The Democratic Party in California has systematically suppressed third-party candidates like Dr. Butch Wear through legal challenges, ballot access restrictions, and judicial manipulation, demonstrating how established political parties use procedural technicalities to neutralize electoral threats and maintain their duopoly power.
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Interview w/ CA Governor Candidate Dr. Butch Ware!Hinzugefügt:
All right, we are officially live. Hello everyone.
Welcome in. It's May 28th, 2026. We've got an exciting show for you tonight.
Butch wear will be joining us uh in about half an hour. I figured we'd get started a little bit early. Give some people time to shuffle on in here.
for the first time. I I think I'm actually streaming on Facebook for the for the first time. I hope it works out. I don't have it pulled up, but it says that it's streaming there as well. So, we'll have to see how that goes. So, yeah. Um, we're going to have Butch wear. He's going to talk about his uh candidacy, his campaign for the governor of California. He's running as a Green Party candidate. We're going to talk about the lawsuit that he's filed against the Secretary of State for illegally pushing him off the ballot.
Um, we're going to talk about the importance of disrupting the duopoly and why we need to build political power now, not later.
Yes, he's not on the ballot unless you kind chatter write his name in which you can do. There is a way to vote for Butch Wear. Yes, you don't have to vote for billionaires or billionaire protectors, right? We're not going to give way to dumerism, are we?
Um, so I I want to start actually by sharing these really great interviews. It it made me really want to have a conversation with Butchwear because, you know, we're not hearing these stories.
Um it they very well are under represented and um he goes through in painstaking detail all of the malevolence and treachery that he's been facing from the establishment. So I I figured let's start by just brushing up. will uh will get acquainted with the campaign and uh this is a really great interview from Katie Halper and Butch Wear.
>> Tell us the latest that you're dealing with from the Democrats as you are attempting to run for governor for the state of California.
>> Yeah, so I refer to them as the Democrat party rather than the Democratic party because they don't want people voting for anything. Um, and whereas Republicans usually try to steal elections after the election, you know, see George Bush um, and, uh, Donald Trump, the Democrats like to try to steal an election before it happens. So, they spent $20 million trying to sue me and Jill off of the ballot in multiple states in the 2024 presidential election. And now in the state of California, they are trying to use the Secretary of State's office to eliminate me from the ballot on an absurd technicality that in point of fact um we demonstrated in court. It's a completely facious claim. So here's what they said.
What they said is is that I left a phone number unredacted on what should have been a redacted copy of my 2024 tax returns. and on the basis of this flimsiest of pretexts, they were going to disqualify me from the ballot in the state of California. And the the news on this front today, I'll go back, you know, to explain the full context. The news on this front today is that yesterday we filed suit in federal court because we're not going to take this nonsense lying down. Um, and we are prepared to take this, you know, the the legal fight as far as it needs to go because this cannot stand. Here's what happened. Each candidate is required to submit uh redacted and unredacted copies of 5 years of tax returns. The unredacted copies are meant to stay on record with the Secretary of State. The redacted copies become public and you redact information that's private, right? Your personal phone number, your, you know, street address, those kinds of things. So apparently what they claim is that that there were deficiencies in my redacted copies that they couldn't explain what these were when they first sent an email saying that we needed to fix this. So March 7th, they sent a message saying, "No, not redacted, returns not submitted." And we were like, "That's a triple negative. No one knows what you're asking for."
>> Andrew, get your [ __ ] apathetic doomerism out of here, okay? You reactionary.
You know, if everyone thought like you, Andrew, nothing would ever change. You realize that, right?
>> Um, we didn't even have to get back.
>> This is bigger than one election. You know what's pointless? Voting for a billionaire. That's pointless.
Subscribing to one half of the corporate Zionist duopoly is pointless.
You [ __ ] spineless little [ __ ] them to clarify because on March 10th they sent a new message saying no unredacted tax return was submitted for these two years for 2022 and 2023. So then we asked for clarification. Well, in your first ungrammatical message, you said that we needed to resubmit four years of tax returns and now you're saying we need to submit two. So then they wait two more days.
>> Tell that to the Palestinians who need to rebuild their entire civil civilization.
>> Oh, this is just pointless. They're just gonna bomb us again. you [ __ ] dildo >> and say no, you have to submit all four.
Now, mind you, on March 7th, when they initial uh initially uh sent this email, they said if you don't fix these deficiencies, which again they have not yet defined, by March 16th at 5:00 p.m., you will be disqualified from the ballot. The back and forth continues like this for a full week. And finally, on Friday, March 13th, we get an order with which we comply, and we just send entirely new copies of both redacted and unredacted forms. They receive them, they open them Monday, March 16th at 9:17 a.m. And then at 4:50 p.m., they send me an email saying, "You left your phone number unredacted on this form, and you will be disqualified from the ballot if you do not correct it in person in the next 10 minutes in Sacramento in hard copy."
>> Yeah. How did I how did I know it was going to be uh between 9 and 5 that they were going to not be able to to send you this notification.
>> They gave 10 minutes warning for for a document request. But it gets worse, Katie. You think that that's the worst of it. So we we file a lawsuit with um a rid of mandate to make this stop, right?
We file it within 48 hours because the voters's guide is supposed to go out at the end of March, right? Um, and so what we're seeing is that this is actually probably not an effort to knock us off the ballot. They know this can't hold up in court. We assume this is just an effort to keep us out of the voters's guide and we have to file within 48 hours otherwise we won't even get a hearing before the voter's guide is mailed out because they're trying to knock down our visibility and our um, you know, name recognition. So, we file within 48 hours. We go into court March 26th. And here's where it gets worse.
The Secretary of State submitted into evidence all the paperwork that I had filed, right? And our lawyer went through this and was able to demonstrate that they had the correct forms in their possession the on time the whole time that the whole thing was a pretext. And the judge admitted this. It went into the record. He said, "So you had correct versions the whole time?" And they said, "Yes, but it's not our job to collate them for the the candidate." So, literally they were they were admitting that they had full copies of all of the paperwork, but they were saying that that because I hadn't responded the way that they had suggested that that didn't matter, that they actually had the paperwork correct. And then lastly, on this particular point, uh our lawyer was able to demonstrate in court that they falsified the email thread. They submitted falsified documents into evidence because they went back into the email thread and remember that ungrammatical email that I mentioned on March 7th, they fixed it to make it look as though they had issued a proper document request in the first place. And you know, travesty of all travesties, the judge is completely unmoved. He enters into record that they changed the the the um the email thread. enters into the record uncontested that they had the documents in their possession on time the whole time and nonetheless denied our writ mandate.
>> Why would he even do that?
>> Because he was sent to do a job the same way that that paper pusher in the Secretary of State's office was sent to do a job. Their job was to get me off of the ballot. Their job was to make sure that I did not appear in the voters's guide. There was a very simple reason for this is that at that time the leading Democrat candidates Tom Styer, uh, Katie Porter and Eric Swallwell before Swallwell imploded, right? They were all polling at 10% and I was polling at five. That was in published numbers. Um, that and and they must have had internal polling because we can't we don't have money to run a bunch of polls. So, they must have had internal polling that had me running neck andneck. just understand what it would do to Gavin Newsome's presidential chances, what it would do to the Democrat establishment nationwide to have a Green Party candidate within four or five points of the lead in the primary elections in the state of California. So, we immediately filed an appeal after they had this absurd ruling. In the Secretary of State's opposition to the appeal, they conceded that they had the documents in their possession the whole time and now they simply said, "Well, the voters's guide has already been mailed out. It's too late for us to change anything about it."
>> Wow.
>> So, they they stopped even arguing that that my paperwork was somehow deficient because we had demonstrated that it wasn't. And now they just simply said, "Well, it's a big deal to mail out all of these mailers. It's very expensive and so we can't, you know, uh change it." The appeal judge again in the same Sacramento district beholden to the same political authorities um again denied our appeal without explanation. So no notes, no nothing explaining why. It just said RIT has been has been denied. So, just to be clear, um what Donald Trump does with the Republican Supreme Court, that's uh child's play compared to what Gavin Newsome does with the judiciary inside the state of California, right? He uses it to take out any kind of political challenges or political opposition. So, we never expected to get redress from a court in the state of California, but we wanted to let the process follow through. The appeal was denied at the end of last week. So, we filed our federal case yesterday. The federal court case is the place where we expect to get relief. Um, we have a request for a temporary um restraining or order order and a preliminary injunction that would stop those ballots from being mailed out until um the the a hearing on this takes place. because there is no world in which um voters should be disenfranchised from having their choice on the ballot because the Secretary of State lies and says that there is a deficiency that does not exist and then after excluding you from the ballot says, "Well, now that you're off the ballot, it's too late for us to do anything about it."
>> Wow. So, you said that uh Democrats steal elections before they happen, Republicans steal them after. Can you elaborate on this?
>> Sure. So, the the Democrat establishment, as I mentioned, spent $20 million trying to sue Dr. Joe Stein and myself off of the the ballot in multiple states. They have actually um removed ballot access from the Green Party in the state of New York. Um it so you can't file as a Green candidate in in the state of New York. They uh go to war with anything that might appear to the left of them. And so when I hear, you know, Democrats complaining about Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters, I mean, I have to laugh because they literally spent more money just trying to sue us off of ballots in 2024 than the Steinwear campaign spent in total. The Democrat uh party is, as my colleague at UC Riverside, Dylan Rodriguez, has called them. He said, they're the most effective counterinsurgency institution ever to emerge in human history.
>> Wow, that's good. the most effective counterinsurgency institution.
>> They their their job is to try to destroy anything from uh to the left of them from ever seeing the political light of day. Absolutely.
>> So we expected this, by the way, right?
I I had a war chest set aside for us to pay lawyers. We're we were ready for that. Um you know, we responded in timely fashion to all of this chicainery because we knew it was coming. And and by the way, it is only just beginning because our polling has improved since they knocked me off of the ballot because the media coverage inside the state of California. There's been um right-wing media that's covered it.
There's been left-wing media that's covered it. There's been local media that's that's covered it. Um but none of the national political media outlets have covered this story because it makes the Democrat establishment look so bad.
Right.
>> Right. They because it's very clear that if they would resort to this kind of, you know, absurdity, like breaking every rule in the book and being naked about it, not even really trying to cover it up, then it means that they're really afraid and they should be because um we constitute a an existential threat to the Democrat establishment in the state of California.
>> So, I'm going to get back to that. I just want to the existential threat, but I do want to add one thing which was the amazing job that they did in North Carolina with Matt Hoe.
>> When they like literally the Democrats got uh like impersonated Green Party officials Yep.
>> and called people and told them not to vote for him >> and they they called people to tell them to resend signatures that they had submitted so that he would be disqualified from a ballot. I mean the there there is you have to understand there is uh no uh depth to which they will not sink in order to try to stop green candidates. And the reason for that so in the last three years nationwide Greens have won 57% of the elections in which we have run a candidate for office. Um those are from mostly from mayor down. But what it means is that consistently when there's not a fire hose of money that they that that the Democrats can, you know, put pour into an election and when there's not mainstream media coverage to overdetermine the narrative and it's just uh uh races that are run on policy and candidate quality, we beat team blue and team red together. That number 57% n is nationwide. That number in California last three years is 79%.
>> Wow. So, so they know that our platforms and policies are things that voters are going to respond to and what they fear is people hearing this message, seeing the candidate, um, having the policies explained in, you know, open public forum. I think that the principal reason why they did this was to get me out of the debate that's taking place tonight at Pomona College with with CBS Sacramento. And ju just for context, the same uh civic organization um APAPA, Asian-Pacific American uh Political Association, they held a debate last September. Everyone that was I participated in that. Everyone that was there perceived the difference in candidate quality. There had been a previous one at SEIU Local 1000 in Sacramento that went so badly for for Katie Porter that we found out after the fact that SEIU leadership went to the Democrats and said, "You need to get another candidate into this field."
That's when Eric Swallwell entered the race. And it it helped solve a puzzle inside our campaign, which is we didn't know why the first four questions on Eric Swallwell's uh survey that he sent out when he was trying to decide whether he would run were all about me. And the reason was is that everybody in the Democrat establishment saw me dismantle their whole field at the SEIU debate in August of 2025. And that began a concerted effort to make sure that that never happens again. And because I was polling ahead of multiple Democrat candidates, they were going to have to include me in that debate. That debate is going to happen tonight with Matt Mayan taking part, Tony Thurman taking part, Antonio V. Regosa taking part and you're shaking your head because no one's ever heard of any of those people.
They are all polling at 1% or 2%. There is no poll in which I am not either even with those candidates or ahead of them.
So they would have had to let me de debate in a live stream debate that was up and down the state of California and they already know what happens when I debate these corporate clowns. So, this has all been an effort to just try to make a threat disappear from public view.
>> Yep.
Yep. There's also another inter uh another clip of that interview which I think is worthy of our perusal >> are just a interesting candidate with viab. So, I I talked to Tommy Styer. I interviewed him and uh I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think he's the most interesting candidate with viability right now.
>> Listen to me very carefully, everybody that's watching this. Billionaires are not the solution.
>> Thank you.
>> Billionaires are the fundamental basis of the problem. There are no ethical billionaires. And if you believe a billionaire is running to try to solve any of your immediate social crises, then I don't know what to tell you about the way that you're processing the world. There is no world in which any credible progressive media commentator can cape for a billionaire that made hundreds of millions of dollars on private prisons. Make it make sense.
>> Thank you.
Thank you. Does everything >> you you talked about some really important endorsements and of course uh Vic Mensah the rapper, but you can't really compete with the endorsement that Tom Styer got from uh Juvenile. And let's take a look at this uh video of Tom twerking, really getting down.
>> Yeah. In private prisons to juveniles hit back that ass up. This is from 2020 at a campaign rally.
>> Oh my.
It's like, "Yeah, this motherfucker's got money, y'all. He paid for me to dance on stage with him, so I'm here.
Back that ass up."
>> So, there you have it. That is a good song. I'm not going to lie. that that that right there should be a hate crime.
And that that just shows you how much um you know uh buffoonery can be purchased by a billionaire. And I mean let let's just take a pause really quick on the fact that the Democrat establishment and even some progressive commentators like Hassan [ __ ] have essentially been in support of Tom Styer's campaign.
Listen to me very carefully everybody that's watching this.
>> Billionaires are not the solution.
Billionaires are the fundamental basis of the problem. There are no ethical billionaires. And if you believe a billionaire is running to try to solve any of your immediate social crisis, then I don't know what to tell you about the way that you're processing the world. At first, I thought it was a run for vanity by Styer um in 2020 and 2024.
But billionaires don't do things for vanity. Billionaires do things for the money. And what Styer wants is he wants, >> listen to this, this is really important.
>> Go from being a run-of-the-mill billionaire to being a mega billionaire.
He has seen how Trump and Kushner have multiplied their net worth by a factor of a hundred um by gaining access to executive power. He saw how Musk gained, you know, basically doubled his net worth just through proximity to executive power. And need I remind you that California is the third largest economy in the world behind China and Germany. And what that billionaire wants is to play like a progressive so that he can have access to those kind of resources, those kinds of business connections, those ways of fattening his own account, building his own legacy.
Um, I wrote a song. You want to talk about, you know, people that that hop around on stage and play in the culture.
Thank you for catching that. A lot of people just thought I was misspeaking, but she she is like the archetype of the Karen, is she not? So, like it's right there for you.
>> Listen to this part.
>> Um, so did Hassan [ __ ] uh endorse Ster Sire or is he just uh giving interviews that you find friendly and and has he not um uh interviewed you or responded to?
>> He won't interview me. Um so and he's been asked directly by Oliver Ma um who uh appeared on his show the day that Hassan [ __ ] said that he would not vote for Gavin Newsome um if that's the presidential candidate that he would go third party. Um I made a post about it and I said I heard my brother in Islam Hassan [ __ ] might be you know ready to get off the Democrat you know plantation. I'm happy to talk to him at any time. He got tagged, I think, about 3,000 times across Twitter and Instagram on that day. And people that that know us both, you know, friends in the Muslim community, put us on text threads together and he ghosted me. Would not answer the text threads would not respond. Um, and and I think I don't know. I mean, I was >> there's your leftist comment, leftist content creator.
>> Still love the opportunity to have the conversation. I mean, obviously the the chance to make the case is critical, but what I fear actually is that well, Katie, you've learned this, right?
You've learned this. Bana Joy Gray has learned this. Chris Hedges has learned this. Is that if you run a foul of the Democrat Zionist establishment by directly contesting their power through your media voice, they will do everything that they can to destroy you.
>> What about the people's billionaire Tommy Styer?
>> So, I I talked to Tom Styer. I interviewed him and uh I can't believe I'm saying this but I think he's the most interesting candidate with >> they all say this all these sheep dogs are like well you know Tommy Star's very uh dot dot dot interesting ability right now uh in this race I uh even before Suave >> yeah it's looking good to people like Assan because he's he's in that uh he's in that that domain you know he's in the Democrat National Convention domain >> um you sexual.
>> He's close to these people. He doesn't want to offend the wrong people. They give him mainstream access mass appeal.
>> Allegations came up and he had to uh quit the race and and also resign from office. Those were like the top three candidates, right? You had Swell, you had Porter and you had Styer on like the Democrat camp and then you have Biano and and Hilton, right? The two Republicans. And I was uh genuinely terrified. I was talking to some other even mention that also live in California. We were trying to figure out like what are we going to do here? And uh and then also the the Swallow stuff came out, but yeah, I think Styer, I can't believe I'm saying this, is uh probably a little bit more responsive than >> probably a little bit maybe just a tiny hair bit more responsive to I don't know, maybe working class uh grievances.
Maybe >> uh the the rest of the candidates are and all of those guys >> rest of the candidates. Dude, what are you talking about? that we're voting for on the Democratic party side, the establishment Democrats, they represent the interests of billionaires and millionaires regardless, even if they themselves are not billionaires or millionaires. So, uh, in the case of Tom Sty, if he's advocating for, you know, uh, singlepayer healthcare in the state of California, that's a very appealing policy for someone like myself.
>> Fell for it again award.
>> I'm gonna I I care about the the policies and not the background of the person. So yeah, I think Tommy Styer could be a very interesting uh governor.
>> No, he cares about the rhetoric. He doesn't care about because it's not just the background history of the person.
These are the the actions. These are the policies. What what is Tommy Styer's platform? What is Tommy Styer's policies? Well, he's committed to egregious, vicious class war against the working uh class Americans uh not only in this country but in other countries as well. And that is all through his hedge fund capital investment firm called Fereralon Capital, which he's made billions of dollars off of the private prison industry and the coal mining industry. Those are his policies.
That's how he got rich.
You can't just brush that aside. Well, it's just like a personal anecdote like like he like he happens to be bald or something or he has a stutter when he speaks. No, these are not personal characteristics. These are meaningful policy decisions as a private individual, as a as a capitalist, as a CEO state.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah. Um, so, uh, a little bit of background. Oliver Ma, um, 28-year-old candidate for lieutenant governor was on, um, Hassan Piker's show, and he teased on Hassan Piker's show. Hassan asked him, "Is there somebody that you like for governor?" He said, "Yeah, I'm in a conversation with somebody about a mutual endorsement, but we haven't, uh, dropped it yet, so I'm not going to tell you who." Um, I was that person. Okay.
And so Al Hassan knows full well about my candidacy and the candidate that um Hassan was boosting for Lieutenant Governor Oliver Ma. When Oliver Ma began to go public about our mutual endorsement agreement, the Democratic Socialists of America threatened to pull their endorsement of Oliver Ma. Yeah.
But you won't even give airtime to a third party candidate. And the reason is is because you're afraid. You are afraid that they will ostracize you and try to destroy you. The same way that they came for Chris Hedges, the same way that they came for Katie Halper, the same way that they came for Bana Joy Gray, the same way that they liquidated all of the progressive establishment that refused to tow the Democrat party line during an ongoing genocide. And Hassan [ __ ] is afraid that they're going to liquidate his ass, too. And if he was the man that he says he is in the weight room, he would come see me in the weight room. We can do 225 bench press competition. We can get down like that. And he should have a conversation because there is no world in which any credible progressive media commentator can cape for a billionaire that made hundreds of millions of dollars on private prisons.
He didn't give any of that back. It's like saying, "Yeah, I used to run a slave breeding plantation, but I've repented now." Well, what did you do with the money? I I kept it. Right.
Make it make sense.
>> That's a great point. I didn't even think about that. He didn't give back any of the money that he made in the private prison market, the slave labor market.
you know, he's still got all that money.
And the funny part is that he want he wants to, you know, champion himself like a like he's a a workingclass hero.
And um he could literally help the working class by not even running for office. he could just literally just divest his large fortune if he really was principally committed to helping the working class as a billionaire.
You know, he doesn't need to be governor of California to to, you know, exact some power in in that regard.
I mean, he's got the he's got the wealth. I think he spent something like 200 million just running for governor of California. What if he just used that money to, you know, feed the homeless or something? You know, there's all kinds of I mean, all kinds of problems, right?
Especially in California.
So, I just I think u I think that really shed a lot of light. I hope you found that insightful, those two clips. We're about to bring on Butch Wear in a couple minutes. Uh, and we're we'll get more of the story. I want to get an update on um his lawsuit as well with the secretary of state the secretary of state's office and did you know did you hear that like he already uh tried to sue the secretary of state I think what whatever the state uh judicial entity they rejected him so he's he's now he's now taken his case to to to the federal courts.
So, that's sort of the next step there.
But, we must remind you that if you're in California, there's the uh the primary happening on June 2nd, Tuesday.
It's just in a few days, and we are urging everyone to write in Butch Wear.
Uh, and let me see if I can find his uh share his here it is. butchwear forgov.
Here's his website. Oh, wait. You can't see it.
Here it is. Butchwear for as in the number four. Butchwear4gov gov.com.
Butchwearforggov.com. We're fighting for a California that serves you, not corporations.
and he's got some um obviously there's all kinds of treachery when you're going in to vote in or write in on the ballot butchware. You have to follow these steps. You have to so it says step one, receive your ballot by mail before June 2nd or in person at your polling location on election day.
Step two, find the governor's race on your ballot. Step three, look for the blank writein line at the bottom of the candidate list. Fill in the bubble and write butch wear clearly in the blank.
No cursive, just plain fine print or not fine print, but you know, submit your ballot as normal. Your vote is valid, legal, and will be counted.
Here's a little bit about Dr. Butchwear.
He's a movement builder, activist, educator, organizer. Respected for his moral clarity, intellectual rigor, and commitment to listening to and amplifying the voices of the people. A gifted orator and mentor, he has spent decades working alongside communities to imagine and build pathways toward justice, dignity, and collective liberation. I am using whatever platform that I have uh to share about his campaign because and I'm not one to just endorse political candidates. My focus obviously is on the working class itself and uh teaching that it's really we need to exact power over the economy but because you know the the duopoly is going to duopolize as it's duopolizing but if there's one candidate to get behind it's wear. It's the Green Party.
I mean, they speak as if I'm speaking to you on my live streams. Like, it's the same.
There's no drop off. There's no mental gymnastics. There's no I don't have to reach and try to, you know, excuse or apologize. No, they are saying everything that I believe. And the the best part is that they're not accepting corporate money. That's how you know they're legit.
It's all about who is funding who.
Where does the money go?
Follow the money. It's the economy, stupid.
Driven by a lifelong desire to understand how societies transform, Butch devoted himself to studying how movements are built, how cultural change is produced, and how education could be a force for healing. As an academic historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, his work offers a people's history focused on abolition, social transformation, and the role of knowledge in collective uplift. As an activist, he has led protests, direct action, mutual aid efforts, and coalition with minoritized pip peoples, excuse me, not piples, but peoples.
Who funds you runs you? Thank you. Did he say that?
Exactly.
workingclass communities and student communities. His leadership reflects a rare integration of listening and action with ideas grounded in history shaped by the people most affected and tested in struggle. His work has been marked by discipline, consistency, and a refusal to separate truthtelling from responsibility. Mr. I'm sorry, Dr. Wear is not a career politician. Thank God.
He enters politics as a voice forged in scholarship and movements, compelled by the urgency of this movement to help turn insight into action. After serving as the Green Party's vice presidential nominee in 2024, he is now running for governor with a renewed green politics aimed at breaking the gridlock of the two-party duopoly.
As a Californian, an educator, and a father, Butch is deeply invested in the future of the state he calls home. His vision is bold and simple to reclaim government from corporate power and secure a just and prosperous future for California.
So, there's a there's a way for you if you have the means to donate.
If you're in uh California, obviously, we want you to vote Butch Wear. write his name in the ballot clearly, legibly.
This campaign is powered by our grassroots volunteers. You can volunteer. Join the thousands of volunteers working together to put in the governor's house.
So, there's more options, right, than just a billionaire or a politician who fights for billionaires.
Okay, so in just a minute we'll be joined by none other than Dr. Butch Wear. I'm really excited to have him on. Been wanting to talk to him for a while. Um I think um the first time I've ever collaborated with him was in uh US or C UCSB Santa Barbara and I was invited to uh this seminar and spoke at it and got to meet a lot of really great people and uh I really got to learn firsthand all of the treachery that Green Party candidates face because at the time he was running for presidency with Jill Stein.
And I got to hear from his campaign manager and other people within the Green Party just how much they've fought this uphill battle just to get on the ballot with all these states. And um it you just wouldn't believe, you know, it's it's it's a story that is under represented in mainstream media. I mean, we know that they face a national media blackout every time they run a candidate. And uh it's despicable when people well-intentioned people want to pick on the Green Party and ask, you know, where are they? Where where's the where's Jill Stein? The fact that you don't hear about them is by design.
You know, you have to go looking and seeking this information. It's not just going to hit you over the head.
And we know why. I mean, that's that's actually a testament to how effective uh the Green Party is and uh that's why they're not allowed to join debates and things like this. So, anyway, I see uh Dr. Wear is here. I'm going to invite him up on the stage and we'll get started. Um hello Dr. Wear. Good evening. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. How are you doing?
>> I'm doing well, man. How you been?
>> Doing good. Doing good. Um, yeah, we're uh we're excited to have you on. Um, and I wanted to begin by talk we were just watching a lot of your interviews and sharing about uh all the all the things all the all the issues and all and everything that you're going through with the campaign. So, the California primary is just days away. Yep.
>> June 2nd. Your opponents are Tommy Styer, Xavier Bera, two Democrats, one's a billionaire, the other's a politician that fights for billionaires apparently.
corporations in a trench coat. Y >> I was going to ask uh what do you think aside from, you know, acrewing billions of dollars in the slave labor market and the coal industry, what what separates you really from these other candidates?
>> I mean, yeah, that's a great place to start start. I'm I'm neither like an unrepentant genocidal capitalist nor a shill for for unrepentant genocidal capitalists. Uh but but I I think that that probably and and first of all, I love the question because nobody's asked the question, you know, in that in those terms like what separates you from these candidates? Um I I'm going to try to keep this simple rather than like do this university professor style. Yeah, >> I I would actually say um uh intelligence, integrity, right? Um >> it's a bit of a softball question. I mean, we we kind of already know, but you know, I I definitely wanted to ask it anyway, just just for those of people that don't know.
>> Yeah. And and you know, like ju just to be clear, um the the Democrats are u displaying for the entire world the utter moral bankruptcy that is at the core of their party. the way that they are completely unrepentant and have learned nothing from, you know, the the the mask off moment that many of us experience, you know, um post uh October 2023. Um so for me, the Democrats are buried in Gaza. They will never recover, nor should they. and the billionaire stoogge and the corporate shill that are the front runners for the Democrats now.
They too are symptoms of a moral rot at the core of a political party that has always been and let's be clear about this. It's always been a capitalist party. It's always been a white supremacist party. It's always been an imperialist party. But but the current neoliberal iteration of the Democrats is more those things even than it was before. You you cannot even see Ronald Reagan from where Gavin Newsome is currently standing. Right? the current neoliberal iteration of the Democrats are so far to the right of Reagan that Reagan looks like a milktoast liberal in comparison to today's milktoast liberals.
>> It's a great point.
>> Um, and you know, maybe we could talk a little bit about what makes Tommy Styer so bad. I'm I'm really disheartened by seeing so many of these uh, you know, celebrities, etc. It seems like Roger Waters is the only redeemable celebrity these days. What makes him so bad? I mean, he he's he's positing him he's posturing himself as this savior for the working class. He's the only one that's going to tax the billionaires, but what makes him particularly insidiously malevolent, if you will.
>> Sure. So, um I I'll start with the the part, you know, where there's been so many, you know, progressives and others that have endorsed him, right? I mean, Democratic Socialist of America, DSA California, endorsed a billionaire that is currently trying to buy election.
Care Action Council on American Islamic Relations their uh C4 endorsed Tommy Styer. So the moral bankruptcy, you know, is spreading from, you know, the kind of core rot. But that also brings us to the core, you know, sort of deficiency in Styer, which is that he is actively purchasing an election, right?
There's a there's a a Latino social uh media influencer called Fool's Gone gone wild. Um it came out that he was paid $75,000 to do a three minute segment with uh with Tommy Styer, Quinton Quarantino, Tommy.
Yeah, >> right. Also paid by Tommy Styer. Tommy Styer has paid $200 million out of his own pocket to purchase this election.
And let's just be clear, I debated Tommy Styer, okay? California Faculty Association endorsement process.
Um, it was three of us, me Styer, and Ian Calderon. Calderon tried to fight back. Poor baby. I I Sty Styer tapped out after the second question. He just kept his responses short because he knew that he had no chance to win that room or to debate me. And when we left the room, he just looked at me and he said, "Amazing job. Never seen anything like it." And walked out.
>> Wow.
>> Wait, where where can we see where where >> because they'll never release these these debates behind closed doors and endorsement processes, they are under lock and key because I've undressed these, you know, uh these these candidates. And the only reason why I mention it now with respect to Styer is does anyone think that this mediocre fraud would have viability in the gubanatorial race had he not purchased it? If if Right. Do do you see my point?
So So the first part, yes, he's odious because he's actively purchasing an election. And 92% of Americans say that we don't want our elections to go to the highest bidder because 90% of American elections are won by the candidate that spends the most. And we pretend across the board that we don't want this. But now you see all of these Democrat shills and so-called progressives completely overlooking this most cynical manipulation by an unrepentant capitalist. Which brings me to the direct answer to your question. Right.
He made hundreds of millions of dollars on private prisons and ICE detention facilities as well as as you pointed out fossil fuels. And he now does this cute white grandpa routine, you know, like, you know, and and people are supposed to overlook this. He's like, "No, no, I'm one of the good guys now." And and and what I've said is like, "Yeah, it's like saying, you know, I used to run a slave breeding plantation. Um, but but now I'm one of the good guys, right? Um, now did you give any of the money back? No, I did not. Did you free any of the people that were enslaved? No, I did not.
Right. And and to to the core of your audience, and I'll I'll stop before we get into Bera. Styer antiBDS.
>> He wants it to still be illegal for you to boycott, divest, or sanction the state of Israel. He has been pro-ab15.
AB715 was the legislation that Gavin Newsome also endorsed that makes it illegal to teach real Palestinian history. You can essentially be criminalized for telling the truth about Israel in the California educational system. Tommy Styer still to this day refuses to call Gaza a genocide. So >> that's crazy.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> I didn't know that. I didn't actually know what his stance on Israel was, but I'm not surprised to to hear that he's, you know, towing the line like a two-state solutionist would. One thing we we just watched uh some amazing clips from you your uh your Katie Halper interview and uh specifically with Hassan we they showed a she showed a clip of him saying something like well Tommy Styer is interesting and I don't really look at the uh the background uh the the the background history almost likening his entire uh career as a venture capitalist as like just an aberration or or just a you know a personal characteristic like oh he's bald or something like >> and and and and instead he's he's saying I look at the I look at the person's policies but really what you're saying is you're just looking at his words.
That's just his rhetoric. He's just saying these things right now. But actually his policies or what he's done as a private venture capitalist. Those are his policies. That's how he enriched himself. That's what put him in uh the position that he's in too. And you also brought up a really good point about um how he's he's he's duplicitous. He's he's do he's looking at what Trump what Elon Musk what all these uh how you put it. He's a he's a run-of-the-mill billionaire and he's trying to he >> wants to be a mega billionaire.
>> He wants to be a mega billionaire and he he sees how Trump has done this. He's seen how a bunch of these billionaires have done this. Married the you know that state corporate complex like we we we talk about. Um, and you know, I I I feel like so many people are falling for it again. And it's just it's really disheartening.
>> Democrat voters like to be lied to. Um, you know, right?
>> They really do.
>> James Baldwin famously said, "I can't believe what you say because I see what you do."
>> You do. Yeah.
>> Right. So the idea that this, you know, really ruthless venture capitalist um uh is able to persuade people like you have to understand he's not persuading them, he's buying them, >> right? He you know, and he spent, you know, literally a hundred million dollars on YouTube ads, you know, so that he can be, you know, everywhere at all times, you know, um and, you know, constantly putting his his name, you know, in front of the public. And of course this this is in in every other country on earth illegal, right? you know, like >> in and I need I need people to understand this that like even in Europe with all of its, you know, rising fascism, with all of its, you know, colonial history, you can't buy elections. If you're if you're a qualified if you're a qualified political party, you have the appropriate number of signatures, then everybody gets the same amount of airtime. Everybody's allowed to participate in the debates. Everybody gets the same number of commercials and people, you know, make their evaluations. We have come to accept it as normal that someone can literally just flood the domain with money and produce electoral outcomes. And and and just to be clear, if you can purchase an election, you do not have a democracy, you have an oligarchy, right? And so so the Democrats, you know, they canled their whole little um you know, they called it the Fighting oligarchy tour, but I just called it the oligarchy tour, right, with Bernie Sanders and AOC um you know, a while back. So >> because they they have firmly cemented themselves as an unrepentant party of oligarchy and we haven't even gotten to Bera yet.
>> I was about to say like how much of a like how much of this is real? You know, it's it just seems like controlled opposition. What what really is there is there really much of a difference between a Xavier Bera and a Tommy Styer?
I know that the the main difference that everyone keeps saying is that Xavier Bera is actually being funded by these corporations.
>> Yeah.
>> But like, you know, Tom is still running as a Democrat candidate. He's still part of the DNC. You know, like this this who who is really behind all this?
>> Excellent question. So, um, the day that Eric Swallwell dropped out of the race, um, I was ahead of Javier Bisera in every poll. Okay, Javier Ber Bera was routinely polling, um, 1 to 2%, I was routinely polling 2 to 5%, which doesn't sound like a lot, but at that point in time, the leading candidates, Styr, Swallwell, and Porter, were all at 10%. So, I was within five points of the the leading Democrat candidates.
Suddenly um the next day every Democrat influencer that you know came out for Basera and Basera became this inevitable candidate. So what you need to understand is that the California Democrat establishment chose Basera as the empty vessel through which they would pursue their kind of corporate um you know extractive you know he's a Chevron guy he's a healthcare guy he accepted a million from Uber expect accepted a million from Meta so he is he he's he's he's like a a Mexican Kamala right there an empty colored vessel for white supremacist imperialist policy. So he brownwashes it the same way that Kamla, you know, black/brwashed it. Um and and ju just to be clear, he has no popular support. There are no people actually behind either of these candidates. Styer has raised $160,000 from candidates of some sorry from people that aren't named Tommy Styer.
>> Right. It's a tiny amount.
>> That's crazy. Yeah, >> we we've raised three times that much, right? So So where does the illusion of Styer's viability come from? Where does the illusion of Basera's viability come from? It comes from the loot. They are purchasing it and they're and they're creating essentially this fiction in the media because to this day, even despite the fact that his ads are popping up everywhere, I've still got twice the social media following that Tommy Styer has. He makes a post, it gets 300 likes.
>> Oh yeah. I've noticed that >> it gets 15,000 and and the reason for that is that that they they're they're Malcolm, you know what Malcolm means to me? He's always over my shoulder. He was my pathway to Islam and to the black radical tradition. Malcolm said Malcolm said, "The media is the most powerful entity on earth. It turns the innocent into the guilty and the guilty into the innocent." And that's power because it controls the minds of the masses. And what and what and what I would add to what Malcolm said is that it turns winners into losers and losers into winners because it creates a narrative.
It creates the illusion. Those are paper tigers. Um, and want to really know what's what's taking place behind the scenes. Like I'm going to be depicted as this outsider that has to struggle through a right-in candidacy to be competitive with these two big candidates who have quote unquote viability. On April 22nd, Rogue DNC held an online poll about a debate that I wasn't allowed to participate in, and I'll get to that in just a minute. They asked, "Which candidate would you like to hear from?" 3,200 respondents. For context, your average Emerson or Gallup poll will get a thousand respondents.
Right? So, this is a large sample size for an online poll. It's not scientific, but it's a significant sample size.
>> I wasn't in the debate.
the the poll. I won the poll. 45% which 33% Javier Basera 17% Tommy Styer 6% Katie Porter. So So where are the actual supporters? It's all AstroTurf. It's all purchased influencers. It's all online bots. We outside, right? Um and and that's that's what made them move to strike me from the ballot so that you would have to pursue a writing candidacy because we have actually been able to build a movement and we've been able to build momentum statewide San Diego to Humboldt, Central Cove, Central Valley.
Um all of our in-person events are always full, right? The >> So that's the real threat. the the we we have posed an electoral threat because the truth is is the these are very mediocre candidates. Um you know very very mediocre >> and it seems like we never even heard of them until like a couple weeks ago.
Suddenly they're just like you say astroturf they're propped up and they're the big they're the bigger name now everybody's talking about them and it's like where were they? Who are these people? Um, but this is why I wanted to talk to you, Butch, because you represent the authentic antagonism to all of this and we're not getting it anywhere else and it's underrepresented and uh I appreciate you taking uh taking us through it. I I wanted to also ask you about uh the saga of disruptor fuge and sabotage. I I swear that that interview that you gave where you went through in painstaking detail, I must have watched it like three or four times just to catch every little blip along the way that they're trying to, you know, undermine your candidacy. But, um, who and who exactly is behind all this?
Maybe you could give us like an update because I know you took the the case to the federal courts.
>> We're still we're still we're still in federal court, right? Um, and you know, the the the judge um did not grant our temporary restraining order, but the judge is still hearing the case because that we we our case is still rock solid.
So, here's here's what happened. The short version for those that are, you know, for those that are joining our program late, right? Mhm.
>> Um, in March, the Secretary of State's office sent me an email at 4:50 p.m. Um, claiming that I had made two redaction errors in what should have been redacted copies of my tax returns that were going to be published on the Secretary of State's website. They keep an unredacted copy for themselves, for the records, and they publish the redacted versions.
They said that I made two redaction errors in 130 plus pages of tax returns.
And they said if I don't fix them in person in hard copy in Sacramento by 5:00 p.m.
>> 10 minutes to come comply with a document request that I'd be disqualified from the ballot. I actually couldn't believe that they were serious, you know, when when when I saw the I didn't see the message until 6 p.m.
because I was actually doing a podcast at that time. Um, long story short, we immediately take them to court to get a temporary restraining order so that they don't disqualify me from the ballot on these flimsy grounds. In the hearing, they have to submit into evidence all of the paperwork that I filed with the Secretary of State. Our lawyer goes through it and proves from what they submitted that they had the correct paperwork in their possession on time the whole time. The whole thing was actually just made up. And but what they said is that the voters's guide and the ballots have already been mailed out.
There's nothing that we can do to change it now.
>> Convenient.
Can very convenient. Very suspicious.
Who who is but And so just to be clear, >> it's the Secretary of State, but then you take it to the to the courts and then the courts even though they see the treachery, they still vote against you, right? I mean, they still >> So, it's like whoever's behind this, they have they have the the courts, they have the the state office, they they they've got all kinds >> the way that the way that Trump utilizes the Republican controlled Supreme Court is the way that Gavin Newsome utilizes the judiciary in the state of California, >> like his personal law firm, right?
>> Personal law firm. Um they'll So, so the fix was in the hit was, you know, was was out from the beginning. and and you ask who's really behind it and what is it really about? So, um as I mentioned, we were polling as high as 5% at in that in that time period. Um, and what that meant, and this is, I think, the root of it, what that meant is that I was going to be they they were going to be required to allow me to participate in all of the nationally televised debates because I was ahead of multiple Democrat candidates in the polls that were being included in those debates. So, April 22nd, April 29th, and May 6th, there were major debates, and I had already been invited to the biggest one of those, April 28th, which was CBSLA. So they disqualified me from the ballot so that they could have a pretext to exclude me from the debates because there's no way that Barry Weiss at CBS News was going to allow the CBS LA debate to become a referendum on divestment from occupation. The California gubanatorial race um should be a referendum on whether we prefer to spend our tax dollars incinerating kids in other countries or educating them in this one, feeding them in this one, healing them in this one. Um, and so the same forces that ran that spent $30 million to knock Thomas Massie out of a Republican primary in Kentucky are the forces that were moving to knock me off the ballot and attempt to slow the momentum of the campaign because they know full well what would have happened in those debates. And it's not speculative. It's not me being boastful or chesty. I participated in debates with all of those candidates and it was a bloodbath because I listen they had to >> they had to allow me to participate right because got a million votes for the White House the in many ways um the most visible national figure in the race right at the at the outset of the race.
So, SEIU Local 1000 um union holds their uh their candidate forum August late August of 2025.
>> It's me, Katie Porter, Javier Bisera, Tony Thurman, Betty Styer's not in yet.
Swallwell's not in yet. There was another billionaire, Scott Kubc. He was so shook he got up and walked off the stage halfway through the debate. I'm not I'm not making this up. He left because I was banging on billionaires as I do, right? So they closed the doors, hold the vote of the the union membership, SEIU Local 1000. I beat Javier Bera, Katie Porter, and Betty Ye, the three top Democrat candidates. I beat their vote total together.
>> They asked best candidate. I beat the next three. I dominated that debate. So much so that the next debate which was scheduled to take place a week later, an Asian and Pacific Islander group was organizing it and I had been invited to participate, they changed the format the night before. No more back and forth. No more multiple questions where each candidate gets a turn because the the the dynamic interaction was highlighting the difference in candidate quality and platform in ways that were utterly crippling for those Democrat candidates.
So somebody said, "If we can't get him out, we got to contain him." So what they did instead was they allowed each candidate to just give an eight minute static speech. That's it. They're trying to muzzle you, Butch.
>> And and I still buried them because they don't have an ortor that is trained in like the black liberation tradition.
They don't have a university professor that's been teaching for 25 plus years and can, you know, produce chapter and verse on, you know, political history or revolutionary theory. And they also don't have anybody, frankly, you know, that that grew up in poverty. They don't have anybody, you know, my father had a sixth grade education. I have seen, you know, like the the the the the business end of American white supremacy and racism and imperialism. And so when I speak about the policy interventions that we need to take care of marginalized people, workingclass people, right? I'm not speaking in an abstract way, I'm not Nancy Pelosi kneeling with a Kente cloth on. I'm not AOC with a hijab, you know, on. Like I I I I embody >> You're not cosplaying. You're not laring. Yeah.
>> Because because this is what I've done for like for my whole life. I converted to Islam at 15. I was organizing a revolutionary pan-Africanist socialist reading group when I was 19. I was teaching I was teaching Walter Rodney and France Fenon and Amlar Cabraw and Assatada Shakur. I've been doing this for 30 plus years. So, and and and people are ready. people are ready for something other than you know team blue genocide and team red fascism. So the the threat the electoral threat that me appearing in those debates would have posed would have you know >> we would be having a very different conversation right about the nature of this race because their their their approach has been to make sure that no one ever hears me speak on the issues that are of critical importance to to voters.
And when you say that they they were changing the format of the debate to so that they could muzzle you essentially, who who are we speaking about? Are they DNC operatives that are behind the scenes? You know, what kind of laws are they violating?
>> This is such a great question. So, we've we've since learned actually some of the inside workings of what actually has been happening throughout this race. So that SEIU local 1000 debate that I mentioned before, the the leadership of that union actually did not invite me to participate in their formal endorsement process despite the fact that I won their debate.
Why? We found out that from people inside the organization that after that debate, they went to the Democrats and said, "You better get another candidate in this field because Butch Wear is going to wipe the floor with these people." which explained something that we had seen inside the campaign but didn't know what its genesis was which was what that Eric Swallwell who entered the race relatively late he actually gave us our first polling numbers because when he was doing his feasibility study on whether he was going to run people in California that are Green Party folks got these surveys and so they sent them to us. The first four questions were about me.
>> Wow. the first four questions on the form and and and it was only because he was surveying about me that we learned that I was polling at 2% in December of last year which for context Mandani didn't get to 2% until March right before his June primary. So we were already well ahead of the curve and we would have had no way of knowing this because we couldn't afford to waste money on polls. were trying to build field operations and and frankly all of the things that the Green Party has never effectively done. Like the Green Party has always had the best platform, but they've never had, you know, an activist and organizer as the kind of key political theorist. And I'm trying to build the infrastructure on the ground county by county, block by block, right? So that's where we were putting our resources, not into into polling.
But all of that is just to say Swallwell was the guy that was tagged into the race by the corporate establishment to try to to give them a candidate that could hold up. And then when he it turned out that he's a whole ass, you know, rapist, then then they had to redirect. So that's when Swallwell went from being the empty suit that the corporate establishment was going to support to Javier Basera now being that empty suit.
But now they no longer had to deal with me anymore on the debate stage. But I can promise you this. Ask any of those.
I I was talk Tony Thurman who's who's actually he's a de Democrat candidate also, but a black man similar generation to mine. He's at least been human in his correspondence with me. He said, "Yeah, you won that debate. There was no question." He's like, "You didn't have to tell me about the de the vote." He's like, "You had that room." They all know they they all know that there is not a single one of them that can hold up against me in a debate. And that's what they fear. And that's also still the nature of the opportunity that we have because it's only going to take a million votes to finish in the top two in this primary despite the chainery, right? And if we do that, then that means between June and November, whichever corporate Democrat survives their party is going to um their process is going to have to deal with me, >> right? Um and so so that's why we're pushing everybody to still go ahead write me in. Um, we we have an electoral base that leftist candidates usually don't have. In so far as 53% of Muslim Americans already voted green in the 2024 presidential election, they voted for me to be the VP. There are a million Muslims in the state of California. It's only going to take a million votes to finish in the top two. So, we just need to mobilize the 18 to 24 demographic, which is, you know, largely anti-ionist, and a lot of the marginalized communities that want protection from ICE, that want universal healthcare. Um, if we're able to to to get out the vote between now and Tuesday, then we can still create that one-in-one matchup, and that's one that neither neither Styer nor Basera could survive. They know it. So, just to recap that, we're we need a million votes in order for you to continue the into the uh the election this November, the general election, and and you would be able to uh be on the debate stage if that's the case. Like, >> I would be on the ballot. I would be on the debate stage. is the top two candidates. It's a jungle primary, which is usually, by the way, designed to protect blue and red, but California leans so far kind of liberal and progressive that there are more independents than Republicans. So, it left them open to an attack from from somebody like me. So, >> what does that Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
>> Well, you're good. You're good.
>> What does that mean? Jungle primary, right? I've never heard that.
>> So, so all of the parties are in the primary together. There's no Democrat primary. There's no Republican primary.
there's no Green Party primary. All of the candidates compete against it's like a cage match, you know, WWE style, you know, um and instead of just, you know, one person survives two. Um so the the top two candidates, the top two vote getters, um are going to be the only choices on the ballot in November, one way or the other. Um, and this is also part of the reason why I strategically targeted this specific election because what it means is that you only need to get between 16 and 20% of the vote in order to finish in the top two. They designed it to try to exclude third parties. Um, but actually it structurally exposed them and they realized that because I I would I would have run past them with any one of those three televised debates, right? people aren't stupid. Um, you know, I often say the American people aren't fools.
They've just been fooled. Like they're they're constantly propagandized, but when they see somebody that um, you know, that they know has authenticity, intelligence, and integrity isn't for sale, they want that, right? You know, they they don't want their politicians to work for Israel. They don't want their politicians to work for corporations if they even even people that don't agree with me on a lot of stuff would would rather take their chances with me than with somebody that they know is just a puppet for a corporation or for Apac.
>> And the biggest criticism I think we hear from people when we advocate for the Green Party is like they everybody gives way to dumerism and apathy and say, "Oh, well, they can never win an election." And they they expect this.
It's funny because I think it's ironic actually that they they they they tell us that we're uh we're you know idealistic for believing in some spontaneous revolution or that we could win this election or that. But we never say that. We're we're you know it's it's actually uh idealistic to just think that, you know, one election is going to save everything. We're going to have immediate success. I actually throw it back on to them. They they're the ones that they're not choosing to back a third party candidate because they want immediate success. But I learned through your campaign for presidency in 24 that, you know, if if the Green Party could secure I and I forget the numbers. You can help me.
>> But but if 5% if if if the Green Party could just capture 5% of the electorate, then you would be able to uh have uh license to all this uh campaign funding.
And I'm sure you can put it more than that. Well, I I think I think that this is a really important point. Um, and you're connecting a couple of points.
So, the first is about the the the kind of psychological warfare and the SCOP.
And then the second is about the investment in actually building independent third party power, right?
What that could look like even if you're not winning a presidential election, what it actually looks like to build third party power. So, I'll I'll wrap those two up to to together with with your permission. So, the first the first thing that happens is that they reverse cause and effect, right? They'll tell you, "I can't vote for a Green Party candidate because they can't win." When the reality is is that they can't win because you've told yourself that you won't vote for a third party candidate.
>> Thank you.
>> Right. You know, it it is >> when I I heard when I heard you say that the first time, it's like a huge light bulb when I'm like, "Ah, thank you.
It's it's the it's the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes. And and it's and it's the it's the result of decades of conditioning. I just saw Jared Ball um Dr. Jarro Bog, you know, great black historian, and he was citing a book and and I I missed the title of the book, but he he pointed out that um they've actually been able to show the historian that he was reading that the lesser of two evils argument was actually formulated as a CIA SCOP in the 1960s to stop the emergence of a true left party. So like quite literally we have had we mil military weaponsgrade propaganda thrown at generations of us saying you're going to throw your vote away if you vote on a third party. And the these narratives don't come from nowhere. They're spending billions of dollars to drill people and in order to get these people to argue against their own common sense. Now now I'm going to give you some figures on this. 63% of registered voters in a Gallup poll in 2023 said that these two parties do such a quote poor job that we need an independent third party. That number is 70% when it's independents. It's 53% when it's registered Democrats. It's 48% when it's registered Republicans. So even the people that identify with team blue genocide and team red fascism know that the two parties are trash. So, so then how do they allow themselves time and time again to be gas lit into voting for the thing that they all know that they want and need, right? And and the answer is it's that weapons grade propaganda and it can be debunked so easily, right? Greens are opposed to the electoral college. We want the abolition of the electoral college and we want rank choice voting. We want proportional representation because those things will take the winner takes all out and that takes away the lesser of two evils, right? So that gets rid of it. But as long as you have the electoral college, which is a hangover from the slaveocracy, right? The electoral college was designed in order to protect slave owning states from free states um and to to keep them essentially from having slavery abolished. So that's why the electoral college existed. As long as we have it, your state is going to in a presidential election, national election, is going to go either blue or red based on its demography in 43 44 of the states. In point of fact, every single person in those states is throwing their vote away, whether they vote blue or red. The only way that your vote can count is if you use it to build independent third-party power, which you say that you want, and yet you refuse to invest in building. And and and people like, but your candidate's not going to win. It's like, okay, maybe not. Maybe not this time. Maybe this time, but but even now, what happens if you have a stalemate? What happens if Michigan goes green because of the Muslim population and DC goes green in the uh with respect to the electoral college leaving neither blue nor red with enough votes. Right?
You can immediately create a third party that requires coalition building.
>> Right? That way you have an independent voice that doesn't belong to the duopoly. Well, well, isn't that a better use of your vote if you're living in California or in Texas or in New York State or in Arkansas than throwing your vote on a pile of either blue or red?
>> I would say yes. I would agree with you on that. Um, but wow. I mean, just you put it all so very well. Um, can you explain for us what kind of an impact on the rest of the country that a a Green Party candidate would bring as the governor of California?
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for this.
So, this is what they're really afraid of, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Because California is the third largest economy on the planet behind China and Germany, right? If you if you you separate the US into 50 independent states, it's literally China, Germany, California. The GDP is 4.1 trillion. So >> bigger than Russia, >> right? So is Zionism going to survive the winter if the state of California divests?
>> I think by the math, if I I'm not a mathematician, but I would say probably not.
>> Probably not. And if California gets universal singlepayer health care with its pop a population of 40 million people and the largest market, the largest market for pharmaceuticals, are the health care companies as currently constituted going to survive if I them in California?
>> It's like the domino theory, right? If California falls, well, it's going to be a cascading effect, right? Is the Democrat party going to survive if it loses the basis of its electoral power and of its economic pull? Are you starting to understand why Gavin Newsome in all likelihood gave a direct order to Shirley Weber, the Secretary of the State, to find something that we can use to knock him off the ballot? I don't care if it won't hold up on appeal in federal court.
>> It's just to slow you down, right?
>> Just to slow it's just to slow you down because we cannot have this people. This is the thing. So I I talked about reading Malcolm's autobiography and it was liberatory and emancip emancipatory for me in so many ways. Um, and so was reading the Quran the next night because in the Quran, you know, which I read is the most radical manifesto. Like it it's an anti-imperialist book for me because all of the heroes are people that are standing up to emperors, right? Abraham, you know, John and Jesus are in the face of Caesar, right? Um, Moses and Aaron, the real children of Israel, not the Ashkenazis, are standing up to to Pharaoh. Um, and what I learned in this book is this inevitable truth that I later found in all of our faiths and philosophies, all of our sacred and secular traditions, which is that all empires fall, right? All empires fall. A lot of us in leftist spaces or in organizing spaces, we behave as though we think that the empire is invincible, whereas I know that its collapse is inevitable. I know how fragile it is.
And and I believe that we are witnessing the extinction burst of Zionism. And we are >> I say that all the time. Oh my god.
>> And we are witnessing the extinction burst of the American imperialism in which Zionism is embedded. Right. Yes.
So, so for me and and and Malcolm >> taught me this. Malcolm said, "Never let your enemy tell you how many of you there are. Never let the man that you're against form your opinions for you." So for me, I perceive the fragility of that empire and I know that with a wellplaced blow, a strike in the state of California that the rest of the dominoes are inevitable and they know it too.
We've even seen this actually taking place in the UK. Now in the UK it's uh we're our Green Party here is actually bigger has had more electoral success.
Greens have won 57% of the elections in which we've stood a candidate for office in the last three years nationwide.
That's 78% in the state of California.
The idea that Greens don't run for lower offices, that's just nonsense. We run and we win those elections all the time.
The UK though, they've been able to make massive leaps forward just in the last year because they won one congressional election, right? And and when that happened, they surpassed the conservative and liberal parties in national public opinion polls after winning just one congressional seat.
Well, what's going to happen if we win a high-profile election like this one in California or Greg Stoker's congressional run in Texas, right?
Because people already hate these parties. And the only reason that they don't go green already is because they think that Greens can't win. Except we will, right?
>> And when that happens, there's a series of dominoes that fall. So if you want to strike at the heart of Empire now, like help us win in California. Like get the word to your folks in California. Tell them to write that name on on on that ballot. You know, support Greg in in his um general election in November.
support, you know, candidates that are actually running from outside of the duopoly because all of the the the fear-mongering that team blue is giving you it's because we are actually an existential threat. Um I I actually I think it's not just Zionism that's doomed. I think the Democrats are doomed. I think the Democrat party is buried in Gaza.
I I >> I believe that. Yeah.
>> I think they killed themselves there.
>> And you know, they did the DNC postmortem autopsy report. Not one word about Israel. Not one word about Gaza.
Such a big tell.
>> Playing in our faces. I mean, >> deeply unserious.
>> Deeply unserious. Well said. Well said.
>> Um uh I just have a few more questions for you.
>> Yeah, I've got as much time as you need, man.
>> Okay, awesome. Um I was just thinking about this because you know we're talking about Tommy Styer. Uh, do you think that he was convinced or or placed in this race as a as a as a butchwear standin to try to capture that progressive liberal like anti-billionaire uh, you know, constituency? I mean, it I don't and I might be way off base here, but it just seems >> he Yeah, if if so, it's the worst possible, >> right? I mean, I just don't like there had to have been some sort of meeting behind closed doors where they're they talk to Tom. They're like, "Look, you got to do this. You got to run."
>> No, no, I I did I that that's the I think this is the first place where I've ever found us disagreeing. Um >> Okay. You don't think so?
>> Well, the reason is this is that um Bera is running as a cutout for the California Democrat establishment. Styer is running for Styer.
>> Okay. Right. The so Bera has no support.
He's all astroturf. But there are tens of millions of dollars of YouTube ads being run right now attacking Styer and they're all being paid for by the California Democrat establishment because Styer is running for Styer and Basera is the cardboard cutout that you know for the for for for the Democrat establishment. Um, as I like to say, he's he's 10 corporations in a trench coat. Like he's not even a real person.
and he's just an elomeration of of corporations. So Styer, to return to kind of where where we started, um Styer's the the the positions that he's marking out for himself right now are very very clearly stolen from from from my platform because they're significantly more progressive than the way that he tried to run for president in 2020. So he he basically watched me carve out the lane and then just decided to, you know, kind of neutralize a bunch of the talking points and then flood it with a bunch of money. Now, he won't do that with respect to to to Zionism because he's an actual Zionist, right?
And he's not getting paid to be a Zionist. He's just a Zionist, you know, right? Um, so Styer is running because as we said at the outset, at first I thought it was a vanity run and I I even wrote a whole song, you know, like I like I I I'm the first political candidate ever to release diss tracks as campaign ads and and and I mean and in the the the song on Styer, I I I I concluded that it was a vanity run. I I'll give you the verse. The the verse is >> let's go.
>> Tom Styer in the dryer fire. When I spin his block, he a billionaire and liar about where he bought his stock. Boy, stop. He cocked. Heard just spent 400 million campaign. Damn shame. But I guess that [ __ ] chilling like champagne said plain can't trust no one worth a billion. Run for vanity and many should have gave it to the children. A calamity of tragedy came by a personality got Karen Ped mad at me and swallow well too cuz you got to work for Israel to run for team blue. Said you got to work for Israel to run for team blue. So right.
drop.
>> So I I thought that it was a run for vanity. I said run for vanity and man, he should have gave it to the children because imagine what he could have done with the 400 million he spent running for president or the 200 million that he spent running. Like if he was really a a class traitor, he would be an unbillionaire. He would not be a billionaire.
>> Thank you.
>> And and the thing is is the Democrats keep deliluding themselves into thinking the good billionaires are going to protect us from the bad billionaires.
The billionaires are the damn problem.
They are not the solution. They are the core and essence of the problem. So Styer now plays progressive, right? Um and but if you think that he's going to give you universal singlepayer healthcare, there's a bridge in San Francisco I'd very much like to sell you, right? You know, like would you would you like the Bay Bridge or the Golden Gate?
I can give you a two for one special, you know, because because they they they have been playing Lucy pulling the football from in front of Charlie Brown.
As Democrats, you know, they're never going to give you universal singlepayer healthcare. Tom Styer had the nerve to say he was he was in favor of reparations. And then he tried to show up in L Mer Park in South Central and got run the hell out of town. He called the police on actual reparations activist. You can't make this stuff up.
So if you think that that guy's a progressive, you need your head examined. He is playing you because he wants proximity to executive authority so that he can enrich himself. Stop the tape. Run this. Cut this segment. If if Tommy Styer wins, god forbid, mark the date, Thursday, May 28th. I guarantee you that by the end of his first term as California governor, he will have doubled his net worth.
at the very least. Right. Yeah. Go ahead.
>> That's why he's doing it. And and I've only seen one investigative journalist point out that he still has his kids in position for all of his ecological, you know, businesses which are really just warmed over, you know, um you know, fossil fuel stuff again, but they do carbon credits and other fake environmentalism. Um he's he's still got um you know his uh old business cronies in all of those same ICE detention facilities and other other places.
Where's the imalments?
This this man is going to take our tax dollars and funnel them directly into his own enterprises the exact same way that Donald Trump has done, the same way that Kushner has done, the same way that Musk did. And and I need these man. I'm about to say something crazy. I need these brain deadad liberals I need I need these braindead liberals to develop pattern recognition skills.
Okay, I'm old enough to remember when they let Elon Musk on Saturday Night Live because they thought that he was a lib and one of the good ones. They right people do you know what I'm saying? They remember when people thought that Bill Gates was a philanthropist. They right people people because we worship power because we live in a society where we are propagandized with capitalist nonsense from the cradle of the grave and we still actually believe that that guy is a billionaire because he's smarter than the rest of us. Bring on the IQ test, Tom. I will take that test right next to you, you know, to today.
These these people are not smart. They are unethical. They He He He was born rich. Born on third base. Act like he hit a triple. Right.
>> I'm trying I got to take a note of all the metaphors that you're that you're spitting to us because you are a master of figurative language. And I'm always trying to think of metaphors to express effectively what we're living through.
The duopoly. It's not a democracy. We have the illusion of choice. They give us good billionaire or bad billionaire, take your pick. They make you think that we have uh choice, but really the thing is they've re So the the really the thing is that they removed all of the meaningful choices before they showed us the board game that they're playing. You know, they take away the pieces that mattered to us. We didn't even know they were moves on the table. And lo and behold, I'm thinking of that as I'm learning about uh how they took your name off the ballot and all the all of the illegal sabotage you've been facing.
Um but I was going to ask you for any other metaphors to >> I got one for you. I got one for you. I got one for you. Ask Ask and you shall receive. So this one's not from me. This one is from uh from these books that I keep behind me. This is Julius Ner, first president of Tanzania. um you know, African socialist, revolutionary.
He said, "Of course, the United States is a single party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
>> That's it, >> right? The the the illusion of of choice and and when what when I want, you know, it's not just the the the terms of phrase, let's let's use, you know, let's talk with our hands also, right? because figurative language is often best when given you know like um justicular you know emphasis. So, let's make together a ven diagram of the donors to the Democrats and then let's add the donors to the Republican right party and then oh wait actually okay so >> it's the same it's just a circle it's just >> you're staring through a single circle and and that's how you know follow the damn money and and and and this is where I think so many people are fed up fed up with the system and it's the reason why I think that they perceive the electoral threat first. You know, the the having the the black radical tradition represented inside the Green Party creates new kinds of coalition, you know, building options, you know, right right off the top. like it's a it's a new kind of um you know uh there's new political coalitions that are possible but we're also drawing a lot of independents centrists even right-leaning folks because across the ideological spectrum right now um people are seeing through the corporate manipulation they're seeing through the Zionist manipulation and and when even when like Trump voters hear me banging on Gavin Newsome and banging on libs. They often come over. I I I was talking to an 82year-old white farmer from Wyoming on a flight the other day.
Um we just struck up a conversation and he was like, "You got a good head on your shoulders. I'm going to tell everybody that I know out here to vote for you." Right? Because I'm I'm not playing their dumb fake culture war, you know? Like because listen, I don't care who you pray with or who you lay with. I honest to God don't care. Your your rights are sacred and non-negotiable and your elected officials are supposed to serve you, not create a fake culture war so that they can siphon all of the money out of your pockets and steal your civil liberties and you'll just nod and smile because they've reinforced your identity in some, you know, way. And on my website it says solidarity beyond ideology or identity, right? That in the end we've got to stand up to this capitalist exploitative class, these these these corporations. And and I say it to the right-wing folks, too. I just sometimes leave out capitalists. I was like, you got to stand up to these corporations. And like damn right, you know.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Right. Speak to people in a language that they'll understand because the political program that we're bringing >> bridges ideological divides.
So refreshing to listen to you. Um I want to ask you I just have a like maybe one or two more questions and then I just uh I'll let you go. But um >> I feel like right now I mean like you speaking to the urgency of the situation. You've characterized this as a war on choice or a war of choice.
>> And I feel like more now than ever everything's being laid bare. And I'm reminded of a Prussian quote that went something like this. Uh, class consciousness is knowing what side of the fence you're on and class analysis is knowing who's on that side with you.
And I and I've heard you speak about um, >> beautiful.
>> I've heard you speak about this and I'm going to give you a chance, I guess, to maybe just reiterate it because I think our audience should hear it. Why do you think that there are so many leftist, so-called leftist streamers and content creators that pay lip service to anti-billionaire, anti-Zionist rhetoric, but when it comes to even the bare minimum of meaningful action, they endorse and vote for billionaires and Zionist cops? What What do you think is holding them to to that camp?
>> It's a it's it's a great question. Um I think that in the end um it so I I have to process things through my own personal uh biography a lot of times because it helps me understand how people make meaning. For me what allows me to unplug is the kind of radical refusal of the categories and the propaganda and the conditioning that somebody like Malcolm represented. For me as a 15-year-old, he got me free in here and in here, right? And so therefore, I could have an unfettered assessment of how the world around me functioned. My colonizer no longer owned any real estate inside my consciousness.
>> And I think that that at the bot, yes, some of these influencers and other folks, they are bought and paid for.
Like they've been bought off and that's fine. We understand how that works. But I think that the deeper problem is that people actually lack a revolutionary imagination. They lack the capacity to imagine anything outside of capitalism or imperialism or the currently established order. So when push comes to shove those lesser of two evils arguments, it actually appeals to a fear-based instinct in them because >> because somewhere in their head they really do think the Republicans are worse and and the thing is is I know better, right? Malcolm said the white liberal is the most dangerous thing in the Western Hemisphere, right? You're worried, not you, but they out there are worried about Donald Trump. You and I are worried about Gavin Newsome, right?
Because we know that Gavin Newsome is going to do the exact same policies, but he's going to do it with a the a Bill Clinton slick Willie 2.0. Um, you know, a smooth criminal and lives love to be lied to. And so, he's going to tell them the lies that they want to hear. And at least when Trump does it, they instinctively know to resist. Whereas when Nuome did it or Obama did it or Bill Clinton when Bill Clinton gutted the American working class through NAFTA, the libs clapped and applauded.
When Bill Clinton and Joe Biden crafted the the the the most heinous carceral state policies that locked up my whole generation, many of my peers doing time for things that cannabis companies now make lots of money off of. Right? Do you know what I'm saying? And some of them are still serving time. So all of that is just to say that that that a lot of them they have this fear-based response because they really believe that the bad guy is out there, right? Whereas I learned from Malcolm Malcolm said the liberal is a fox. It bears its teeth.
You think it's smiling. You're on the menu.
>> The conservative is a wolf. When it bears its teeth, it's into a vicious snarl that leaves the black man no illusion as to where he stands.
So exactly. So so, so for the black radical tradition, Malcolm being the exemplar in this case, but Fred Hampton, Huey P. Newton, Assad Shakur, they took similar analyses. They understood that that single party that Neri talked about has two a effects. One is fascism and the other is fascism, right? And and that it's two predators. They differ only in the way that they hunt. One through cunning, style, it sneaks in.
You think that, you know, that that it's on your side. It gets up close and it knives you. The other just squares up, right? Yeah. And as for me, I mean, you call me an accelerationist if you want, but I actually prefer just to square up, you know, >> because my enemy coming, whereas a lot a lot of, you know, like my own community, black community, it infuriates me >> that that so many, you know, black folks vote Democrats when the Democrats don't do anything for us. And Malcolm told us in ' 64, he said, "You put them first and they put you last, and that makes you a jump." Right? We don't get anything. They didn't protect affirmative action. They didn't protect DEI. They didn't protect the women's right to choose. They didn't protect the Voting Rights Act. And here we go giving away our power to people who hold us in utter content contempt because the Democrats couldn't win an election for dog catcher without getting 80% of the black vote, right? And and and what do we get in return for it?
So, so that like for me that liberal, that Democrat party, that AOC more dangerous because I know that they'll they'll allow absolutely heinous, you know, Obama assassinated Gaddafi and there's now an actual slave trade in Libya, right? You know, do you know what I'm saying? Like, and and people pretend that the greatest scandal of Obama's presidency was a tan suit, right? It's like, no, it was the killing Yemen kids with drones. It was the right. Um, so yeah, I'll give you one more since you asked for the for the for the metaphors.
I told you what Malcolm said about about foxes and wolves. This one's for me, but it's on the same topic. Why do they do it? Right. Why do they do it?
>> It's that fear-based response. That's what I pointed to a moment ago.
>> Yeah. So the the sheep is going to live its entire life in fear of a wolf only to be consumed by the shepherd, >> right? So >> and and who's the shepherd in this metaphor? Would that be the Democrat party? The liberals, >> right? The liberals. So they're going to keep saying the big bad wolf, Trump, Trump, Trump. The Nazis are out there, you know. Don't go over there. It's right. The bad guys are over there. Stay close to me.
It's safe.
>> It's great. Yeah, they you know and and I feel like we can conceptualize it. We can we can we can share this information and and and speak the truth and people will understand it, but there still seems to be this disconnect because it they always end up going for the Democrats and you know they make up all these excuses and apologies for why they have to vote blue no matter who and it's just it's just infuriating. But we we we have all of the truth on our side. We have all the facts. We have the the correct conception. We're speaking exactly how it is how it is.
>> Yep.
>> Um and you know they they play different roles, but it's start it's part of the same institution. I like the the whole offense defense for the same team. It's still the same football team. They just you know >> you know one one is the the the attack of capital, the other one is the defense of capital. But >> that's very well put. That's very well put. Yeah. Well, that's high praise coming from you, uh, Dr. Butchwear. Uh, we respect you immensely. Um, and what what can we do? Uh, should we just go over to tell people like, you know, because there's a lot of, uh, ways you can disqualify yourself from the ballot, so I've learned, by writing your name in, but it's it's pretty straightforward, right? You just you go to the governor part of the ballot. So, I'll I'll I'll do that. But I I saw something in the comments that I want to make sure that that we address because I I had I said um don't care who you pray with or who you lay with. Somebody said asterisk except if you lay with children. And let me just go ahead and because that's another thing that I've said, right? Blue and red are all up in them Epstein files. And I've said as governor of the state of California, I am going to direct the attorney general to investigate any alleged crimes that took place in the Epstein files because how come no one has been tried on anything? Any sitting attorney general or governor could do that right now and hold these people accountable? But they're not holding people accountable because the ruling class holds us in utter and absolute contempt to the point they're where like like they literally think that they can consume us, eat us, they can, you know, they they can steal our children away literally. Right. So, so there has to be accountability because you know who's not in them Epstein files? Greens. Ain't no greens in them. No, no greens in those Epstein files.
>> Greenies ain't in there. Yeah. the Chinese, the Iranians, they're not >> all of the people that you were taught to hate and fear are not in the Epstein files, you know, um, uh, my god, you know, victimizing and abusing children and, you know, engaging in alleged acts of cannibalism and every such crazy thing. So, I know that's that's a hard left turn, but I saw that in the chat. I was like, no, we got to we got to speak on this. Um, so, >> absolutely. So, how do you get somebody that is not part of the Epstein class into a position of executive authority?
It's simple. All if you're in the state of California, you just tell your folks in that governor section, right? There there are 61 names on that that ballot.
24 Democrats. They they accuse me of splitting the vote. The Greens nominated one candidate. There's 24 de Democrats, but they me they accused me of splitting the vote, but that's that's a separate question. So, the kids at the Colombia encampment, um, when Colombia sent back all of their rules and conditions about the, you know, trying to vacate the encampment, the kids at Colombia said, "I ain't reading all that." They wrote, "I ain't reading all that. Free Palestine." Right? That's what they did.
So, when you see those 61 nondescript governor candidates, you just you don't write it, but you just look at it and you say, "I ain't reading all that." You just move down move down to the bottom and there's a writing box and you just if there's a circle you circle it and then you just write butch where b u t c h w a r e. Those are the two most dangerous words in the English language to the >> That's right.
But we love them. We love those words.
>> They're dangerous to the to the other people. The the Yeah.
>> Not to us.
>> They should be afraid of us. And and and and I want to say this too because, you know, >> I I try to be um an articulate and impassioned and um morally centered advocate for the people. But it's really not about me as a candidate. It is about the people. the policies that we're running on are the policies that the people want and need.
And but we're not going to get them until we have the audacity to choose elected officials. And I know a lot of the people that that that that watch this kind of stream, you know, and know that you're a hardcore leftist, you know, and I've been a revolutionary my my whole life. Some of them might be suspicious even of electoral politics as a vehicle for change. And I share that skepticism. My model is the model of the Panthers. I don't think that I'm going to fix it as governor. But what I do know is that mutual aid plus direct action plus electoral power is the cocktail that the Panthers used. and they ran for office because they understood that if you could get people in positions of elected authority, then they could do things like, for example, instead of criminalizing ICE watch and rapid rapid response, they could funnel resources to ICE watch and rapid response, right? That you have a few people in positions of authority because we keep us safe. the cops don't keep us safe. But if we have people in positions that can reinforce the work that the community is doing on the ground that revolutionary activists and abolitionists um and you know socialist organizers and others are doing on the ground, imagine that you have an advocate and a shield that is wielding the resources of the state not to persecute you but to to to protect you and to reinforce. Right? So, it's not just that I'm going to say I I'm not complying with unconstitutional orders.
So, the feds are going to have to go through every lawyer and law enforcement officer in the state before they so much as touch a hair on the head of any California resident. That's great. I'm going to and I'm going to sue I'm going to have the attorney general sue police departments that run cover and carry water for ice. That's great. That's something that I can do with the executive authority. But even better, I can get resources to the people that are doing the rapid response and ICE watch on the ground as well so that we can actually have a coordinated movement centered approach to political power. So even if you don't believe in elections, trust me, neither do I. Malcolm was the one that persuaded me because in the ballot or the bullet, he said, "We're going to knock on every door in Harlem.
We're going to register every black face behind every door, not as a Democrat, not as a Republican. We will say, "Show us your card." And whoever did not have the responsibility to register themselves, we will have words with them, and we just might move them out of town. It's going to be the ballot of the bullet. So, you might not believe that elections are where revolutions take place. And I agree with you, they can't take place only at a ballot box. But Malcolm said specifically in that speech, "A ballot is a weapon of war as effective as a bullet or more so by any means necessary," which people associate with Malcolm means by any necessary means. And that includes electoral ones.
And if we had all of us that are abused by the system just writing those nine letters on this ballot, voter turnout is low in primaries. We could destroy them now, right?
>> Yeah.
>> No. Uh amazing. Um yeah, we you know, it takes both. We we need the the political tip of the spear and not just the spear itself. We we need workingclass institutions strong in the economy. We need working-class institutions strong in our politics. So, um we got it's all hands on deck. Uh it's so refreshing to hear this. I think my audience agrees just it seems like we've achieved some clarity here by listening to you and you're one of the few people that I could listen to for hours and I hope to have you back on one day and we could actually talk about um Malcolm X's autobiography. Uh, and one of my favorite recent favorite writers, uh, Walter Rodney.
>> Oh, I saw you. Yeah. Discussing Rodney.
I I read Rodney for the first time when I was 19, how Europe underdeveloped Africa. And and I need you to understand that the only reason why like an aspiring teenage revolutionary such as myself considered doing a PhD in African history as like uh um something that wasn't a betrayal of the people was because Walter Rodney did. Walter Rodney got his PhD in African history. He taught African history at Dar Salam University in Tanzania and he was martyed for his socialist organizing work in his homeland of Gana. And so when I went read Walter Rodney, it wasn't just that he had this incredibly clear and precise reading of capitalism and imperialism and the relationship between Africa and Europe, but he embodied in his practice that, you know, model of an engaged scholar, somebody that that utilized knowledge for the benefit of our liberation. And so because Walter Rodney existed, I I believed that I could do both of these things, write the academic works, teach in the universities despite the fact that they're part of the military-industrial complex. Um, and and and and still do the work of being an engaged community builder and movement builder. Walter Rodney is a giant. Like, if you want to do just a show on Walter Rodney, count me in.
>> I would love to. He's uh like I said, one of my favorite writers. I I the How Europe underdeveloped Africa book. I consider it essential reading. It's one of my favorite books ever written. And I've I just learned so much. it just and and it's it was also very relevant because everything that he was saying he was writing about in the 60s and 70s uh combating uh all this propaganda debunking all of these arguments about Africa and colonialism we still hear you go on Twitter you hear it every day they're still uh you know uh promoting all of these facious talking points and Elon Musk is always at the center of he's always talking about the same stuff like I read Walter Rodney Actually, let me go flip to the page where he debunks all this nonsense.
>> You're not You're not going to fool me with this nonsense. I read Rodney. Yeah, I'm I'm immunized against your nonsense.
>> He also wrote a a great book uh on the Russian Revolution from the African perspective, which I really appreciated.
Um so, yeah, I I would love to to chat chat with you, chop it up with you over um his his work. Um but >> look forward to it. I I want to say one thing about that Rodney the history of the Russian revolution. I read it only recently because he did not publish it while he was alive. It was his lecture notes. So he taught about the Russian revolution and they published it postumously after his death. And and reading that book um you know recently was just mindblowing for me. Yeah. his analysis of the Russian Revolution from a third world perspective is just so fire and and and what I really learned from it that that that I've you know applied um really to my political movement work now is just and and I wish leftists would pay attention to this especially like you know the the communists and you know I'm a big fan of communism like I'm a big fan of and and web de boys and others um but like sometimes online communists can you know can very Yeah. territorial. Yeah.
>> So, so what Well, here's what what Rodney uh said that that I found fascinating. He pointed out that the that there was no real ideological um traction that the Bolsheviks had.
There were 240,000 Bolsheviks at the beginning of the October Revolution in 1917. There had been 5,000 in May. Right? So there was this massive growth in the organization between May and October, the kind of May semi-revolution and the October, you know, full full revolution. They were getting busy. They were working. They were building with those Soviets, which were community councils that were already extent on the ground. This is how the people were organizing, right?
And so what they did which we need to learn from is that they didn't focus on trying to convert people to their socialist ideology. They focused on going into those community gatherings where people were the people were resolving their own problems and then they were providing the material responses to what the people were facing. And that's when I realized that the revolutionary movements that I've written about, Haitian revolution, senagamian revolution in West Africa, they didn't persuade people of their ideology before the revolution. they met the people's needs in a moment where there's a crisis in capitalism and imperialism because and I and I think that there's a lot of focus in a lot of leftist spaces about leaning in on political education but it comes across as very preachy frankly right that you're trying to persuade people and that you're procilitizing them to your ideology whereas what worked in the Russian revolution was just meeting people's needs right and that that's what allowed the Bolevixs to be successful. And I realized after the fact that the revolution that I wrote about in the Sagal River Valley in my first book, Anti- Capitalist Revolution, 200 100 years before Marx. So it wasn't Marxist, but it was very explicitly anti- capitalist. Right? They also didn't persuade everybody to see the world the way that they wanted them to see it.
They just resolved the fundamental contradictions that capitalism and imperialism was imposing on the population. And I think if we did more of that, we would get more converts than the preaching.
>> And and what just for my knowledge, what revolution was that? You said 100 years before Mark.
>> Yeah. So um if you go to my first academic book, The Walking Quran, I write about the first free republic in the modern world. The first um country to abolish the institution of slavery is actually an African Muslim republic. And they also abolish kingship. They create a republican form of governance. They don't read any European languages. They read Arabic and they speak, you know, a dozen different African languages. And yet they nonetheless craft the most effective resistance movement to the face of white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism in that time, which was the slave trade. So Rodney didn't write about it in how Europe underdeveloped Africa because he didn't read those source materials. Great historian. I read Arabic. Rodney didn't read Arabic.
I speak Wooloff. I lived in Sagal for years. So I did the oral history of this movement as well as the documentary history and uncovered this deep revolutionary movement. And sometimes people get mad at me when you know like I say, well all of my policies are socialist, but my my anti- capitalist heroes were born a hundred years be before before Marx, right? They were fighting against capitalism and imperialism. And don't get me wrong, I love the the black Marxist Leninist too, right? I love the Panthers. I love Dubo.
I love Robeson. But my my uh uh predecessor here at University of California, Santa Barbara, Cedric Robinson, the late great Cedric Robinson, wrote an amazing book called Black Marxism in the 1980s where he talked about how the black radical tradition is something that is anti- capitalist before Marx is a glint in his daddy's eye. That it has its own trajectories. And yes, that overlaps with Marxist, you know, political projects, you know, in the in the 19th and 20th centuries. But there is more to anti- capitalism, anti-imperialism, and anti-colonial resistance than just kind of making it all be processed through the filter of Das Capital. And and again, don't get me wrong, no one ever wrote a more trenchant analysis of European capital than Markx. And you know for my money Grochi is the greatest European you know Marxist intellectual um you know but the the it's really really critical to understand that like for indigenous you know North American populations or Central American populations that there are anti- capitalist traditions that you know predate um you know Marxist ones and so that we as leftists have to understand that the left begins at anti- capitalism and anti-imperialism and it includes a bunch of different people that are going to see eye to eye on 98% of things but also are going to have different, you know, kind of overlapping history. So Rodney is one of those great scholars.
Amalcar Cabraw is another one.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean, just doing an African socialist book club would be super dope, frankly.
>> Yes.
>> Would love that. And uh you know, just to piggyback on that point, uh it's true Markx didn't discover, I mean, he didn't uh create communism. He didn't create the anti- capitalist contradictions in society. He observed them and he articulated them.
>> He articulated them. Yeah.
>> And I think also there's a there's an when you were talking about Sagal and that example uh the success that they had, how they they spoke to the material conditions. They didn't try to, you know, influence people's ideology. I was just thinking of uh when Chris Smalls when he talks about the success he had in creating the Amazon labor union. He didn't do that. He didn't speak to like uh oh, I'm not going to speak to people that are MAGA. I'm not going to, you know, he spoke to >> Yeah. He talked to everybody. He he he he spoke to the grievances of the workers, the working class, and and you know, he's he he he made that his focal point. That's why he was successful.
>> It's it's so important. And I know we're we're past time, but Amlar Cabraw um who for me is the most interesting um you know of the the African Marxist intellectuals, he he said we we we take from marks whatever concords with the best in our indigenous traditions and we leave the rest. Like he said he said that but but more importantly he he also said never forget that people are not fighting for the ideas that exist in men's minds.
>> People are fighting for better material conditions for themselves and for better futures for their children. Right.
>> Absolutely. that that in the end we're supposed to show up and try to construct a society where human dignity um and you know aspirations for for prosperity and safety um and to have their basic material needs met that we fulfill those so that human potential can then take the next steps in our evolution as a species. And capitalism fundamentally cannot allow that to happen. Capitalism is born from indigenous genocide and African slavery and all of its institutions will reproduce those systematic inequalities at every step.
Humanity cannot move forward under the regime of capitalism. And so those of us that are organizing politically to try to fight it, we have to fight it with a sense of urgency that we really are trying to save humanity itself at this point because these imperialists are going to kill us through ecological holocaust or through nuclear holocaust or probably both.
>> You're just curing us of all of our brain rot. Just, you know, every answer you give is just like it's so refreshing to hear. Um, I can't thank you enough for uh for joining us here on the stream tonight and uh for giving us your time.
You have a busy schedule running for the governorship of California June 2nd.
People need to vote for Butchwear. Write in Butchwear on the ballot. Thank you so much for your time. I hope we can do this again sometime.
>> Looking forward to it. Any anytime. I'm I'm a huge fan of all your short form content, your long form content, and I especially love that you never let up on the Zionists.
>> Hell yeah. Got to, man. Got to.
>> Bye. Take care.
>> Thank you. See you. Bye. Bye.
>> All right. That was uh that was a wonderful conversation. I'm really just uh so thrilled that we got to have that talk. Uh, I hope you found it as fruitful and worthwhile as I did. And uh, that's going to be my show for tonight.
Don't forget, write in Butchwear on the ballot, green party. I got my green jacket on. Let's go. Um, I'll see you guys tomorrow. Okay, have a great night.
Peace and love. Bye-bye.
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