote on the question of how they want to elect top leaders of their union. So we obtained a convention delicate system, which, in my opinion, only created the problem that we have with the corruption and concentrated power to the hands of just a few people to decide who would lead the UAW. We could convert to the one member one vote or what we call on the ballot, the direct voting system, where every member will get an opportunity to cast a ballot in every election for the top leadership of the UAW so they could decide who will represent the UAW and its members going forward. And that is what's going on in the UAW. Yesterday was a historic day for us, October 19, the referendum began, ballots were mailed to the 1 million UAW members and retirees, and that election will occur, will actually end on November 29. All ballots have to be in by November 29 at 10am by mail. And so that's, it's a historic moment for us we have an opportunity to instill or establish democracy in the UAW something we've been fighting for the UAW for 30 or 40 years. One other development that I think we need to be talked about here tonight in the UAW is the fact that we now have 10,000 UAW members who work at John Deere and Stripe. They're fighting for the contractual lives because they have a company that is making exorbitant profits, and they came to the table, and now they want concession from the workers. And Scott can go more I guess the details on the issues there, but those are the two major events that are occurring in the UAW today. Yeah, thanks Mike yeah we definitely will talk about Deere Scott you're welcome to elaborate a little bit on that but I also want to hear, you know specifically tell people how are you going to win this referendum how have you organized for the past I mean for it's been about two years you guys have been working on this so you know what are you doing to get this thing passed. Well, we've gotten a lot of inspiration from TDU I can start to start there, TDU has shown us the way they've been doing it for a number of decades and we watched that, and we studied what new directions was doing but what we're doing in practice is we have to build a list of UAW members to reach out to, and to do that we've used a variety of techniques from firing with a scan code on it for people to scan and fill out a form so that we can have their contact information so we can exchange information with them. And, you know, let them know when when there's changes on the ground that are going to affect them. So that's one one way also we've been doing text banking. We've been doing some phone banking. Once we get the people on the list we call them and see if they want to help out in any way whether it's text banking or doing or firing. Just this week I've mailed about 5000 flyers out just to people all around the country and I've also placed orders for flyers in in Louisville Detroit and Kansas City. So, you know, we're doing what we can to build our list and get those members activated and working to reclaim their union. Like Mike said this has been a 70 year one party rule in the UAW. And it's long time long past time for a change there's been several attempts to change to a direct voting system. And the structure of the UAW but it gets blocked every time it tries to get people try to get it put on the agenda for the constitutional convention. So, you know they control the convention committee and won't allow that to even come up in the in the conventions, even though the members put resolutions for that. And for the convention every every time there's a convention. So now the members are going to get to have their voice heard for once. And they're not going to have to rely on their their delegate to vote for them, they're going to get to vote for themselves to decide whether they want to have a more democratic union. But Mike was saying about concessions. I think that's been the crux of the problem that one of the biggest to me the most egregious part of the corruption scandal is the bribes that were exchanged at the fiat Chrysler. Because we had vice presidents that were taking bribes getting their houses paid off so that the fiat Chrysler could get better contract terms and better enforcement terms during the contract. That cost, you know, the membership of the UAW hundreds of millions of dollars and, and, you know, lost wages, lost grievances. It's just, I just can't describe how awful that is for the membership of the UAW. And now, you know, even after all this has come out, when Volvo workers went on strike they voted their contract down by 90%. And Ray Curry was the the chief negotiator in that that contract negotiation, he just kept bringing that contract back to them to vote until they got it right after the fourth time it finally passed by a handful of votes. But that's, that's not negotiating on behalf of your members. And right now the dear workers are facing the very same issue. They voted their contract down by 90% and said we're willing to fight for what we deserve. This is a company that's making huge profits. We deserve better. And actually the the tiered wage and benefit structure started with dear workers since they've had the tears since 97. That was a full decade before it entered the, you know, fully entered the auto industry. So these the corruption, I think is is really you can really base it back to the joint programs, because these joint programs create these huge slush funds that are opaque. The members don't know how much is in there, what it's going for, or anything like that there's no LM to for that where you can go look it up and see how money's being spent. And these, these pots of money have proven to be too tempting for the, the officers of the UAW to keep their hands out. And it's been too tempting for the companies. It's been a, well, I think it was their intention in the first place was to use these slush funds to try and influence the contract negotiations. And that's been the crux of the problem to me. Great. Thanks Scott. Yeah. I want to just make one note here. We do have a Q&A box that some people have used but I want to make sure everyone's aware of it if you do want to ask a question that's the best way for us to see it. And also, because Zoom is funny, a lot of people have my name in the Zoom. So if you want to change your name if you can, just be interested to see who's asking these questions. But yeah, let's, I wanted to open it up to at least one question for the whole panel to kind of discuss together. And you kind of touched on this, Scott, and to me it's kind of about the deer strike and it's kind of about the last UPS contract. It's the types of things that motivate, you know, rank and file members who aren't super involved in the leadership of their union or the structures of their union. So part of my question is, what would it mean if these reform efforts one for someone who's not already really committed to, you know, I care who's on my executive board or, you know, why do you think this is a path. Why do you spend your time after work, working on UAWD and Teamsters for a Democratic Union.  And that's open to anyone on the panel who feels, you know, they want to jump in on that. Well, I'll take it I'll start off with it. In our case the UAW. And when we went when the referendum, we strongly believe that it will of course end the stranglehold that the administration caucus has on the top seats of the UAW. And we're talking about the UAW International Executive Board here here. What will happen is, same as what's current in TV you and Teamsters, we will be able to field candidates for those top offices of the UAW. And, you know, there will be a debate that occurs as a result of that. You know, and those candidates will be questioned, and their position on the issues as it relates to corruption or concessions or what have you are all going to be put out for the voters, the 1 million UAW members and retirees to vote on. So it will be for the UAW a dramatic change in how we select our members. It will give us a chance to look over people and decide for ourselves who we want to run our union. Also, it will create an environment where it will absolutely reduce or eliminate corruption, because if we can get seats on the International Executive Board, we will be watching the other officers or top leaders at the International Executive Board and what they do. If we have eyes on them, there are not going to be inclined to steal union dues money for their own purposes. So it adds an element of accountability, a big element of accountability that we don't currently have under the current convention delegate system. So we pick up, you know, the accountability. And then we also have an opportunity to advocate for progressive path in terms of representing the interests of union members on the International Executive Board. We have a chance to try to influence and shape policy. And now in the UAW, we have none of that. Yeah, no voice, no input whatsoever. Basically the 13 members of the administration caucus, they decide what's going to happen in deer negotiations or auto negotiations and, and that's it but we can create a debate once we're able to gain seats on the International Executive Board. So it will radically change how we do business in the UAW. Thanks Mike Ken did you I saw your hand when jumping. Well, I think. Ms. Karthi said a lot of members of discourage participation is low in union elections, including ours right now. You know percentage wise I mean it's going to be hundreds of thousands of people but it's, it's not half the members. And you know I think, having a leadership that at least opens the door that stands shoulder to shoulder with people when they're ready to fight. It starts to inspire people about the union, both in the union and beyond and other unions and and unorganized people. One of the questions in the chat was about organizing Amazon every time I talked to people outside of Teamsters and one about organizing Amazon. All the candidates in this in a Teamster election say oh yeah we're going to organize them. Well, I'll tell you what they can hire enough organizers to organize Amazon the entire treasury could be spent on hiring and it's not going to happen. It's going to happen when there's more of a movement, when people from Amazon starts saying hey I want to get in that union they just kick ups is ass and raise the wages for the for the inside workers by $6 an hour and they're making a lot more than I am they seem to be happy about it. So you start generating where you're organizing meshes with a broader movement and I think that has to be our bigger goal for for Teamsters and auto workers and others these are good starting places that Teamsters in logistics the auto workers and manufacturing. We need to, we need to think big vision long term, and I think that's, that's what can really start to inspire people about unions and the labor movement and take unions off the defensive and on to the offensive. Right. Karthi does that seem that ring true to you for talking to members at work you know do they make connect the dots of you have this election it's going to open some path that could make this union come back or stronger make life on the job better. Absolutely, I mean this is pretty much the turning point of the union people are looking at this is the last big vote that we had when when half are joined I mean it's now or never pretty much numbers are saying it's either we get on a train of the movement that's happening across the country. Everyone is sort of mobilizing whether or not it's the wage, whether or not it's the wage crisis whether or not it's corporate not being able to attract employees, whatever it is. I mean it's the now or never move manager we get on board now wherever wins is a pivotal turning point in the union, meaning it's either we're going to get someone that's cushy cushy with management, or we're going to get someone that's adversarial. So, I mean people are very, very eyes on and what's happening when it comes down to this vote embracing a leader I mean the fish rocks from its head. So pretty much not having a strong leader means we're not going to be out there striking we're not going to be out there voting and I think members are aware of that because they feel that the union has lost power over the years and, and that's pretty much what's happening there's a lot of dissent, there's a lot of right to work states. There's a lot of things that's happening that we have to push back on so when it comes to that I think members are really aware about what's going on and say this is the changing it's either we get on board this movement, and we make a pivotal change or it's never going to happen for us so I think, again, we're at the moment of change, no matter how you look at it. Yeah, Scott, does this same question to you, you know how do you connect this kind of direct voting thing to the members and what would it mean I mean do you think it would change things like dear and how. What it would do is require the candidates to communicate with the members. Right now, I can tell you that probably the vast majority of UAW members have no clue what the name of their president is. That's because he's never had to go out and campaign and never had to say hey, you know, look at me you need to vote for me because I can make your, your union better better I can help you to win better contracts. That doesn't happen in the UAW. You go you send delegates to a convention and they get, you know, arm twisted into going along to get along otherwise, you know things could happen to your plan. So, you know, that's, that's the difference between the delegate system and the direct voting system is that the candidates are going to have to go to the members and and introduce themselves. At the very least you got to introduce yourself but then it's going to be a competition of ideas. And when when you have a competition of ideas and workers are right now in this country we're at a point where we want to build back what we've lost we need to claw back a lot of what we've lost.  We're down below 400,000 members now active members we have more retirees and we have active members. So, what this voting system is going to enable is a competition of ideas, and also it'll, it'll, you know, force the membership or the leadership to get behind the membership in these job actions rather than try and suppress them. So, you know, I think there's a communications problem, the members don't know what they're, and they know what they want to strike for but they don't know what's on the, on the bargaining table, because there's a lack of communication during bargaining there's a blackout. It doesn't have to be that way they've decided to do it that way. So, that's one thing is, is it can open up communications. But the members are wanting to build a better standard of living for themselves their families their coworkers their communities. And we want to rebuild our communities. And to do that, we're going to have to take stands like the dear workers are taking right now. And we need leadership that's going to be working with them and not a headwind against them. And that's what we've seen with the Volvo contract was the leadership was a headwind to what the membership wanted. They were, they were pushing back trying to prevent them from winning what they wanted out of that contract. Something I think is really interesting trying to touch on I'm going to take a few of these questions here and there's a lot of them so I'm going to bundle some of them together. But something in the deer vote this 90% no vote that was really surprising covering it for labor notes was they had three days to get that together there was not a 10 year vote no movement. There was, you know, an alignment of forces. The question for a lot of dear workers now that I'm talking to is, you know, what do we do next how do we, how do we keep this going and I think both the UAWD and T du examples. There's a lot of moments, but there's also a movement that's created in these unions. So this is sort of Thomas's question. You know how did you start organizing your movement within your union, Thomas is a brother from CWA in California. So, both the how and the why, what is it what does it matter to have an organization, why do you have a T du and not just a 2021 election why do you have a UAWD and not just a referendum, and why do you put work into that organization. And that can be for anybody. I mean, all four of you would be great on that. Well, I'll start by saying to you sort of the mighty mouse, you know, we're out there fighting fires and starting things and that people don't even think about. Think about the reach of organizations it's small but it's mighty think about the reach we're able to do things that people are not able to do. When you talk about maybe agents of business agents of people who are working in the union front who are busy with other things and handling members, crisis and buildings and grievances. They probably don't have to spread for that they don't have the time to reach that and I think when you look at organizations like T du being able to spread their wings and get people on the ground and mobilize you know that's great organizing is the strength of the organization and I think if O'Brien was smart enough to figure that out to join forces and say guys you guys are strong when it comes to organizing so I think you got to utilize the strength of every organization and I think maybe that's something as Scott talked about alluded to before that you can take from T du. I mean building on people's strength and collaborating and say guys we got to come together as one we're in a fight together pretty much. That's one thing you can take from it. Scott, I'll just add to this. This question is related people are asking directly you know after the referendum what's uad going to do to keep organizing same same with T du but you know, what is the organization do after the event. So this will be our first chance to do that after the event, but you know we're going to have to be organizing for getting fair election processes put into place. I'm assuming that we're going to win this referendum. I work, you know, members, you a w members across the country work on this every day day in and day out. And we have a couple of extraordinary organizers that the staff organizers that are helping us with this. So after the referendum, we're going to put forward a platform. We actually have a platform already that we've put together. But the first part of that platform is passing the referendum, then after that it's going to be winning a fair election system. And then after that it's going to be getting delegates elected to pass the reforms that that we need it's not just electoral reforms. Well, for instance, one of my pet peeves is that the before we raise the union dues by a half an hour a month. There was no way for the strike fund to regenerate itself every single penny that went into it got kicked back out between rebates, and even the interest went into the International General Fund. So we need to correct that and make a strike fund that's self sustaining. So, you know, there's there's a lot of work to do beyond the referendum. But right now are, of course, our main focus is on the referendum. But, you know, to bring that forward. I think we're going to have to support our brothers and sisters in the struggle. And we got to show that we're all in this together and towards that end. UAWD has begun a go fund me campaign, and that go fund me campaign and has really taken off and a lot of that that credit is due to you Jonah for helping getting getting it out spread out there widely but and we thank you for that. Right now we've raised almost $75,000 to help our brothers and sisters that that are in the struggle right now taking the brunt of the tip of the spear so to speak of the labor movement right now. We're going to use that to help them to, you know, sustain their strike effort. And, you know, every penny that we raise is going to go towards helping our brothers and sisters to stay out there until they get the best contract that they can. Can I can I cut in just please. I think you said the question you have was from a union member from CWA and they wanted to know how can they get started how can they get a reform movement started in their union. And, you know, I think the best way to start it. And I've been a part of two reform movements now the new direction and now UAWD is to just start talking to people. If you're a local outside in your area. Anybody that you meet in any meetings conventions or what have you just start talking to people about the need to have a vehicle for change that exists in your union. Without even a framework or anything official or formal just start having those discussions. And then use the tools that you have today. I'm absolutely amazed that all the tools that exist today for organizing. I mean you have zoom you have free conference calls. You have email texting. If we had those tools back in the 80s when we were organizing for for a new direction is I mean we would have been hell on wheels. So you've got all these wonderful, wonderful tools that you can use that will help you organize pull people together use those tools. And that's exactly how UAWD got started. It was just a group of people started talking about the corruption they were college and before you know, before you know it, they started saying well hey let's talk every Saturday. You know for an hour let's just kind of just keep this conversation going and look what it's grown into. Right. So you've got that and then what you want to do is you want to use your Constitution you want to follow the leadership closely. If they violate the Constitution, try to pick an issue that you can win against them to help build support challenge them through the Constitution. And those means that you have to create a victory that will also give you some publicity with other members, and then you can build on that. And that's sort of like the pathway towards establishing a reform movement in the Union and I guess can or yeah. I would just add when you talk about what's happening next for me and for many of us from me, the movement has already moved to the next level which is focusing on the contract. You know, when you look at the biggest contract that Teamster has on their wing which would be ups. That's for us. If we get a good contract that's going to set the stage for a lot of things to come. So we really need to start focusing and getting in gear and you know when I when you look at the history of ups the first strike was what 1997. We haven't had a strike since that was the only national strike ups I've had. And I don't think both of the candidates have had some kind of strike patterns or have talked about striking and some extent. But when you look at the fact that we can use strike leverage if we need to. It's not something that everyone wants to do but sometimes it's necessary so I think, when this contract evolves and we get to the contract negotiating level we got to send a strong message that listen we're going to we're going to push forward to getting what we want and then moving forward to other people building on that it's so important. So we have not we've not just settled here thinking that the vote is over we've already moved the gears to the next to the next battle. Again, did you want to add anything about, you know, starting a caucus in a new union or connecting it. I'm thinking about dear really but yeah. I, I think you've got to, you got to focus on the rank and file membership issues and not come in with a predetermined program. And some of the issues that we know are here are two tier agreements, the things that the dear workers they voted 90% no after the uiw international said vote yes on the contract. You've got to focus on those kinds of issues another thing that we do and to you be an educational center. It's not just a matter of opposing the leaders and number one problem is we don't have enough leaders in the labor movement we need more people coming up from below. That's what we regard ourselves and we're an education networking sharing movement. We just had our convention and an experienced labor leader from other Union was there and he said, you know this is unique, you have rank and file workers, local officers, international officials all here is like equals sharing ideas, debating things discussing things networking. Be that kind of a movement of course when you're starting out you're not going to be at that level, but sort of using that model, and not the traditional caucus here's my 10 point program vote for me and everyone will be happy. Don't use that model, use more the rank and file movement. And as Carthy said one critical thing is contracts, and we see that in the uiw to to an uiw d knows it. Again, yeah I actually am seeing now, you know I invited anyone to let us know if you're from the deer strike I see we have brother Jeremy from local 838 waterloo. I think I recognize some other names. I also see we have IOTC members who are you know facing this, this contract ratification vote this big moment we're having. And I also saw someone talking about tier two tier contracts in general which in a lot of ways is kind of the pattern that we've seen as Scott kind of referred to. I guess, you know, we can move to some closing thoughts and statements but I think what I really want to hear is, you know, not just advice of how to get started but what do you see as the signs of life in your union what gives you some excitement and hope. Again you mentioned the TDU convention members taking the lead where do you see member leadership and how do you kind of throw throw gasoline at what do you say Carthy that you're like mighty mouse going out and putting out fires and starting stuff. Yes, how do we start more stuff, you know and what what are you thinking about what's getting you excited about the labor movement right now in your union and beyond. I'm excited about channel Brian I think pretty much for me. I was pretty excited when I got on board the trail last year and said man this guy might change the face of the union. For me I was one of the discourage members out there thinking maybe this is it you know maybe after 15 years I'll never see a change in the union. I was on board also TDU and you know and said man we got to change things we just got to make that movement more aggressive and more militant as we would say. So when it comes down to that I would say for me I'm energized I think if we do have a new strong leader who can go out there and advocate from us we can get behind him and and lock arms together at the frontline and say this is what we'll accept and this is what we won't accept we put a pushback. I'm excited I think if anything you can take from TDU here would be definitely the training point and organizing strength of the organization I think that's something we can all use and any in any unit. So for me I'm really energized I went to the TDU convention the women's convention the teamster convention, and really energized to know that people are mobilizing people are gaining the strength of what's what's ever happening across the country. And now like I said it's a critical point for us and I think if we all get on board and we're all here together as activists to some extent this is great this is what we want we envision this as to have this sort of mobility and be able to talk together and share ideas and come together as one. That's what we want. Yeah. Scott Mike Ken. What's, what's keeping you going what are you excited about. Well, I'm excited about being able to push our leaders. You know that's that's what this referendum is all about it's it's about the ability to push our leaders and try and drive the, the direction of our union.  If we don't correct the course. So to do that we're working diligently, you know getting these flyers out. I've got I'm picking up stickers tomorrow that we can get 100,000 sticker or no 10,000 stickers passed out around the country. So we're getting the flyers out. We have organizers, full time staff organizers that are helping us and legal fees to deal with the, you know the courts and the monitor, you know the monitors team is all lawyers. So we need some on our side. So, you know that's that's what's getting me excited is being able to finally have the membership driving this, this ship that is called the UAW, rather than having it being driven off a cliff by, you know, people that are self serving. So UAWD, you can learn more about UAWD at UAWD.org. Also, we have a sister website, one member one vote one m one v.org one m one v.org. And you know if anybody wants to chip in to help us out. We have a donor box link on our on both of those websites. Thanks, Scott. I mean, feel free can or Mike to respond to the last question or also you know how how can people find your movement if they are teams around this call or no teams in their life. Right now we're in the midst of an election as we talked about that is number one we're pretty excited about it we're hopeful. It's certainly not in the bag but we actually believe that Teamsters United Slade is the favorite and it's going to and it's going to win the election and take the leadership of the union out of the hands of the Hoffa administration. And when we talk about strikes. That's the last thing on their mind. And the employees brag about how much is in the strike fund and as O'Brien says that's because you never cause it call it call any strikes. And the employers know that we want to create a union that is, that is not just militant but is inclusive of its members. It's outreaching that's outreaching to the labor movement and beyond we can't do it alone. And T du members tend to when they talk about labor notes they say, oh that's the T du for the whole labor movement. And I put an ad in here the labor notes conference, March 25 27. There'll be a lot of Teamsters there will probably be in a good mood we want to see a lot of other people there, because the alternative to having a vision and building a labor movement is going to be more of what we see in this country the employers can steal your job and convince you that immigrants did it. We have any quality that's off the charts I live in California, we have more billionaires and anywhere in the world and I believe we have more homeless also. If you think there's something wrong with that picture that's what we all should be working on. We're going to do our part in the Teamsters which can be the most powerful union. And hopefully inspire others. Thank you. Can Mike did you want to say a few closing words and I'll close this out with a few next steps for people because we want to give people something to do of course. Yeah, what inspires me so much I mean I've been around a long time. I've been a union rep for 35 years, go back to the 70s and 80s. You know veteran of many campaigns over that over that time. And what inspires me as the is the young people that I talked to today that people are just getting involved in the UAW or have been around for a few years, and decided to stand up and speak out advocate for a better union that just brings such so much glow to my to me to just see people are willing to do that because in these any fights you know our biggest enemy is apathy. Our workers just simply have a tendency to just check out I'm not going to deal with that I can't change it. I'm not going to, I'm not going to waste my time with it so when you have people who are inspired to say no can make it better let's let's work let's give it a try. That makes me feel so good about the future of labor in this country without a doubt. In our case what we're doing here with the referendum. Just so people know when Scott made the pitch for donation. We're mailing 10s of 1000s of postcards to you a W members and retirees. We're emailing 100,000 UAW members and retirees doing this, the voting period, we're handling that plant gates. We've got days of action plan where we show up at the plant we, we pass out handbills and whatever we're phone banking. We're doing a lot to try to get out our vote to try to make people aware now we have to make people aware because the UAW and a monitor really not publicize in this referendum at all. So, and it takes a lot of money for us to do that so if you can make a donation we certainly would appreciate it if we can post the donation link in the chat if that's permissible. We have to do that, and that will help us win this, this fight that we have for democracy in the UAW but don't give up. Continue to believe in unionism and work towards changing it making it better that's we need to get more people involved on that as well. Because, you know, it's your future you can't just walk away from this. What happens at that bargaining table affects you in your family, and it will for in your entire working time. So there's no sense of giving up and just, you know, resigning to the fact oh I can't change this no get involved. Let's start talking to other people and start coalescing with folks who feel the same about the same way that you feel about the issues involved in this and let's work to build a better union. Thanks Mike. Yeah, definitely Scott if you have another if you want to put that link again. I also want to just thank all of our panelists for joining us and for the work you do I know on top of working a job and organizing a caucus and working on some of the most powerful union leadership in the country. You know to come spend time with us at Labor Notes is, you know, it means a lot to to us at Labor Notes and to the people that we are organizing with. I just want to make sure everyone knows you know meetings are great panels are great we love to hear from our friends doing is better and Labor Notes is about organizing. So we, you know, like Mike said it's all about keeping in touch with people coalescing organizing talking to others. So at Labor Notes we bring people together for a conference every other year we'll be having that in the spring. I also want to just drop this link for you all Labor Notes dot org slash events. We have a ton of online events for every level of activist organizer, whatever level you're at you're at I'll just say you can, you can go there but I want to plug a couple things. First of all, if you're in Detroit or Philadelphia in November and December we will have in person troublemaker schools these are sessions with workshops and trainings everything from filing grievances to organizing your coworkers beating apathy at work. Like Mike said, I also want to plug, we have a secrets of a successful organizer training every month there's one in November, one in December, this is for everyone from a new member to a local union president. It's all about how do you do the basics how do you get people to a union meeting how do you get people in motion. How do you fight the boss at work. How do you build a labor movement from the bottom up. And I also want to plug our stewards workshops this is new event we're doing for union stewards only. I know we have Jeff from john dear local 79 thank you brother Jeff for coming on to the call and we would love to see some john dear at some of these events. The whole point here is that we believe that if we connect rank and file members across unions, we can build a labor movement bigger than one workplace and bigger than one contract and bigger than one union. And that's what we're trying to do so thank you all for your attendance thank you for your support for these teams just for a democratic union and you a w d organizations. If you are a teamster or you a w member, you are sitting on a historic moment and I hope you will take the opportunity to meet thousands of other activists across the country in these movements, and stay in touch with labor notes hope to see you at the convention in 2022 and have a great night everybody. Thanks.


Starting with a flat and level floor is very important that helps make my job a lot easier. You can lay vinyl, tile, hardwood, and even carpet.


What's good jobs for Ross back out again with another video, so we're gonna check out NXT top 40 greatest kick outs We gotta check out some of these classic Legendary kick outs from the black and gold era, man. It was just Man, it's like in every NXT takeover around that period, bro You just knew you're gonna have a great great showing of like in ring wrestling people, you know putting on the best possible show Honestly, it's like their mission was to steal the the wrestling weekend because they're their shows we happen on Saturday And then you would have WWE's Pay-per-view event, whichever it was on that Sunday and usually NXT takeover was the best thing About the wrestling weekend and they would have some classic matches Fantastic matches some close near falls where you just like holy what's going on So we're gonna check out some of these classic moments, man It's gonna bring us down memory lane shout out to the homie wrestling savage Make sure you subscribe to only to the original video. We'll be down below. Let's check out some of these classic kickouts for the black and gold era Oh Commentary I miss it. It's just Maro's commentary. I miss him so much on commentary Oh my god, oh This is a great match Oh The match they had If you haven't seen as much go watch it. Oh my goodness Listen to the crowd we date for two huge individuals two big guys. They showed out boy So good so good Hadn't had somebody that's so passionate on commentary since JR prime JR when he's so Passionate you believed what he was saying you felt what he was saying he was describing how he was feeling during the match Maro was that oh my god Imagine Imagine if you would have had like a Maro Nalo and Michael Cole with the freedom. He has now during WrestleMania weekend, bro Oh my god, what Corey Graves as well? Imagine ah Just this WrestleMania weekend Maro would have lost his voice This was a great match I watched this boy And I forgot how to pronounce his name, but y'all know I'm talking about Craziest the timing on that I once again. I'm watching this live and I'm just holy, you know what? Oh my god I've seen it all And it's crazy how much of these matches Johnny Gargano is involved in in Adam Cole God Oh, I thought it was over here Bro the crowd went crazy, bro. One of the best errors for NXT We just didn't know what we had Just didn't know oh no, I think we knew what we had but we just didn't know it wasn't gonna last ah Comment down below Let me know what was your favorite NXT?  We miss him, but I appreciate all of the support wrote to 150k And I am still young speedy YouTube wrestling champ of the world Appreciate y'all kicking me see our next one


There's a YouTube channel called PragerU that makes political commentary videos from a conservative perspective, and in case you've never heard of it, PragerU stands for Prager University. But it's not actually a real university, it's just a YouTube channel named after its host and co-founder Dennis Prager, which is sad news for its nearly 3 million subscribers who are all hoping to earn a PhD in owning the lips. It's pretty pathetic and more than a little bit cringy to call your YouTube channel a university, unless you're doing so ironically, which I'm very sure is not the case here. Seems like Dennis Prager is just trying to give his videos the illusion of intellectual authority that the word university provides. Kind of like how Scientology tries to make itself sound legit by putting the word science in its name, even though it's just a weird religious cult. It's desperate, it's delusional, but it seems like people fall for it, and why should I pass up a good opportunity? So… Welcome to Lucky Black Cat University. I'm Dr. Professor Black Cat, and in today's lecture, we'll be doing some media analysis and criticism of the video, Socialism Makes People Selfish, by PragerU. You might think it's not worth it to debunk a video with such obviously bad and nonsensical arguments, but sadly this video has over 4 million views, and the likes outnumber dislikes by 4 to 1, so it is in desperate need of debunking. I've put the link below so you can watch their video in full, but rest assured, I'm going to show the full video, I'm not going to cut out a single word, I'm just going to chop it up into little pieces so I can comment along the way. OK, so let's begin this wild ride. In the contemporary world, it's taken as a given that capitalism, with its free market and profit motive, is based on selfishness and produces selfishness, while socialism is based on selflessness and produces selflessness. Well, the opposite is true. OK, so that's quite a big claim. Let's see what he says to try to prove his point. Whatever its intentions, socialism produces far more selfish individuals and a far more selfish society than a free market economy does. And once this widespread selfishness catches on, it is almost impossible to undo it. Another big claim, still waiting on that argument though, and here it comes. Here's an illustration. In 2010, the United States President, Barack Obama, addressed a large audience of college students. At one point in his speech, he announced that young people will now be able to remain on their parents' health insurance plan until age 26. I don't ever recall hearing a louder, more thunderous, or more sustained applause than I did then.  It is highly doubtful that the applause would have been as loud or as long. Here's the thing, Dennis.  Any of them in the crowd who have cancer but don't have health insurance won't be able to afford to get their cancer cured and will probably die. And there's probably others in the crowd who have diseases that, although not cancer, are also deadly, or perhaps only debilitating. So yeah, I think you can excuse them for being a little enthusiastic. Those selfish students not wanting to suffer from disease and perhaps die. So entitled. But what were they so happy about? To be told that you can now remain dependent on your parents until age 26 should strike a young person as demeaning, not liberating? Maybe they do find that demeaning. But if they do, what is it that has put them in this demeaning situation? It's the fact that their country does not have free universal health care. It does not have Medicare for all. If their country did have free universal health care, they wouldn't need their parents' insurance because they wouldn't need private insurance at all. Problem solved. Throughout American history, and for that matter, all of Western history, the great goal of young people was to become a mature adult, beginning with being independent of mom and dad. Socialism and the welfare state destroy this aspiration. No, they most certainly do not. It's actually quite the opposite. A strong welfare state makes it easier for teenagers and young adults to become independent of their parents because it becomes easier to afford moving out of your parents' home. And if there was real socialism, it would make this transition to independence even easier. And now is probably a good time to point out that socialism and the welfare state are not the same thing. The welfare state is the bundle of government programs that are meant to improve people's economic and social well-being. It includes things like old age pensions or social security, unemployment benefits, and in many countries, but not the United States, free universal healthcare. Every country has a welfare state to some degree, even if it's just an itty-bitty welfare city, and a welfare state can exist within a capitalist system. Socialism, on the other hand, is an entirely different economic system. In socialism, there are no class divisions, and the means of production are socially owned, which means they belong to society as a whole. And if we take socialism to mean what Karl Marx called lower-face communism, then in socialism the commodity form is abolished, which means that production is not done for profit, it's done to meet people's wants and means. If what I just described sounds very different from countries that get called socialist, that's because it is very different. So many people mistakenly believe that these countries are socialist. It's a common mistake, but it's still wrong. In various European countries, and now increasingly in the U.S., it is becoming common for young people to live with their parents well into their thirties and not infrequently beyond. And why not? In the welfare state, taking care of yourself is no longer a virtue. Why? Because the government will take care of you. Oh my God, this is such a bad argument. PayPal no longer value being independent. They've been corrupted by the welfare state. That's why you have thirty-year-olds living in their parents' basements. Ah, Dennis, Dennis, Dennis. No. That's not the problem. It's because it has become increasingly difficult to find a decent-paying job, increasingly expensive to pay rent, increasingly expensive to pay tuition, and the blame for this belongs to capitalism, not the welfare state. Therefore, socialism enables, and as a result, produces, people whose preoccupations become more and more self-centered. How many benefits will I receive from the government? Will the government pay for my education? Will the government pay for my health care? Wanting the government to pay for education and health care is not selfish. It's something that benefits society as a whole. When your neighbor gets an education, it doesn't just benefit your neighbor. It benefits you, too, because now your neighbor can use that education to cure disease, or invent more efficient forms of green energy, or condescendingly work their knowledge of ontological philosophy into every conversation. No, Cody. I actually hadn't noticed the connection between the Hegelian hermeneutic circle and my comment that we've been having lots of rain. Thank you for enlightening me. Okay, I guess that last one's not really benefiting anyone. I know right now there's someone watching this video who's like, that joke doesn't even make sense. Lucky black cat obviously doesn't understand the hermeneutic circle. And to that viewer, I would just like to say, shut up, Cody. But in all seriousness, a well-educated population is a population that will be better equipped to advance the well-being of society. And a healthy population is a population that will be in tip-top shape to go out to work every day and produce the goods and services that we all need and rely on. Education and healthcare have, as the economists would say, positive externalities. It's not selfish, because it benefits everyone. This of course is a very shrewd, cold, and narrow justification for providing healthcare and education.  Anyways, let's hear some more of the selfish things that socialists want. What is the youngest age at which I can retire? How much paid vacation time can I get? I have a feeling that Dennis Prager is totally clueless about just how awful and soul-crushing many jobs can be. They want time away from being exploited and alienated. They want an early retirement from spending nearly every day doing tasks that feel meaningless and painfully boring. They want a vacation from being emotionally abused and bullied by their boss and having their dignity stripped from them. They want time to recover from the chronic pain and disabilities that result from their bodies being gradually broken down under hours of daily toil. Whoa, chill your balls, Dennis. It'll be okay. I promise. What's next? Time off when they're sick. How many days can I call in sick and still get paid? By God, it's madness. How many weeks have paid paternity or maternity leave am I entitled to? Wow, these selfish pricks wanting to take care of their newborn baby. Feed the baby, change its diaper, bond with it. Don't they know there are Starbucks customers waiting for their lattes? Get back to work. And if you stay home, it'll only spoil the baby. A baby needs to learn to be independent, meet its own needs, not rely on mommy and daddy. This is how you get 30-year-old socialists living in their parents' basement. No, send the parents back to work and leave the infant to fend for itself. This will teach it the spirit of capitalism. The list gets longer with every election of a liberal or progressive or left-wing party. And then each entitlement becomes a right. Let me say this loud and clear. You should be entitled to health care, to education, to vacations and parental leave, and to having the freedom and the choice to retire at an age where you still have plenty of years left to enjoy and make the most of your one and only life. This is not selfish. The definition of selfish according to the Miriam Webster dictionary is concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself, seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure or well-being without regard for others. So there are three key things to highlight in that definition. The word excessively, the word exclusively, and the phrase without regard for others. There's nothing wrong with being concerned for yourself. In fact, there'd be something wrong if you weren't concerned for yourself. Concern for yourself is not selfish. What's selfish is when that concern for self becomes excessive and is exclusively for yourself and without concern for others. It's not excessive to want to live in a society that provides health care and education. It's not excessive to want free time and fulfillment. These are very basic things that we all deserve. And it's not exclusive concern for yourself or disregard for others to want these things, especially when you want a world where these things can be enjoyed by everyone. And you know what can give us this world? Socialism. That's right. But we're not done. There are even more destructive effects of socialism. Entitlements create citizens who lack a character trait that every human should have. Gratitude. You cannot be happy if you are not grateful. And you cannot be a good person if you're not grateful. That's why we constantly tell our children, say thank you. But socialism undoes that. I love how the fist just comes and punches her away. Let's see that again. Socialism undoes that. Un, un, un, undoes that. Ooh! Awesome. After all, why would a person be grateful for receiving an entitlement? Who's going to be grateful for getting what they're entitled to? So instead of thank you, the citizen of the welfare state is taught to say, what more am I entitled to? Entitlement and gratitude can coexist. I feel entitled to my hands. But I can also take time to reflect on all the great things that my hands can do for me.  And I can feel gratitude and appreciation for my hands. And I can do all this without ever thinking, you know what? I'm really not entitled to having hands. But Dennis is right about one thing. There is a connection between gratitude and happiness. Research studies show that making a mental effort to appreciate the good things in your life, both big and small, can improve your emotional well-being and mental health. So there you go. That's one victory point for Dennis Prager. I hope you're grateful, Dennis. The problem is that Dennis takes this piece of truth, and he twists it, and distorts it, and perverts it into a justification for a system of brutality and violence, health care, education, a home to live in, food to eat, all the very basic things we need to survive and live a decent life. Every person deserves this, which is to say, every person is entitled to this. To deprive people of this because they might not feel grateful if it comes too easily is just brutality with a thin and totally transparent mask of benevolence. Here's another way to look at this. Do you think that in a relationship between two people, that both of them should be entitled to a basic level of respect and common decency? If you answered no to this question, please don't have any relationships. You should feel entitled to respect and decency, and you should recognize that others are entitled to the same. If you don't, you might let people abuse you or treat you like a doormat, or you might treat others this way.   Say thank you. In an abusive relationship, it's common for the abuser to normalize treating you badly and then expect you to feel grateful when they don't. They don't think you're entitled to decent treatment, and they don't want you to think that either, because if you do start thinking that, you might stand up for yourself. And they don't want that. And any time you stand up for yourself and demand decent treatment, they try to make you feel like you're the selfish one for expecting to be treated with decency. Does this sound familiar? Sound a little bit like the curriculum at Prager University? We're in an abusive relationship with capitalism, and PragerU wants to keep it that way. Yet the left insists that it's capitalism and the free market, not socialism that produces selfish people. But the truth is that capitalism and the free market produce much less selfish people, teaching people to work hard and take care of themselves and others, and that they should earn what they receive. Produces less selfish, not more selfish people. Hold up. You're saying that people should earn what they receive? OK. Abolish inheritance. Abolish surplus value extraction. Abolish landlords and usury. You know, just to be consistent. And did he say capitalism teaches people to take care of others? Teaching people to work hard and take care of themselves and others.  First of all, hasn't he just spent this entire video telling us that taking care of others is bad? And also, does he lack even the most basic understanding of capitalism? The goal of economic activity is private profit, i.e. personal financial gain? That doesn't teach us to take care of others. If anything, it's the exact opposite. Dennis also seems to think that in socialism, people would become so obsessed with their own needs that they lose interest in working. But most people want to work. They don't just want to sit around all day every day. They want to feel like they're contributing something. The problem is that capitalism makes the conditions of work quite miserable. But work doesn't have to suck. In socialism or lower-phase communism, whatever you want to call it, the goal is to create a truly free society. We seek to create a world where work is freely chosen without the duress of needing to earn a wage, where work is self-managed and unalienated. Socialism makes this possible because workers control production and because production is freed from the necessity of pursuing profit. These conditions empower us to reshape the nature of work in such a way that makes our needs as workers one of the priorities. So that work, as much as possible, can be transformed into something that we enjoy, something that gives us fulfillment. For example, when there are types of work that people find tedious or boring, we can automate them.  And that won't always be possible. So in those cases, we can share that type of work so that nobody has to do it full-time and each person only has to spend maybe a few hours on it every week or month and save the rest of our time for things we actually like. Capitalism teaches people to work more. Socialism teaches people to demand more. Which attitude do you think will make a better society? Well, Dennis, when you put it that way, socialism. Socialism sounds better. Dennis wants us to work more, but the question is, work more for what? When we work more, who does that benefit? What good does that do? Does it do something good for those who need it? Or does it primarily serve to help the rich get even richer? Are you working to serve people's needs and enhance their well-being? Or are you working to encourage trivial consumption that's also destroying our planet? Or to build bombs that are used in war? Or to serve goals that are anything from pointless to downright harmful? Work is never good or bad in itself. It depends on what purpose that work serves. Are people happier when they work more? Are their lives richer and more fulfilled?  When we work more, what does that do to our families? What does that cost our relationships, our friendships? But never mind. Dennis would say that these questions are selfish. Our world has the productive capacity to provide a good quality of life for everyone on the planet. And as technology improves, it takes less and less human labor each and every year in order to do this. So why does Dennis want us to work more? Because the more we work, the more profit we make for the capitalist class. And if we don't work hard to make them rich, then we're selfish. It all makes sense. I'm Dennis Prager. To subscribe to our YouTube channel, click here. To help keep our videos free, donate here. Wait! Help keep our videos free? What are you trying to turn us into selfish, entitled monsters? You should put all Prager U videos behind a paywall. Immediately. The higher the better. It'll help make us grateful. Say thank you. I, for one, would be very grateful if each Prager U video was behind a thousand, no, no, $10,000 paywall. Come on, Dennis. Practice what you preach. I thought this was a university. Where's the tuition? It can't be free. Are you a socialist? The truth is that capitalism and the free market produce Dennis Prager. Why?  Hey, it's Lucky Black Cat here. Thank you for watching. And if you'd like to watch some more of my videos, feel free to click one of the video links you see on the screen. And if you'd like to help me and my channel grow and reach more people, then please like, comment, subscribe, click the bell to turn on all notifications. And Cody, if you're still watching, now's your chance to comment and explain why I'm wrong about Hegelian hermeneutics.


So, today we will begin a new topic on stocks and flows. These stocks and flows forms the central concept for this entire system dynamics methodology and we will be spending most of our time in this course worrying about the stocks and flows and trying to model them and using that construct to understand and model and simulate various systems. So, before that I would like to give a brief history of system dynamics methodology with some of you might find it fascinating. This is one of those rare approaches that has a definitive founder or a creator who had developed this methodology. So, this system dynamics methodology was developed by Professor J. W. Forrester from MIT in the mid 1950s. The interesting was Professor Forrester was an electric engineer by training and he was even participated and headed the project on the whirlwind project as it is called in the 1940s where he had helped develop the kind of a storage device which is a precursor to today's ramp. So, with that solid foundation in the mid 1950s when the Sloan School of Management was started, he was invited to be on board and being a true electrical engineer, I do not know nothing about management why am I being part of it. They just said okay you just come and see what you can do. So, being an electrical engineer we had a good sound background in the areas of control theory. So, he thought okay let us see whether we can apply some of those concepts into management. So, he spent a year or two looking at various industrial processes and trying to map it in terms of kind of control theory kind of approach where we look at the state of the system and see what kind of things flow in and out and the result was this fascinating field of system dynamics. So, what he did was to look at industrial systems where he identified various players within a supply chain. So, even at that time people were not even common in using the term supply chain kind of initiative to say okay let us assume there are some event and studied some of it and okay there are see factories, there are these warehouses and there are these retailers and warehouses orders material to the factory, factory produces them and after sometime the material reaches the warehouse and even before ordering there are various sorts of delays that can occur and systematically wrote them out as a set of equations, time difference equations or differential equations as you see it and the end result was this interesting book on industrial dynamics which he came out in 1961 so where he actually identified the business structures looked at the sales inventory and order policy in very systematic manner and looked at the business okay let us say the expanding effects of supply chain due to fluctuating retailer demand and this book now it is known as a bullwhip effect some of you may have heard of bullwhip effect it has its origins right here 1950s work of Forester at that time he did not use the term bullwhip effect he just pointed out the fluctuations and very interesting and new to that period in time this book is full of illustrations it has full of computer generated graphics to show how if an inventory changes what happens to dynamics upstream within the warehouses retailers warehouse distributors as well as the factory but to do that simulation remember you were 1950s and that is when computer logic set up each computer was probably as big as this room there is probably handful of computers in entire United States and predominantly was used in the Manhattan project and stuff so he had one so he had approached the computer department and I told here set of these equations but I can't solve them they are you know getting highly non-linear so can we actually try and simulate them so the computer department took it up as a challenge and built this simple standing for simulation of industrial management problems using lot of equations that's what simple stands for that was the very first attempt to move away from coding in the coding sense to bring it into symbolic language because what we have on the top side is just a set of differential equations and using that symbolic structure we want to simulate the system so we don't so there was this very first attempt to actually move away from coding into use of a symbolic structure so that that can be used by others who are non-coders so its foundation went way back in 1950s almost very first development of use of computers and this is probably one of the very early use of computer rather than military purpose that has later developed later meaning within next decade itself it led to the development of what is called as Dynamo standing for dynamic models with a little more powerful interface which does based on symbolic input it could use to simulate differential equations and dynamic system so dynamic model means and this spurred the development and use of computers by non-programmers that had a very very interesting origins so it is not that the programming came first and then we went this effort to develop and use computer models for non-programmers started way earlier than you might have known so in this industrial dynamics came there was very new we are looking at unit management or industrial system nobody has looked at the system as a set of equations that can be model that has kind of well received but soon the potential for this approach in other domains become apparent in admit the entire 60s when forester had encounters with other colleagues in various department as well as in administration the result was in 69 he helped work on urban dynamics where he looked at more problem of cities and urban development where is able to use the same system dynamics methodology to actually map and identify various variables as stocks and flows with underlying structure as being a differential equation concepts and then in 71 he developed this world dynamics the model of how the world population evolves the energy needs environment etc way way back in 1971 all these three where came out as nice big fan books so what it did and then forester devoted rest of his life to expansion the education as well as the use of system dynamics methodology for various societal problems as well as looking at complex issues and how to abstract them so all these work helped initiate this dialogue on whether how feasible the modeling of societal problem still of course it's an ongoing debate you may find people are either really into system dynamics take it or they just dismiss it out out front saying now this is still giving us a very still model there are still more complexities which you can't capture it so it's still ongoing debate but it's all stems from forester's early argument where he's told that use of computerized system models which he believed in use of computerized system models in form societal the social policy is far superior to simple debate both in genetic insight into the root causes of the problem and in understand the likely effects of proposed solutions way way back in 1971 which hopefully some of us will share the idea here being when we engage in come up with you know when we are looking at a social or more complex socioeconomic kind of problem we need various viewpoints we can just sit in a room and just ideate on what will work so when we start to engage in dialogue it eventually leads into moves away from dialogue to discussion to heated debates on various sources so what this can help bring to the table is as and when various viewpoints are presented we can try to map it out in the kind of nice causal kind of diagram and identifying stocks and flows and then trying to see understand how the dynamics evolve over time here so that's the kind of nice history of how system dynamics has evolved when we started off with it started off directly by identifying the stocks and flows that we are going to see and only later people told that you know jumping to stock and flow itself is quite difficult let us you know first develop what we call as a causal mapping which led to the development of causal loop diagrams identify what are the key variables in the system let us map out their interaction and then let us use that to move into stock flow diagram where once you start doing stock and flows you are already one step towards building a computer based model which you will see why in a minute because they are just visual representation of the underlying equations that you are trying to model and assemble okay so and it is quite quite easy to teach use that takes time yeah so still so MIT then the so-and-so of management has a pretty strong group on system dynamics group till most of the activities are concentrated there the fair bit of participation now from various industries and countries and applications from the government all the way to people wanting to just learn and understand the systems individual level various nice things that has happened over time people have then used the model to help predict there is a very classical book by Meadows on limits to growth it actually points out how now that was a time remember in 60s things was all great it was fantastic there is no in fact there is no limits to growth at that point in time when this in a book on based on system dynamics ideologies methodologies came about talking about that that is going to be limits to growth and then that started unfolding in the 70s and 80s 1980s system dynamics methodology was used in a supreme court or maybe a district court I don't know some legal hearings between a customer and the and the government saying that many the client was telling the telling that the delays in the project was due to the interference by the government because of changing requirements government was trying to sue the company saying that you delayed the project unnecessarily so I am not going to pay you the full money but the system dynamics model was used to understand actual dynamics between the government as well as the company and it was found that there was excessive interference in the government which caused the delays and the ruling was add use this system dynamics methodology so that is why you know how often you hear that actual math is used in court case rulings so it was quite interesting and more recently the I don't know how much of you are following that debates and discussions on climate change there is this conference of parties and one of one climate change model has been adopted by all the countries so this model is be has been developed based on system dynamics methodology underlying model or the system dynamics model which has been adopted as one of the most accurate models to represent what can happen in climate change and what are the potential pathways that it predicts based on our current consumption and usage patterns of the fuels etc. economies and stuff like that so it is called sea roads climate road map to look it up so there are a lot of interesting and very high level applications that is coming out