Alligator Alcatraz & Schumer's Senate

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J. Eskow, produced by the WeAC Radio Network and broadcasting from the banks of the Anacostia directly into the halls of power. And now your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the program. Our internal occupying army here in the United States, ICE and its affiliated military units are on the back foot politically as people protest their detention centers. That doesn't mean they're dialing back their activities. It just means they're being more covert about it. But we'll talk about that in this hour. We will also address a pressing question for anyone who follows politics, which is... Why is Chuck Schumer? It's still in a leadership position in the Democratic Party. It makes absolutely no sense. However, his leadership position in that of other people in the Democratic Party does help us understand why Republicans haven't been relegated yet to the dustbin of history. So we'll talk about that as well in this, our latest episode, addressing what we might call America under occupation. We'll be right back. Hello, this is Yo-Yo Ma, and you're listening to The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow.

And we are back on this Zero Hour. As always, I'm your host, Richard R.J. Escal. And as always, I look forward to speaking with Zero Hour Senior Correspondent and so much more, Sonali. called Hotcar. Sonali's work can be found at Rising Up with Sonali.com. She's a journalist and an activist journalist, I would say, or maybe she reverses those words. And her latest piece, which I read in CityWatch, which is CitWatch, which is CitWatch, I'm sure it's published elsewhere as well. They headlined it at CityWatch. The public isn't budging on ICE's immigration detention. policies. So first of all, Sonali, of course, welcome back. Thank you so much for having me, Richard. And I actually didn't pick that particular headline. I can't remember what I picked, but it was more focusing on the fact that detention centers are actually shutting down. It's not all good news, but we can get into that. Right. Your lead says, you know, even as I'll paraphrase, ICE's powers are being expanded. but people are scrutinizing these detention centers, and some of them are shutting down. That was the gist of your lead. And the one you make a great point in terms of communication, which is Alligator Alcatraz, so called the Florida Detention Center. has had to close down, which seemed to get less attention than the opening of it in the first place. So I mean, we'll start with that. We heard a lot about how this place, it seemed to me there was a kind of pornographic sense of brutality on the part of the administration when this was announced, gleefully announced, you know, talking about how brutal it would be, how inhumane. And it disappeared with Nario Whipper. But first of all, what happened to it? Right. So Alligator Alcatraz, and believe it or not, this is the official name of the detention center. I thought it was just the nickname, but they made it the official name, which just, you know, is an indication of its brutality. It was... shut down almost exactly a year after it opened in Florida. And essentially what had happened was that this particular detention center that they had spent so much money on was not full. For the majority of the time that it was kept open, it was half empty. But the real reason, the technical reason, is that it seems as though it was just plagued by so many environmental issues. There was a major lawsuit because this particular detention center is located in the Everglades in South Florida. And it's in the middle of this sort of sensitive wildlife habitat.

There's a stereotype in our culture that people who are brutal are all so stupid. And I have to say the way that this was handled does nothing to dispel that stereotype. And the savagery of it plus the idiocy of it is really something. And it is interesting that it disappeared without a trace. But even, you know, even the fact that they filed environmental lawsuits, they were. absolutely legitimate. The Everglades is a very important and fragile ecosystem. But I have to believe that some of the people who supported those lawsuits also hated the brutality. And this is not the only form of pushback that these detention centers are receiving, is it? Right. So what's been really interesting and a sort of Achilles heel of the immigration project of the Trump administration is that the expanding footprint. across the country because ice has been flooded with so much money are these growing detention, growing numbers of detention centers that give people a physical location to protest. So when, you know, it's one thing to wait for an ice raid to show up in your community when ice agents drive up. You know, you have to have pre-mobilized people. You have to be ready for them. You have to catch them when they're in the act of detaining somebody and then, you know, roll out your... your whistles, your megaphones, and confront them. And that's done very successfully. But the detention centers themselves offer these physical spaces for protests, these targets, if you will, for Americans to protest. So people who are really upset about what's being done around immigration, including people who don't like. Having a detention center, imprisoning immigrants in their city because they see it as inhumane and, you know, just to have this prison, it is a place for people to show up day after day to protest. And it's been, that has been happening quite remarkably in, in detention centers around the country, the most high profile one. It was tough to get to alligator alcatraz because it was in the Everglades. So tough to protest something like that to make it out there. But Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, so in a city, in the middle of a city, has been the most high profile location for pro-immigrant, anti-ice. protests and it has been happening. The protests has been taking place on the inside and the outside and it's been going on for over a year, but it escalated in spring of this year when dozens of immigrants that are being held there went on hunger strike and labor strike. So they didn't show up en masse in an organized way. They didn't show up for meals and they didn't show up for the jobs that were assigned to them because these are privately run prisons by these private

corporations like Geo Group and Poor Civic, who are, you know, cutting costs by putting these immigrants to work, oh, we don't need to hire somebody to clean the toilets. We'll make the people that we imprison do it. They will earn a few dollars a day and we'll basically get their labor. And so Delaney Hall in New York has been. Completely, you know, when word got out that these people were engaged in a hunger strike, the people who were family members of those being held inside and allies and activists and organizations mobilized and they started having these protests, relentless, ongoing protests. There was a lot of violence against them. People were brutalized, arrested, beaten up, tear gassed, including elected officials. Right. And it is, you know, I suspect that by the end of this year, I would bet money that Delaney Hall will shut down because of this. You know, there was a story recently. There was a video of a young woman protesting at Delaney Hall being hit by a car. It's really tough to watch. What's that? It's really tough to watch. It is tough to watch, but it triggered my old journalistic instincts when I got the maps and the geo maps and the Google maps and the aerial view and the front view and the side view for trying to prove that this was a, whether or not this was a deliberate attack absolutely was. There was a line of sight from every direction. This person had to see her in my view very far away, but before I could publish anything. Fortunately, that person has been arrested. So the police were rather slow, I would say, in Newark to get around to arresting them. But they did arrest that person who hopefully will face the full force of the law. Also, not that it should matter on one level, but it does. Most of the people were talking about, the incarcerated people were talking about have not been found guilty of any crime. Many of them. are not even here illegally or many of them have sufficient documentation. Some don't, but the issue of crime doesn't even come into it. You quote, Rachel Marandette, detention attorney at the American Friends Service Committee, saying that there are, that there are, the environment includes severe medical neglect, in edible food, and foul tasting water. and then quote her as saying they're treated as if they're less than human. And KFF Health News, you also quote in the AP, widespread medical neglect in custody deaths have soared. This is really, to me, this is a test of us as a society and we're failing. We are. We're absolutely failing the kinds of conditions that people are being held inside. And these are people, human beings, fathers, mothers, daughters and sons and children. It is very, very, very difficult to imagine what people are going through. And to your point about people.

not, you know, these are not at all criminals of one case of just, you know, one particular case to stand out, just to give people an example of how shocking it is, there was a city worker at New York, New York City employee named Rafael Marco Rubio, who was arrested and detained for 158 days. It's months and months. And he was not guilty of anything. He has an asylum application in process. He's in the midst of his legal asylum case. He showed up for his court appointment that he is supposed to show up for, that the court told him to show up for. And at his court appointment, he was arrested by ICE, thrown into this detention center, held there for 158 days. And the only reason he was released was because he is... co-workers at the city of Newark mobilized for months and did everything they could to help get him out. And he, you know, was finally released. God knows what trauma he's been through, how his family must have suffered. And this is the kind of, I mean, and it is an indication, by the way, of how desperate the Trump administration is they are running out of people to put into these. facilities. Their goal was to, you know, engage in an ethnic cleansing project and tell their voters that they were going after criminals. There are not enough, quote unquote, criminal immigrants to fill the spaces that they have opened up. So they are criminalizing innocent people. And of course, now with the Supreme Court wins that the Trump administration had on overturning temporary protected status and preventing asylum seekers from entering the United States. they're going to get, they're stripping basically legal status off of people who will give them more bodies to put into these privately run prints. But yeah, it is just absolutely disgusting. Right. I think what is it? 300,000 refugees from Haiti or now? 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians were at the heart of that case. And that doesn't include, if you include everybody who has TPS, it's something like 1.5 million. Yeah, that's called creating demand for their for-profit prison companies. You write, Sonali, that after spending a billion dollars of taxpayer money, and of course, that's not counting Ron DeSantis is $1.2 billion. After spending a billion dollars of taxpayer money, buying 11 warehouses for detention warehouses. Lovely. ICE is now reporting seven, excuse me, reportedly selling seven of the structures. under the leadership of Homeland Security's new head. Ed Mullen, Markwayne Mullin, quote, according to the Times, wants the agency to be quieter about how it carries out its immigration enforcement. Does this mean, does this go back to what you were saying earlier, that these human warehouses are centers for protests and he wants to keep it more on the down low? Or what's that about, you think? Yeah, I think it's part of... Again, this sort of propaganda war. Like last year, when the Trump administration came guns blazing, DHS was under the leadership of Kristi Noem, who, you know, basically thought she was in a Hollywood film as some sheriff of the nation who was walking into people's houses with accompanying ICE agents in the middle of their raids and having, you know, the whole thing videotaped. And she, what...

she essentially did was she turned the public tide away from the Trump administration, away from immigration enforcement, and the polls prove it that within months of the Trump administration doing this kind of heavy-handed enforcement, public opinion shifted back toward immigration and immigrants. And so after she was let go, her replacement has realized that maybe. it's not to our benefit to be so open about these flashy raids that generate public anger and these big detention centers. I think part of it is also that they don't need such big detention centers because they literally don't have that many people to arrest. The problem of... quote unquote illegal immigration has been so inflated and so overblown because they need an enemy to distract us from the fact that billionaires are scoring us over. But yeah, so they're they've they bought over a dozen warehouses. By the way, warehouses are generally not designed for human habitation, right? No. But they bought these warehouses. Again, that speaks to the dehumanization of these people there trying to imprison. And realize they didn't need as many, also didn't want to provide, you know, I think as many sites for people to protest and are dumping them. I mean, how much of our tax dollars is being wasted on these efforts? But I think that, yeah, so I think that's a sort of a twofold reason why they're not wanting to have these big flashy incidents. And I think that's also why we're not seeing these. very overt raids in cities, it doesn't mean that arrest rates are going down. Ice agents are continuing to arrest people and in fact arrested hundreds of people in just a week, I believe it was last week that I saw a headline, they're doing it piecemeal and they're doing it quietly. And so we have to be very careful about that. If you hear the rest of my conversation with Sonali, Cole Hotcar, please go to Zero Hour Report.com. You will be right back after this. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow and you're listening to Zero Hour. You are listening to the Weact Radio Network produced in Washington, D.C. Visit us online at weactradio.com or at YouTube.com slash WeactRadio, D.C.

And we are back on the zero hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Now joining me once again is Sam Rosenfall. Sam is the political director of Roots Action, which can be found at rootsaction.org. And appropriate enough, we have a political conversation in front of us. So first of all, Sam, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me on again. You bet. Now, the matter at hand is Chuck Schumer. Roots Action, you folks are working pretty hard on a campaign to get Chuck Schumer out of his position as minority leaders. So if you don't mind, let's just start by you telling us a little bit about that. Yeah, thanks. And I want to be clear, it's not an effort to get Chuck Schumer to leave his office entirely. What we're saying is that Chuck Schumer, while he can remain a senator, should no longer be the leader of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. And I think that that is really because we feel that Chuck Schumer is increasingly out of step at the party, certainly out of step at the base. And more and more is drifted from, you know, a leadership role within the caucus to being sort of a representative that is upholding the traditional establishment friendly order in the Democratic Party. I think that order is starting to fall apart. We've seen in primary after primary this year, voters are choosing candidates who represent an alternative to the traditional establishment in the party. And Chuck Schumer is unwilling to relinquish his hold on the party because he wants to continue to be kind of a bulwark against the more progressive elements in the party. So what we're saying is that Chuck Schumer is no longer representative of where the Democratic Party is, according to voters, where it should be going from a political, strategic perspective. And he should let go of the reins and let someone else. step into that position. It seems to me, when I think about Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party, three things come to mind where this dissonance that you're describing is most apparent, at least to me, and I'm probably overlooking some. But one is opposition to Trump, whether he's being forceful enough, clear enough, an opposition to Trump in some of his policies. I think, for example, of his exceeding to Trump's budget deal in the beginning of last year at the start of Trump's second term. Second is Israel and U.S. policy towards Israel and the Israel policy, the Palestine issue where polls show a dramatic shift among Democratic voters is very much. in contrast with what Chuck Schumer believes. And the third is the more general issue of war, opposing Trump's attack on Iran and how to oppose it, that kind of thing. So have I left any critical issues out, you think?

I don't think so. I think those are all right. Maybe the only thing I would add is that we have seen Chuck Schumer this year pretty reliably backing establishment-friendly candidates, even in instances where those candidates are really not polling well in their primaries and don't seem to be preferred by anyone except for the consultant donor class of the party. I just think that this... puts Chuck Schumer at a further remove from where the energy in the party is, which is among the grassroots right now, among activists who want to see more progressive candidates running for Congress. So I think that puts him, you know, further out of touch. And I think everything that you just described that you just said can really be summed up as... Chuck Schumer is representative of a politics and a Democratic Party that no longer exists. This is, he's representative of politics of, you know, days of yore that maybe 15 years ago, 20 years ago, this would have been the Democratic Party mainstream. But there's a lot of evidence that it really isn't anymore. And things like giving a blank check to Israel, a sort of thirst for more war, more confrontation in the Middle East. These are deeply unpopular policies now within the Democratic Party. and increasingly across the country, across political parties and across political tendencies. And Chuck Schumer being a poster child for this type of policy is really damaging the brand of the Democratic Party. He's, you know, one of the most unpopular major political figures in the country. even among Democrats and he's someone who I think just is either unwilling or unable to go where the energy among party activists is now just to you know touch on a quick sort of contemporary example The war in Iran is incredibly unpopular. This is something that Donald Trump started unilaterally under false pretenses is even overselling it. I mean, there was almost no pretense. He just decided he was going to start bombing this country. And we saw that during a pause in the fighting, or I'm sorry, before this latest round started when Trump was negotiating with Iran, we saw Chuck Schumer make a video where he was effectively taunting Donald Trump about not having gone to war earlier with Iran, not having attack the country with more force, with more gusto. And that's just the kind of thing that's really a clear indication of how far Chuck Schumer has drifted from mainstream Democratic. party policy on this issue. This is not popular with the base, but nevertheless, we see that Chuck Schumer as an Iran hawk, as an Israel right or wrong supporter, is very much someone who's clamored for military conflict of this country for a long time. And probably if this were a Democratic president who is perpetrating this war in Iran, he would be happy about it. Well, we've got a lot of issues on the table now, which is good. But one of them...

that it relates to what you just said, is that the other thing that's struck me about his response to Trump's highly unpopular attack on Iran is that it seemed stylistically to be, and not just stylistically, but in content, to be this kind of... You know, you might say hall monitor, tone to a tour, where it's, you didn't ask us permission first, as if we would have granted it, but you didn't follow the rules. You didn't, you know, your foot was in the aisle, you know, kind of, you know, tattletail kind of thing, as opposed to this is morally wrong, this is tactically wrong. we're against it. But the style to me is part of, I'm glad you brought up the issue of the old model of the Democratic Party because What came to mind when you said that, Sam was, and this was on the House side, but Ryan Grimm, when he was at the Intercept, published, got and published the slide deck that they gave to newly elected Democratic members of Congress. I can see you remember that, where they said, among other things, expect to spend two or three hours a day, fundraising on the phone with big donors. So the... And the party is still evolving, to be clear, but the voters are way ahead of the party as an institution. But the old model was first and foremost, keep the donors satisfied. And so that, regardless, I don't know Chuck Schumer's personal ideology, but that means keeping APAC donors happy about Israel, keeping... defense industry, people happy with, you know, the voting, the kind of money that's allocated to the Defense Department and so on. So you have both stylistically and in content, this growing gulf between the party, meaning the voters, and the party meaning the leaders. And in every way, I mean, Chuck Schumer can't even fake it. It seems to me, you know, we could name other senators who at least can pretend that, you know, they're not in opposition to the voters on this one. But he seems to be tonally and in content completely in contrast. Would you agree with that, first of all? Absolutely. And I think one of the biggest failures of Chuck Schumer's leadership, is an inability to recognize how much the politics in this country has moved on from the model he's familiar with. And it's stylistic. It has to do with policy. It has to do with style. It has to do with a general approach to politicking in this country. And it feels like there is a wing of the Democratic Party that for...

so long now since 2016 has been waiting for a return to politics as usual. And they have failed to recognize that there is no return coming. There's no going back to a pre-Trump, pre-2016 style politics, pre-Bernie even politics, we could say. We are in a fundamentally different era and it requires a different approach with different policies. And I think that when you look at someone like Chuck Schumer, what you see is a kind of... implicit promise to voters that he's making, sometimes an explicit promise to voters, that he can take you back to the politics of your. And Joe Biden was part of this trend, too, right? That there's some sort of return to a politics of respectability, decorum procedure, doing things the right way. And the error... that the establishment has made in the Democratic Party isn't thinking that that's what voters want. That's what they want and that's what their donors want because these are people who are materially very comfortable. And what bugs them most about Trump is that he's indecorous or that he's crude and he's mean to world leaders who are supposed to be our friends. What should be bugging them is that people in this country still can't afford health care. People are getting priced out of their housing. People are unable to provide for their families even when they're working, you know, four or five, six jobs between two parents. And that's what people want to see in this country. From a political standpoint, those are the policies that we want to see our elected picking up and running with. But instead, all Chuck Schumer is capable of is saying, well, we'll go back to doing things by the book. You know, we'll go back to if you elect us, you'll get a return to a rules-based order. And. will be a more predictable cast of leaders who, you know, where nothing fundamentally will change, as Joe Biden said. And that's not what people want. People want things to change fundamentally. It's just that the way people want things to change is out of step with what people like Chuck Schumer and his friends in the political donor class want. And so instead of... resolving or even approaching that tension, what he's saying instead is, you know, I can take you back to a time when you didn't have to check the news every day. And that's just not what people want anymore. Right. And we're talking about not just recent events, but a 40-year or more history of the decline of the middle class, working class. And that decorous, you know, my friend, the distinguished gentleman from New York kind of governance.

including the bipartisanship that was so celebrated for a while. I wanted to cut Social Security, let the minimum wage lapse on and on and on. And people don't want to go back to that kind of decorous elite rule, it seems to me. I also have to add, and I feel a little bad saying it because it feels a little unkind, but Chuck Schumer is also what... terrible communicator. He's also a terrible face for the party. He just communicates old politics in his posture and his style and his, but there were a lot of questions I have on the table, but let's start with this one. You mentioned Chuck Schumer's involvement in certain primaries around the country. Let's start with fundamentals. Why would the minority leader necessarily get so involved in primaries around the country? Why would he designate who he wants, for example, to be the nominee for Maine Senate or anywhere else in the country? Should that really be his or her job to do that? that the voters of the state, the primary voters are the ones who should decide that. And then the parties should do what they can to, I mean, I can understand if someone's really scaring them that they might want to say a word about it. But have the big donor Democrats gotten too involved in the primary process? And if so, have they done so on behalf of big donors? Yeah, I think they have. I mean, there's no rule that says the party leadership needs to be involved in primaries at all. And I think probably they shouldn't be. You know, it's a little tough. We want to have it both ways. I mean, I'm happy when Bernie Sanders endorses people and goes on the campaign trail on their behalf. But Bernie is representative of a social movement as well as being a senator. So I think it's a slightly different scenario. You know, Chuck Schumer certainly. able to endorse he's you know if he wants to that's something he can do i just don't think it's really wise politics because ultimately he is in a unique position as the leader of the uh senate democratic caucus to have to corral members after they're elected and so it seems that it would behoove him or anyone else who's in that role to sit on their hands during primaries and just wait and see who's elected these are all going to be future colleagues these are people who you have to work with And I don't think there's much advantage to be gained from putting your thumb on the scale, especially for someone like Chuck Schumer who does not really campaign with, by and large, does not campaign with people he's supporting in primaries. There isn't a lot to be gained from putting his thumb on the scale. We saw, for example, in Maine, you know, that's turned into its own sort of train wreck, but... Prior to this, we saw that he was pushing Janet Mills actively. She was polling terribly. She was, you know, another representative of the old guard. I mean, she's both old and age and old in time in terms of tenure in the party. And this was just so clearly someone who the electorate was not interested in. And he was still pushing her because I think that, you know, as he eyed a potential return to the majority in the Senate or even being...

the minority leader with a very thin majority for Republicans, he was thinking about who are the people who are going to be compliant, who are the people who are going to be easy for me to whip when it's time to get votes for more aid to Israel or get them to block some of the, you know, left-leaning legislation coming out of the house that we don't want to see. And so he's thinking about making his job easier, in effect, by saying, we don't want any rabble-rousers in the Senate. We don't want anyone who's going to be a problem. someone, you know, the kind of politics that someone like Graham Platner, disgraced as he now is represented, right? A more populist progressive politics. Those people are a problem for Chuck Schumer. So I think he thought, oh, I'll get ahead of it. I won't even have to deal with people like that if they get into the Senate. But the net effect is that he's been supporting candidates who are really, really uninspiring, and it only serves to further toxify the brand of the party because the most powerful Senate Democrat is seen running around the country trying to promote these people who, frankly, don't often have a chance of winning and are not in a good position to represent the Democrat Party. So I think that's the issue with that. And he didn't, you know, I noticed he didn't. back off the mills endorsement after poll, after polls showed that she was doing very poorly. So it's not only the initial choice. It was the sticking with her, which raises a slight digression, Sam, feel free to tell me I'm out of my mind when I say this, because I acknowledge I may be. But there's at least a part of me that thinks, well, the Democratic Party establishment will leave aside the Graham Platner personal issues for a second. But in general, that the Democratic Party establishment, given its druthers, would rather... If it had to choose between a Graham Platner type, let's say politically, and Susan Collins, would rather have Susan Collins, even if it threatens their majority, because they would see a platinum type. And again, I'm distinguishing from Graham Platner, a political platinum type as threatening to their agenda, whereas they see a Susan Collins as a Republican they can work with. Yeah, I totally, I completely agree with that. And to take an example that's still live, like, let's just look at the Michigan Senate race right now where we have Abdul El-Sayed, who's running, who's a progressive backed by a lot of left groups who's action is backing him in addition to many others, versus Haley Stevens, who's sort of the platonic ideal of an apex shell. She's taken...

Tons of money from APEC. She, in the last cycle or two cycles ago, she ran against Andy Levin, who was a Jewish member of Congress, one of the longest, from a family, a Jewish political family that had been in Michigan government, in national government for a long time, and was just seen as insufficiently pro-Israel. So A-PAC backed Stevens instead to an unseeded Levin. What we're hearing now from the Democratic establishment is we can't let Abdul El-Sayed win because he won't win in a general election. That's their line. But when you look at the polling between Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed versus Mike Rogers, who's the Republican in that race, it's actually the same. They have as good a chance, both of them, as beating at beating Rogers. To hear the rest of my conversation with Sam Rosenstalk, please go to zero-hour report. We'll be right back after this. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow and you're listening to The Zero Hour. Hello, this is Yo-Yo Ma, and you're listening to The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow.

back on the zero hour on your host, Richard R.J. Escal at the beginning of the hour I mentioned, or I used the phrase America under occupation, which reminds me, we haven't talked on this program at all about the bizarre overnight military training that took place in Southern California at the first week of June of this. year, sudden flashbangs, simulated gunfire, low fire flying helicopters, the FBI and Army eventually confirmed that these operations were coordinated supposedly to prepare tactical readiness for the World Cup and the 2008 Summer Olympics. But it does raise the question, why are the authorities in this country and the powers that be conducting military exercise? exercises against our own population centers. We'll be right back.