We Need to Harness People Power - Andy Shallal on Reality Asserts Itself

[Jefferson23]

Mr. Shallal says at the local level is where you can make a change. It's very hard to expect change on the national level.

Bio

Andy Shallal is a 2014 candidate for mayor in D.C. He is the owner of the Busboys and Poets restaurant chain, a hub for progressive politics and culture in the nation's capital. In 2003, he founded Iraqi Americans for Peaceful Alternatives in opposition to the invasion of Iraq and has been involved in the peace movement. He is on the board of trustees for the Institute for Policy Studies and the Co-founder of Think Local First DC, and has served on the boards of several arts and peace organizations.

snip* Transcript: JAY: So one more time, Andy runs this Busboys and Poets in D.C. It has--it's the hub of all kinds of progressive politics, a very successful chain of restaurants, I think up to seven in a short while.

Andy's running for mayor of D.C. And we've established a couple of ground rules which--he's not allowed to critique anyone else running for mayor. He can only talk about his vision, because we don't know if we're going to get to interview any of the other candidates, although we have invited them.

But in this episode I'm going to ask sort of the basic question: why did you want to run for mayor? Because it's a sort of be careful what you wish for proposition here. You can run and raise issues and make sure these things get into the campaign. But you're doing more than that. You seem to want to win this. But if you win this without some real support on city council, and, even more importantly, if you don't have, like, a movement behind you that if you're going to really take on issues like, you know, deep, chronic poverty and how to change that, you're going to go up against some seriously entrenched interests in D.C. who--. And, I mean, the reason these things aren't solved isn't 'cause people don't know what the policy is to solve it, really. You know, people are not interested. Their interests are in real estate speculation or kinds of other things, or, as we talked about in the last episode, people make a lot of money out of chronic poverty in various ways, from prisons to other things. So if you actually won, what could you do?

SHALLAL: Well, first of all, we live in a fairly progressive city. I mean, D.C. is--you know, relatively speaking, is pretty progressive. And there is a movement, there is a real progressive movement that's waiting to be sparked.

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