Lorie Shaull
Representative Keith Ellison speaking in support of DACA at Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, January, 2018.
On March 9 and 10, 2018 the Congressional Progressive Caucus gathered for its strategy summit in Baltimore, Maryland. Members of the caucus and allies from left-leaning organizations and European left parties gathered to talk policy and power for the short, medium, and long term. At the conference, I spoke with Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota about the new push for Medicare for All, how to talk about racism and economic justice, and why it might be time to think about a maximum wage.
Sarah Jaffe: You have been talking about Medicare for all, what's going on in the House?
Keith Ellison: We're starting a Medicare for All task force, a single-payer task force, and Pramila Jayapal and I are going to help lead that effort. Debbie Dingell, Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee, and others are there, too. We’ve got a team. We believe that, in this moment, the most important thing to do is help build the public support and awareness.
We're working with Bernie [Sanders]. The time for this issue has come. Now we're all staunch advocates of the Affordable Care Act, but we're looking further. We imagine an America where when you get sick you worry about getting well, not whether you might be in bankruptcy.
SJ: So there's energy within the Democratic party pushing in this direction. You were just saying you’ve been in Congress for ten years—does it feel like there's a momentum shift and when did that start?
KE: It started when people like Paul Wellstone were raising the health care issue, and people were like, ‘we don't know what you're talking about.’ Bernie's run for president caught a wind and definitely escalated the awareness. But what is really driving this thing is the fact that when you get sick, you can't afford your medicine. I know a young lady who I work with every day, smart as a whip, super talented, but she has toxoplasmosis and needs Daraprim. So that little creep Martin Shkreli is saying, ‘OK, $13 a dose is now $800 a dose.’ Not to mention EpiPens and insulin!
We imagine an America where when you get sick you worry about getting well, not whether you might be in bankruptcy.
People are asking, does it have to be this way? Is it this way in Canada or other countries? Turns out no. People want a better alternative.
This is wrapped up with market power. Every time a Martin Shkreli screws somebody we're winning converts to single-payer healthcare, and medicare for all.
Our mission now, particularly when the Republicans are dominant, is to get out there strong, let people know there's an alternative and that they don't have to suffer this way. They don't have to mortgage the house so they can get an operation.
SJ: We're talking about market power, what are some of the other—you made a joke about a maximum wage.
KE: No—I made a statement about maximum wage. . . This idea that you can leave people in poverty as you are stacking up dead presidents like nobody's business has got to come to an end. I mean the CEO of McDonald's makes $3000 an hour and they're fighting people getting $15 an hour.
SJ: But they turned their logo upside down to be a W so...
KE: They care. Awww. Not only are they screwing over workers, they're screwing over the environment, they're clear-cutting forests so they can graze more cattle and we all know that like beef production is extremely abusive on the environment. They're bad actors, you know?
I wasn't joking about having a maximum wage. Why shouldn't there be a maximum wage? I remember when Ford, GM, and Chrysler came for $25 billion to rescue the American auto industry. OK, well how much does the guy who runs Toyota make? $28 million a year.
OK stop right there. Where did you get that greedy? And how did you create a philosophy that says [it’s right] to protect your greed, so that if I say you shouldn't be that greedy, you get to call me a name? Because they do. . . If we say your incalculable greed is not acceptable, we get called communists. Why not call them what they are, which is avaricious and greedy?
If we say your incalculable greed is not acceptable, we get called communists. Why not call them what they are, which is avaricious and greedy?
SJ: Folks in the meeting were talking earlier about people being afraid to talk about racism under Trump…
KE: Most of us talk about racism from a very capitalistic standpoint, that racism is what working class white people do to working class black people.
What if you looked at racism another way? Racism is what the big bosses use to manipulate everybody against each other. It's the classic pitting of the have-nots against the have-very-littles.
My view is that we've got to ask who benefits from all this racism, and who loses.
Racism is what the big bosses use to manipulate everybody against each other. It's the classic pitting of the have-nots against the have-very-littles.
Because Florida purged black voters in the year 2000, the whole country got George W. Bush, which led us into a war with absolutely no justification and the whole country got a prescription drug benefit that enriched big pharma. And that happened to everyone of every color.
Racism helps elites control everybody else. Therefore our fight has to be in solidarity.
Why is it that the states we associate the most intense racism with are the southern old Confederate states and also are the poorest states? Make no mistake, they've got rich people in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, very rich. But the reason they're able to maintain that wealth is because everybody at the bottom is at each other's throats.
I'm not saying that there's not racism in the upper Midwest. But the states furthest away from the Confederacy have the least amount of inequality. There's plenty of racism in Minnesota, I know that, I'm from there, and in Maine—I'm not trying to say these people are off the hook. But I'm saying that you show me a section of the country that has the most inequality, I'll show you the most racism. And that's just how it works.
We've got to help people understand that these puppets have strings, man, and that we're being manipulated. But we've got to find the right language to do it. And I think it's well within our power. The success of the progressive movement depends upon it. We've got to learn how to talk to working-class white people about racism and not get them so damn defensive that they don't even want to have a conversation.
And here's the other thing—in the popular media, who is the racist? It's always the poor ignorant white person. In 2018, March, the chief racist in America is Donald Trump, a billionaire who comes out of the chute talking about Mexicans as rapists, Muslims as terrorists, black people are all bad, tweeting stuff about black people committing crime. Why is that?
Because if you do not actively promote racism it doesn't work as well. You have to promote it, you have to make people suspect each other, because if you don't, it won't take. Racism doesn't self-perpetuate; it has to be promoted.
You can follow Representative Keith Ellison on Twitter.
Interviews for Resistance is a project of Sarah Jaffe, with assistance from Laura Feuillebois and support from the Nation Institute. It is also available as a podcast on iTunes. Not to be reprinted without permission.