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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. With us now New York and New Jersey journalist Bob Hennelly, a former WNYC reporter among many other things. Bob has a new book called Stuck Nation: Can the United States Change Course on Our History of Choosing Profits Over People? He also reports a lot on public employee unions these days for the New York City newspaper that covers them, The Chief-Leader, so relevant now with the vaccine mandates and other COVID news.

We also have the city's biggest public employee union, DC 37, joining the call for Governor Cuomo to resign. Bob was just named the ninth most influential policymaker in New Jersey, number nine on Insider NJ's new list of 100 policymakers right behind the state attorney general. Bob, congratulations on the book. Congratulations on the listing. Welcome back to WNYC.

Bob Hennelly: I am thoroughly embarrassed. As a journalist, we're always skeptical of any list and, of course, to find yourself on it it's an honor and I'm humbled by it. I also just want to thank you for the tremendous and essential community service you guys have provided throughout this well, combination. I don't think we've spoken since an insurrection in pandemic, it's been a while.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, mostly we'll talk about your book, but on the Insider NJ ranking, you're not a policymaker per se as a journalist. What's an example of the work you've been doing in New Jersey-- this is like carte blanche to tout your own horn, that you think got you into the top 10 on that list?

Bob Hennelly: I think it's just paying attention to the places that the corporate media, for a whole bunch of reasons that we may get into later on, doesn't have time nor inclination to focus. Going back to the time that I was at WNYC, the station supported keeping track of how was the recovery under President Obama going.

What we saw, of course, in communities of color, is that while African Americans got the bragging rights of having an African American in the White House, so many of them, and not just me, Cindy Rodriguez chronicled these stories, people lost their own homes. It's been staying on that throughout my entire career on a granular level, and then also seeing the connection between how much working people have been losing ground, Brian, pretty much my whole life.

Just right now, after this great national tragedy we're still in midst of, there's just a hint, a hopeful hint that the balance between capital and labor is tipping finally towards labor.

Brian Lehrer: That brings us right to the heart of your book, Stuck Nation: Can The United States Change Course on Our History of Choosing Profits Over People? You've got at least 50 years of history here going back to the 1970s. Which you remind us was when American workers stopped seeing their wages grow with their productivity. Is there a day zero in the '70s or a policy decisions zero when the march to today's income inequality and concentration of wealth really begins?

Bob Hennelly: Well, I think that this is where lived history intersects with my reporting career. Around that time, I was almost six. My dad had been in the textile industry, that business moved. I remember just ironically, my first big train trip was to go down South with him. He was with JP Stevens, and they were trying to avoid union labor in moving to the South. Within short order, my dad was out of a job, and the first elected official I met was Sheriff Joe [inaudible 00:03:59] .

At 13, he had handed me my parent's foreclosure papers. That's rooted in that experience and so I would just say that it was coming out of the Vietnam War, or the effort of having guns and butter, this kind of further notice military expansionism, the connections made by Dr. King about the question of how we had this further notice war, and the connection between further notice militarism and the decline in the social contract.

It's just ironic in the arc of the book, you'll see, I did work my way. I went to Ramapo College working at a union job in ShopRite. Through a series of twists and turns, some of which people may be familiar with very recently, because of political things that had happened and the stance I had taken at workplaces, I found myself back at an Acme working overnight while doing my freelance work.

I was actually making less money then and I was surrounded by-- it was fascinating because these were men around my age who had, at the end of their career in grocery who had been in the military, who had stayed their whole life in grocery, and we're making $25, $28 an hour. Brian, they had five weeks of paid vacation but the job I was doing was only paying $9 an hour.

They could never find anybody to do that job. What ended up happening was they were happy to see me and treated me very nicely because it meant they could finally take their vacation. It's lived experience, and then it's rooted in my reporting.

Brian Lehrer: Were they making more money than you at the supermarket because they were grandfathered into some worker protections that you as a new employee were not?

Bob Hennelly: Oh, absolutely. I follow the tradition as a journalist who've done this kind of thing, nickel dimed in America. Yes, what had happened was because of the power of corporations and the weakness of unions-- A lot of that was set into motion with what Ronald Reagan did when he fired all the air traffic controllers, and then the tremendous push back against unions, and the effort to demobilize them.

That has an effect on the rest of the workforce. What they were doing is selling the unborn. We've seen that happen. I remember one of the questions when I was at WNYC and I interviewed then-Senator Obama when he was running in the New York primary. I asked him about the low salary of a starting New York City policeman, which was, you could collect food stamps, because the balance of power, again, was totally towards capital.

What's happened in the arc of my lifetime has been the government got in the business of securing ever larger concentrations of capital, both political parties, and I would include Governor Cuomo is a great example, are about preserving capital. Now, the pandemic has revealed the underinvestment that's happened both in labor and in our public health systems. It's tragic, but we learned a lot of these lessons about the importance of community-based health care in the last great pandemic.

We learned, "Oh, you need a school nurse in each school." What did we do over the last 30 years? Decide that you can have a circuit school nurse, you don't need a school nurse in every school? [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Right. That staffing diminished, and here we are. My guest, if you're just joining us journalist Bob Hennelly, his new book is called Stuck Nation: Can the United States Change Course on Our History of Choosing Profits Over People? 646-435-7280. If you have a question, 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

You're fairly critical of President Obama in the book, starting with your interview with him as a presidential candidate in 2008, that you just referred to, when you concluded that he was more of a charismatic, moderate than a change agent. What happened in that interview?

Bob Hennelly: Well, I would say that, first of all, luckily, we got stuck in traffic so it was longer than I think he expected. This was right around the time where Bear Stearns had collapsed and it had set in motion of the great implosion, which just has devastating consequences on Martin Luther King Boulevard in Main Street. At that time, I had pretty good access to Bob Morgenthau, a former district attorney. Well, then it was New York County.

He had said to me, "The problem with this crisis is that it's like the new Pirates of the Caribbean, all these banks are operating in offshore havens, and there's no way of accountability." I asked Obama about that. He seemed to have a grasp of what the problem was about trying to make great capital accountable and that's the problem. We're in a period now where capital can race around the world in a nanosecond, and even hide its tracks.

Meanwhile, individual working-class people can be held in a detention center for just wanting to go a few miles to a place where they can make a living to feed their family. You have this mobility of capital accelerated in concentration at the same time, so he got that, but then looking at actually what happened, he actually did not hold accountable Wall Street. He didn't go in the direction of Senator Warren.

There's a lot of reasons for that. It was just disappointing because he did have a grasp of the issues but I think he got co-opted. To be honest, when I had the chance to cover him on the campaign trail, often I found Senator Clinton's speeches far more progressive in terms of these economic issues, but he did have this ability to inspire in real time extemporaneously.

Brian Lehrer: How much does your title, Stuck Nation, refer to the political gridlock Washington has been in for at least since the Obama administration, and how much to other things?

Bob Hennelly: I would say that it's the entire political economy. In fact, right now, the discussion that's holding everything up and we thought might interrupt our reunion, which would be Governor Cuomo having an attack of conscience and resigning. That is such an example of where the power that we put into authority in the form of democracy has been so concretized if you will, that we've lost the ability, the power itself is greater than the individuals to hold it accountable.

Even now, it's interesting to hear people talk about where they thought the genesis of the problems with Governor Cuomo. I remember him bullying Governor Patterson out of office. I remember Bridgegate, and what he knew about that. You remember this goes back to three men in a room where we had Assembly Speaker Silver and then senate majority leader, Bruno. We know they all had their criminal [unintelligible 00:11:35].

New York State government, to a large degree, has been an ongoing criminal enterprise. I just got to be honest.

Brian Lehrer: Even though some of those convictions have been thrown out [crosstalk] on appeal, let's take a phone call. Wesley in Ditmas Park. You're on WNYC with journalist Bob Hennelly. Hi, Wesley.

Wesley: Hi. Bob Hennelly, I just want to say thank you so much for doing the work that you are. I'm a bit disappointed this is the first time I'm hearing about you. The thing I appreciate is-- and some context, I grew up broke and doing fairly well now. Along the way, you meet people from white, black and different, it doesn't really matter. You just know that you're broke.

When I came into a decent situation or whatnot, it stopped being about that. It stopped being about whether you're broke or you're not, it become a black and white thing. To get out of the situation, I used the GI Bill. Also, you go into the army and you're either a worker or you're an officer.

You're either broke or you're not, just to say. Thank you so much for voicing this as whether you're your worker or you're a owner. I just never hear places talk about that anymore and it's a sad state to be in if you know what I mean.

Brian Lehrer: Wesley, thank you so much for putting all that on the table and keep listening and keep calling us. Bob, anything you want to say to Wesley?

Bob Hennelly: No, I think that one of the great honors has been spending the last five years at The Chief-Leader newspaper, and getting to report, record, and document this story of, at first, public sector, the civil servants around the New York region, but also around the country, and then making the pivotal turn under Richie Starr's leadership towards covering all unions.

Seeing the connection between-- For me, the amazing moment of solidarity was, there was this big effort going on with the so many-- WNYC has done a good job covering this, the death of undocumented immigrants who are working in construction. These are folks that come-- this is the other thing, I have such a different take about immigration because I saw New York transformed.

When I first started, there were 2,000 homicides a year. Now, we get upset when it gets over 400. My lived experience is that undocumented immigrants build societies because they have three fundamental things in common; work, family, and faith. That's my lived experience. That's what I've seen. That's the thing that-- When we see what's happening [unintelligible 00:14:47] current moment where we've been divided to this consciousness of--

It really comes down to fundamentally do you believe in abundance or scarcity. I look at this period of time of pandemic and the alienation through the Trump era, where for a long period of time, scarcity, fear, and authoritarianism had the edge. I do put Governor Cuomo in that camp even though he's got the democratic label.

Brian Lehrer: Jim, in the south Bronx, you're on WNYC with Bob Hennelly. Hi, Jim.

Jim: Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. My first question is why does your guest who mentioned that this begins with the Reagan administration in particular. Why is it that so many working class people who have been so badly impacted by Reaganism and other Republican policies still support that to this day? I know about the culture wars and all that thing, but I want to know what his take is.

My second question related to that is, I've always been a little annoyed by so-called progressives that want to solve this problem by transfer payments rather than stripping the power of labor. I wonder if he has a comment on that. I think people would be better off having good paying jobs rather than receiving more government benefits. I want to know what his thought is on that as well. I'll take my answer off the air.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks so much, Jim. Two great questions.

Bob Hennelly: Yes. I would say that the beginning of the so-called Reagan Democrat, and that was one of the fracture in the labor movement and the Roosevelt new deal coalition when organized labor was saying vote democratic. Of course, that was easier for them because they usually are making six figures and somebody else drove them to work.

Then a big chunk, sometimes 40%, 50% depending on where it is. In critical places like Ohio and even to some degree, upstate New York, migrated towards republicanism because there was also at the same time this very cynical way of shifting responsibility for the decline in working conditions and putting it on immigrants and people of color. That combination of issues, and then also I think the concern people had about the emerging of a majority minority country, which we've been on a trajectory for a while.

Actually, the voting by mail that happened as a result of the pandemic accelerated the kind of political change that demographers had predicted would happen a decade from now. I think that that's part of the Reagan legacy. Also, the idea of the strength of America is being this-- and there was this sense coming out of the Carter years that we were rudderless, that were introspective.

Then about the question of transfer payments, I do think that there is something about the dignity of work. We're in a very weird place right now where there's a real push by capital to increase on the automate work and to basically have people not work, then you create this tremendous amount of wealth. One of the things that happens is work is an organizing principle for one's life.

I think that there's a dignity to work and that when you deny people an ability to be productive with their time, that then you have all kinds of secondary impacts. One of the things that-- and this comes from [unintelligible 00:18:17] reporting.

I remember at one point I got a call when I was at WNYC that the amount of shipping containers, which you'll probably see if you've been around the airports and the ports, the shipping containers that had gotten so high in one area that people could no longer see the New York city skyline from Newark. This is reporting I was doing at WNYC so I was like, "Well, let's go a neighborhood where--"

This is a result that the United States didn't have anything to put in those containers of value because multinationals had shifted production with the help of both parties outside of the country. I went to the neighborhoods where these shipping containers were actually gotten so tall, Brian, and this will hurt you. They had to close a ball field in a public housing project.

Brian Lehrer: Not a ball field.

Bob Hennelly: Right, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Never mind kicking millions of people out of work or down the economic ladder, not closing a ball field.

Bob Hennelly: Right. This is the thing about public media. I got to spend the day watching this neighbor and talking to the old timers. People who had been part of the great migration, African-American folks that moved from the South away from Jim Crow to union jobs. They were grandmas and grandads waiting for their kids to come home. We're talking about these places where they used to work and make a living and make something.

Then I noticed around it got to be late around four o'clock in the afternoon and everybody went inside. They were uptight and afraid and they had the little kids inside and then the drug dealers came out. They took their position and then I knew to have a different street sense about me. That's a deterioration that happened coast to coast. I saw it happen in Philadelphia. I saw it happen in Cleveland. That's what gave Donald Trump the opening, was the fact that Democrats were not paying attention at the granular level. In places like Irvington or Orange, what was the response to the foreclosure crisis by democratic politicians, to the few African American families holding on against all odds on their homes? Raising their taxes, Brian. That was their solution.

Brian Lehrer: Now, Bob, in our last two minutes, we have-

Bob Hennelly: That went fast. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: It always does. We have Biden, the moderate, and Biden, the second coming of FDR, both in the news right now. How much do you see this moment as an opportunity for a major shift in the direction away from this decline that you write about in your book?

Bob Hennelly: I wake up every day hopeful because I saw in little things his decision to go to Tulsa and reintroduce that loss narrative into mainstream America has been critical. The reduction of childhood poverty through Congresswoman DeLauro's efforts and that payment that's gone is only going to last for one year. The decisions he's made about organized labor and having laborers back.

Then, just creating opportunity even for us maybe to get a rerun of the Amazon election down in Bessemer, Alabama. I'm more optimistic than ever before. I think that we really can turn the page here. I'm excited.

Brian Lehrer: Journalist Bob Hennelly. His new book is called Stuck Nation: Can The United States Change Course on Our History of Choosing Profits Over People? Always good to talk to you, Bob. Thanks a lot.

Bob Hennelly: Take care. Bye

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