John de Graaf, 2020 VP Bread and Roses Party
The Bread and Roses Party was formed in 2018 in Maryland by peace activist Jerome Segal, who is also the first Presidential nominee of the new party.
https://www.segalforpresident.org/
On their webpage, the Bread and Roses Party bills itself with the subtitle: "An Electoral Party for both New Socialists and Non-Socialists, A Party with a Strong Utopian and International Orientation, One in Pursuit of a New American Dream."
https://www.breadandroses.us/
The BRP will be on the Presidential ballot in Maryland for 2020. On April 30, 2020 the Party announced that Seattle-based documentary filmmaker, author, lecturer, and activist John de Graaf was nominated as Vice-President. His documentary and best-selling book
Affluenza was met with great acclaim and challenged America's self-destructive binge with consumerism and debt.
https://www.johndegraaf.com/
John was gracious enough to agree to be interviewed.
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Photo by Michael Maine
Q: Can you provide us with a little autobiography about your pre-Seattle life and how you became a resident of Washington State?
A. Sure. I grew up in the San Francisco area, participated in the Free Speech Movement as a CA-Berkeley student 1964. I served as a VISTA Volunteer on a Wisconsin Indian Reservation for two years then attended the University of Wisconsin--Superior, where I was named a Distinguished Alumnus in 2018. At UW-S, I was the President of the student Democratic Club but also a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). I lived in Madison for awhile, taught on the Navajo Indian Reservation in 1969 and traveled to Cuba as part of the Venceremos Brigade in 1970. I was very active in the first Earth Day, and in the anti-Vietnam war movement. In 1972, I moved to Duluth, MN to work as a community organizer and was later the public affairs director of the University radio station there. I moved to Minneapolis in 1977 to work on my first film, A COMMON MANS' COURAGE, about a radical MN Congressman from the 1930s. It was chosen "best locally produced public television program in the US for 1977" by PBS. I also made films in MN about organic agriculture, labor struggles, the farm movement and the fight against nuclear weapons. I moved to Seattle in 1979 to escape MN winters and to be close to the mountains where I loved to climb and backpack.
Q: What role has Seattle played in shaping your politics?
A. I moved to Seattle in 1979 and made my first film there about another 1930s radical labor leader, Terry Pettus, whom I got to know well and who shaped many of my political ideas. I was an early member of DSA in Seattle in 1980 and the co-founder of an organization called the Washington Commonwealth Federation, based on an older WA state movement. I began working as a free-lance documentary producer with KCTS TV in Seattle in 1982 and over the years have made more than 40 films on quality of life subjects including sustainable agriculture, overwork in America, international environmental policy, labor history, biographies of outstanding activists, Native American environmentalism, Catholic economics, nuclear weapons policy, fair trade, sustainable timber, vacation time, and world hunger.
My most famous film AFFLUENZA (1997) about overconsumption in America was seen on PBS by some 15 million people and my book by the same name has sold over 160,000 copies and been published in a dozen languages. I spent 31 years with KCTS and produced more than 15 national PBS specials, winning more than a hundred regional, national and international awards. The John de Graaf Environmental Filmmaking Award, named for me, is presented annually at a film festival in California. While in Seattle, I co-founded three organizations--Take Back Your Time (fighting overwork in America), the Happiness Alliance and And Beauty for All. I have been a frequent speaker on college campuses and internationally, and was an advisor to the country of Bhutan in 2013, to help draft its Gross National Happiness program.
Q: How did you become involved with the Bread and Roses Party and then became the VP nominee?
A. I knew about the Party because Jerome Segal and I have been friends since starting Take Back Your Time in 2002. I hadn't followed it closely and was surprised when Jerome called recently and asked me to be his Vice Presidential running mate. But I agreed with its quality of life message and readily accepted.
Q: Have you ever run for public office before? Can you share with us what it feels like to jump into a national campaign?
A. I never have. It's exciting though we realize we are pretty small potatoes. We will be on the ballot in a few states, including Maryland but we are under no illusions--this is primarily an educational campaign. We'd also love to influence the Democratic Party platform. I have worked closely with Democratic members of Congress and the WA state legislature on legislation to provide paid vacation time for Americans, a key plank of the Bread and Roses platform.
Q: I have actually made a documentary film myself and came to appreciate how much research and coordination was involved. A 30 minute film took ten months to complete. It was a challenge not to get lost in the technical details while still trying to communicate some humanity. Do you think it would be fair to say many of the talents involved in documentary filmmaking are legitimate skills to list on a resume while seeking a job in public administration?
A. Well, yes, absolutely because of all the subjects I have covered, and the knowledge I have gained. But I have also been an activist and I know how politics works. I have had many friends in politics, most of them Democratic Party officials and I have learned much from them. I also spend a great deal of time reading and writing about political and cultural history in the US and I am starting a new film on the life of Stewart Udall, the Interior Secretary under Kennedy and Johnson. Udall most exemplifies a public servant whose goals and successes I'd most like to emulate.
Q: The Bread and Roses Party program promotes a socialistic ideal and endorses the concept of a social contract that will result in a system of "From each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs." Two-part question:
> 1: Some critics might argue that we already have a social contract called the "US Constitution." Is that document not adequate?
A. That's a contract for governing the country, not a policy contract. The social contract I favor is like that of the social democratic countries in Europe. I believe in an active government that uses social policy to combat racial and economic injustice, protect our environment and provide for a higher quality of life for all of us. I have spent a lot of time in Europe and followed closely many of their policies which we need here as well.
> 2: How do you achieve such a collaborative system in a wildly diverse nation like the United States?
A. Coronavirus is teaching us that we have more in common than what divides us. It provides a real opportunity to think of the future we want. And we have come together before--in the Progressive Era, during the New Deal and during the Great Society of LBJ to reduce inequality and racial injustice and to protect our environment. We have no excuse for not doing it again.
Q: So educate me here. When I read the BRP material online it doesn't seem all that different from the Democratic Socialists, except for the emphasis on "Roses" as a metaphor for the pursuit of happiness, appreciation of beauty and culture, and celebrating being alive. Is my take on this accurate?
A. But that makes all the difference in the world. The Milwaukee socialists of the early 20th Century, the 60s counterculture, even LBJ and Bobby Kennedy knew that material equality wasn't enough. People need more than healthcare, free education, higher wages and economic security--though we support those things. We go "Beyond Bernie" in calling for more leisure time, more focus on the arts, beauty, nature, meaningful work, community and sustainable agriculture, all of which receive too little attention from progressives. We are not hung up on the word socialism--some of us consider ourselves socialists but others do not. But we agree that the current form of capitalism as practiced in the US is an unjust, unsatisfying system that favors the rich and promotes rampant consumerism rather than quality of life, while threatening us with environmental destruction, especially from climate change.
Without attacking the current left we are saying that: we are utopian; we are non-dogmatic; we believe in focusing clearly on ends and being pragmatic and experimental on means; we reject basing political identity on narrow policy choices rather than shared values (we can appreciate Nixon's Earned Income Tax Credit as much as LBJ's anti poverty work).
Q: What historical political parties or social movements do you see the Bread and Roses Party being descended from?
A. There are many--the Transcendentalists of the 1800s, the Progressive movement, the City Beautiful and Country Life movements of the early 1900s, the Christian and Jewish democratic socialist traditions. the conservation and environmental movements, the Cooperative Commonwealth traditions of the MN Farmer-Labor Party and the WA Commonwealth Federation, the New Deal, the Civil Rights movement, the women's movements, the Great Society, the 60s counterculture, the 90s simplicity movement, even elements of conservative views about localism and personal responsibility. They are all part of our national progressive heritage and tapestry. We do not draw our inspiration from the undemocratic state socialisms that were part of the Soviet system and its spinoffs. We appreciate the early Marx for his recognition of alienated labor and the inequities of capitalism but reject dictatorships of all types.
Q: Jerome Segal created quite a few political waves when he was recently quoted: "It's completely irresponsible for a progressive third party to compete in swing states. It's quite likely that it'll be close and in a winner-take-all system, even if you do terribly in that state, that tiny percentage of votes can actually make a difference. Our view would be if the Green Party is on the ballot in Pennsylvania, don't vote for them. Vote for Biden." What sort of response has the Bread and Roses Party had to this opinion?
A. It's mixed of course, but I am absolutely with Jerome on this. I voted for Sanders in the WA primary but I stand with Sanders in his view that we simply must defeat Donald Trump in this election. So we do not intend to run in any swing state, we are not spoilers and we urge everyone in the battleground states to vote for Biden. We hope to expand the electorate in a few states that are not swing states and in so doing we hope to help progressive Democrats keep the House and take back the Senate. And then we want to push them and work with them toward more of our goals. But where the election is safe we want people to vote for us. We do find it absolutely irresponsible to repeat the Green Party debacle of 2016 in the swing states. This election is not a game. We want to get people to think but we do not want to help Trump in any way.
Q: I imagine the ever-shifting political pundit situation on what constitutes the
definition of a "swing state" must be playing havoc on what states the Bread and Roses Party plans to focus on regarding campaigning for votes?
A. Not really--there are many completely safe states--in MD Biden is ahead by 30 points; also in VT where we expect to be on the ballot. Because of coronavirus, it is not possible to go out and gather signatures, so our ballot access will be limited in any case. I tend to trust Nate Silver's numbers in this.
Q: As the person behind the
Affluenza documentary, how do you think Covid-19 is going to change our country's attitudes about politics and materialism?
A. It's too early to tell, but it should certainly lead to universal health care and perhaps a basic income guarantee, which I favor. I hope it will help us understand the need for justice for our "essential" workers, many of whom are low-income and people of color. 50% of our farmworkers who keep us fed are labeled undocumented or "illegal." But we must come to recognize that they, and bus drivers, small farmers, garbage collectors, nurses, teachers, service workers, are vastly more essential to our economy than hedge fund managers and stockbrokers and bankers or even IT engineers. We may all come to see that what we value is community, nature, social connection, leisure time; that we don't need all the stuff, and the overwork and stress that comes with it, and that we can reduce our working hours and our impact on the planet appreciably. I hope that's the outcome, and the Bread and Roses Party will do everything we can to promote that.
Q: I have to ask this. I see you have taught at The Evergreen State College. I was a student there in the 1970s when it was considered an experimental school for nonconformists, visionaries, freaks, weirdos, small "L" libertarians, so-called hippies, cartoonists (like me), eccentrics and freethinkers, and then I was employed there for a couple years in the 1980s after it had rapidly become more mainstream and consequently more boring and ordinary. What is your experience and impressions of the place?
A. I taught there off and on as an adjunct from 2001-2008. I loved it. I didn't find it mainstream at all, enjoyed the team teaching and multidisciplinary nature of the school, the push to think critically and appreciate the arts and humanities and the lack of grades. I taught such courses as Take Back Your Time, What's the Economy for, Anyway? and others like that. My co-faculty were wonderful as were my students, many of whom were active military from Joint Base Lewis McCord. I learned a lot from them, but I was a victim of the layoffs caused by the great recession.
Q: Thank you for contributing to this blog. If you have anything else to add that my questions did not cover please feel free to add them here.
A. I want to put in a big plug for my running mate Jerome Segal. He taught public policy at the University of Maryland for many years, worked in the House of Representatives, has written several books and been an advocate of international diplomacy and justice for Palestinians. He is a brilliant thinker and doer and I am honored to have him at the head of our ticket.
Thanks for these great questions! I enjoyed it.
John and son David
