Episode 138: Election Extra

Sarah Goodyear: Hello, everyone. I am Sarah Goodyear, and this is The War on Cars. I’m here in the studio with my co-host, Doug Gordon. Doug, I would normally ask how are you doing? But that’s a little bit of a fraught question as we’re a week out from the presidential election. And so I’m gonna first ask, is it okay if I ask how you’re doing?

Doug Gordon: I was gonna ask you, actually. You know, you are married to a woman. Your marriage could potentially be in jeopardy in the coming years. And honestly, one of my first thoughts when this all went down was you, and my friends who are in relationships that could be declared, if not illegal in their home states, federally banned. Yeah, that’s sort of where my head and my heart was.

Doug: You know, I had a feeling Trump was gonna win. I had steeled myself for another Electoral College popular vote split. I didn’t necessarily prepare myself for him winning the popular vote. You know, as the numbers come in, it’s still pretty close. I think he’s only gonna wind up winning by one or two percent. It’s not the blowout that the narrative is suggesting. Yeah, it’s not easy.

Sarah: Yeah.

Doug: I’ve got a kid who has had many surgeries in his short life already, and I worry about the Affordable Care Act and what that’s gonna mean for him and our family. I’m Jewish. I’m really worried about antisemitism and what has been unleashed not just here, but everywhere. So other than that, doing great. I had a waffle this morning for breakfast with Nutella because I just grabbed my son’s stuff and that made me happy.

Sarah: Yeah, there you go. Well, I appreciate your concern for my marriage. I’m concerned for my marriage, too. And here’s just a PSA for everyone who thinks that New York state could protect my marriage. Like, federal marriage rights are important because there are certain programs like Social Security that are federal programs that are only available to people who can be legally married to each other. There’s a lot of financial implications for your queer friends who are married. So just educate yourself on that. It’s not something that the states can protect.

Sarah: So all right, as you may have picked up, this is not gonna be a usual episode of The War on Cars. We’re keeping it super casual. There’s not gonna be any ads. We’re just kind of riffing on some of the stuff that happened in the election with a special focus on some points of light and hope that we saw amid the wreckage, and also on some strategic thinking going forward for people in our movement and in all progressive movements. So I do want to start by talking about some of the cool stuff, if that’s okay with you. Can we?

Doug: I would love cool stuff. Tell me the cool stuff. So the other thing people should know, I know nothing about what Sarah has prepared here. So I’m literally sitting, like, relaxed in the chair, just waiting. Like, this will probably be the most relaxed I’ll be, you know, for the next four years. Hit me with what you got, Sarah.

Sarah: Okay, so the city of Nashville—Nashville, Tennessee—which is a very bright blue spot in the middle of a very red state. Nashville voters—I’m quoting from the Nashville Scene here, an alternative publication in Nashville. “Nashville voters have cast their ballots in favor of a new transit plan designed to improve buses, upgrade traffic lights, build sidewalks and more.” And so this is a plan that the mayor of Nashville has been promoting. It calls for $3.1 billion in spending over a 15-year period, basically put into the city’s transit system, the bus system, upgrading the sidewalks. And it’s called Choose How You Move. It’s gonna be funded by a half cent increase to the sales tax. So the whole point of this was to give the city of Nashville a dedicated funding source to do improvements to the active transportation network, the public transit network. And, you know, I think that it’s pretty exciting that that passed. That’s a referendum, and the people voted to pass it. So thank you, Nashville.

Doug: Wasn’t there something in Tennessee from a bunch of years ago where they did try something similar to this and it got shot down by a bunch of, like, Koch brothers-funded, like, Astroturf groups that went out and railed against it? I’d have to look this up. As I said, I’m not prepared for any of this.

Sarah: Well, actually, as a matter of fact, the Nashville Scene does refer to that in their article. And apparently, the opposition to this plan was very poorly organized and it was not well funded. But back in 2018, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity …

Doug: Yes.

Sarah: Yeah. And that had light rail plans in it as well. So the Koch brothers did get behind crushing that, but they did not mobilize on that one.

Doug: Congrats to the people in Nashville. That’s pretty awesome that it won this time around.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s great. The mayor there is Freddie O’Connell, and he was quoted as saying, “There have been people carrying the torch for this conversation for such a long time. We all came together for the past couple of months to do something good, big, important and popular.”

Doug: Good, big, important and popular. Lesson for Democrats going forward. Do big things. Yep.

Sarah: Okay, so that’s Nashville. And then let’s zoom across the country to the city of Seattle.

Doug: I’ve heard of it.

Sarah: Yeah, we have a lot of listeners in Seattle. So shout out to all of you there, and shout out to everybody in the state of Washington because there were a lot of, you know, really good progressive wins in Washington. Washington was kind of a bright spot on the map, a lot of conservation measures and so forth, But specifically in our realm—and this is from The Urbanist. “The city of Seattle secured a substantial win Tuesday night as Proposition 1, the eight year, $1.55-billion transportation levy crafted to replace the expiring levy to Move Seattle was on a path to victory, leading by a comfortable margin.” So there is a lot of road and bridge funding in this, but it also ensures funding for the Seattle Department of Transportation. And one of the initiatives that the Seattle Department of Transportation is gonna be focusing on is 250 blocks of new sidewalks within the next four years. So that’s really exciting. Really great to see people prioritizing sidewalks.

Doug: Yeah, that’s pretty awesome.

Sarah: And that one is really by a quite substantial margin. Obviously, the votes haven’t finished being counted, but it looks like it may have been as much as 67 percent of the vote.

Doug: This is the way forward. I think we spend so much time fighting individual—like, imagine if you had tried to just say, “We’re gonna put a sidewalk on one block and we’re gonna let everybody vote on it.” Well, of course, all the people who park their cars or don’t want other people walking by their homes, they would come out against it. But I think if you can mobilize and you can do citywide referendums and things like that, it’s not a guarantee, of course, but I do think there is hope that, you know, enough people are kind of understanding what’s happening now that oh, yeah, in Nashville, one cent for better transportation, better ways to move around, more funding for sidewalks. Yes. Who would be against that? So I think this might point to a way forward.

Sarah: Yeah. And it’s not just sidewalks. This also is gonna put $160 million into Vision Zero planning, $193 million into sidewalks and crosswalks, $133 million in bicycle safety. So that’s double what was in the last transportation levy.

Doug: Way to go, Seattle. That’s awesome.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s really exciting. And also in Seattle, you know, a few months ago, we had a guy on named Holden Ringer.

Doug: Yeah.

Sarah: He was a Patreon bonus interview. He had walked across the country from Washington to New York. Well, he went back to Washington, not on foot. And one of the things that Holden has been doing is campaigning for a city council candidate who’s very progressive on transportation issues. Her name is Alexis Mercedes Rinck. And I saw in his social media feed that she had won her race. So we’ve got another really great person on the city council in Seattle to help keep pushing progressive transportation policies forward. So that’s great news from Seattle as well.

Doug: Okay, where else are we going?

Sarah: Okay, so we’re going to San Francisco. We’re gonna be talking about Proposition K, which was a proposal to close the Great Highway along Ocean Beach in the city of San Francisco, which is along the Pacific waterfront.

Doug: Close it to cars.

Sarah: Close it to cars.

Doug: Yeah.

Sarah: Open it to people and turn it into a public recreation space. And that Proposition K has passed, and the people of San Francisco will now be able to enjoy this waterfront space, which has been turned over to cars for generations. And it’s gonna become park space. It’s gonna immediately become iconic. And it makes tons of sense also because this is an area where there’s a lot of erosion, and the future of this road as a road was already being called into question by climate change and the forces associated with climate change. So great news. This was very contentious. This was not a slam dunk. And so in San Francisco, Proposition K has won. That’s good news, too.

Doug: I was gonna ask, like, was it close or was it a blowout? Because it’s so fascinating to me how these things play out.

Sarah: I don’t know if you’ve noticed that California counts its votes extremely slowly. And part of that is that, you know, they have a really—a very expansive way of …

Doug: I mean, have you ever tried to order a sandwich in California? It just takes a lot longer than it does in New York. So yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. No, but I mean, you know, they allow people to send in ballots, and those ballots get counted over a period after Election Day, and it can take a really long time. But the most recent count that I saw as of this taping was 54 percent backed Proposition K.

Doug: That’s still really good.

Sarah: That’s really good.

Doug: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. And so, you know, maybe that margin will change, but it was clear pretty early in the vote counting that the math was such that Proposition K was gonna win. So it was not a squeaker.

Doug: Yeah, that’s great. I mean, I think look, like I said before, I think this is a slightly better way to do things. I know referendums and things like that have their problems, but it certainly beats people shouting at each other in a church basement about their parking, their driving, or no, my bike lanes. So, you know, where you can put things to a vote and really, you know, take the temperature of people, again, maybe that’s the way forward.

Sarah: And another thing that we’re watching, and the vote counting is going too slowly in this case for us to make a call—we cannot call this race. Too early to call, as they say.

Doug: We’re cutting now to Steve Kornacki.

Sarah: But friend of the podcast John Bauters, who is known as America’s bike mayor. He’s been the mayor of Emeryville, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is running for Alameda County Supervisor. And that race, he has been in the lead. As I say, it’s still too close to call at this point. Too early to call, I think, is actually what I should be saying. But we’re really hoping that John Bauters is going to win that seat on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. For one thing, he would be, astonishingly enough, the first openly gay member of the Alameda County Supervisor.

Doug: Wow. That’s surprising, yeah.

Sarah: It is, because that includes Berkeley and Oakland and, you know, a lot of places that you think of as being very queer friendly and that are queer friendly, but there has not been that open representation on the board before. So, you know, John Bauters is somebody that I constantly, constantly, constantly go back to the interview that I did with him last year and what he said about political will. You know, he’s done all these things in this small city, Emeryville. He’s had mayors from around the country coming to ask him how can I make change in my city, bike lanes and transit oriented development and all of this stuff? And his answer is always political will. When you figure out whether you’re willing to lose reelection over something, that’s when you know that you have the political will.

Sarah: And I think about it on a pretty much daily basis because so few people do have that kind of political will, it turns out. And so I would urge everybody to go back and listen to our John Bauters episode. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. But, you know, he’s a very inspirational person, and I think that he’s going to be rewarded with a new political position. We’re really rooting for him. Even if he doesn’t win this race, I know that he is the kind of person who is going to persist in public life and persist with his true values. And so that’s another thing that I think this election has made me think about a lot. I don’t know about you, Doug, but, like, standing and saying it with your whole chest, right?

Doug: I mean, yeah. I think if we learned anything from this election—we’ve learned a lot, and there’s a lot we still don’t know. But authenticity matters. People looking at an elected official and saying, “I might not agree with everything that person says, but I believe that they believe what they’re saying and they’re gonna stand for something,” that really matters. And I think progressives and Democrats really need to stand up for what they believe in and say it very loudly, and not try to pander to the center or to the right, but just do what they know is right. And so John Bauters also has got that really cute dog, so hopefully the dog will continue in public life. He’s a really great example of that, and really happy to see him, hopefully going all the way.

Sarah: I’m gonna have one more little piece of good news which is not directly tied to the election. On October 29, the New York City Council voted to legalize jaywalking. That—you know, jaywalking is something that I have been looking at and writing about and learning about from scholars like Peter Norton for a long time. Jaywalking wasn’t illegal in New York until 1958, and now it’s gonna be legal again. And that’s just terrific, because jaywalking is rarely enforced. When it is, it’s something like 90 percent of the people who it’s enforced against are people of color. It’s just a regressive, terrible policy to have. It doesn’t keep people safer. So I’m really happy that the New York City Council went ahead and just did the right thing here. But interestingly, it was seized upon by right wing members of the New York City Council for their culture war rhetoric.

Doug: There’s nothing they can’t turn into culture war, you know, grist for the mill.

Sarah: Yeah. So Vickie Paladino, for instance, who is a councilmember from Queens, she has said that—this is from the New York Times, that new residents were trying to alter the streetscape because quote, “They hate people who own cars.”

Doug: This is the funniest thing to me. New residents are trying to alter the streetscape because they hate people who have cars. If your parents don’t jaywalk when they take you home from the hospital, you are not a New Yorker, right?

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

Doug: Like, you learn to jaywalk as a kid, because in some cases it’s actually safer to cross when there’s no traffic coming. You know, you cross against the light. You’re not worried about people turning into you. You cross mid block because why are you gonna walk to the end? Like, that’s just like—you might as well say, like, “These newcomers with their bacon, egg and cheese.” Like, no, that’s just what it means to be a New Yorker. But yeah, it is interesting how they can just take anything and turn it into fodder for the culture war. You know, look, she represents a suburban type district. It’s very car dependent. She’s really right wing, Islamophobic and, you know, a conspiracy theorist.

Sarah: She’s a very bad person.

Doug: Yeah. And this sort of nativism of, like, how long have you lived here, you’re changing our streets, is just ridiculous to me. Look, this is good news. It just means, like, the cops will not be allowed to, you know, do these pretextual stops and just harass people.

Sarah: I would also really like to know—I would really like to just ask Vickie Paladino to her face if she has ever jaywalked. I mean, give me a break.

Doug: Yeah, but as we’re learning, hypocrisy and calling people out on it is like, they delight in the hypocrisy, right? It’s like rules for me, not for thee. And, you know, you can’t logic your way to defeating these people. You just have to defeat these people.

Sarah: All right, so how are we gonna do that, Doug? I mean, come on! So, like, I’ve run out of good news.

Doug: Yeah.

Sarah: But I think we want to talk about what can give us hope going forward, right?

Doug: I mean, I’m not gonna lie. It’s bleak. And I think things are gonna get bad quickly. As we talked about at the top of the episode, I think, you know, some fundamental rights for vulnerable people are gonna go away. You know, I think they’ll be preserved at some level, but that’s gonna be cold comfort, like you said. You know, I mean, I guess the good news, Sarah, is that no one’s gonna get Social Security going forward. So it won’t just be a problem for our LGBTQ+.

Doug: But so, you know, I don’t want to sugarcoat it. I do like to find the bright side. A couple of things. I think, number one, look, what is The War on Cars about? The War on Cars is—yeah, it’s about cities, it’s about cars, it’s about how we use public space. But at its heart, it is about protecting vulnerable people from big, powerful forces that generally escape accountability for destroying things and harming others. So the fight that we are trying to wage, and the things that we’re trying to cover here on The War on Cars, and the things that all of you who listen are doing at home, that matters more than it ever has. We have to protect vulnerable people.

Doug: There’s already talk from Democrats of like, “Oh, people focus too much on trans issues and woke ideology and all that garbage.” No, like, read a book. You don’t fight fascism by throwing the most vulnerable people under the bus. You fight fascism by finding solidarity and protection for the most vulnerable people. So our job here at The War on Cars, myself as an advocate is to keep doing that. Community is another piece of The War on Cars, both literally as the podcast, and the listeners who formed various communities where they live around what we’re doing and their own work, but also creating public spaces.

Doug: I mean, there’s a reason there’s this split between places like New York City and rural red state America. And some of that is, like, where do you go to interact with different people? Where do you go to learn from people who aren’t like you? And cities and communities, small towns too, have places that can be developed where we can foster community. And I think that’s really important. I know this is a long rant, but I think we need to take lessons from what the Republicans have done. Like, you know, they know, run for school board, run to—you know, go to your library and talk about the books that they have there, go to your community board and demand things, run for something. And we have to do that from the bottom up.

Sarah: Yeah. And for me, I find some solace in having meaningful work to do. So the work we do on this podcast, to me, is meaningful work in that it is aimed at trying to make positive change that makes the world better for everyone, especially for vulnerable people. And in the aftermath of this election, the idea that I had to get up and do this work actually gave me strength and a sense of purpose, you know?

Sarah: So again, I just want to say thank you to everybody who listens to the podcast and everybody who is out there doing meaningful work in their own communities and in their own lives. And however that looks to you, whatever that is for you, that thing of working together with other people to build things instead of tearing them down, to create things instead of destroying them, that work is, you know, literally what got me out of bed this morning. And I thank our listeners for giving us the opportunity to do that in this community, which is growing and strong and real. And as we saw from those victories that have been won in cities around the country, there is good work being done. There are positive things being done and we have to build on those.

Doug: Yeah. And I think my philosophy as an advocate is you obviously don’t get into this for any sort of personal reward, either financial, obviously, or you’re not gonna stand up on a stage and accept, like, I did the best advocacy for the best bike lane in the city. That’s not why you do it. You do it because when I go up to Prospect Park West and I see a seven year old biking by herself, I think, “Oh, man. How could I have known 14 years ago that that’s what would happen?” That was what I was fighting for, but I wasn’t sure that that would happen.

Doug: And so we have to fight for things knowing we might not see the reward or that the reward we see will be far off. There’s that. I think we need radical kindness now. I think that doesn’t mean you’re a pushover and you just accept people being terrible and walk away. You have to stand up when you see people being treated horribly. We need more people calling out what’s right and wrong. I mean, another thing, what is The War on Cars but it’s a manifesto that says the way that we have built our cities, our towns, our society, the way we’ve structured mobility in this country is fundamentally unjust and wrong. Period.

Doug: Now we can get into, like, 150 episodes about why that is, but we need people to just very clearly say, like, “That’s wrong.” You know, racism is wrong. Deporting people is wrong. Taking away rights from trans people is wrong. Focusing on just bullshit culture war issues while people don’t have healthcare, while people can’t afford groceries, that’s wrong. You know, I saw someone post online, like, there’s a lot of bystander classes. People should look into that kind of stuff. Look, just form community with people who you know will stand up with you. I feel very grateful likewise to all of our listeners. It’s been really heartening to know people are still listening, people are still contributing. And also people share their wins. They email us all the time and say, “Hey, there’s this campaign. We just won this new bike lane, we just won this new transit funding.” We want to keep hearing from you. I just love getting those emails because it’s so heartening.

Sarah: Yeah. And I just want to put out a little shout out for a relatively new place to get together with people that’s online. And that is the Bluesky social media platform which has been seeing a huge influx of people who are leaving X because of X’s connection to our new billionaire overlord Elon Musk, and just the hate and terrible things that are happening over on that platform. So it’s been kind of amazing to see just the people flocking to Bluesky. The War on Cars is over on Bluesky. Just search for us: thewaroncars.bluesky.social. You’ll see how it works. But I encourage other people to go over there, because right now that’s a very good space that’s online, that feels safe and productive.

Doug: Got one more for you. We have added community chats to our Patreon. And so, you know, there’s a general chat, there are places where people can share advocacy tips, but we are probably gonna add spaces either on Patreon or we’re thinking about starting a Discord. We’re both old, so, you know, we might need some help setting that kind of stuff up. 

Sarah: [laughs]

Doug: But a place where people can connect with people in their geographic area, in their cities and towns. So we might create little, you know, side chats and channels where if you’re in Chicago, if you’re in St. Louis, if you’re in wherever, you can connect with people who might not already be involved with the advocacy organizations there. So look for that soon.

Sarah: Yeah. And just once again, a big part of what this podcast is about and has been about is to say you are not alone. You are not alone in seeing how broken things are. And we are gonna continue to be here to make sure that there is a community for you where you will be heard and you will be able to hear others who are fighting the same fight. So …

Doug: Thank you to everybody.

Sarah: Thank you. And that is it for this episode of The War on Cars.

Doug: As always, we want to thank everyone who supports us on Patreon, including our top supporters, Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, Virginia Baker and Mark Hedlund.

Sarah: You can become a Patreon supporter by visiting TheWaronCars.org, click “Support Us” and pitch in. Starting at just $3 a month, we will send you stickers and you’ll get discounts on merchandise, access to exclusive bonus episodes and ad-free episodes.

Doug: A big thanks to the Helen and William Mazer Foundation for all of their support.

Sarah: This episode was recorded by Josh Wilcox at the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio. It was edited by Ali Lemer. Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Our transcriptions are by Russell Gragg. I’m Sarah Goodyear.

Doug: I’m Doug Gordon. And this is The War on Cars.