Heather McGee

That's where they wanted us to get to, was a place where activism and protest would sort of ignite a sense of shame and hatred.

and responsibility on the part of the white majority in the 1960s, but that ultimately we would get to a place where we all benefited.

This is a very old tactic that is used by people in power who are trying to concentrate power in their own hands and who don't want to see millions of people exercise their fundamental rights to dissent, to protest, and then of course to vote.

Last year, a national survey of 500 political scientists found that the U.S.

was in the process of slipping from democracy into a form of authoritarianism, right?

The benchmarks of authoritarianism from persecuting political opponents and using the military to dominate civilians to controlling the media and defying the courts, right?

That's precisely how the government is beginning to function today.

in this administration.

And so if you think about it, what you want in that kind of a society, if you are in power, is to make everyday people, the only people who actually have the power, as long as there are still elections, to release your grip on power, is for them to be afraid, for them to think that it is dangerous and socially undesirable to speak out and be active.

I mean, the good news is here, that just doesn't cut it.

It's never cut it in this country that has been made better generation after generation because of activism.

And, you know, I don't think that this administration is very credible when one of its very first acts was to pardon thousands of violent activists who took part in January 6th.

You know, racial and economic inequality costs our country so much.

The economists at Citigroup found that the black-white economic divide had cost the U.S.

GDP $16 trillion over the course of 20 years.

And it makes sense, right?

If you think about it, if you've got so many of your players sidelined due to debt, discrimination,

They can't be on the field scoring points for your team.

And, of course, the zero-sum lie tells folks we're not all on the same team, but that's just not true.

We are in an interconnected economy.