Running for office is a fool’s errand if you think you can win and radically change the system from within. But an election campaign can serve other purposes for political organizers. A campaign provides a platform, a megaphone... media attention. The process of campaigning puts you in touch with people in the community. As Steve puts it, an election allows you to “build coalitions and radicalize people.”  

Jen Perelman’s need to run against Debbie Wasserman Schultz was clear:  

“I knew that we weren't going to win, but we made significant strides in what my bigger mission is. At the end of the day, I just was not going to sit there and let her represent Jewish people and not stand up for Palestine.” 

Steve has been on Jen’s show, JENerational Change, a number of times, where he has successfully convinced her of the validity and value of MMT. In this interview we get her take-aways from her most recent campaign. She and Steve talk about the popularity of programs that would provide jobs and healthcare. Election results represent the needs of capital, not the public.  

The conversation also touches on the moral implications of violence and how societal structures perpetuate violence against marginalized groups. 

Jen Perelman is host of the podcast and YouTube show, JENerational Change. She is a native Floridian and has run against Debbie Wasserman Schultz twice. So far, she has not won in the traditional sense. On Jen’s Linkedin profile, she explains: 

“From my earliest days of practicing law, I've fought for those who can’t fight for themselves. I've helped the poor & indigent receive proper counsel and helped young women receive a judicial bypass for an onerous process for their reproductive rights.”  

@JenforFL25 on X 

All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. It's been a hot second since I've had my friend Jen Perelman on this show. But I want to tell you all why she's on this show.

Because aside from being smart lady and my friend and someone that has a really, really successful alt media talk show of her own, JENerational Change, which I get to occasionally be a guest on, thank you very much. The fact is that she did something that many of us talk about but never do. She ran for office. She ran against what I consider to be a pit viper.

And Debbie What's-her-name Schultz. And yes, I didn't misspell that. That's how I call her. Because I just cannot stand Brillo Pad Lady. I just can't stand her.

And with that in mind, I can't stand her policies. I can't stand the way she talks. I can't stand who she protects and who she kicks. I can't stand the apparatus that she represents.

I can't stand any of it, because it's all Shadenfreude. It's all a big ruse to protect capital. It's all a big ruse to protect the establishment.

And if you're on the outside looking in and you've got needs or wants or desires, well, you're screwed. Because she represents the very thing that holds every one of us back. She represents the oligarchy.

She represents the moneyed interests that control this country and control all of our national institutions. But Jen, in what must be an act of absolute insanity, decided to go not once but twice against the machine down there in Miami [Florida] Dade.

And what do we get? We get nothing. Honest to God, nothing. It was a landslide. And let me make it really poignant. And this is not the pile on Jen, because Jen's my homie.

I think Jen did God's work showing the futility of the system. But I actually did something I haven't done in a long time, and that is I crawled out of my shell and I phone banked for Jen.

I felt slimy because I don't buy into this system. But I believed in my friend.

And I wanted to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what I've been thinking and you know, let me just say the results were pretty scary. So let me stop pontificating, as her co host, Pontificating with Pete [Hager] might say, and let me just bring on Jen. Jen, thank you for joining me so much.

Oh, you are so welcome. Thank you so much for having me back on.

Absolutely. Last time we had this web of networking, we were talking about networking all these people together.

This time we're going to talk a little different, right? I mean, hats off to you. Goodness gracious. You didn't just mail it in either, by the way.

You were out there in the streets, glad-handing, kissing babies, changing diapers, doing whatever it was that you had to do to be a good politician. And you ran what I consider to be a very good campaign.

But the reason why I want to talk to you so badly is because you represent things like a (Federal) Job Guarantee. You represented Medicare for All, you represented all these hot button items that we always talk about.

And you see the public opinion polls are through the roof and yet you were running against somebody who genuinely represented everything against that. And she made you out to be like invisible. She just absolutely tsunami-ed you with establishment vote. And it was a kick in the stomach.

I'm not being mean. I didn't expect you to win because I don't believe in the system. I don't believe you can win, not in the way we think we're winning anyway.

But to watch the numbers, to see how bad it was, it was almost as if it wasn't real.

It isn't real.

Well, first of all, let's just get started. What the hell made you decide to run in the first place?

You mean the first time or to do it again?

Well, to do it again the first time we can chalk that up to exuberance because of the Bernie movement.

This time we can touch back on the first time, too, because I think there's some important Brand New Congress stuff that we can talk about in there as well. But this time in particular, what was it made you feel like, yeah, you know what, I'm just going to go ahead and do it.

You know, Peter and I had been tossing it about from the very first time. We knew we weren't going to do it again in '22, that we had some ducks to get in a row.

We wanted to figure out some things, our district lines changed and some stuff like that. But you know, I never ran thinking, oh, I'm going to win and I want that job. And when we say that, oh, it was like you got beat. Yes, electorally yes.

However, every single campaign is part of this snowball that I am building in terms of connections and coalition. And at the end of the day, that is how we will win. It won't be electorally now for me to use that process as part of building.

We say our mission is transforming politics into service, but a lot of what we do down here is service. And so using the campaign to build that network, that's how I've always seen it. And then the same with the podcast.

It's all just part of this snowball to get people to coalesce, you know what I'm saying? So even though electorally? Yeah, I mean, I'm not delusional.

I knew that we weren't going to win, but we made significant strides in what my bigger mission is. And at the end of the day, I just was not going to sit there and let her represent Jewish people, and not stand up for Palestine.

Watching the public opinion and watching children, kids, young kids, 18 years old in college, on campuses, protesting against the genocide in Gaza, and then watching the way the establishment coalesced around demonizing Muslims, demonizing Palestinians, othering them, unhumaning them, making them out to be quote, unquote, animals, never telling the truth, always gaslighting.

Yeah.

And literally thousands upon thousands upon thousands dead children every day, frozen to death, you name it. And somehow or another, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was able to just carry that right to the bank. Yeah, just. It wasn't even a thing.

Because people don't vote on policy. And this is something that I've seen very up close and personal at the congressional level. But people vote based on how they feel. Right?

People vote based on how they feel about a person, how they feel about security, how they feel about safety. But it's always feeling. It's not generally based on reason, and it's almost never policy, although people will tell you it is.

But what you will find is people's policy will go in accordance with their tribe. So the policy for them is more fluid. It's really how they feel. And Debbie, in a lot of ways down here is what is comfortable to people.

They're used to her.

And especially our voting demographic, which is older people, every district is different, but you have a lot of older people, you have a lot of Jewish people. And those are the people that are our consistent super voters. They vote all the time.

I mean, look, we only had like, I think 14%, maybe 16% voter turnout in our primary. So it isn't so much that Debbie represents the district as much as she represents super voters.

And those people are older and they vote with what's comfortable to them. Even though I can tell you I've had conversations with them where they flat out know that she's corrupt and they're still comfortable with her.

Wow. So this whole "feels thing, I mean, I go back to a period of time when I remember people saying they liked Bill Clinton.

It's like, why do you like Bill Clinton?

"Yeah.

Like, he's dreamy looking. He's so handsome. He's so cute.

I was an idiot. I voted for him because he played the saxophone on Arsenio Hall Show. He was my first election.

Oh, my God, you poor thing.

But we look at this stuff, though, and I say to myself, you know, I was a big believer in electoral politics for a very long time, and I went away from it for a while, and then the Bernie Sanders campaign kicked in, and all this energy about left populism was rising up. And I watched the Democratic Party literally do everything in its power to kill it. To kill it dead. Not to win with it, but to kill it.

I'm thinking, wait a minute, hold on. Democracy is we the people. But the party apparatchik, the party machine, from start to finish, did absolutely everything it could to crush us.

I remember Nancy Pelosi laughing and calling the Green New Deal, "the green dream, or whatever."

Yeah.

I remember Hillary Clinton cackling about Bernie Sanders going, pie in the sky. How you gonna pay for it, Bernie? And all this stuff. And this is your standard "Vote Blue" sycophant Democrat, right?

This is the Rachel Maddow on steroids crew, The View, laughing at people for trying to end a Gaza genocide while they prance about in Prada. And the ultimate lie that they represent the people is only slightly more egregious than the other guys saying they represent the people.

Because over that time, from my Bernie delusion to present, I've come to find that capital owns the institutions, capital owns the politicians.

And when you do have some good bloke, some good person or somebody you think might be okay, finally pass through the filter, they're immediately rolled into the machine. They're castrated, they are muted, and they become a bot. I mean, think about AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] for a minute.

AOC was standing on someone's desk one minute talking about a Green New Deal, the next minute, she was calling the same person "Mama Bear" and, like, voting for things that were so antithetical to anything of progressive value, and people still worthlessly telling you, oh, she's one of us. No, no, no. And recently she talked about how, you know, she was currying favor so she could get ahead in the party and blah, blah, blah.

And they passed over her for a dude with stage 4 cancer. The gerontocracy is well in place there.

Oh, no, we're running a hospice there.

It's sick because none of this is representative of a democracy. Now, listen, I remember as a former conservative, the word was, hey, we don't live in a democracy. We live in a representative republic. Jen Perelman 00:11:33Right.

But the reality is, is that the entire election cycle, the Democrats sat there and lied to us and told us we were voting to save democracy. That gaslight.

Without having a primary, mind you, without anything.

Right. I mean, without anything, you know, coming back to your particular campaign.

Yeah.

Debbie Wasser... I can't call her Wasserman. Debbie What's-her-name Schultz.

Literally, each time she's run against somebody with even slight progressive values, the machine has literally crushed them. What was the final result of your election?

To be honest, I don't even know.

Was it like 99 to 1? If that.Jen Perelman 00:12:22It wasn't that horrible, but yeahSteve Grumbine 00:12:25

No, I'm just being....

It was... I mean, it was bad, but that's why I don't even know. I don't even look. We do what we do to build up our infrastructure and make our connections and stuff like that.

And we've always treated both campaigns very much like that.

And so, as a result, both times, like losing, I didn't really feel like it was a loss because there's a lot of things that have happened in terms of some of the people we've worked with and things that we've been able to do locally. Like, for me, it's part of just being in this community and standing up and doing what you gotta do.

But that's only because I never looked at it as, oh, I want that job, I want that seat. And I always treated the campaign as its own entity to further build this platform in my mission, you know?

Yeah, no, I do.

In fact, what I've come to realize, at least from my vantage point anyway, is the value of elections at this point is an opportunity to build coalitions and radicalize people.

Exactly.

Educate, radicalize, and move forward. And by the way, your final results, the certified results.

Yeah. Oh, did you look?

Uh-huh. Debbie What's-her-name Schultz: 36,479 votes, making up 83.2% Jen Perelman 00:13:41there it is. 83.Steve Grumbine 00:13:42...and Jennifer Pearlman, 7,349 votes, 16.

8%. 

It's not 99 to 1, but my goodness.

Yeah.

I just. I find it hard to believe ...

Because it's again, it's. Look at our voter turnout and look at who votes, you know.

Yeah.

And people are deflated. And this is all by design.

When you have people that are sort of struggling to live, which, as we know is most people, they're not able to be concerned. Is certainly not a primary. Like, we don't want people to be educated or involved, and so we keep everybody desperate.

But the few people in this demographic or this district that come out to vote are her people. That's just how it is.

You've been around this a long time.

Yeah.

You were part of Brand New Congress. You had your eyes filled with stars. We all did. Right.

I mean, Brand New Congress brought in a lot of new voices and faces and gave a lot of hope, but that's gone now. I mean.

Yeah.

What do you think happened?

Well, I can say what happened for me is basically, I have just gotten further and further. I don't even like to use the term left, because that doesn't mean anything anymore.

But I am more in the arena of, like, I would consider myself an anarcho-socialist or, I don't know, something like that.

But so to me, anything within the government, within the electoral, within that process, anything in the duopoly is just completely capital run and capital court. Like, I feel like we're in the Hunger Games and you're just sitting there in the Capitol trying to fight against the Capitol Police.

We have to think outside of the Capitol, you know?

Absolutely. You know, it's funny you bring up the Capitol Police for a second. A lot of things went on January 6th a few years back.

Oh, yeah.

And people are shocked from the establishment that people don't give a shit about January 6th. January 6th doesn't hold the, you know, the whole Donnie Tiny Hands, 'Orange man bad' approach. Now, mind you, this is not an endorsement.

Or do I like Donald Trump in any way, shape or form? I want to be clear.  Every time I hear Elon Musk utter something, I want to vomit, you know?

But the tactic of building coalitions based on fearing one man. Lionize this guy to the point where he won two elections and almost won a third, really, If you think about the one that He lost.

After being impeached twice.

Yes. I mean, I remember consultants that I used to interview on this program that spent every waking moment spreading Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Oh, my God.

Instead of talking about a Green New Deal, instead of rallying people towards what a progressive left vision might be, they just spent the entire time, wasted every ounce of their political capital, turning Donald Trump into a martyr so he could win this election. You could say whatever you want. Bottom line, it doesn't mean a fucking thing to me. Excuse my French.

It really, at the end of the day, just shows me that this derangement between red team, blue team is there to obscure the fact that the working class is not a party.

The working class are people that work for a paycheck, that have needs, that have everyday lives, that we're being lied to on the daily by the news, that works hand in glove with these parties and the establishment narratives. And we're walking around like bobbleheads, trying to claw our way out of the lies, right, and come out the other side.

And, you know, it's that game of telephone. You tell somebody something, and by the time it gets to the other end, it's so bastardized and screwed up that nobody knows what truth is anymore.

And so these parties and this establishment work collectively to literally nullify the power of the working class by keeping us constantly divided, keeping us ignorant of economics, keeping us ignorant of what is possible, and just has us fighting over nonsense. What was your experience as a candidate with trying to pry your fingers through the establishment terrain?

I mean, what was your experience like working within the party?

Well, the first time that I ran, I mean, we didn't know we were doing. I started out with the idea that it was okay to run in a primary, and I actually started going to Dem clubs and approaching them.

And then I realized pretty quickly that they were not okay with someone challenging an incumbent. And they were really horrible to me the first time. Like, it was just ridiculous, just very ghosting.

They would talk shit about me behind my back, like all her little sycophants. And the Party is so ridiculous. It's like junior high school. And the second time, I didn't even bother.

The second time I ran, we did it without having anything to do... Like, I didn't go to any club meetings. I didn't show up to any of the Party stuff because there's no point.

So the Party is just, to me, immaterial, other than I'm registered as a Democrat to be in that primary.

Really, at the end of the day, when I see, like, for example, you know, "we're fighting to liberate Ukraine" and I'm looking around and I'm saying nobody thought that was the top priority.

And number two, they don't talk to us about NATO, they don't talk to us about any of the factors going into Russia protecting their sovereign borders. Instead, you've got this narrative out there that somehow or another, Russia is empire. And last time I checked, it's the US Empire.

The US Is the empire right now. And I think that that is a universally held fact across the globe that everyone would say the US Empire. Why in the world,

Then they talked about Buff Bernie and how Russian trolls had created a coloring book with Buff Bernie and it was ridiculous.

And they had people like Casey Charlemagne, I don't know if you remember Casey Champagne or Charlemagne or whatever that worked on Hillary's campaign and put the kiddie porn in the Bernie groups to get them shut down.

No, I don't remember this, but... Steve Grumbine 00:20:09Horrible. Jen Perelman 00:20:10Like I said, it's like junior high school.

It really is. But none of that sounds like democracy to me.

When I hear about suddenly Biden talking about China as the great evil in his State of the Union address, I'm thinking to myself, at what point in time is that US citizens talking about China? It's like they're preparing us mentally for them to be the new enemy.

China isn't out there bombing the world. China's busy building a belt and road initiative, great technology, making the lives of their people wonderful by comparison.

Giving them health care, giving them education, providing them with state of the art everything, and busy working hand in glove with other countries to build cooperative societies.

I know.

While the US is busy putting its thumb on their head. Help me understand what you think the purpose of government is.

Because as I look at it, I used to think government was about "we the people, by the people, for the people," and I even bought into the lie that it was a democracy, and so on and so forth, but now I don't see any of that.

I'm curious, what do you think in reality, not what they sell, but in reality, what do you think the purpose of government and all the stuff that comes out of government is? What do you think its purpose is? 

Protect capital

It's based on the principles of democracy, in theory. And we've never had that. This country's never been that.

I think it's just becoming more and more obvious that we don't have it, but we've never had it. And I don't know that any other country is necessarily better, but I do know that they're not worse.

And so I've never understood the thing about Russia, especially since they're the ones that, thanks to them, we are not living under a Nazi regime.

But, you know, we had a military industrial complex that needed to be fed, and we needed a bad guy, and we needed a Cold War, and we needed all of that. And it's still that. We're like a giant Rocky IV movie. We're ridiculous. And I've never understood it because, first of all, my family is Russian.

So, like, my great grandparents escaped Russia from the pogroms at the turn of the last century, right? So I don't think of Russia as enemies. I think of them. Weren't they on our team? They lost a whole lot of people.

And, like, why do we not like them now? Like, it never made sense to me. And the other thing is just the facts.

They have, like, what, a handful of military bases around the world and, like, whatever. I mean, are they really a threat? Did they have warships on our coast? Cause we have them up their ass.

So, like, I guess I'm too educated to have ever really seen them as a threat. But it's an easy sell to people. People like the Rocky IV.

Yeah. I mean, this goes back a bit, right? Obviously, the Red Scare, duck and cover.

I mean, we had the nuclear fears going, you know, I mean, I remember Sting and his Russian song. You know, I. I hope the Russians...

It goes back to about [19]48.

I was going to say, I know that when they worked out the dollar system and the Bretton Woods system and everything else, and they were trying to deal with Daddy Joe, Joseph Stalin, coming out of World War II, I know that all eyes were on Russia at that point. That went From Russia saving the world by defeating the fascists.

And yes, by the way, it was Russia that did that, to suddenly we've got to build all these non-government organizations, these NGOs, to literally keep Russia at bay through the IMF, the World bank, the Peace Corps, you name it. And you had the McCarthyism. I mean, there was just so much insanity that this country has gone through.

And just a slight aside, we had Clara Mattei on here a few years back. We're about due to bring her back on. Man, she's excellent. If you haven't talked to her, you need to.

And that includes people like John Maynard Keynes and that includes people like FDR [jFranklin Delano Roosevelt]. We have whole bunch of people making grand bargains to keep capital in power.

And really, you know, ever since then, the libertarians and the capitalists, the Mount Pelerin Society and all the other little fascist groups in this country have been doing their damnedest to get rid of any of the gains, if you will. And I don't even think they were gains, they were compromises.

Jen Perelman 00:25:48

The communist threat, yeah.

Yeah, we have been literally dealing with the fallout of that ever since then.

Oh, we still have it. Don't get. I mean, oh, I live where you've got young Cubans fighting with old Cubans over the communism.

Insane. Insane. So let's go back to Jen Perelman, part one, where you were part of Brand New Congress.

I know that people like Fadhel Kaboub talked to you about MMT and you got a little bit of a starter kit, if you will, on the Green New Deal and other such things. What was the enthusiasm level like for all you Brand New Congress folks?

I mean, did you all feel like you were ready to take on the world, that you had Bernie Sanders there and you know, we're going to just do this thing or what was that like?

You know, I never felt like I was in that because I think also I got in that a little bit later than the people.

Also, when we got there, it was really interesting because you had a lot of the candidates you could tell, like, and I hate to say it, but, like, they're not going anywhere. Whether it has to do with they have no chance in that district or they're just certain people that are not good candidates.

And then there were people like Cori Bush that really stood out where, like, I knew she would be a really good person to be fighting. But most of the people, it was, you know what, it had a good vibe. And I think that the people there legitimately did really care.

Like, Ava Psova was a good candidate in Arizona. Like, a lot of the people are now still involved in the grift in just different ways.

Interesting.

It is.

Talk to me more about the grift.

Oh, the grift. It's so profitable. I call it the WCCC. People think the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] is the problem. It's really the WCCC.

They're white collar campaign carnies is what I call them. And these are the consultant class.

These are the people that are the reason that we have Kamala having a $1.3 billion campaign and spending over half a billion dollars on staffing.

Pod Save America.

Right? It's like when you look at Trump by comparison, it's so much less, and it is infinitely worse on the Democratic side than the Republican side.

Hands down, the consultant class. The whole grift is so much worse on the Democratic side because on the Republican side, if you don't win, you don't get rehired.

On the Democratic side, oh my God, you can lose every election and they keep circulating you to these campaigns and you keep feeding off of it.

Wow, revolving door.

So it's a big grift. It's a big grift. And I do know, unfortunately, a lot of the candidates get involved in it.

And I do think that it does start out well meaning and well intended, you know, and a lot of them are just doing campaign services. But it's easy to get caught up in it as the money comes in.

You know, I go back, I guess it was 2015 or so. I think we all kind of swooned over Tim Canova back then. Tim was the rising star.

I worked with him. Like we were friends at one point and I worked... I was a volunteer.

Yeah, he was my friend. In fact, we had asked him to be on our board years and years ago. It didn't work out, but Jen Perelman 00:29:03You're lucky.

I was sitting on a couch with Tim the first time, having a debate with him right before we did an action in Washington, D.C. and I was so excited. Oh, my God, I'm sitting here with Tim Canova. I was still one of those guys, got excited about meeting people, you know, and I was all goo goo eyed and everything. But Tim fought Debbie What's-her-name Schultz.

Yeah.

Twice as well. And he got the living hell beat out of him to the point where he lost pretty much all of his savings, everything. He was in a real bad place.

And I know that he emotionally never quite recovered from that. I mean, I stopped talking to him after a period of time, not because I didn't care about him, but because we just kind of diverged completely.

Like, he went in a totally different direction. And I can only blame that on the sheer feeling of abandonment that he felt as he tried to take on this monster, this leviathan that is DWS.

Especially during that period of time where, you know, Hillary was gone and so forth. I mean, two times he ran against her. Two times you ran against her. Did you run ever when Tim was running too? I can't. I think you did.

No. In fact, I made sure he wasn't running again. Okay. Before I decided to run. But he still was bitter and angry and hateful to me.

And he's the reason that Jimmy Dore never covered me. And Tim talked shit about me. He was telling people I got money from George Soros, and he, you know, he just got very bitter.

He lost the plot. Yeah.

Yeah. But here's the thing about him. And it would be really convenient to just say, oh, the system chewed him up and spit him out and he was never the same. But he had issues before. Okay.

Like, it's not my place to, like, psychoanalyze people and whatever, but he didn't come into this with the same intention and mission that, say, I did. Tim was always about Tim. Tim was always extremely big ego and very thin skin, which is the exact opposite of what you need to have.

You need a small ego and thick skin. Tim was like a baby having a tantrum when things didn't go his way, because it was all about him. And I was never in that mindset when I did this.

From the very beginning, I didn't do this job. I was asked to do this. And we came at it from very different angles.

So when I think something is all about you, then you're prone to that kind of damage, maybe? Like, to me, this was never about me. So that's the big difference. You know, he is. Yeah, he's interesting.

You know what's funny? I mean, taking it back though, I remember when all of us were big on Tim, you know what I mean?

Like, there was a period of time where Tim was a rising star.

Yeah. 2015-16. And he blew it.

Yep. And same with Tulsi [Gabbard]. You remember the Tulsi grift? Kind of weird thing.

I'm not a psychoanalyst by any stretch of the imagination, but just looking at the bitterness factor, I mean, either that or I just don't know. I mean, it's tragic, I guess...

Not everybody is suited to go into this. And I think that it matters what people's reasons are and where they're coming from.

Unfortunately, it is an area where you get a lot of very egomaniacal, sociopathic type people that get into it. It's very unfortunate there is a certain kind of person that gets into it.

Like for me, I never really was delusional, thinking I was actually going to get that job.

Gotcha.

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Let's talk just a teeny bit about your activism as it pertained to Gaza. I know that that was a big part of your campaign.

And as a Jew in Florida, in an area, let's be fair, the voting population of your district is heavily Jewish. And there you are positioned as a Jew.

And you know, I know a lot of us that in different ways ended up having to break out the cleaver and separate ourselves from a great many genocide apologists out there. This was you running for office. What was it like?

I mean, just paint this out for me because I know what it's like as an activist yelling and screaming into the void. What was it like being boots on the ground, shaking hands in an area like that, saying the things you were saying.

Well, you know, there's two different aspects of this.

So there's aspect of a campaign when you're like talking to groups and you're at fundraisers, and then there's the door to door, really out canvassing and talking to people, like real one on one. And when you're talking to people one on one. When I'm canvassing, people are concerned with economic issues.

That's the priority for most people, believe it or not. Palestine is not the priority for most people.

So me going around and talking about populist economic policies and anti corruption and the fact that I can't be bought and don't take special interest money, it's like those are the kinds of things that regular people want to talk about and care about.

But when you're dealing with, let's say groups or social media and it's more like... out there, there's a beating that's involved with taking a stand on Palestine for sure. And I know that we got a lot of hate mail. I didn't get any, like death threats, unless "I hope you rot in hell" counts.

But to me that's more wishful thinking. But that stuff doesn't really bother me. Like I don't give a shit, I don't care.

Like honestly, and I've said it before, there are only two people besides myself that I care what they think about me and that's my boys. And other than that, I really don't care. Plus I am not on social media and that is a luxury. I know because Peter does my social media.

So I don't see the nasty shit.

That's why you're a happy person.

That's why I'm not on social media. I don't want to see that. I mean, I don't need to see the negative shit. You know, I am extremely informed.

I don't need social media for educational purposes. It's just nasty. And I feel like if you wouldn't say it to my face, then you ought not be putting it on social media.

And unfortunately that's not how people behave.

Yeah, yeah. Tell me, what is it like to actually run for office? Take us through. You made a decision and you're going to run for office and wherever.

Obviously through your vantage point, you ran as a Democrat. So just take us through that process if you would.

Okay, so the first time when we had no idea what we were doing, there's the technical aspect where you have to make sure you have your paperwork in order and you're filed at the right time at the right place. Like there's you know, like logistical hoops that you have to jump through, opening up an account, all of those things.

But at the same time you also need to be raising money. So like you can't do anything without raising money. So when we ran the first time, we really didn't know what we were doing.

And it's like on the one hand, I knew I was extremely grassroots. Like I knew that I was a grassroots person and believed in populist policies. But we hired a finance director because we didn't know what else to do.

And that was more of this old school dial for dollars approach which does not cross pollinate with a grassroots campaign, which is what I learned. So that was a short lived approach. Once you start raising money and getting people together and the logistics down, it's actually not horrible.

But it's 24/7. Like there's no mental break when you're a candidate and you are on 24/7.

And it's like from being a candidate, almost like I was a whole different person. Yeah, it, yeah, it's a lot of being on and always having to be. I mean, I would change three times in my car in a day from event to event to event.

And it is a lot of that. But that stuff I actually don't mind. And this is the thing that's kind of weird. I am an antisocial extrovert. I'd really rather just be home alone.

But I'm really good at peopling. Right?

I do it well and I am somebody that can go from a fish fry in a parking lot behind a church and change in the car and be at a black tie gala, and I'm the same person, and I get along with people in both spaces. And that is not something that a lot of people can do and certainly not for six months straight.

Well, yeah, it's obviously something for people who have money, right?

I mean, you have to, you have to have. You couldn't afford to do. There's no way, if I had to be working, there's no way I could be. It's a full time job.

The Green Party had tried to recruit me during the Bernie Sanders Part 1 era and they tried to get me to run against Bob Casey here in Pennsylvania. And you know, the fact is they had no money for me, they had no infrastructure for me.

Right, they just wanted you to run.

You know, I, I had to run.

I would have had to have figured it all out and you know, work full time with kids and everything else in a statewide race for Senate, which they said typically they don't do. But reality being what it is, I was like, well, anything to get the MMT message out there, I'll do it.

I was told by my then employer that if I tried to run for office that I probably would not retain my employment. So that made that decision pretty easy.

But the reality was is that I would have needed to have gotten in a car, driven all around at night to anywhere across the state of Pennsylvania. I would have had to have done things that there's no way in hell that I could have done.

And to make it worse, you know, even though you have friends probably at the high school or the elementary school with your kids, and maybe in the youth leagues and so forth, you know, you probably not got a huge network of people ready to go door knock for you, right? And you don't have media, so you got social media. And you know how people are. They don't like to share things for whatever bizarre reason.

And so how would somebody, without having the party already paying for them, without already being part of the machine, how would somebody even remotely, really genuinely run for office, like of the people, by the people, people, blah, blah, blah. You're always looking at someone's class interests that are not your own.

These people are not going to represent, in a very rare case where somebody fits a niche where maybe they somehow or another still have class sensibilities for the working class and would represent them, the machine itself would suffocate them as quickly as possible as soon as they got in power. Obviously, you and I are. I don't know whether we're 100% in lockstep on this, but I believe that we both have a cynical view, if not outright...

I'll tell you point blank, I don't believe that we have any form of democracy in this country. I don't believe that it's real. I believe that it's all meant for manufacturing of consent.

I believe it's all there to push a narrative that isn't mine, that isn't for the working class people of the country. I don't see the institutions representing the people. I see them representing corporate interests.

And people are absolutely, in my opinion, deluded to think that you can vote away the power of the people that own the system, the people who control the system, the people who control the entire, you know, parties, everything about. I mean, these parties are private corporations that have personhood, I guess. Right?

Help me understand in your opinion, what the go forward looks like. Is it through electoral paths or is it through building outside of the system? I mean, what is your idea here?

I mean, when we talk about the electoral system, it is really there as just a tool of empire, right? It's there to protect capital. So it really only serves what, zero point whatever percent of the people.

And the rest of us are really Just like in a Lord of the Flies situation with this sort of facade of democracy. So we're never going to get our needs met by the system that's designed to protect our oppressors. Like that makes no sense.

They're counting on keeping us stirring around. Like that's how it's going to happen if we just vote, if we do that, like all of that.

But I do think more people are stepping out of it and realizing it. I mean, you and I did.

There are more and more people, I think, that are going to come outside of The Matrix, if you will like, and join us in the outside world. And that is ultimately where the change will come. And I don't know entirely what that looks like.

Like, I do think it has a lot to do with labor in this country and the labor movement. I think that a lot of people need to start recognizing that this is a class war. That's where the change is going to come.

It's going to come from with and, and also I think it will coincide with just what seems to be the inevitable failure of empire. Empire is collapsing.

And whether it's a BRICS thing, whether it's just that the world is sick of us and might makes right up to a certain point, but then the world figures out how to trade without you and you don't make anything and you're kind of screwed and you can't bully your way out of it anymore. I mean, so I think as our empire implodes, our individual power will get greater in this country.

So I think a couple of things are aligning in that way. But no, the solution is never going to come from inside electoral politics.

And I just wanted to touch on something you said earlier about like regular people being involved. They can't be at any sizable level, but they can be locally. And I do think that that's important. And I have seen where that helps people.

That's just one thing for people to keep in mind. And that's also where you don't have partisan nonsense either, right?

You know, I'm curious. There's crises that we know we have to deal with.

We know that the climate is breaking down, whether it's 100% man made or whether parts of it are just sort of the tilt of the earth and changing of the poles and history and blah, blah, blah.

At the end of the day, we're about to head into some very, very serious, you know, outcomes as this climate crisis hits us, however it happens, right? The people, the little people are going to be the ones that feel it first. They're the ones that are homeless.

They're the ones that don't have health care. They're the ones that are hungry. And as lands that were once fertile are dried up or buried underwater, people are going to be moving around.

And now all of a sudden we're cracking down on immigration and we're cracking down on borders and setting the stage for a very, very bloody future. We know that these problems exist. We also know that we have a lack of healthcare in this country.

That we people, regular people, Jane and Joe Six Pack are putting off very, very important procedures, putting off the most important things to keep themselves alive. They're putting them off because they can't afford them. They can't get it taken care of.

Even with all the great Affordable Care Act bullshit from Obama, they're not able to actually afford the care they need. All these problems exist and there's literally not a single one of them doing anything for. For us. Help me understand me.

Like, to me, this is a life and death conversation. This isn't just, you know, friends can have differences of opinion kind of conversation, right? And we're watching day in, day out. The bodies pile up.

Like, we've talked several times now in Gaza. What do they do? Instead of ending a genocide or stop funding it, they want to ban TikTok from showing us videos of it. I want to be clear.

I don't believe it's not just that we don't live in a democracy. I really believe from watching them celebrating AI and surveillance and everything else, that we're really just sort of slaves on a farm here.

And any illusion that we get to really enjoy the society is mere happenstance. It's really okay. So here's some examples of people that made it so. They're the ones you look up to, guys and gals.

They've got a good career, they make good money, they're good people.

And let's be fair, if you look in San Francisco, you find more people making six figures or at least 80,000 and up living on the streets than in actual houses. Nothing. Our country is so bad right now. Historically bad. Like nakedly bad. And I don't see the kind of energy.

I see people beaten down, arms hanging at their sides, limp, unwilling to do anything other than put a stupid I voted sticker on their forehead. But the only level of effort that I see most people doing, everybody have got this learned helplessness.

The only way they see is this very, very narrow one degree of the world. And that is we gotta vote we gotta vote. We need to vote a few more. We'll source the vote, we'll make it better. And I think we're way past that.

I think the January 6th conversation isn't sitting with people well, because people are wondering, hey, you know, they may have been fighting for the wrong things over there, they may have been deluded, but voting sure ain't working. What do we have to do in this country to be taken care of so our needs are met?

And I think that there are probably a lot more people than we'd like to even acknowledge that look at January six and say, damn, why can't the good guys have been the ones doing that? Why did it have to be, you know, the Trumpies or whatever?

Why did it have to be these 3 percenters and the, the other militant group, Proud Boys, whatever. I see a lot of desperation, but I see a lot of people with their arms just hanging at their sides. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, we're wage slaves for sure.

I mean, we're in this sort of new feudal system and we're wage slaves and you have capital buying up all the property and the houses so that people can't own and then they're able to jack up rent so high. So then you've got all these unhoused people that are still working.

I mean, it's blatant almost that they're not able to step outside of it and really see it. Yeah, no, it's very depressing. It's very depressing.

And that's why I think like it's so incumbent upon people that are in my position where I have a certain amount of privilege, that I can do these things to do as much as I can do to help red pill as many people as I can. I feel like this window where we have to get as many people red pilled as possible in order to ever be able to achieve anything.

And that's all I feel like we can do at this point. Because the majority of people, they don't have an opportunity to really participate. They're struggling to live.

You guys talked a lot about Luigi Mangione. And I mean, I was on your show, we talked about him a little bit as well. In your mind, what does Luigi represent to you?

Because I see almost no one mad at Luigi Mangioni. Only people I see mad at him are people on television.

I don't see rank and file people saying, oh my God, we've got to protect CEOs that deny us health care. What is your vision of Luigi Mangione, as kind of a parting gift here.

I'm pleased by the whole thing and I don't hesitate to say it.

I have spent the better part, and you know this of the past, like five years doing everything I can to educate people to punch up and aim their anger in the correct direction. Because at the end of the day, we are the most violent people to have ever lived on this planet.

So to think that we're going to solve things without violence is just naive. Now, I personally don't commit violence. It's not something that is in my personal repertoire. But, yeah, that's where we are.

You don't get to exert violence all around the world and have the most weapons in the entire world and have more weapons than people, and then be surprised when people turn to violence to solve problems, especially when you've stifled all other forms of resistance. So I look at Luigi Mangione, one, as the inevitable natural and logical consequences of what the oligarchs have created.

Like, this is where we've gotten to. And I look at him where I'm pleased that, yes, he at least aimed his anger in the correct direction. We see way too many people that don't.

I don't want to hear people bashing immigrants. I don't want to hear people bashing Muslims. But you want to go after those pieces of shit? Oh, yeah. All day, every day.

Honestly, and I've said it, there's no way they're going to find 12 people to convict him. I'm concerned for his safety. I think that we need to be concerned that he doesn't get Epstein-ed.

I think that the powers that be cannot afford for this to go to trial because of the circus that will be. And they will not be able to convict him. I just don't see it. I don't see how they're going to get 12 impartial jurors.

I can't see it either. Let me ask you as your final question here, okay. You have shocked me and surprised me. We could have made this whole episode.

Maybe we can do a follow up on this. But over the years, you've always played the kind of funny girl that says, ah, I don't really understand all that MMT stuff.

And yet out of nowhere, I'm watching you break down things. They tell me you've been listening. I hear it, I see.

I do the best I can and I.

You do damn good.

Thank you. But I still don't completely understand it. But I do understand. Here's the thing.

I am the Big Picture, I just don't understand the nuts and bolts, right? So I understand what I need to.

Understand, and that's all you need to understand, quite frankly.

Exactly. And I'm good with that. Like, I don't need to know the details any more than, like, when I get in an elevator and I push the button.

I don't need to know all the mechanics of the elevator. I know that it does what it's supposed to do. Right? So. But I do my best. But you saw me talking about it somewhere.

Yeah, no, I mean, like, look, for. Let's be fair, I got a couple text messages from this person I know named Jen who said, hey, talk to me about a job guarantee.

I want to add a job guarantee to my platform. And I mean, I was just like, sitting there pinching myself. I was like, gosh, man, wow. I mean, I better be careful.

I might start believing in electoral politics, man.

Well, if I could get in, you would. But then I, of course, had to read the book. What's her name?

Pavlina Tcherneva. Yeah, yeah. Case For a Job Guarantee. Yes.

So I read that and, you know, I've just gone down the rabbit hole. But, yeah, no, I'm convinced that's the best way to go.

Really like, of all the things, like, I don't have a lot of power, right?

I don't have any power, but just to be able to turn the lights on for Jordan Chariton, turn the lights on for you guys over there [at JENerational Change], I take a small victory lap on that. Because, you know, one of the big things that we have to do is influence the influencers, and you're an influencer.

And if I'm able to at least leave some print and you're carrying that forward as a force multiplier, how can I not be happy? Right? That is a huge thing because you've known me for a long time now.

Yeah.

I've been talking this stuff for 15 years now and ...

screaming it, like, yelling.

At like, like the crazy guy in the inner city with the John 3:16 sign up, right? And the dreadlocks screaming out, you know, repent and be saved. There I am.

Genuinely, I have totally come to realize that MMT as a Bernie guy meant something very different than MMT post Bernie. And for me, I see MMT as a tool for radicalizing people to realize they are murdering us by denying us healthcare.

They are murdering us by denying us basics, and they are literally killing us with this stuff. And they've taken away any meaningful form of democracy that you could have to vote your way to your needs being met.

So you need to understand that it's not just your hard-earned tax dollars, blah blah, blah, but you are literally being told lies to keep you content dying young. And when that wake up call happens, I call it an awakening because you can know all this stuff.

And I see a lot of folks that are MMT'ers that literally never cross into the radicalizing side. They're, they're happy investing and perfectly content with Empire and they're cool with the global south being slaves.

They're cool with all this stuff. They ignore Gaza.

But the ones that I want to listen to and follow understand the interconnectedness of this knowledge of MMT and how it pertains to our daily lives. I had an MBA. I didn't get into MMT because I thought it'd be cool to be a nerd.

And if you can get rid of that lie, oh my God, we could really have ourselves a party, right?

Yeah.

And that's what I held onto for a long time.

Now, with so many crises, existential crises going on, I look at it as an opportunity to show people, look, they could save us yesterday, but they're so filled with greed and power that you have no way of making that happen. And the way that we could make it happen is terrifying. It's scary, it's impossible.

But yet there is something out there that if we are willing to go all the way to the end of the line of the metro, not jumping off on the third stop, but going all the way to the end, we realize that there is going to be a way to get there, but it's just not going to be the way that they tell us in nursery rhymes. And I think that's scary to everybody. It's scary to me.

It's very scary. It's like when on The Truman Show when he hits the end of the thing and he has to step out the door. It's like you don't know what's out there.

That's right.

I mean, it is scary. It is. But I've always been more comfortable with the idea of unknown than with injustice. Right?

Like we can't do what we're doing now and expect it to just get better. That just doesn't make any sense, you know?

And I think that we need to also shift what we perceive when we look at a case like Luigi, when everyone's like, oh my God, it was so cold blooded.

No, we live in cold blooded violence every single day in this country that is perpetuated by a very small amount of people on the rest of us, and it is violent. Denial of care is violence. Right. When we get people to see it that way, it's a lot more enraging.

That's why at the Luigi Mangione they're so clutching their pearls and they don't understand it. Well, that's because you have not felt violence, you have not been violated. So to you this was out of nowhere, sort of like October 7th.

And that's just not how the world works. We have had violence perpetrated on us all the time by the oligarchy. So, you know, when somebody fights back against that, it pleases me.

Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. Jen, tell everybody where we can find more of your work.

I host a podcast called JENerational Change with my business partner Peter Hager. We do two live streams and Thursday evenings, clips are always dropping.

I don't even know what social media we're on, but you know, we're just trying to educate and red pill as many people as possible. So yeah, check out our show. We need subscribers. It always helps.

It's always nice to talk to somebody who's not trying to gaslight me into bullshit, [always]. And you know, look, I'm big on people learning MMT inside and out because it has a global picture.

But I agree 100% with your assessment that you only need to know certain amount of this for it to really be useful.

And if we can get people to wake up to that peace, I think more will be radicalized to the point where we maybe have the ability to, you know, maybe look at some of the previous revolutionaries of the USA and of the world and start thinking about how we might build a parallel power, dual power, build strength outside of the system. And I think it's the only way that we're going to move forward. And I don't have the answers. Let me. There's one guy out there who I know as.

Oh yeah, well, no shit. But I do know this isn't working.

No.

So doing the same thing over and over again, because that's what you do, isn't the same thing as doing stupid shit, right? I mean, at least you know this isn't working. So stop putting your treasures into a lie. Start building where there's potential and, and start talking.

And you know what? [In] a real democracy people would talk about what that next step would be. A real democracy people would maybe should.

Be talking about that. There are some people that think that way. It's very outside the box.

Like do like in my universe, I'm living in a small sustainable community where we have trade and the community garden and a farm and all this stuff. Like that's the world I want to live in and downsize and degrowth. And that's what I'm trying to get back to that.

But no, most people have no idea that there is another way possible.

That's right. We gotta red pill 'em. All right, Jen, listen, you have been an awesome guest as always. I will talk to you very, very soon.

Tell Peter I said hello, please. All right, folks, my name is Steve Grumbine.

I am the host of this podcast, Macro N Cheese, and also the founder of the nonprofits Real Progressives and Real Progress in Action. This podcast is an outcoming of Real progressives, which is a 501c3 non for profit.

Please, if you consider work worthwhile, consider becoming a monthly donor. You can get us on Patreon or you can come over to our Substack or you can go to our website, realprogressives.org and become a donor.

We need your help and we need volunteers.

And folks, if you're tired of somebody on you to vote your way out of this and you're looking to work with like minded people that are just done with this, consider volunteering for us. Consider joining us and helping us put something together that maybe we change the world. Okay? And with that, Jen, I want to thank you one more time.

And to all of you who hung in there with us, this is Steve Grumbine g with my guest, Jen Perelman. Macro N Cheese. We are out of here.