This episode of Liberty and Justice For All asks Americans to reclaim both their history and their economic power. Michael Merrill and Egberto Willies debate how the nation should judge its founders, arguing that the country must confront their failures without surrendering the universal promises embedded in the Declaration and Constitution. That historical discussion becomes a bridge to the present: a functioning democracy requires civic knowledge, an engaged public, and an economy whose rules distribute power more fairly, rather than allowing concentrated capital to dominate workers, small businesses, housing, and public policy.

• Americans must take ownership of their history. The founders failed profoundly to extend their stated ideals to everyone, but abandoning those ideals allows the forces of exclusion to claim ownership of the American tradition. The better strategy is to demand fulfillment of the universal promise of liberty and justice.

• Democracy requires civic literacy. The discussion argues that citizens should possess a basic understanding of American history, democratic institutions, and civic responsibility. Civic rituals and education can reinforce a democratic culture without requiring everyone to become a historian.

• Economic inequality reflects power, not simply merit. The episode challenges the assumption that market outcomes automatically represent what people “earn.” Workers often receive what their bargaining power allows, while owners of capital enjoy far greater leverage.

• Changing the rules matters more than preserving concentrated privilege. The conversation explores private equity, financialization, small-business consolidation, and a system in which capital can effectively “go on strike” while workers and small businesses lack comparable freedom. Fairer rules could redistribute economic power without destroying productive enterprise.

• Real transformation requires democratic control over economic institutions. The hosts disagree over whether redistributing wealth or redistributing power deserves priority, but they agree that institutions must be restructured so government, workers, and communities serve the public interest rather than concentrated private wealth.

America does not need to surrender its democratic story to plutocrats, reactionaries, or romanticized versions of the past. It must claim the unfinished promise of liberty and justice, teach citizens how democracy works, and rewrite economic rules so that workers and communities possess meaningful power. As the episode emphasizes, revolutionary change need not mean violence; the New Deal, the civil rights movement, the labor movement, and the women’s movement transformed America by changing laws, institutions, and expectations.

The KPFT station manager’s report to the station board about its fall schedule described “Liberty and Justice for All” as “a show about the promise of American democracy,” so that seems a good place to start. What is “the promise of American democracy”?

The nation’s founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—lay that promise out quite clearly:

BECAUSE every human being is “created equal,” with “unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,”

THEREFORE, “We the people” … to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

That’s the promise. In short, “Liberty and Justice for All.”.

Of course, though people disagree about how much and for whom, the reality has so far fallen short of the promise. On this point, most people agree. Where they more often disagree is on how much progress has been made and for whom.

Generally speaking, the country has been on an upward, improving, trajectory for most of its history, for most of its people. But they didn’t get better without a struggle; and there is no guarantee that things will always get better.

In fact, they have been known to get worse and can easily get worse again. The need to keep getting better is as strong now, despite the nation’s gains, as it ever was. Indeed, we seem to be in the middle of a “things are getting worse” period, when a great many people are worried about how things are going.

Characteristically, we don’t agree on what’s wrong. Everybody has their favorite candidate. But there does seem to be a consensus that SOMETHING is wrong and needs to be fixed.

By my count, we have faced similar crises as a nation at least three times before, but emerged each time stronger and better, at least for a while. I am thinking, of course, of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the New Deal.

And we can emerge from the current crisis better and stronger. But only if we face the storm, figure out what’s wrong, and work together to do something about it. We can’t just complain about our problems. We have to do something about them. I see that as the focus of our show.

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What are our problems? How is the promise of American democracy falling short today? And for whom?

I see two areas of special concern. The first is the growing gap between the richest Americans and the rest, Have Mores and the Have Lesses. The second is the growing cruelty, polarization, and dysfunction of our politics.

Here is one measure of the growing gap between the Have Mores and the Have Lesses.

In 1980, the average income of the top 1 percent of American households, after all taxes are deducted and all transfer payments have been added, was 7 times larger than the overall average household income for the whole country.

In 2020, however, it was 14 times larger.

In other words, the average household income of the top 1 percent grew twice as fast over that period than the average household income for the whole population.

And the story is the same for each quintile. The average household income of the top 1 percent was 19 times larger than the bottom 20 percent of households in 1980, and 35 times larger in 2020. For the second quintile, the multiples are 12 for 1980 and 25 for 2020. For the middle, they are 8 for 1980 and 19 for 2020. For the fourth, 6 and 14; and for the highest, 3 and 6.

In other words, every quintile is worse off relative to the top 1 percent by at least a factor of 2.

Another way to put the point is to say, that if the rewards of the economy’s rising productivity over that 40 years had been distributed in the same proportion as they were in 1980, then the average household income in every quintile would be twice as high.

Of course, the opposite would be true for the top 1 percent. To raise the income of everyone else, their income would have to decline by slightly more than half. But before we cry to much about their loss, let’s observe that even with that decline, the top 1 percent would still make twice as much in 2020 as they did in 1980, and still multiples more than the average of every other quintile.

Why are the top 1 percent doing so much better now than they once did? We will have to talk about that. But it is my position that they are not doing so much better because they are twice as smart or work twice as hard now as they did in 1980.

No. I think they are doing so much better because they have used their positional advantage at the top of the financial system to capture more of the gains the system as a whole is producing.

I call them the Money Power. And if we are going to restore the American promise to every American, we need to rein it in, just as Americans figured out how to rein in the Royal Power, the Slave Power, and the Corporate Power, which in earlier generations denied the American promise to others.

Which brings back to our political problem. We won’t be able to rein in—I intentionally do not say “abolish”—the Money Power until we have restored functionality and effectiveness to our political system.

As long as our politics remain dysfunctional, the Money Power has nothing to worry about. I imagine the Money Power even likes the way the game is going. The monied classes are certainly benefitting from it! We have to fix our politics, if we are going to fix our economy.

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How do we fix our politics?

First, I see a representation gap. Neither of the established parties speaks clearly for or on behalf of the working classes. Both of them are dominated by the monied interests, and they have been since at least the mid-1960 s, if not before.

I agree completely with my colleague, Les Leopold, that the billionaires currently have two parties and the people need one of their own. We will be talking about that.

I also agree that there is a “governability gap.” By which I mean, the system as currently constituted is not delivering good government. Indeed, many say it delivers more bad government than good!

We will also be looking at that. But I want to declare my own interest in this discussion from the outset. I do not share the conviction of many that fixing the government requires amending the Constitution.

On this point, I agree with those who say, to paraphrase John Adams, that the US Constitution has given us an imperfect form of government, but every alternative on offer is worse.

Fortunately, we can fix what is wrong with the government without amending the Constitution.

Take the Electoral College. It has become increasingly unrepresentative. But the problem is the Electoral College itself. The problem is its unrepresentative nature. Repeal the 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act, expand the number of representatives in the House, and you fix two problems at once: the unrepresentative nature of the House AND the unrepresentative nature of the Electoral College.

There are similar reforms to the Senate and the Supreme Court that would make both bodies more responsive to “we the people,” which I hope we will discuss.

Granted, the Senate is a tough one! It has been called the most undemocratic legislative body in the democratic world. But just because the problem is hard doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution. I think I see one, and we will invite others here at some point to talk about.

That’s enough for today. I am looking forward to the conversation and welcome comments, criticisms, and suggestions.

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Episode 3 of Liberty and Justice For All tackles the contradiction at the heart of the American experiment: a nation founded on sweeping promises of liberty and equality while simultaneously tolerating slavery, exclusion, colonial power, and economic exploitation. Michael Merrill and Egberto Willies examine Thomas Jefferson not simply as hero or villain, but as a window into the unresolved tension between democratic ideals and lived reality. The discussion then moves from the founding era into the present, connecting racial and gender exclusion, environmental destruction, corporate power, labor rights, and working-class solidarity.

• America’s promise looks different from outside its borders. The conversation begins with childhood memories of Panama and the Canal Zone, where the United States appeared as a beacon even while stark inequalities existed between Americans and Panamanians.

• Jefferson embodies America’s founding contradiction. The episode wrestles with how a man associated with equality and democratic government could simultaneously enslave human beings and participate in a system that denied those ideals to millions. The disagreement centers on whether history should judge intentions, circumstances, deeds—or all three.

• Democracy has always involved a fight over who gets included. The discussion challenges the mythology of an instantly democratic America and instead presents democracy as an evolving struggle over political power, citizenship, race, gender, property, and participation. Jefferson’s democratic impulses existed alongside profound exclusions.

• Today’s injustices force the same moral questions on the current generation. Fossil-fuel dependence, environmental destruction, corporate exploitation, and inequality raise a provocative question: What practices tolerated today will future generations look back upon and ask, “How could they allow that?” The conversation argues that people retain agency to challenge those systems rather than simply accept them.

• Working-class solidarity offers a path forward. The episode ultimately rejects attempts to divide workers by race, gender, or geography. It argues that Appalachia, the barrios, the ghettos, and workers everywhere share material interests that become politically powerful when people recognize their common struggle against concentrated economic power.

America’s democratic promise remains unfinished because democracy never advances automatically. Ordinary people, abolitionists, workers, organizers, women, racial minorities, and movements have always forced the country closer to its professed ideals. The progressive task remains the same: confront historical truth without surrendering democratic possibility, dismantle divisions manufactured from above, and build enough solidarity from below to make liberty and justice genuinely universal.

This episode of Liberty and Justice For All asks a foundational question: What does the promise of American democracy actually mean? The discussion argues that the country’s founding ideals cannot simply celebrate individual wealth or abstract freedom. Democracy must deliver liberty, political equality, economic opportunity, and justice broadly enough to include everyone. The program traces the recurring American struggle against concentrated power—from monarchy and slavery to corporations and today’s increasingly dominant “money power.”

• The American promise extends beyond wealth. The episode identifies “liberty and justice for all” as a political and moral promise that cannot coexist with unlimited accumulation when that accumulation undermines the freedom and power of others.

• American history reflects an ongoing struggle against concentrated power. Royal power gave way to slave power, then corporate power, while the modern challenge increasingly comes from what the discussion calls money power.

• Capitalism requires democratic restraints. The conversation does not argue for abolishing capitalists. Instead, it makes the case for preventing concentrated wealth from granting a small group disproportionate authority over everyone else.

• Political power matters as much as wealth distribution. The discussion emphasizes that changing economic outcomes ultimately requires changing who possesses the political power to write rules, structure taxation, and determine how prosperity gets distributed.

• Democracy remains unfinished work. The episode concludes that liberty and justice are currently failing to reach everyone and argues that the democratic alternative needs stronger organization, leadership, and public participation.

The progressive lesson is straightforward: democracy cannot remain merely a promise written into founding documents. Ordinary people must possess enough economic and political power to make those words real. Liberty without economic security becomes hollow, justice without equality becomes selective, and democracy without organized popular power eventually becomes government by wealth.

The inaugural episode of Liberty and Justice For All establishes a mission that reaches beyond the usual partisan shouting match. The program argues that American politics needs a reset grounded in “first principles”: the democratic values the country claims to honor but has repeatedly failed to extend equally to everyone. Rather than treating liberty, equality, justice, labor rights, and democracy as empty slogans, the show intends to examine what those ideals actually require in practice.

• America needs a political reset. Michael Merrill argues that both major parties have wandered away from foundational democratic principles and that the country needs a more constructive conversation about where it came from, where it should go, and how it gets there.

• Liberty and justice must genuinely apply to everyone. The show frames American history as an unfinished struggle to turn the promises of freedom and equality into lived reality for enslaved people, workers, tenants, artisans, and everyone historically excluded from full participation.

• Working people must become participants, not spectators. Merrill’s experience in worker education emphasizes empowering workers to teach, organize, question authority, and share their own expertise rather than remain passive recipients of knowledge handed down from elites.

• Democracy must make sense to ordinary people. The conversation rejects a politics designed mainly by credentialed insiders. Its democratic standard is straightforward: public ideas and institutions must work for the people who actually labor, consume, organize, and live under them.

• The Pledge of Allegiance becomes a starting point, not an exercise in nationalism. The hosts intend to examine the meaning behind familiar words such as liberty and justice and ask whether America actually fulfills the promise citizens routinely pledge themselves to uphold.

Liberty and Justice For All begins with a decidedly democratic proposition: patriotism should demand accountability, not obedience. If America claims liberty, equality, democracy, and justice as its principles, those promises must extend to workers and ordinary people rather than remain privileges reserved for the wealthy and powerful. The series intends to recover those ideals and turn them into a practical agenda for democratic renewal.

Welcome to “Liberty and Justice for All,” the Substack home of KPFT ‘s weekly radio hour of the same name, which airs Thursdays at 2 PM Central.

The show is co-hosted (that’s me), currently a Research Fellow at Rutgers LEARN (Labor Education Action Research Network); by , co-founder and executive director of The Labor Institute; and by , who also produces “Politics Done Right” on KPFT, as well as “Egberto Off the Record” and “Reality Check” with on Substack. It got started after Les and I had been talking to Egberto, who has followed Les’s column, “Wall Street’s War on Workers,” now subtitled, “Why We Need a Party of Our Own,” on Substack and Common Dreams.

I am going to be taking the lead on the radio show for now, together with Egberto, while Les concentrates on his column, which we will occasionally feature on the show, and whatever his next book project becomes!

KPFT’s program notes describe “Liberty and Justice for All” as focused on “the promise of American democracy,” and Egberto and I share our initial views on this theme in the first programs.

But I am also entering the project with a larger purpose in mind, which I want to share and invite comments upon right off the bat. We need an American civic religion revival, a political Great Awakening, and there is nobody to make one but all of us!

I think nearly everyone agrees that American politics is broken. The question is: what can we do to fix it? The first thing we can do is start talking about solutions and not just the problems.

And I don’t just mean band-aids. I mean real, far-reaching, and meaningful fixes.

A lot of the conversation about fixing our politics focuses on messaging. The idea seems to be that if our side has the right message, it can win. Should it be more conservative? Should it be more centrist? Should it be more populist? That is what everybody is asking themselves.

The problem with this conversation, as I see it, is that it is too often circular. What is the right message? Too often the answer is, whatever message can win! Which gets us exactly nowhere. Winning is only the first step. Essential, to be sure. But what will we do if we win?

Nobody runs on a platform that says, “We will make things worse for you!” They run on, “We will make things better for you!”

But how do they propose to do that? That is the question. Make us safer. How? Make us healthier. How? Make us richer. How?

Those are the things we must talk about. And we need to get into the weeds. Find all the right messages you want. At the end of the day, what people remember is what the messengers did: Whom did they protect? What did they provide? Where did they make things better?

So, what are we going to do? “Liberty and Justice for All” is currently guided by the following initial assumptions.

First, we are not going to fix American politics by being against America. We can criticize it. But we have to do so from a standpoint of love, not hate. Otherwise, it will seem to most people that we criticize to make the country worse, not better.

We need to take back our history from those who tell it as either a story of relentless, unrelenting hate, as too much of the left does, or as a contemporary excuse for cruelty and hate today, as too much of the right does.

The American story is not just about expropriation, enslavement, exploitation, and oppression. It is also a story about cooperation, abolition, equality, and justice. To focus on one side but not the other is neither to tell the whole story nor to learn from it what it can teach.

Second, we are not going to fix what’s wrong with the American economy by simply fine-tuning its parts. The American economy needs more than a tune-up. It needs an overhaul.

But that does not mean getting rid of what works. It means getting rid of what’s broken. So, what’s broken?

What’s broken is that the economy is not run by and in the interests of all of us. On the contrary, it is run by and in the interests of only some of us.

Which some? Follow the money. The average income of every fifth of income earners, from the bottom to the top, has doubled since 1980. That’s the good news. But the average income of the Top 1 Percent, the richest of the rich, quadrupled over that same period.

That’s the bad news. If the Top One Percent (let’s call it “The Moneyed Class”) had done no better than the rest of us (let’s call us “The Middle Class and Working Classes”), then the average income of all of us would be even higher.

Of course, none of us are average. All of us are somewhere on the spectrum, and what happens to the average does not necessarily happen to any of us. And many of us are now worse off than we were, certainly than we would have been, if the economy worked for all of us and not just for some of us.

“Liberty and Justice for All” will address both of these facts. That all of us are worse off now than we might have been if the economy had been run for all, but some of us are actually worse off than we were and certainly worse off than our parents.

Third, and for now, lastly, we will only be able to fix what’s wrong with the economy if we first fix what is wrong with our politics. If our politics aren’t working, we can’t get our economy working.

What’s wrong with our economy is pretty much the same thing that is wrong with our politics. The US Constitution established a democratic government.

It explicitly declares that the rights of “the people” are not limited to those “enumerated” in the Constitution (Amendment IX). On the contrary, “We, the people” retain all our rights, natural or human, whether or not the Constitution mentions them.

The Constitution also specifically reserves “all the powers not delegated to the United States …, nor prohibited by it to the States, … to the States respectively, or to the people” (Amendment X).

The problem is that political power has become as unevenly distributed as money.

The government, federal, state, and local, are bigger now and expected to do more than it has ever done. But the benefits of government are not evenly distributed. Most of it goes to those who already have the most and need the least, rather than to those who have the least and need the most.

How do we fix that? How do we ensure that the benefits of government are distributed in proportion to need, not greed?

Some argue that we can only fix our politics by changing or amending the Constitution. I am not convinced. There is much about what is wrong with our politics that we can fix without amending the Constitution.

Take the Electoral College, in which urban voters are under-represented and rural voters are over-represented. Eliminating the Electoral College would eliminate the problem

But it would create others. The Electoral College geographically distributes the presidential contest in ways that ensure at least some attention is paid to rural areas and that attention is not monopolized by the more populous urban areas.

There are ways to make the Electoral College less representative AND ensure presidential candidates have to get into the country, at least some of the time. The best way to do so is to enlarge the House of Representatives, which would make both it and the Electoral College more representative.

These are the kinds of things we will be talking about on “Liberty and Justice for All.” Please join us.

Les Leopold uses Bruce Springsteen’s working-class politics to make a larger point: no celebrity can substitute for organized power.

In “The Boss and Me,” Leopold tells the story of asking Bruce Springsteen to write a preface or endorsement for his book, The Billionaires Have Two Parties — We Need a Party of Our Own. The request grew out of Springsteen’s public statement that America needs an effective alternative party or a Democratic Party leader who can speak to the majority. Leopold connects that comment to decades of shared working-class struggle, especially the 1985 fight by 3M workers in Freehold, New Jersey, Springsteen’s hometown, against a plant shutdown.

• Leopold saw Springsteen’s call for an alternative party as confirmation of his own argument that working people need independent political power outside the billionaire-dominated two-party system.

• The article recalls the 1985 3M shutdown campaign, where union leader Stanley Fischer sought Springsteen’s support and helped turn a local plant closing into a national and international labor story.

• Springsteen’s involvement gave the 3M workers a powerful cultural amplifier, including a New York Times ad and a benefit concert that drew broader attention to corporate abandonment.

• Leopold highlights the remarkable solidarity between mostly white New Jersey workers and Black South African 3M workers under apartheid, showing that class struggle can cross borders when workers recognize a shared enemy.

• The article ends with a sober but important lesson: even a Springsteen preface would help, but there is no shortcut to building a durable working-class political movement.

The progressive conclusion is clear: celebrity support can amplify a cause, but working people cannot wait for famous rescuers. Real change requires organizing, solidarity, independent political infrastructure, and a workers’ movement bold enough to challenge both corporate parties. Springsteen may lend his voice, but the people must build the power

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Les Leopold’s article argues that the working class has turned away from the Democratic and liberal establishment because too many liberal institutions preach solidarity while practicing disposability. He begins with Oberlin College’s 2020 layoffs of unionized food service and maintenance workers, using that betrayal as a metaphor for a broader political crisis: elites talk about inclusion, community, and shared sacrifice, but when budgets tighten, workers get sacrificed while administrators, donors, consultants, and corporate-aligned interests remain protected. Leopold ties that hypocrisy to the collapse of Democratic strength across the Midwest, where mass layoffs, deindustrialization, NAFTA, and job insecurity have left deep political scars.

• Oberlin College’s layoffs exposed how elite liberal institutions can abandon blue-collar workers while maintaining a public language of care, community, and justice.

• Leopold argues that mass layoffs are not just economic events; they are political radicalizers that push workers away from the Democratic establishment.

• His research found that as county mass layoff rates rose, Democratic vote share fell between 1996 and 2020, especially across the crumbling “Blue Wall” states.

• The article cites a YouGov survey of 3,000 voters in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin showing broad negative views of Democrats and strong rural support for an independent working-class political formation.

• Leopold argues that Democrats cannot rebuild trust with slogans like “opportunity society”; they must put job security, federal job guarantees, and working-class candidates at the center of politics.

The progressive conclusion is unavoidable: working people need material security, not liberal branding. A party that protects donors, consultants, and corporate comfort while asking workers to absorb the pain will continue losing the very people it claims to represent. The answer is not technocratic messaging. It is working-class power, job guarantees, union strength, anti-corporate politics, and candidates who know what it means to live under economic insecurity.

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Veterans sit at the center of America’s democratic crisis.

Les Leopold reviews Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon’s Courage or Complicity: How Veterans are Responding to the Assault on Democracy as a necessary examination of how veterans, shaped by war, service, trauma, solidarity, and neglect, can either help defend democracy or become tools of authoritarian politics. The article places veterans within the long arc of U.S. militarism, working-class sacrifice, VA privatization threats, and the fight for a politics that honors veterans with material support rather than empty flag-waving.

• Leopold frames U.S. history after World War II as a near-continuous cycle of wars, interventions, proxy conflicts, and military campaigns that relied heavily on working-class Americans.

• The review stresses that veterans are not politically monolithic: many have drifted right, but many others have become labor leaders, working-class candidates, antiwar voices, and defenders of democracy.

• Early and Gordon argue that the Veterans Administration remains a model of single-payer care and solidarity, which makes Republican privatization schemes especially dangerous.

• The article highlights the painful contradictions veterans face: society praises their service while too often abandoning them to PTSD, suicide, homelessness, incarceration, underfunded services, and political exploitation.

• Leopold invokes Major General Smedley Butler’s transformation from imperial enforcer to critic of capitalism and war as a warning and an invitation for today’s veterans to question militarism, empire, and authoritarianism.

The progressive takeaway is direct: veterans deserve more than patriotic slogans. They deserve healthcare, housing, dignity, democracy, and a political home that does not use them for wars abroad or authoritarian projects at home. Their culture of solidarity can become a democratic force, but only if progressives organize with them, respect them, and fight for the material conditions they were promised.

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For too long, working people have been told to settle for a political system that answers to billionaires, corporate lobbyists, and party consultants. Les Leopold demolishes the tired argument that an independent working-class party would merely act as a spoiler. In district after district where Democrats lose by overwhelming margins, there is nothing left to spoil. The real danger is continuing to force workers to choose between two parties funded by the same wealthy interests. Leopold argues that the path forward requires building an independent political movement rooted in labor, economic justice, and grassroots organizing.

• The spoiler argument has become a political excuse rather than a strategic reality.

• In more than 130 congressional districts, Democrats lose by margins so large that independent candidates cannot meaningfully divide the vote.

• Working-class voters support progressive policies such as Medicare for All, stronger unions, higher wages, and anti-monopoly reforms.

• Historical third parties helped lay the groundwork for transformative reforms later adopted during the New Deal.

• Building an independent party offers workers a vehicle that answers to people rather than billionaire donors.

America does not suffer from a shortage of progressive ideas. It suffers from a political structure captured by concentrated wealth. When both major parties depend on the same donor class, working people remain trapped in a system designed to protect profits instead of people. Leopold’s argument is both practical and urgent: build political power where the Democratic Party has already retreated, organize around the economic interests of ordinary Americans, and create a party that belongs to workers themselves. That is not a protest vote. It is the foundation for a democratic renewal capable of challenging oligarchy and restoring government to the people.

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• Les Leopold revealed polling showing 57% of Rust Belt voters want a new political party focused on progressive populist economics.

• Working-class voters consistently prioritized job stability, economic security, and corporate accountability over culture war issues.

• The interview detailed how the Democratic Party lost credibility in working-class communities devastated by deindustrialization and layoffs.

• Leopold argued that many Trump voters were not ideological conservatives but economically abandoned citizens casting protest votes against a broken political system.

• The discussion emphasized rebuilding politics around labor, public investment, union power, and economic democracy rather than billionaire influence.

The interview exposed a political reality that establishment figures often refuse to confront: working Americans do not feel represented by a system dominated by corporate donors, privatization, and elite indifference. Instead of blaming ordinary people for political frustration, the discussion challenged progressives to organize around material needs—jobs, healthcare, wages, infrastructure, and democratic participation. The message resonated because it rejected cynicism and insisted that ordinary people still possess agency. If working people organize independently and refuse to accept billionaire-controlled politics as inevitable, the political landscape can change dramatically.

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Two veteran labor thinkers delivered a blunt truth: working people know the system is rigged, and they are ready for a political alternative. In this conversation, Author/Labor activist and Retired Dean & Professor explained why the billionaire class effectively owns both major parties and why a working-class political movement could gain real traction. Drawing from polling in key Rust Belt states, they revealed strong support for bold economic policies and even a new independent workers-focused political organization. Their message challenged decades of neoliberal propaganda that told Americans they must accept layoffs, inequality, and corporate rule.

• A YouGov survey in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin found major support for pro-worker economic policies.

• 57% supported a new independent political organization for working people outside Democrats and Republicans.

• Younger voters under 30 backed the concept at roughly 70%, signaling generational hunger for change.

• The speakers argued that unemployment and job insecurity keep workers politically trapped and fearful.

• Existing third parties often fail because they do not organize deeply within working-class communities.

This discussion made one point unmistakable: Americans are not too conservative for progressive economics. They have been denied authentic representation. When workers hear policies centered on jobs, wages, healthcare, and dignity, they respond. The path forward requires courage, organization, and a politics rooted in people rather than capital.

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For decades, political elites insisted Americans would never support bold economic reform. They said workers hated government, distrusted collective solutions, and preferred market discipline over public investment. That narrative helped justify stagnant wages, union decline, privatization, and corporate domination. But this conversation with labor activist Les Leopold and historian Michael Merrill shattered that myth.

Leopold described a large survey conducted with working-class voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Instead of finding hostility to progressive ideas, researchers found strong support for them. Policies such as guaranteed jobs, living wages, anti-price-gouging measures, and limits on taxpayer-funded layoffs resonated deeply. Even more striking, a majority supported a new independent political organization representing workers rather than billionaires.

That result should surprise no one paying attention to material reality. Workers face rising rents, medical debt, insecure employment, and corporate consolidation. Productivity has increased for decades, while wages have lagged behind. The Economic Policy Institute has repeatedly documented the disconnect between worker productivity and pay growth. Wealth flows upward while labor creates the value. When people struggle daily, they naturally seek alternatives.

The political system has failed to meet that need. One party openly serves oligarchic reaction. The other often campaigns on inclusion while protecting donor-class economics. Workers notice. They may differ culturally or ideologically, but many share a sense that neither party prioritizes the other’s material well-being.

That explains why support for an independent working-class politics crosses partisan lines. Leopold noted that even a sizable portion of Trump voters favored the concept. This is crucial. Many voters who drift right are not ideological extremists; they are disillusioned people responding to economic abandonment. A movement focused on healthcare, wages, jobs, and dignity can reach them more effectively than moral scolding ever will.

Merrill added an important historical frame. American politics has always contained a struggle between concentrated power and democratic sovereignty. Whether against monarchy, slavery, or unchecked corporate power, ordinary people have repeatedly expanded democracy through organized pressure. That history matters. It reminds citizens that elite dominance is not permanent.

The call for a jobs guarantee deserves special attention. A right to employment at a living wage would weaken employer blackmail, strengthen bargaining power, and stabilize communities. A. Philip Randolph championed similar ideas generations ago, and modern economists continue to debate federal job guarantees as tools to reduce inequality and mitigate the pain of recessions.

Critics immediately cry “spoiler.” But that argument often serves to preserve a broken duopoly. Every political realignment in U.S. history once looked impossible until it happened. The Republican Party itself emerged from the collapse of older party structures.

The deeper issue is not ballot lines. It is whether workers build independent institutions powerful enough to negotiate, pressure, and, if necessary, replace captured parties. That means unions, local assemblies, media platforms, educational networks, and candidates rooted in working-class communities.

This interview also rejected fear-based politics. Merrill spoke of hope and joy—an underrated strategic insight. Right-wing politics thrives on resentment, scapegoating, and anxiety. A democratic working-class politics must offer security, solidarity, and a believable future.

Americans are told to lower expectations. They are told healthcare is too expensive, decent wages are unrealistic, housing is unaffordable, and democracy is limited to choosing between two donor-approved options. Yet when asked directly, many choose something better.

That is the opening. Not cynicism. Not despair. Organization.

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