Episode 277 – Be the Revolution with Jay Ponti

Macro N Cheese – Episode 277
Be the Revolution with Jay Ponti
May 18, 2024

[00:00:00] Steven Grumbine: All right, folks. This is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Folks, we started this podcast, what, five, six years ago now, and we were largely a ‘Bernie meets MMT’ podcast. We had the great work that folks like Stephanie Kelton, and Warren Mosler and Randall Ray and Bill Mitchell brought out. And occasionally we would bring out other elements of the Bernie Sanders movement.

But as many of us on the left have done, we’ve looked at Bernie and we said, “no bueno.” You’ve gone ahead and endorsed Hillary, then you’ve gone ahead and endorsed Joe Biden, and folks feel really let down. I felt really let down. I still feel really let down, but that does not change the relationships, and so much of the good memories of that time period. Including Occupy Wall Street, and including both part one and part two of the Bernie Sanders’ runs for president. It was a very important, very formative time of my adult life. Not my childhood, my adult life. And a lot of dreams and ideas came into being as a result of those campaigns, regardless how they turned out. And I must tell you Jay Ponti, my guest today, is a key part of that. Jay, I got to meet Jay, first off working on the Occupy inauguration, and some of the other convergence /conference type work that I was doing with the Progressive Independent Party and Movement for a People’s Party, and other aspects of the larger, broader left coalition.

And Jay was very much a part of those things. It was very, very neat to get to meet all these people, who had been largely names on a computer, that were exciting, that were out there moving and shaking in the movement. And so, when I got the opportunity to get Jay’s book Be the Revolution: How Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders Movement Reshaped American Politics, I said, ‘Hey, let me see if he’s still willing to talk to this guy.’

And lucky me, Jay agreed to come on. For those that don’t know who Jay is, Jay Ponti is a grassroots political organizer, trainer and consultant, who has participated in some of the most important social movements of the last decade. Including Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, and Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns.

He is the co-creator of the Bank Exit Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign, and has organized campaigns and direct actions across the country. Be the Revolution: How Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders Movement Reshaped American Politics is indeed his first book, offering a fresh perspective on the transformative power of grassroots movements in American politics.

For more information, check out his website, Jponti.com. That will be in our show notes. It’ll be in our extras. And with that, Jay, thank you so much for joining me today, sir. Welcome to the show.

[00:03:55] Jay Ponti: Brother Steve! Boy, I don’t know, you make me sound like some kind of big shot.

[00:03:59] Steven Grumbine: Well, you kind of are, man. It takes a lot of effort just to pen a book, much less publish a book, much less all the other things you’ve done. I mean, seriously, the bank exit and all the other things that you were involved in Occupy Wall Street. These are things that guys like myself, who maybe had a conversion process from right to left, we didn’t know who you were. As we got to know who you were and got to know some of the others in the movement, Kshama Sawant and others, it became kind of a big deal to be part of that. It really shaped a lot of my forties, late forties and early fifties. And here I am at 55, talking to you sir.

So, thank you.

[00:04:41] Jay Ponti: Yeah, thanks for having me on. You know, I guess it’s interesting, I have a different feeling and perspective around it of just, they are our comrades that we meet along the way. And, just what you described about us connecting, I didn’t even remember about Occupy Inauguration.

I t was really cool to be reminded about that. Evan Duke, who was one of the , spearheaders of that project, he was like my BFF at Standing Rock, and prior to that I worked a lot with Evan in 2016.

But my hope with the book, is that it creates a new perspective. That just because it hasn’t been recorded in mainstream media and corporate media, doesn’t mean that there isn’t this incredible, vibrant network of people doing great work over the last 12 years.

And over that time, we’ve all just started- we’ve all just gotten to know each other and continue to work with each other. And these projects, whether it’s been Standing Rock, or the Poor People’s Campaign, or Bernie [2016 or 2020], or the latest Gaza upri sings… this sacred community keeps growing and we keep seeing each other, and getting these opportunities to work with each other or see each other’s work. And my hope is that it dispels the notion that someone is coming to save us.. I grew up with this idea of these mythic organizers like Abby Hoffman, and they used to really lionize the MLK’s and Malcolm X’s. But it’s all part of this capitalistic notion that someone is coming to save you, that there are some heroes out there.

Your only role is to be a good consumer and buy shit, and be a cog in the machine. And you really don’t have any real role to play, it’s for other people. So that’s the hope of this book, you know, you talked about Bernie Sanders, this book is not about Bernie Sanders.

The operative word in the title is, it is the Bernie Sanders movement. And it is very much showing how the real power behind Bernie was the movement. There are a number of premises, but core to that is the popular mythos that Occupy Wall Street failed, and that Bernie Sanders went viral because he appealed to unrealistic millennials. And this book shows those are demonstrably false, because not only did Occupy not fail- we talk about the impact that Occupy had in its day- but then we demonstrate how, for a good many of us, Occupy never ended. It wasn’t just a tactic, it was a movement and an idea, and that movement actually was behind pushing Bernie to run. Bernie did not want to run for president in any way, shape, or form. But Occupy Wall Street activists intentionally ran a campaign to activate the National Occupy Network, which became the movement that pushed Bernie to run.

And this is a really, really important kind of shift in paradigm in Gestalt, because Bernie was a tactic. And it sort of dispels this notion that politicians are somehow heroes to be worshipped, and we just need to get behind the right guy and they’re going to do a good job.

Maybe AOC is going to be the one, or Ilhan Omar or whoever you think. They’re not. They’re not going to save us. Not one of them can, because Washington is such a toxic, broken place. But there is a theory of change that I put forth in the book, with a number of case studies where small groups of committed people, even if they didn’t have resources, fundamentally changed the world.

And so, there’s a lot more to talk about, but that’s some of the broad sweeps.

[00:08:06] Steven Grumbine: Nah, and that’s a fantastic way of bringing us in, because I think what you said is probably the most important thing. All these different aspects of what we do, are largely tactics. They are not the ‘ hero that’s going to ride through on the white horse’, no ‘Buff Bernie’. We kind of screwed ourselves by putting our hopes and dreams in an individual, as opposed to, into ourselves as a movement, into ourselves as the change agents. And I can assure you that the feeling of despair, that many of us felt when Bernie got his legs swept out from him in 2016, and the Super Tuesday sweep of the legs that the establishment did this time around that, put Biden in there, I think, really, really crushed a lot of people, because they were looking at Bernie as a hero, and I know that I probably fell into that as well. So it’s refreshing to hear you talking about all the stuff going on behind the scenes, all the different movements, all the case studies that you lay out in the book.

But I want to start back… I want to preface this by saying I want this podcast, this discussion, to kind of look at the history- which you lay out in your book- but I want to go back to Occupy and maybe even a little before Occupy, as to what led to that group of people coming together to do Occupy.

Can you fill me in on how you got involved in Occupy Wall Street?

[00:09:35] Jay Ponti: Yeah, so what was happening at the time was, I was mostly in what you might call the ‘peace movement’ and I was organizing peace concerts. And the conditions that led to Occupy with that in 2008, , was the largest fraud of the 21st century, committed by financial institutions who

preyed upon vulnerable populations, with what they call subprime loans, which are just bad loans. They pushed really bad mortgages, parasitic, predatory mortgages, to people who didn’t really understand what they were. hey were like, ‘Oh wow, I can get a house.’

‘You’re going to give me a loan? Great, sign me up.’ A lot of them didn’t speak English, or they basically just didn’t tell them the fine print, which is that in a year or two, they would be upside down in their mortgages, meaning that there’s no way they could have paid for it.

They knew this because they had terrible credit ratings, they didn’t have enough income, and they knew what would happen, was they were going to be able to take money from them, and they were going to be able to foreclose on their house and take it right back. But what else they did, is they took all of the housing market, and they turned that into an investment product, that they could bet on in Wall Street.

And of course, it was a bad bet because it was worthless. Because it was inevitable that it was all going to come down. Except the way it all got bundled together, basically crashed the global economy, left millions homeless. And then they all got bailed out… it was socialism for the rich.

They all got bailed out. The big banks got bailed out. Also Obama, he ran o n this hope and change, then what we saw was Obama was basically an 80s, 90s style Republican, who then t ook those fraudulent banksters and gave them cabinet positions.

Again, this was sort of the moment where, for most of America, they really saw the American dream turn into the American nightmare. And then eventually they took to the streets, because of a call to action made by an anti-consumerist magazine called Adbusters, who said, “Hey, the Arab Spring is happening, we should do one in Wall Street.”

And so they put out a call to action. And just like the students are doing now, in campuses across America, there was a big call to action and it swept across the globe like wildfire, and for about three months really shook the establishment. So that’s kind of the back story and the history. How I got involved was, I had been doing punk rock shows for a long time, bigger concerts, and I was friends with Ozomatli, the band who were going to play an Occupy Rally for Robert Reich.

And so they reached out to me because I have experience as a concert promoter, punk rock show organizer and community organizer. So, that rally was my 1st entry. And then once I got to- it was the L.A. Occupy encampment, where there were about 1000 people camped out, laying siege to City Hall, and it was just… I’d never seen anything like it. It was like a punk rock circus. And I was like, ‘what the fuck is going on here? And then I, I mean, I was just hooked from that moment on. And I spent almost every day there, since it was just so extraordinary.

[00:12:37] Steven Grumbine: Well, there’s been so many of these little events across the timeline. And I think of the Dakota Access Pipeline. I think about the Tea P arty, how there was like a converged movement that led into Occupy for a period of time, am I not right there?

I mean, wasn’t there a bit of Ron Paul even kind of joining forces and…

[00:12:57] Jay Ponti: There was. So, what you’re looking at, is a populist phenomena as a response to, what you might call the technocracy, neoliberalism. Basically, what we broadly call the establishment. In the book I refer to it as the corporate state. Which, I was surprised, I thought that that was definitely going to be a term that already existed, I couldn’t find it anywhere. But when I say the corporate state, I mean the coordination between elected officials, corporate consultants, working on behalf of corporations and corporate interests, the police state, the media establishment, all working together to suppress populism, populist movements, economic justice and all other forms of justice.

So, anytime people try to claim power for themselves, from the oligarchy- these are the people who wield power- generally, populism takes one of two pathways. One is FDR, where we rail against the rich, the super wealthy, the billionaire class, which is correct in my opinion, or what ends up happening is gullible poor people get duped into scapegoating vulnerable groups, like immigrants or minorities, or whoever they’re going to scapegoat.

That’s mostly going to be the right wing tactic. And so the Koch brothers, which I talk about in depth in one of the chapters on how QAnon was organized, there was a conscious effort made by the Koch Brothers Libertarian Network of Dark Money Groups to put a lot of money into co-opting the Tea Party movement, and using that as a vehicle to wage war on objective climate science.

But what ended up happening, is that while we were doing Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party got 84 people elected to Congress. And so, where I think we learned a lot about our theory of change, because we got our asses handed to us by jack-booted riot police, and mayors’ and sheriffs’ departments working together in concert, having national conference calls, just like they’re doing to the kids now on campuses. They’ve learned from Occupy that they’re not going to let these encampments go for too long. They’re kicking in the barricades, they’re doing that right now.

But Occupy tended to be a very anarchistic movement and not everybody had this evolution, but a lot of us came to the conclusion that we really need an electoral strategy, because that is how the laws are made. That is how the budgets are made. That’s where power is. And that’s another principle I talk about in the book, is how do we move beyond performative- what I call prefigurative- politics, which means that we do things that feel good, but don’t really have much strategy behind them to actually change the system. That’s how the Bernie Sanders strategy emerged, a group called the People for Bernie, were Occupy activists. And there was another group working in tandem called PDA, Progressive Democrats of America.

Both of which, by the way, came out of the Dennis Kucinich campaign, which is kind of interesting. And I talk about the post -Dennis Kucinich campaign in 2004 is really the birth of what we call the progressive movement. There’s nothing resembling that, which I think is an interesting piece of history as an aside.

But what ended up happening is, we discovered that the Koch brothers were able to take over the Republican Party and that has- over a decade- mutated into what it is today. Whereas the left, we were kind of left holding the bag, and with not much to show for it, in terms of having claimed power, if that makes sense.

So, in the 5 years that followed, a number of us realized that there needed to be an inside/outside strategy.

[00:16:23] Steven Grumbine: You were also involved with Bank Exit. I mean, when did that kick in or was that part of occupy or was that a pre-runner to Occupy? Where does that fall into this?

[00:16:33] Jay Ponti: So, really interesting. So 2016, the Bernie campaign really was a lightning rod for some of the greatest activists in the country, who are already working people that went back to WTO 99. You know, Battle for Seattle. But then it activated a whole new generation of activists, and really gave them a chance to shine and learn and actually see what it was like to challenge, as you talked about. Which the book does give a very detailed history of what happened in 2016 and 2020 to those Bernie campaigns. What were the tactics the establishment used to organize against Bernie?

You know, you talked about Bloody Tuesday. I really get into a lot of depth about what happened, cause most people don’t know what actually happened. Bank Exit came following the 2016 convention and campaign, in Philadelphia, which was a huge moment. Again, most people who were watching the democratic convention at home, had no idea that there were 3,000 people surrounding it, and disrupting inside and outside,

[00:17:33] Steven Grumbine: We were part of that.

[00:17:34] Jay Ponti: Yeah, shit was on fire. It was wild. I mean, it was not quite as violent as 1968 Chicago convention, but it had definite similarities to be drawn. I had created a secret group called ‘Bernie’s Avengers’, and that was a tactic to recruit celebrities and bands, to stump for Bernie and to open up rallies. I did this for the campaign and we organized them, it was a lot of the surrogates that you saw stumping for Bernie.

We helped recruit ’cause we were in Hollywood, a nd then we organized them and we ended up being this incredible affinity group, and we did stuff at the convention. We created Bernie’s diner. We did direct actions, college tours. So we had this really tight group of people. A lot of the Bernie heroes that emerged, Shailene Woodley- the actress from the Divergent series, the Snowden movie, an incredible actress- had gotten involved in Standing Rock in the springtime, and basically she got all of the Bernie surrogates, I wasn’t a surrogate, but myself included, leading up to the convention. Basically Bernie canceled his last rally, probably because he was pressured by the DNC most likely. So, myself and Josh Fox, decided that we were going to do the rally, which we did. And it was, Danny Glover and Susan Sarandon and Amy Goodman, all of them, we did this big ‘climate revolution is up to us’, rally.

Shailene had done a, caravan across country, that was kind of the first moment that the Bernie movement- and there was about 3,000-4, 000 people at that rally- and that was the first time we had people from Standing Rock speaking about Standing Rock. From that moment, we almost seamlessly transitioned from the Bernie campaign, once Bernie conceded, we transitioned to Standing Rock almost immediately. No one had really heard about Standing Rock yet. And over the next couple months, the violence escalated, Shailene was arrested. That was the first time we actually heard about Standing Rock in the news.

And then as it went on, pretty much the whole movement, the Bernie movement, got involved in the Standing Rock fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, it was looking bad. It was looking like we were definitely going to lose. And so I had remembered from the days of Occupy, there was a thing called ‘bank transfer day.’ There was a call to action because Bank of America was hiking up its ATM fees to $5. And so there was a campaign on Facebook that said, ‘we’re all going to take our money out and put it in a credit union. And it worked. Within two days, the bank reversed its policy and it worked.

And also I had heard one of my indigenous organizer friends talking about it on Indigenous People’s Day. He’s like, ‘do we have our money in the banks?’ And I went, “oh, shit, that’s right, bank transfer day.” So I tried for about a month, month and a half, to try to get the nonprofit industrial complex on board.

I’m like, ‘guys, this is the strategy because whether it’s secretary Clinton or Trump, most likely the pipeline is going through.’ And it was basically the divestment tactics that were used against South African apartheid, it was just going to ask people to take their money out of the banks funding the pipeline. Really simple idea.

Then, in our group, we had Jordan Chariton and some other incredible journalists, who were sending us drone footage through our WhatsApp chat, where we were doing most of the organizing. The pipeline was going to cross the river, that was a big deal. And so I just threw a Hail Mary and I reached out to Susan Sarandon, who I’d met through the Bernie campaign, and I said, “this is what I want to do, I want to launch this campaign” and she said, “great, let’s do it” and so I asked her if she would do a conference call the next day.

She said yes. I reached out to a bunch of heavy, heavyweight folks. Cenk was on there. Dennis was on there, environmental activists, celebrities, and what not. And my plan was to go to Standing Rock, ask the indigenous elders, to make the call to action come back. That was my plan. And then I told this to Susan before our conference call, and she’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s a good plan. Except I already booked BBC and TYT and CNN today, I’m going to go on TV today to tell people about this campaign. What are we going to call it?” I actually hadn’t come up with a name.

So I had remembered the DemExit campaign, and I went, ” uh, Bank Exit, hashtag Bank Exit”, and she’s like, “oh, good name. Cool.” And so then I’m on my phone, typing up this care to petition on my phone, so that I can have it by the end while I’m trying to facilitate the craziest conference call I’ve ever been on. And we were able to do it. And a filmmaker named, Matthew Cook, Oscar nominated, a documentarian. You might know his online content. He went in and did a Bank Exit thing.

He just made this incredible video in two days, that got put out by Anonymous and some other big channels, and we generated like 40 million impressions. Those Susan Sarandon interviews, that was the famous interview where she- they just tried to change the subject to Jill Stein- and that was the interview where she said famously, “I don’t vote with my vagina.”

[00:22:19] Steven Grumbine: Yes.

[00:22:21] Jay Ponti: And she was on there to talk about divestment and Bank Exit, and they tried to divert the subject.

[00:22:26] Steven Grumbine: Standard.

[00:22:27] Jay Ponti: Yeah, exactly. So yeah. So, and then Bank Exit went hugely viral, and then a month later it became Defund DAPL. And actually, this book is the first book to have over 85 QR codes linking to videos of what happened, cause a lot of it’s on video. This is the first book to also do this. So you can actually watch some of these actions, like Jane Fonda reached out to me  reached out to me to organize her Bank Exit action. She said she wanted to do a direct action.

She wanted to do some kind of event to announce her divestment. So I said, “cool, let’s go in and shut down the Wells Fargo and the Chase in Hollywood.” So we marched in with Indigenous leaders, and drums, and a bunch of celebrities, and we shut down that bank. And that was the first time that there was a public facing campaign to ask people to get involved in divestment.

And it was the first time we really saw- in the popular consciousness- the financial institutions linked to funding. So people understood that by having their money in these banks, you are contributing to funding these pipelines, and all of these other terrible industries, like the weapons industries and so on and so forth.

[00:23:35] Steven Grumbine: Let me jump in for a minute, because I think this is really important. I want to tie the present in with the past momentarily. I mean, we’re watching people that say, “hashtag BDS”, we’re watching folks trying to take your model, and doing it against the Zionist genocide of the Palestinians.

And we’re watching our government, under a democratic president, with all of our friends supposedly out there, literally gaslighting the public, cracking down like you wouldn’t believe. How do you think that Bank Exit would go today, given where we are? With the militarized police and this kind of like ‘if you told me without telling me who’s in office, everything I heard about this Biden administration and what they’re doing with these students across the country, would make me think, “Oh, you must be talking about Donald Trump, or at least that’s the hype I’ve been hearing for all these years.” No, it’s Joltin’ Joe Biden, Genocide Joe doing it. What do you think would have been the take now? .

[00:24:36] Jay Ponti: Donald Trump really has been, in a lot of ways, a divergence from the norm, just because he has been such an irrational actor. But since Jimmy Carter, every presidency that has followed has been a continuation of the same neoliberalism.

So, it has been a consolidation of power, by what you’d call the oligarchy, the corporations, and we’ve just seen them continue to consolidate power, and escalate their tactics. So, who has been in office, has been mostly immaterial, because even though the Democrats posture that they care about social justice and working class people- they haven’t since the ’70s, which Thomas Frank has talked about in his book, Listen, Liberal. They’ve sold out unions. You look at Obama’s legacy, Jesus, the NDAA, the creation of the modern military police force, the bailing out of the banks, it’s all been a continuation.

So to me, it’s no surprise. And I think anybody who thinks that their party are the good guys, don’t understand what’s really going on. Having said that, I will say that, culturally speaking, organizing against the Democrats is more strategically viable. But what I hope to dispel with this book, is that anyone thinks that the Democrats are the good guys… they’re not. The Republicans and Democrats just serve different factions of the ruling class. And because of the Democrats narrative and because there has been some kind of insurgency, there’s more to work with, because the Republicans actually celebrate their corruption.

And in fact, the type of escalation that we do, the type of disruption, the type of protest… The fascists use that as part of their narrative, that we are… “the Marxists that are coming for capitalism.”

*grins*

We are.

Right.

Spoiler alert: I don’t identify as a Marxist, but I’m just saying [globally speaking], they’re not wrong.

But not in the way that they think. We’re not talking about Soviet style anything. We’re just talking about, I don’t know, having fucking healthcare like they do in Europe. Like, it’s not crazy. Like, we just think that we should be able to have nice things like healthcare and education. That’s pretty much it.

But when there is a strong man authoritarian, like Donald Trump, basically, it makes anything we’re trying to do, a hundred times harder. Even though Biden is horrible [yes, Genocide Joe], it shouldn’t be overlooked that there has been, by no stretch of the imagination, adequate or acceptable ground made… We also have to look at the movements have made ground, we have actually done things that have never been done before.   We have shifted the ground beneath their feet, and it’s not because they are good people. It’s not. It’s because we have built enough power, to force them to make certain changes.

Have those changes been adequate. No, of course not. Has the military industrial complex continued to wage genocide? Has AIPAC and all of their shills been able to continue to enable genocide? Yes, of course they have, but I don’t think we should lose that nuance in the conversation. Also, that is not an endorsement of Joe Biden.

[00:27:42] Steven Grumbine: Right.

[00:27:43] Jay Ponti: It’s very easy for us to get into very black and white thinking, and…

[00:27:47] Steven Grumbine: Well, let me throw this at ya. With you being the ultimate organizer- and that’s what I think of you as, I think of you as the guy that has an idea and suddenly, from zero to 60, you are already moving and shaking with your network- that said, what I’m seeing, and I want to get your take on this, because I’m nowhere near the… I don’t have the touch, the reach, the connections, nor the lifestyle to be able to pull off a lot of what you do, and I watch in awe sometimes. But in this particular case, what I have noticed- in spades, is that the vast majority of Americans go back to sleep when a Democrat is in office, they stop fighting for any of the things. And so, the very things you didn’t want to happen under a Republican, that you fought tooth and nail to prevent, and somehow or another, we’re able to generate enough populism to stop it… suddenly, when a Democrat gets in there, they say it in a gentler, kinder way, and it weirdly happens. So, in effect, they may be the lesser evil, but they appear to be the greater facilitator of said evil.

[00:28:56] Jay Ponti: I would agree with the premise that most of the mainstream, we’ll call them the liberals, they go back to sleep. They go, “Oh, great a Democrat’s in office, mission accomplished, all is right… maybe they’re not perfect.” I agree with that premise wholeheartedly, however, what did we stop?

What did we stop under Trump’s office? Like what? Liberals being outraged, liberals getting fired up? But it’s really just following CNN and MSNBC, and getting themselves whipped up and thinking that some member of the DOJ is finally going to put him in jail. It’s never going to happen.

That’s never going to happen. So, outside of their performative outrage [which accomplishes nothing], I would argue that, what the fascists were able to accomplish, which was to get 300 lobbyists appointed to the cabinet. They ran the f*cking table on the federal courts. Really like, forced hysterectomies in ice facilities, they were nabbing activists off the streets.

I would argue that we made very little ground. Now, I would say getting the liberals radicalized is cool, because I do think that that, in the long term, helped to wake people up. But I will say, during this Biden administration, the Gaza student uprising, is another example. I think that the illusion for a lot of liberals is cracking, because they’ve seen too much now.

And so, I think the illusion has become much thinner for them. Does that mean that they’re going to take to the streets? I actually have seen a lot of them come over and become much more radical. So, I don’t know if I entirely agree with the premise. The frame I’m coming from is that the 99% must continue to unite. Unite around issues and organize.

That’s it. And take that frame and shift the frame from, ‘I’m just a consumer, I don’t have any power, and so maybe, hopefully we get the right guy and hopefully they’re going to do a good job, so I can focus on surviving late stage capitalism.”

It’s just not a sustainable model. My standpoint is that we just need to keep coming together, find the issues, whether it’s MMT or whether it’s divestment. And by the way, I really, really don’t believe that I’m the ultimate organizer.

[00:31:05] Steven Grumbine: I think you are.

[00:31:06] Jay Ponti: I could probably name 20 organizers that are more effective than me. I’m good at a really specific type of campaign launch and mobilization. So I’m a really good mobilizer. Like, I’m good a guy to bring in to get the troops fired up, but I also don’t want people to think that, ‘oh, someone like Jay Ponti is doing it.’ No, a lot of times when I was organizing, I was on EBT card. I was on food stamps. The only thing I did is, I just really studied history. I studied the tactics that worked and I took it to the market, and I organized with real people, because I understand that the human race has less than five years to figure out how to transition from fossil fuels, if the human race is going to survive, in the way that we know our world today. And I can’t live with myself if I don’t do something about it. and it’s been hard, but I really wanna dispel the notion that there are these superhero organizers. No. Most of it is just ordinary people like me, that have just, kind of stuck with it, and I’ve just learned over time, and I’ve made so many mistakes.

I have made so many mistakes, Steve, hoped I’ve learned from those mistakes. I’ve had the humility kind of learn from them and to keep iterating. And over time, we have stumbled on, I believe, a theory of change that has worked and that’s what the book is about.

[00:32:21] Steven Grumbine: Well, that’s where I want to go right now man, I like how you dispelled the whole great man hero thing, because I agree with you, but it was more of a setup for you to lay it down.

I think that that was really what the ‘not me us’ was all about, right? I mean, it was to dispel heroes and make it so each of us, instead of us, just put an I voted sticker on our forehead and think that we had achieved, you know, world peace, that we actually do more than that.

And I find it extraordinarily challenging. To get people to do the most rudimentary things. But yet you can get people to move . And I say you, and I know it’s more than you. I want to be crystal clear. This is not to double back and lionize. The intent here is just to say that there are people that do, and there are most people that don’t.

Before we get into your theory of change, which I want to really, really spend the rest of the time on, I really want to understand your theory of mobilizing, your theory of getting people to buy in and do things that they didn’t think they would do.

[00:33:49] Jay Ponti: Oh, I love this question so much. I just love such a nerd wonking out in this stuff because what ends up a lot of happening with a lot of these things is they, you end up preaching to the choir. You get people who think like you and, you know, you end up just talking to another group of people and you feel good because you did a thing.

Um, but nothing really changes. Again, I don’t, I’m not trying to start a fight, but force the vote was, I think one of those examples. And I, for me, I looked at what are the times where culture was hacked ? How how have people launched campaigns that have hacked culture?

Occupy wall street was one of those campaigns. Bernie was one of those campaigns. the ice bucket challenge was one of those campaigns. So for me, I go to the core principles. I look at how they launch a movie, right? what do big Hollywood studios do to get people, they, they have spend a bunch of money on some big stupid action movie.

You know, partially funded by the department of defense. But then they need a lot of people that care enough to go to the theaters and buy a ticket. How do they do that? Right. So what I start with is number one, what is my plan? Do I have enough time? What is the message? Is that message going to resonate?

Is it simple? Because our ideas on the left tend to be very abstract, right?

[00:35:03] Steven Grumbine: Oh, yes.

[00:35:04] Jay Ponti: How do I get people to take their money out of the banks? That is a nightmare. Oh my God, it’s a nightmare to go in, like, take your money out of the bank is horrible. And, you know, credit unions don’t exactly have the conveniences of, you know, the services offered that the big banks do. Right? It’s the hardest thing you can imagine doing it to take my money. Oh, that’s terrible. Right? So what you need to do is you need to communicate to them in a way where they care enough about it to take action.

Tactically speaking, number one, the message has to hit them in the heart. It’s got to hit them in a way that’s really simple. We were at a zeitgeist moment with Bank Exit because the Dakota access pipeline was happening. It was so clear. The moral divide was black and white. It was just so clear.

The footage of, peaceful indigenous people on their own land being brutalized by police. the images were very compelling. The narrative was perfect you just couldn’t argue against it. and I think the same thing is happening with Gaza.

it’s a really, powerful comparison because people see in real time, on social media, the death and destruction caused. And, it is really clear. There is very little nuance, despite the fact that you talked about gaslighting in the book. I do say that gaslighting is always a tactic of the oppressor.

Always. Oh, if you want ceasefire, you support Hamas, right? It’s ridiculous. It’s a ridiculous thought. But I think because we get to a certain point where we just can’t handle seeing more dead Palestinian babies in real time that at a certain point, something breaks inside of us and we just say, like, I can’t live with the pain of knowing that my government is helping to aid and abet this genocide.

I have to do something. As these Gen Z students are doing right now. But in terms of the tactics that work, number one, make sure the message resonates. And don’t just go with the first message you come up with, because most likely that’s going to preach to the choir.

You have to keep workshopping it. And I, talked to people who do marketing for a living and I asked for advice. I actually literally just did this today. I have a marketing document. I brought in two people who were Hollywood professional screenwriters.

And I asked them to tear it apart and they did. And it’s uncomfortable cause you know, you don’t want, to get criticized. It’s hard. It’s a hard process. The same thing with my book. I got a group of about 15 people to spend two years reading it on zoom. And we read it cover to cover three times to kind of flush out the implicit biases.

But also it was really important to me that this book was fun to read

[00:37:25] Jay Ponti: It

[00:37:25] Steven Grumbine: is

[00:37:26] Jay Ponti: Because books about organizing tend to be really boring and dry and nobody wants to read them. And so what fucking use is it if nobody wants to read your book? The books I like are, you know, written by Hunter S. Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut. So I modeled it after that you were right. It is very, very hard. So get the message right. And then I try to enlist influencers. And if you’re running a local campaign, you can find people In your local community who are influential, whether it’s a pastor or, or some city council person or some community leader, you find those people who are influential, who have reaches, and then basically make sure that the marketing materials, whether it’s a video or a PDF document or a one page or a press release, get out there and then have an event.

For me, it’s finding some kind of event where I can make a big call to action. I like Abby Hoffman style. Um, we did a disruption of Joe Manchin last year. I like sort of more humorous style, if you look up hashtag demons4manchin, you can see a fun action we did against Joe Manchin.

[00:38:28] Steven Grumbine: I will do that !

[00:38:30] Jay Ponti: I think, trying to get through in this attention economy, how do I reach Joe the plumber. Now, you’re not going to reach everybody. I’m not trying to, convince the average, you know, Charlie Kirk fan, you know what I mean? I’m not trying to convince him, but there is a swath of people who haven’t quite up made their minds.

if you can talk to them in the language that they understand, uh, not the language you use, you speak to their listening. Not the language that you talk to your friends and comrades about, this is why a lot of socialist efforts have failed. Because they speak in a jargon that makes sense to them. And most people who still have cold war conditioning go, wait a minute, what? You know, they, they just tune out. That’s kind of the process okay. So a good metaphor is building a fire. When you’re building a fire, you start with the kindling.

Okay. You can’t catch the bigger logs. So getting those initial influencers and stakeholders, and the right message and the right vehicle. That’s the kindling. if you think about a, sort of a bullseye with concentric circles, like sort of circular concentric circle.

So you start with a core, then you kind expand out from there. And then, the outer reaches are sort of the broader population. You’re not going to get everybody, but if you get enough of a nice little fire going, then it can spread like wildfire. These students got a nice little fire going.

They were able to break through the media narrative, and then catches fire. Now you have 120 encampments, and I’ve been down to the encampments. It’s really quite inspiring thing.

[00:39:53] Steven Grumbine: Every time I hear you talk about this stuff, instantly starting at kindling. I’m already hurting because a lot of the stuff that we talk about is much more esoteric. And so finding a unique way of making it simple, keep it simple smiley. You know, I mean, like there’s got to be a way of doing that.

I don’t have access to a bunch of publicists. I don’t have access to Hollywood screenwriters and things like that. But, for the average person that maybe lacks some of your access, how might you tell the regular Jane and Joe that don’t

have that, what they might do.

[00:40:32] Jay Ponti: So first off you can get access. A hundred percent. There’s nothing special about me. I just had the chutzpah to go and ask. I just asked. I was clear about what I wanted. I made it simple. I was very direct and I make sure when I make the ask that I believe enough in what I’m doing that I believe that it deserves their attention. You absolutely can. You can reach out to people on Twitter, on Instagram, you can reach out to their foundations. Go to events. They speak at events all the time. Just go up to them.

A lot of people just don’t think that they have the right to go up and ask. That is the difference. That’s what I tell young people I work with, go and ask. You would be shocked If you just ask them for their cell phone, that they’ll give it to you.

[00:41:14] Steven Grumbine: Yeah.

[00:41:15] Jay Ponti: Right. And then all you need is one or two, and then it’ll build the confidence and then it’ll snowball from there. But you absolutely can. I hundred percent need to communicate that first.

Sorry, what was the second part of the question?

[00:41:26] Steven Grumbine: That was basically it is like, how do you get started? How do you get these people? Because the kindling, which is what I was talking about is like, a lot of the people at that regular Joe Plummer voter level they have to hear it from Bernie before of they believe it. They have to hear it from Susan Sarandon before they’re going to go, Oh, well, okay.

And in my world, it’s like, Oh, I got to hear it from an economist, Steve. I’m so sorry. I appreciate your decade of work, but I need to hear an economist say what you’re saying. And I’m, and I’m like, okay, well, here’s 40 references.

I mean, without the appeals to authority and stuff, how do you operate? You genuinely said, I’m not interested in reaching everybody. I’m

not going for charlie kirk’s faithful, you know?

[00:42:10] Jay Ponti: So it’s a great question. Get a whiteboard. And first off, think about who you have in your midst. You absolutely can recruit people. You know, marketing firms, all these places, they have websites, they have phone numbers, you know, they’re on LinkedIn. There’s a million people on LinkedIn.

Put it out on Facebook. Who do I know that’s a marketing wizard, right? Someone you know knows someone. Okay and then, just have a direct conversation. Hey, can I get half an hour of your time? I would love your idea. I’m launching this campaign and I just would love for your perspective on it. And ask him, ask him to get on a zoom with you.

What I do is I go to a whiteboard and I try to get the best people I know who are smarter than me and better at this. I go in with an initial idea. This is what I have. And a lot of times this is also what I’m hired to do professionally is, you know, have people hire me to go in and help them take this complex idea and make it digestible.

But what we’re trying to do is get down to and with Occupy Wall Street, how do we talk about a class war, right? You mention class war, especially in 2011, and most people tune out. They go, Nope, not for me. It is a class war. The class war is real. It’s been happening for decades. 60, 000 people die every year because we don’t have healthcare.

And that’s because rich people don’t want to pay more. and they want to profit off of our misery. Okay. It’s really simple. But you can’t talk to Joey the plumber about that. But ‘we are the 99%.’ It so simply communicates such a powerful idea that has completely changed the mental model around class warfare and class consciousness in America. For Standing Rock, we are ‘water protectors.’ Okay, so we’re not a bunch of eco terrorists, we’re just trying to protect the water, man. You know, ‘not me, us.’ Such a simple idea. Not about me. It’s about all of us. Such a powerful, simple idea. Okay. So ‘feel the Bern,’ right?

So powerful. So the right wing tend to be much better at this. Get a whiteboard and just keep at it, put it out on social media. Hey, do polls, it’s a process. You want to take it and boil it down and boil it down and boil it down and boil it down and boil it down.

Really, it’s just, it’s hard. It’s just hard. Most people don’t want to do it it’s uncomfortable work. But once you get it down and you get confident about it, then all you need is 1 or 2 people.

When you get that message. Hey, I want to ask people. Hey Susan. the pipeline’s about to cross the river. Divestment worked in South Africa. I think it can work here.

Will you help me?

[00:44:37] Steven Grumbine: Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.

[00:44:39] Jay Ponti: Right. It’s so simple. And then, um, really try to make sure there’s young people there. In a lot of organizing spaces, I see there’s no one under 30. There’s no one under 40. There’s no one under 50. There’s no one under 60. And if there’s no one under 30, it’s going to be really hard because probably language you’re talking in is going to be hard to resonate.

Okay. Try to make sure there are some young people there to help you as well. Just test it out , read it out loud and say, this is what I’m thinking and see if people glaze over. But there may be one thing that you wrote and they go, Ooh, what about that?

Ooh, I like that. Then do more of that. Does that make sense? Yeah,

[00:45:14] Steven Grumbine: no, absolutely. This is fantastic. I mean, think to myself, you know, as somebody who came from the right and enjoyed the simplicity of the bigotry they espoused with one word sentences, you know what I mean? Uh, the left doesn’t have that. It’s it’s a paragraph to say one word. But you think about it and, and quite frankly, the idea here that you’re laying forward is really important.

I mean, what we’re dealing with today, it’s not going to do us any good to talk about the comintern. It’s not going to do us any good to talk about bolsheviks, necessarily. I mean, maybe it will, behind the scenes.

The point is, that out here in public, though, we have to find a new way of saying that we have to be present, by the way, not mailing it in and hoping somebody else will talk for us, but we have to be present and we have to network and we have to simplify and youthfulize our commentary, change the language.

So it’s relevant to today. I appreciate that. So taking what you’ve just stated, talk to me about your theory of change. Cause I think that this really is the capstone of what this book is about. And quite frankly, it’ll help me because I need to learn this stuff badly.

[00:46:24] Jay Ponti: Right. So you know, there’s quite a lot to unpack here. I can talk about a few core principles. I wrote a book that uses storytelling so you know it’s a narrative that goes from occupy all the way through the modern labor movement. It’s a story told from my perspective so that you can follow along and you can see the evolution of how we go through these various campaigns. It shows that it’s part of a longer campaign. Now, along the way, we learned some lessons about the things that worked and the things that don’t work.

One of the lessons is that one or a small group of people can actually make a powerful call to action that lights the fire that really changes everything. Greta Thunberg did it. The people for Bernie did it. The standing rock youth runners did it. , Adbusters did it with Occupy wall street. A few, a handful of students at Columbia did it.

Right. It’s totally possible. You can too. All right? Now, when we are going to approach that, one of the things we learned from Occupy is that we need an inside outside strategy. That means, in the way that the civil rights movement has done in the way that unions do it’s actually really just union collective bargaining.

Um, we need an inside and an outside strategy. That means we leverage the power of the grassroots to get out, make noise, disrupt, have protests. Make sure the protest is effective, right? Because there are certain types of protests where people just tune you out.

They don’t care. Okay. But you want to not only get out with a bullhorn because it feels good, or you don’t want to get out and just kind of shout into the void because it feels good. You want to make sure that number one, that’s effective. But also that there are people who are negotiating with stakeholders, whoever’s in power. Whether it be the union bosses cause they’re saying, we believe we deserve a 2 dollar raise.

We believe we deserve whatever they’re trying to lobby for, and then they’re going to say, look, we are not going to work until you change this policy. Okay. It’s the same principle, same thing with the voting act. MLK SNCC and, uh, the leadership said, ‘Oh, you don’t want us to continue marching and protesting and, disrupting, the status quo?

Cool. This is the legislation we want, and we’re not going to stop until you pass it.’ That’s the principle. So I have expanded that idea of an inside outside strategy to also incorporate the notion that broadly progressives or the left or activists or social justice, we tend to focus only on outside tactics and we neglect our inner landscape.

So I have also included in this theory of change, the notion that we must also focus on healing ourselves. We must focus on self care, mindfulness, meditation on our conditioning. Okay, the trauma we’ve experienced as Americans. It is impossible to live in America and not have been conditioned and brainwashed and traumatized.

The problem is, is that, white supremacy, misogyny, patriarchy, colonization, homophobia, all these things are in the drinking water of our culture. And then we bring that with us. Classism. We never talk about class either. How as poor people, that’s something we also never talk about how that affects us.

And so we need to work on ourselves to heal ourselves, to make ourselves the most empowered whole. And then also doing this work is going to be traumatic. We need to create practices to take care of ourselves. Otherwise, you’re going to burn out, people burn out. and then if you’re burned out, you’re probably going to create a bunch of problems for the people you’re working with. There’s a lot more to unpack in the theory of change. but the inside outside strategy is pinnacle. Also breaking down the notion that any one of us has the answer.

Uh, cause what happens is we tend to organize in silos.

I have my issue, which is healthcare.

Okay. I have my issue which is climate. I have my issue, which is MMT. Right?

The problem is that not one of these groups has the numbers or resources to succeed in changing the system. So the challenge is how do we break down the mental barriers? I didn’t invent this idea. Fred Hampton, probably was one of the first to really, really do this in the most effective way, which is basically his rainbow coalition.

He said, look, we all have the same goals. We all have the same enemies and oppressor. it probably makes sense if we work together because healthcare, um, you know, white supremacy and racism, uh, if you live in a poor community of color, Most likely you are the one that’s going to get a fossil fuel project.

Okay. They don’t put them in white wealthy communities . They don’t tend to do that. And if you have that fossil fuel extraction project in proximity to you, the chances you’re going to have some health problems go up and then you don’t have healthcare to deal with it.

So, all of these issues are interdependent and interconnected, but so rarely do you see the groups working together. It’s crazy. So I do a Be The Revolution training locally with these groups to bring these groups together, to try to create those rainbow coalition. So the rainbow coalition aspect is also a big part is if we’re really going to address these big problems, we get to get out of our comfort zones.

And start, expanding our circles to show up for each other in solidarity. And that is happening. Okay. So it is happening. But in my opinion, we haven’t quite made this shift. because guess what? In Gaza, guess what? A lot of it’s about that. We don’t hear a lot about fossil fuel reserves in the Gaza territories. Just Google it. they’re going after the oil.

No fucking shit. Right? So if you’re in the climate movement, it’s absolutely connected. Or let’s just talk about the carbon footprint of the war machine. And we don’t have the luxury to have more stupid wars in Ukraine and in Gaza. We don’t have the luxury because of the carbon footprint of the war. Okay? So these issues are definitely interdependent.

We’re all on the same team. Everybody helps

everybody. That’s the idea.

[00:52:20] Steven Grumbine: you know, I’m a project manager. So to me, the line that I would use to describe what you just said is ‘understanding the inputs, outputs, tools and techniques that bring it all together and you just talked about the intersectionality of all our struggle and the fact that

as

a class, we have a common enemy, a common purpose.

Even if we have individual struggles through that, our common purpose is we are the 99%. We are the working class, and we are being oppressed by these larger than life figures above us right now that, if we but unite, we have the chance to actually bring about change. And folks, I’m going to bring us to a close here, please by all means, I want y’all to go out buy the book. Be the Revolution: How Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders Movement Reshaped American Politics. I have it. Please get this book. Let’s all start thinking, you know, about how we can be part of making change because things are sliding to the right really quickly in a way that I don’t think any of us are truly prepared to deal with.

As you look at those militarized police officers the stuff you see happening in

Gaza, I we’re not that far away.

[00:53:30] Jay Ponti: Google project 2025, they have a plan, man, the, right. has a plan and it’s terrifying. don’t sleep on, the, the neo fascist version of the corporatocracy. You’re right, Steve, thank you for uplifting it. And hopefully we can make that last step of how do we wake people up, get them to care, but then give them some simple thing that they can do where they can experience the power of people coming together in real life.

Cause it’s such a good medicine, man. I tell you, those young students are facing some huge challenges right now, but I went down to the USC encampment and the vibe there was off the hook. I came away from just this, I was so despondent feeling so down, I just, I had to sneak in. But I did sneak in to bring the book to these kids and to see what I could do to support them.

And boy, I left high because the energy there was so powerful. Until you get out from behind your keyboard, because it’s just not,

[00:54:27] Steven Grumbine: It’s not, the same.

[00:54:28] Jay Ponti: Yeah, thinking that posting into the void on social media is activism, that’s a notion we get to move beyond.

[00:54:35] Steven Grumbine: I want to just bring this up and I don’t want to belabor this, but I do want to say this. I always find it disturbing that the right wing always has, this neo fascist side always has a proactive plan for what they want to do. And when I look over to the left, all the left is doing, and a center left, uh, the center establishment, the milquetoast, I just voted, whatever.

All we ever do is react to whatever the right’s dreams and aspirations are. We never have a positive theory for what we want. And we don’t hold on to it when we do. We get sidelined with ‘Donny tiny hands’ or ‘orange genie.’ We don’t make them fight our positive message. We’re constantly in reaction mode.

[00:55:19] Jay Ponti: Yes.

[00:55:19] Steven Grumbine: And I hope someday we can get out of that rut.

[00:55:22] Jay Ponti: I couldn’t agree more. And I think the liberal portion they just, they want to maintain the status quo. The radical right, you know, they have six-figure consultants sitting in war rooms coming up with these strategies and using vast resources to operationalize these plans. some of the instances where we’ve done that on the left. The problem is that mostly we’re poor. Mostly we’re trying to already just survive in this late stage capitalistic society, which is hard. So we don’t have the time, the capacity. Plus we have all of our internalized ideas that we’ve been indoctrinated to think that as poor people, we have no agency, we have no power. So it’s a lot for us to overcome, but there are groups like there is a chapter about Divest LA, a group that I was part of didn’t lead, but I was a part of that. That followed Bank Exit, where we pushed L. A. City Council to divest 8 billion dollars. We beat Wells Fargo straight up and, unbundled 800 accounts, changed the request for proposal process. We fucking won. And that should have never happened. We passed public banking on a state and municipal level. Should have never happened, but I talk about how we did that.

There are groups of small committed citizens coming together with a good strategy and the commitment to. And that’s, I hope what people come away from this book with

[00:56:46] Steven Grumbine: Fantastic. And I hope that’s what people come away with this podcast too, as well. I mean, go ahead and finish up your thoughts.

[00:56:52] Jay Ponti: Steve. Thank you for working on the part that you’re passionate about and trying to shift the Overton window. And, don’t sleep on the fact that your moment may come. You may find the right moment where the thing just pops, you know, so keep at it.

Do you know the spray 409?

Okay. Do you know why they call it 409?

[00:57:09] Steven Grumbine: No.

[00:57:11] Jay Ponti: Because that was the 409th iteration of the formula where they finally got it right.

They went through 409 iterations before they finally found the one that was like, this

is it.

[00:57:25] Steven Grumbine: That’s amazing.

[00:57:26] Jay Ponti: Just stick with it. It’s about being in a growth mindset, possibility mindset where you’re like, okay, that’s not working. What’s next pivot. we get very bogged down in doomerism.

It’s easy to get discouraged, but just keep trying. Keep trying. Honestly. I spent years where I really wanted to do something important for years. let’s say from 2008 to 2016, that’s eight years where I’m like, I’m looking at the ice bucket challenge.

I’m like, why can’t I do something that actually makes a difference? I really wanted to feel like my time on earth had mattered. I spent eight years failing before finally stumbling onto the right moment and the right time for Bank Exit. It took eight years, but finally one popped. Okay. Didn’t happen overnight.

I just spent a lot of time being bad at it. And, I just didn’t stop. I really wanted to do something that, made a difference. And it just happened that the universe, I was just in the right position at the right time. And I jumped on it.

It’s like surfing, you know. At first, it’s hard to swim out through the waves. You don’t know how to do it. And even if you can get past the breakwater, you’re tired, but then you can’t always make the wave come, but when it does come, you paddle like hell and then you’re probably going to fall, keep doing it.

And eventually you’re going to build the muscle memory and you’re going to stand up and then it’s going to be fun.

[00:58:45] Steven Grumbine: You know what, that is giving me just a little scintilla of hope right there, because if nothing else, I’ve got sticktoitiveness. Now I gotta be able to change my tactics. So with that, Jay, thank you so much for joining us again. The book here, folks, please go out and buy this is Be the Revolution: How Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders Movement Reshaped American Politics by my friend and author, Jay Ponti. Jay, where can folks find more of your work?

[00:59:15] Jay Ponti: Yeah. So you, if you go to betherevolution.us. And then if you want to download a free bonus chapter, which was an autopsy of why Trump won, it’s betherevolution.us/home. And then you can sign up to find more about our trainings and the tour. Please go out and request your local bookstore to carry it, your bookstore can order it.

It is on Amazon or there are some other platforms if you don’t like Amazon, which a lot of us don’t. But thank you, Steve. Thanks for having me, I really enjoyed this conversation.

[00:59:44] Steven Grumbine: Absolutely. All right, folks, my name is Steve Grumbine. I’m the host of Macro N Cheese. My guest, Jay Ponti, we are out of here.