Future Hindsight

Thursday, February 23rd, 2023   Leah Goodridge has served on the New York City Planning Commission since 2021 and is the Managing Attorney for Housing Policy at Mobilization for Justice. She oversees a team that provides legal representation to tenants in eviction proceedings. We talk about housing in New York City, ranging from high rents and evictions to land use discussions.   Tenant unions have advocated for tenants’ rights in New York and Albany, which pushed for right to counsel and new rent laws. Developers and landlords have successfully shifted the media narrative to portray them as the little guy and the victim, and the tenant as the villain. Joining community boards is an effective way for everyday New Yorkers to have a voice; community boards vote on the housing proposals before the planning commission sees them. Private developers are being pushed to be at the forefront of building affordable housing, but the City can and does decide how much money it will allocate toward housing. It could decide

Thursday, February 16th, 2023   Gregg Colburn is the co-author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain US Patterns. He's also an Assistant Professor of Real Estate at the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments. We discuss the prevalence and variety of homelessness and the big ideas to tackle the housing crisis.   About 5% of the population in the US will experience homelessness at some point in their life. Housing costs and other structural factors drive homelessness. Hence, the easiest path to providing greater support for low-income households would be through an expansion of the federal government’s housing voucher program. In the long run, the best response to this crisis is building much more housing.  Follow Gregg on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/ColburnGregg    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey! 

Thursday, February 9th, 2023   Octavia Abell is the co-founder and CEO of Govern For America, which describes its mission as bridging the gap between governments and emerging leaders to build a pipeline of diverse and dynamic public sector talent. We discuss the power of public sector workers to be agents of change, whether that's public policy on climate or streamlining the process of getting a birth certificate.   Government can deliver public policy that improves our daily lives. For example, civil servants are hard at work right now in deploying the broadband and infrastructure funds from the infrastructure bill in 2021. There are many policy areas that young people are really fired up about, like climate. With 40% of the public sector workers nearing retirement, now is an opportunity for young graduates to work in government.   Follow Octavia on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/octavia_abell    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.insta

Thursday, February 2nd, 2023   Ruth Milkman is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and History at the CUNY Graduate Center and at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, where she chairs the Labor Studies Department. Her most recent books are Immigration Matters and Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat.   Unions remain a voice for the voiceless, especially given that the playing field has been very strongly tilted in favor of employers for some time. Employers are very aggressively anti-union, even in settings where union is long established like at UPS. The current wave of workers trying to unionize are not the usual suspects of historically unionized workers. They're mostly college educated, instead of blue collar workers, and they seek to address the gap between their labor market expectations and the actual job quality and pay that is available to them.   Read more about Ruth:  https://www.ruthmilkman.info/    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Insta

Thursday, January 26th, 2023   Jared Yates Sexton is a self-described Hoosier, a Political Analyst, and host of the Muckrake Podcast. His latest book is The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis. We discuss our current era of neo-liberalism and what may be in store in the future.    One of the most dangerous things that Reagan and Thatcher did on behalf of neoliberalism was convince people that government is impotent. This has eaten away at the authority of the state and reduced confidence in government regulation. Further, neoliberalism has reduced citizens into consumers who are left talking about consumer preferences as opposed to real politics. Jared predicts that the end of neoliberalism is nigh.    Follow Jared on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/JYSexton    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!  http://survey.podtrac.co

Thursday, January 19th, 2023   Victor Shi is a Gen Z activist, host of On the Move, co-host of iGen Politics, a junior at UCLA, and Strategy Director of Voters of Tomorrow. He was elected as the youngest delegate for Joe Biden in 2020 and previously interned at the White House and DNC. We discuss the power of the youth vote to determine elections and which issues motivate Gen Zers to go to the polls.    Against the backdrop of voter suppression, especially in states like Texas, young voters struggle to understand that their voices really do matter. We need people to be engaged in keeping this democracy running. Because Gen Zers and Millennials are going to outnumber any other generation of Americans starting in 2024, it’s crucial to meet young people where they are. That includes text banking, social media, phone banking, and relational organizing. Voter registration drives should start in all high schools and early, in person voting should be widely encouraged. Sustaining change also comes through electing m

Thursday, January 12th, 2023   Danielle Moodie is a cultural connoisseur, a political junkie, and, in addition to Democracy-ish, also hosts the Woke AF Daily podcast. Wajahat Ali is a Daily Beast columnist, public speaker, recovering attorney, and author. His most recent book is Go Back To Where You Came From: And, Other Helpful Recommendations on Becoming American. We discuss the struggle toward a multiracial democracy and the role of civic action to achieve it.   Despite many years of disinformation and misinformation, abortion rights and defense of democracy are kitchen table issues for a majority of Americans. They are the reason we did not see a red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. White rage is ascending because we are making steady progress toward a multiracial democracy that fundamentally centers  justice and equity for all people.   Follow Danielle on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/DeeTwoCents    Follow Waj on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wajahatali    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/m

Thursday, January 5th, 2023   Steve Phillips is the host of the Democracy in Color podcast and the author of How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good. We start off a new year of civic engagement and fighting for democracy with a conversation about his political leadership, thought leadership, and coalition building.   The Confederate Battle plan of never giving an inch, ruthlessly rewriting the rules, distorting public opinion, silently sanctioning terrorism, and playing the long game has been present in every period of US history. Through organizing and civic participation, in the places that held people in slavery, the country is being transformed. The new American majority and the majority of eligible voters are people of color and progressive whites. We have the potential power to redraw the social contract.   Follow Steve on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/StevePtweets   Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight o

Thursday, December 29th, 2022   We’re sharing a clip from an episode of Some of My Best Friends Are…   Here’s a preview of another podcast, Some of My Best Friends Are, from Pushkin Industries. Harvard professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad and journalist Ben Austen are friends, one Black and one white, who grew up together on the South Side of Chicago. On Some of My Best Friends Are, Khalil and Ben, along with their guests, have critical conversations that are at once personal, political, and playful, about the absurdities and intricacies of race in America.    In this preview, Khalil and Ben are joined by Donald Yacovone, author of Teaching White Supremacy. In the midst of new laws to ban books about race and the teaching of slavery, Yacovone digs through thousands of school textbooks and finds that most already emphasize whiteness as the core of our national identity. Khalil, Ben, and Donald chat about how the history we’ve been teaching over the last 300 years isn’t necessarily the history we made, and how that

Thursday, December 22nd, 2022   Chris Kang is the Co-Founder and Chief Counsel of Demand Justice. He served in the White House for nearly seven years as Deputy Counsel to President Obama and Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. We talk about court reform from diversifying the bench of judges to expanding the Supreme Court.   The Supreme Court of the United States is actually the only court in the entire country that does not have a binding code of ethics. Congress has changed the size of the Supreme Court seven times before. It's very much within their power and ability to change the size of the court again now to restore balance. When you have a system of checks and balances set up in our constitution and one branch of government gets too powerful, the other two branches are expected and really need to step in.   Follow Chris on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/cdkang76    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagra

Thursday, December 15th, 2022   Jackie Salit and Thom Reilly are co-directors of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University and co-authors of The Independent Voter. Independents are making a statement about the culture, the practice, and the destructiveness of the current political culture. You have almost half the country identifying themselves as independents, but you have a system that is completely embedded with partisan bias.   Jackie and Thom break down the independent voting profile and why the two main parties need to sit up and listen to them. The independent movement of today is a direct challenge to the parties, party power, and the party system. The issue for America and for American democracy is having the fairest, most inclusive, most vibrant democratic process, as opposed to engineering a system to produce a certain outcome.     Follow Jackie on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackiesalit   Follow Thom on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/ThomReillyNV   Follow

Thursday, December 8th, 2022   Chris Melody Fields Figueredo is the Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which seeks to strengthen democracy by building a national progressive strategy for ballot measures. We discuss ballot initiatives and how they put the issues directly into the hands of voters and out of the two-party system. It can really flip the script!   Ballot measures are often higher vote-getters than candidates. They also transcend party lines. Medicaid expansion has been a huge example in the last several years of being incredibly popular in red, blue, and purple states, and ballot measures gave power and agency to citizens to make policy changes. There is a huge opportunity in the coming years, especially around climate change.   Follow Chris on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/fieldsy    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Surv

Thursday, December 1st, 2022   Cecile Richards is the co-chair of American Bridge, former president of Planned Parenthood, a co-founder of Supermajority, and author of the book Make Trouble. We make sense of the midterms, take away some gold nuggets for democracy, and are reminded that grassroots organizing is all about the long game.    A way to suppress democracy is by telling people it doesn't matter whether we vote or not. With widespread predictions that Republicans would sweep the midterms, indicating a foregone conclusion to the election, voter turnout was relatively strong. The American people largely defeated candidates who did not believe in democracy and who were willing to do anything and say anything to get power.    Follow Cecile on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/CecileRichards    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!  http://survey.podtrac.c

Thursday, November 23rd, 2022   Andrew Koppelman is the author of Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed. It’s a fascinating history of this idea and an excellent lens for understanding so much of American life and politics.    The core idea of liberalism is that people ought to be able to live as they like and libertarianism appeals to that desire for freedom. The question is how do you deliver it? A robust free market has proven to do more for the poor than any centralized state control. However, there are some problems (like a pandemic) that can only be dealt with by organized collective action led by a strong state. Government facilitates freedom by making the country richer and giving individuals more wherewithal to conduct their lives. Markets alone don't give people what they deserve because what people deserve is a backward-looking question.    Follow Andrew on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/andrewkoppelman    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/

Thursday, November 10th, 2022   Rebecca Cokley is a disability-rights advocate and the first U.S. Disability Rights Program Officer for the Ford Foundation. From 2009 to 2013, she served as an appointee in President Barack Obama’s White House. We discuss the lived experience of being disabled in America. It's an important conversation that truly exposes the inequities of our society.   We don't live in a society that allows for equality for disabled people. In fact, if you're disabled, you're more likely to be poor. Also, most people see disability rights as extra. We have to fundamentally shift to an equity mindset  and go back to address the historic inequities from the beginning.    Follow Rebecca on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/RebeccaCokley    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!  http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=6tI0Zi1e78vq&v

Thursday, November 10th, 2022   Thaddeus Johnson is a former police officer, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, and Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice & Criminology at  Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. This broad-ranging conversation discusses law enforcement and empowering communities and citizens so we can all be safer.   Public safety falls under a much larger umbrella than just policing. Police officers need to be rewarded for community policing. There has been little accountability of police misconduct because of lack of transparency. Many communities have been let down systemically, so governments need to restore them systemically, too. Citizens need to arm themselves with information and be engaged in their communities.   Follow Thaddeus on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/docthadjohnson    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Love Future Hi

Thursday, November 3rd, 2022   Dr. Alison Gill is a veteran, former federal government executive, and Host of Mueller She Wrote and the Daily Beans Podcast. We discuss democracy, accountability and all the legal troubles the former president is facing, and the power of your vote.   Your vote matters and can deliver accountability at the ballot box, which is why there are so many efforts to suppress it. Personal outreach and relational organizing are the most effective in turning out the vote. Democracy really is in peril and the rights of women have been  and voting is one way that we have the power to protect it. When it comes to accountability for the former president, an indictment would be justice at work.   Follow Allison on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/allisongill    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Love Future Hindsight? Take our Listener Survey!  http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx

Thursday, October 27th, 2022   Amanda Brown Lierman is the Executive Director at Supermajority and Supermajority Education Fund, which builds women’s political power through efforts to inform, train and organize women across age, race, and background.   Women are 52% of the vote. Fundamentally, women believe that their lives should be safe, their bodies should be respected, their work should be valued, their families should be supported, and that the government should represent them. Relational organizing is surprisingly powerful. One simple conversation could be a game changer. Supermajority’s work is to bring more people along in this exercise of radical imagination for true representation of these values. A crucial step is to make sure that women are voting in November.   Follow Amanda on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/amandak_b    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Love Future Hindsight? Take our L

Thursday, October 20th, 2022   Orly Lobel is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for Employment and Labor Law. Her latest book is The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future. We discuss reframing our public discourse around technology in order to proactively use it as a tool for equality.    Lobel urges us to think about what our goals, social norms, and values are in a democratic society. Because we’re racing forward with integrating technology into our lives, we need a more balanced debate about how privacy ought to be offset by other values. In addition to talking about AI technology gone wrong, we should consider the comparative advantage of AI over a human decision maker, who has a lot of biases.    Follow Orly on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/orlylobel    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Love Future Hindsight? T

Tuesday, October 18th, 2022   We're sharing an episode of Civics 101 from New Hampshire Public Radio.   The House and the Senate have mostly the same powers: they both propose and vote on bills that may become law. So why does the House have 435 members, and the Senate have 100? Why does legislation have to pass through both sides, and what kinds of power do each have individually? And finally: what role do you, as a voter, play in ensuring that Congress, and your Congressional delegation, is working in your best interests?   This episode features the opinions of former staffers from both chambers, Andrew Wilson and Justin LeBlanc,  former member of the CA assembly, Cheryl Cook-Kallio, CNN political analyst, Bakari Sellers, and the inimitable political science professor from Farleigh Dickinson, Dan Cassino.   Follow Civics 101 on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/civics101pod    Follow Mila on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/milaatmos    Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsig