Speaker Identification
- Speaker 1 - Show Theme / Announcer
- Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown
- Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman
- Speaker 4 - Liberty Jones

Speaker 1 - Show Theme / Announcer

Democracy is a chorus, and it starts with you. Shadow Politics. Let the midnight speak for the overlooked, the unheard, the strong, and the weak. Senator Michael D. Brown holding open the door. Liberty Jones saying we are silent no more. From the district streets to the nation's soul, every broken-out voice makes the country whole. Shadow Politics. Turn the dark into sound. When America listens, justice comes around.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

Good evening and welcome to Shadow Politics, an hour-long grassroots talk show on a mission to make America think again. I'm your host, Michael D. Brown, United States Senator Emeritus, along with my amazing co-host, Liberty Jones.

We're interviewing the people who are making it happen - not always in front of the camera, but always ahead of the curve. We're not going to tell you how to feel or who to vote for. We're just putting the information out there, because what goes on in the shadows is what really makes the world go around.

So come listen and learn, because a vote is a terrible thing to waste. Now more than ever, we need everyone listening, learning, and engaged if we're going to make America sane again. If you've got questions, you can call in at 888-627-6008.

Our guest tonight is Kymone Freeman. Kymone is a friend of the show. He's the founder of We Act Radio. He's an activist. In my humble opinion, every day he's been in the District of Columbia, he has made it a better place to live for all of us. He's out there doing labor in the field. Kymone, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for all you do, and thanks for being here with us tonight.

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

Always a pleasure, Senator Brown. Always.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

Tell us about your campaign, Kymone. What's going on? You're running for Congress. I don't see you in the write-in votes, and I don't see you on the ballot. How is that going to work?

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

Well, I'm in the general election because of the media blackout. The fact is, the corporate leadership of the Democratic Party has seen better days, for lack of a better word. They are more interested in maintaining the status quo than accepting progressive politics that would move us forward and make the party a true big tent.

Remember when they used to say, "Vote blue no matter who"? Now it is, "Vote blue no matter who - unless they are Democratic Socialists, unless they are challenging the status quo."

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

But that's changing, right? They've been dragged kicking and screaming to the left.

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

Yes. A poll was just released on CNN showing that 34 percent of Democrats - more than a third of the Democratic Party - support Democratic Socialism. So, by virtue of democracy, the Democratic Party seems more willing to side with far-right reaches of the GOP on certain domestic policies and almost everything in foreign policy than to listen to that part of its own base.

To answer your question, I am in the general election as a D.C. Statehood Green Party candidate. The last time a D.C. Statehood Party member defeated the Democratic primary winner in a general election was Hilda Mason. Hilda Mason was not only a Democratic Socialist, she was a DSA member. She contributed heavily to the initial election of Bernie Sanders, and she was the second-longest-serving council member in Washington, D.C. She served 22 years on the council and as chair.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

And she was also one of the best. I say that, and I mean it.

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

I'm glad to hear that, and thank you for that compliment to her legacy. She was known as the grandmother of the world. Hilda Mason was the last time we saw a Democratic primary winner fall in the general election. It has been quite some time since then.

With our beloved Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton finally stepping down, that changing of the guard may create an opportunity for us to see history repeat itself. She has refused to endorse the Democratic primary winner.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

I don't blame her. I didn't endorse him. I just don't think he's the right guy for the job. I looked at your website before I let my co-host in here to ask a brilliant question. Tell me about your "No Vote, No Tax" policy. This is nothing new, but you think the people who live in the District of Columbia, since they don't have voting rights and they don't have statehood, should not have to pay federal taxes, much like the people of Puerto Rico. Is that right?

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

Absolutely. Not just Puerto Rico - Guam and the other islands as well. We are the only U.S. territory that pays federal income taxes at all. In addition, we are taxed at a higher rate per capita than everyone else in the country.

I think it is far past time to acknowledge that we need to put an end to taxation without representation. The hypocrisy of celebrating the 250th anniversary of America and its resistance to taxation without representation is a bitter pill to swallow while continuing down that same road.

During the primary season, I was allowed into only two debates. In those debates, I made a point of saying that all nine Democratic primary candidates were making the same promise: "I'm going to be the one who brings D.C. statehood." I said that claim was both disingenuous and disrespectful. Eleanor Holmes Norton and countless others have spent decades trying to get this country to do the right thing. During Barack Obama's first term, when Democrats controlled the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, statehood was not even an issue. It did not even come up for a discussion, let alone a vote.

As Malcolm said, we keep putting them first and they keep putting us last because we are political chumps. In the absence of statehood, we should no longer be paying federal income taxes. The goal is, of course, representation, but in the current climate, we cannot even say DEI. We have a president who has said he is seeking a third term and has no intention of leaving the White House, and people are pretending they did not hear him.

I think it is far past time that we take matters into our own hands and claim the power we have. I am quoting the late, great Johnnie Cochran, who said right here in Washington, D.C., at Union Temple Baptist Church, that the best way to air your grievances against the federal government is by withholding income taxes, and that D.C. had legal precedent to do so.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

The only problem is that tax resistance is very hard because most of us don't pay taxes directly. We get them withheld by our employer through that lovely W-4 formula. So it is really up to our employer to pay them. We only file returns. We did this during the Vietnam War, and it did not work very well. We've done it here in D.C., too. But I agree with you 100 percent that we should not have to pay federal income taxes. We don't have the same rights everybody else has. Liberty, jump in here.

Speaker 4 - Liberty Jones

Thank you so much for coming on today. I am delighted to be in the presence of your interview again. You're a great public speaker. My question is: if Congress is unwilling to admit D.C. as a state, what is the next best solution to ensure democratic representation?

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

Wow. I am going to be making an announcement. You have an exclusive here, Senator Brown. I have never announced this publicly on any program, so this is an exclusive for you out of respect for your support of We Act Radio.

For the past 30 years, since my encounter with Johnnie Cochran, I have been a tax resister. I have not filed federal income taxes for the past 30 years in support of D.C. statehood and also as a conscientious objector and war-tax resister, because a good portion of our federal income taxes goes directly to fund wars. Unfortunately, we have seen the military budget explode to more than a trillion dollars, and now it includes genocides around the world.

I have to say that because when we talk about money being taken directly out of our checks, it can make it seem as if we are powerless against the system. Johnnie Cochran and others educated me to the fact that you can change your withholdings. It is up to you.

To answer your question about how we can make this a reality, I do not think Congress is going to pass anything. I think we can declare to Congress that this is the challenge we are making. If a person walks into a crowded room and yells fire, it causes panic. It does not matter if there is a fire or not. It does not matter if people see smoke. The mention of it is enough to cause a panic.

I think just mentioning the threat of tax resistance is enough to move this conversation forward. I do not want people to be fearful and think they have to take the same risks I have taken. But they do need to invest in leadership willing to risk itself for qualitative change. I am clearly one of those people.

There is a great organization in D.C. called Free DC, named after the organization Mary Berry founded with countless others, including our beautiful sister Denise Jenkins. The original Free DC supported a slow-tax approach, which means making collection more difficult. They have educated me on the metric of critical mass.

Critical mass is defined as 3.5 percent of the population. In Washington, D.C., that would be about 24,000 people. If only 3.5 percent of the population would join us in accepting tax resistance as a liberation tool and as a tool to move toward statehood, none of us would have to be at risk of prosecution. In my last election, I received more than 22,000 votes. So we are quite close to that critical mass.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

You make it sound possible. I think there are at least 24,000 people in Washington, D.C. who are angry about this situation. It is amazing that the federal government exempts us from the rights states have, but when it comes to taxes, they treat us like a state.

Let me ask you about something I saw on your website: addressing the root causes of poverty. Washington, D.C., has always amazed me because it really is two cities. We are the most educated city in the world in terms of graduate degrees, yet when I first took office, half the kids at Anacostia High School did not graduate on time. We also pay the highest taxes, partly because we make the most money, yet there is still so much poverty east of the river. We are a tale of two cities, to quote Charles Dickens.

What do we need to do to address the root causes of poverty? I have been broke many times, but I have never been poor. Poverty is a whole different condition. It is cyclical. It is really a disease as much as anything else. What do we do to attack the root causes?

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

First, thank you for taking time to check out my website. I hope others will go to freeman4congress.com and consider making a donation to our campaign. We did not receive any of the $2 million raised during the Democratic primary for the nine people who ran for this office. The Democratic primary winner alone raised more than half a million dollars. Somehow, we continue to elect only people endorsed by wealthy donors, which is why working-class people do not get qualitative change.

What you saw on my website was about addressing the root causes of crime and violence, poverty being one of them. Nelson Mandela said poverty is man-made, just like apartheid, and it can be rectified and eradicated by the will of policies. If poverty is man-made, then it has been enforced as a tool of social control.

In D.C., unfortunately, 30 percent of our young people live below the poverty line. That is 30 percent of children in the nation's capital, and almost all of them are children of color. That rate is twice the national average. People need to realize that if you have twice the poverty rate, you should expect twice the amount of problems. People scratch their heads as if one does not connect with the other.

Go to a wealthy side of town and things are hunky-dory. People exchange handshakes and pleasantries. Go to a poor neighborhood and it is the opposite, because people are struggling. You cannot make friends with a hungry person if you have a whole pizza and are going to eat it in front of them.

In addition to poverty, we have illiteracy. Illiteracy is higher than the national average as well. People ask, what does literacy have to do with violence? It has been shown that third-grade reading scores have been used as metrics to determine prison population projections. This is coming from the country with the largest prison population in the world, in a city with the largest per-capita ratio of police to citizens in the country. Clearly, more police and more prisons are not eradicating crime and violence. That is just a profitable way to manage it.

We also need to acknowledge the disparity in food deserts - what we call food apartheid. Ward 3 is our wealthiest ward in Washington, D.C., and it has at least twice, maybe three times as many grocery stores as Ward 7, one of our poorest wards. Yet Ward 7 has twice the number of people. Ward 7 has more liquor stores than Ward 3, so that tells you what the agenda is.

It has been scientifically shown that an underdeveloped mind that is devoid of key nutrients is more prone to violent behavior. I am not making excuses. If you give a little kid too much sugar and then tell that kid to sit down and be quiet, what will that kid do? They are going to bounce off the wall. Is something wrong with the kid, or with what you are giving the kid? That is the conversation we need to have about the root causes of crime and violence.

We also have not addressed lead pipes. Lead is not only a detriment to cognitive function; it is also a precursor for violent behavior. Yet we have a government that has given billions of dollars to a billionaire owner of the Washington Commanders to build a new stadium, and that stadium is supposed to host its first game by 2030. Meanwhile, D.C. Water has projected that it will not have all lead pipes replaced in the nation's capital until 2037. That gives you an idea of the priorities of current administrations and public officials in the nation's capital.

Martin Luther King Jr. said we need a radical revolution of values. Addressing the root causes of crime and violence is one of them.

Speaker 4 - Liberty Jones

I really commend you for teaching me all of this. These are important considerations. Education is also a root cause of violence. I used to work for Amnesty International canvassing against gun violence in D.C. That is actually how I met Senator Brown. It baffles me that every five minutes somebody is shot, and it is a kid most of the time. Every neighborhood I went to had some child who had been attacked violently in the last month or so. That is horrible.

What are some of your initiatives to help with that? There are the roots, but what could heal them?

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

We have to change our policies and our approach. The reactionary policies are outdated. Citywide curfew is an extension of collective punishment, which is defined as a war crime by the United Nations. Of course, the United States is defiant of the International Court, especially when it comes to human rights.

As my contribution, I have been teaching kids chess, reinforcing lessons in critical thinking, conflict resolution, and working with kids one on one. I have taught at least a thousand kids chess because I felt it was criminal not to have that be part of their education. It has been difficult, even when offered for free, to get D.C. Public Schools to allow chess to be taught in their curriculum.

I have only been allowed to teach chess in one public school, Hyde Elementary in Georgetown, as an after-school program. Georgetown is not the biggest problem spot in the nation's capital. The rest of the time, it has been charter schools with more autonomy to make those decisions.

Again, we can go down the line with food apartheid. There should be regulation over the number of grocery stores per person, per capita, or per neighborhood - whatever metric you want to use. I know someone mentioned Zohran Mamdani earlier. He was attacked and laughed at when he suggested municipally owned supermarkets. People asked, how would that work? I said, they have commissaries on every military base. Every military family knows about the commissary. That is a municipally run grocery store. Why can't we have one here? Why can't we have co-ops where the people who live there have ownership in the enterprise and are trained not just to be bag boys, but to run the enterprise from the ground up?

We do not have a left-right political problem in this country. We have a top-bottom problem. Somehow, the top feels that the bottom is best controlled by staying in survival mode. What we really want is equilibrium. People say, "You want utopia. That does not exist anywhere." Actually, it does. Look at Vienna, Austria. It has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. They have no ghettos. They have no homelessness. They have social housing. Nobody pays more than 30 percent of their income for housing. A millionaire can live next door to a working-class person, and they have the same quality of life. They may drive different cars and go on different vacations, but there is a social safety net.

Ironically, Vienna was subsidized by U.S. taxpayers through the Marshall Plan when Europe was rebuilt. Vienna did the best job with it. These are models we can follow.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

As a guy who lived in Ward 3 for 35 years, I know the problem in Wards 7 and 8 as far as food stores. Within less than a mile from my front door, there were three Whole Foods stores, plus a Giant and a Safeway. We had five food stores within a mile of my house. Ward 7 is gigantic, and it is just crazy.

Since we are briefly talking about Mamdani, let me ask you something. One problem I had with him this week is that he talked about arresting Netanyahu, which of course he knows he cannot do. If anybody has diplomatic immunity, it is the head of a nation - and the head of one of America's closest allies. I do not agree with what Netanyahu is doing, but Mamdani is out there talking about things he cannot do. Doesn't that make Democratic Socialists look bad?

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

I would not say it makes them look bad. I think it was overreach in terms of his authority, but I think he is using his position as a bully pulpit. We constantly hear that the president is the leader of the free world. Well, the world did not get to elect the president. Is he overreaching when he is called the leader of the free world? In my opinion, yes.

Since Mamdani is the leader of the largest city in America, I think he is following bad examples set before him. You cannot criticize him for being a habitual overstepper if you are not going to do the same for his predecessors, especially people coming out of the White House.

I think he has done more good than harm. He has reminded people that Netanyahu has been called a war criminal. Diplomatic immunity is not just for Netanyahu; it is for other figures like George W. Bush, who could be arrested in another country if that diplomatic immunity were not upheld. It is part of why America does not subscribe to the International Criminal Court.

We need to ask what the bigger issue is: is it Mamdani overstepping his bounds, or is it him acknowledging the evils of man? Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid of any country in the world. It receives billions of dollars annually, more than sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America combined. They also have subsidized health care, housing, and education, and they do not have the same student-loan debt, housing crisis, or medical-debt bankruptcies we face here. Those things are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, but we do not have them here. These are things we need to talk about.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

You're right. Thankfully, they are opening the Strait of Hormuz, which I love, because they were opening and closing that all the time. Liberty, say something brilliant.

Speaker 4 - Liberty Jones

So much pressure. I am with two geniuses. How do you think we got to this moral standpoint where so many people are in a survival-based mindset that is easily conquerable? A lot of us are divided. Divide and conquer. How did we get so deep into narratives that make something like billions of dollars to Israel annually seem normal? How do we step out of that? It feels like these narratives have been constructed and threaded into our system so deeply that it is hard to unravel them.

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

That is by design. The intimidation is meant to make you throw your hands up in frustration and give up. You see that expressed through lack of civic engagement, from jury duty to voting. In D.C., more than 70 percent of registered voters did not participate. That is a mark of that.

I want to point to Martin Luther King Jr. because my studio is on Martin Luther King Avenue, and I espouse the things that got him killed because I think he is the greatest teacher we have. He asked, "Where do we go from here: chaos or community?" His last full Sunday sermon was delivered here in Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1968. It was titled "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution." In that speech, he said that too often, people find themselves living in periods of great social change yet fail to develop the new ideas and mental responses that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution. I submit to you that this is the quintessential definition of "stay woke." That is why they have turned it into a pejorative.

On America's 250th anniversary, I also lift up the Declaration of Independence. The flawed founding fathers of this country had the vision to include words saying that mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursues the same object and reduces them under absolute despotism, it is their right and duty to overthrow such government and provide new guards for their future security.

That is where we are. That is the challenge of our generation. Are we going to pretend this is not happening? What will we do if the president stays in office for a third term? He has placed U.S. military on Democratic-controlled cities in case there is resistance. I have trouble understanding why people do not see the game in play. First, they get us to step over the Posse Comitatus Act, which is supposed to prevent the U.S. military from being used as a domestic police force. Then we have curfew. Then we have ICE snatching people off the street. They are normalizing all of this, and they will get to each and every one of us at some point if we do not begin to resist soon.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

This is a real problem I have. Where are the Democrats? How did they take a term like woke and turn it into a pejorative? It means being aware. That should not be bad. They are doing it right now with voter ID. They are talking about voter ID, but that is not what they really want to do. They want people to prove citizenship, which is much harder. They have people convinced that going to a polling place and showing a driver's license will get you to vote. It will not. First you have to register, and under the SAVE America Act, you cannot register unless you prove you are an American citizen. That is hard for a lot of people.

When I went to get my driver's license so I could get on an airplane, because I am retired and did not have a W-2 and got my Social Security card when I was 14 years old, I could not prove I was a citizen. I had to go to the Social Security Administration and get a new Social Security card. You had better have your passport or birth certificate. This is not just showing ID like when you get a drink or get on a plane.

Where are the Democrats? Why aren't we saying this? How did we let woke be taken by the right and turned into a pejorative? Everybody should be woke. That is what our show is about: making America think again, making America woke again.

We are going to have new leadership in D.C., it looks like. What do you think of the incoming mayor? Do you think there is more hope if Janice gets elected than there has been with Muriel Bowser? The District has not put much into statehood. Ralph Nader came on our show and said $10 million a year has to be put into it. We had Mr. Smith from D.C. Appleseed say the same thing. We are hardly putting any money into it. Do you think Janice will stand up for ideas like statehood more than Mayor Bowser has?

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

It would not be hard to outdo Mayor Bowser, so that is a low bar. Aside from Janice endorsing Mr. White, I am in full support of her ascension to the position. I think she is coming in with a mandate, and we expect her to be a change maker. We share some of the same mentors. I have known her for years. We have been in the same activist circles, and I am proud to call her a friend.

I expect a lot of changes with her ascension. What will be telling before she does anything officially is what happens when she is called to meet with Trump. How does she respond? Is she going to do what Muriel Bowser did, flying all the way to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to meet with the president rather than going to the White House, which is right down the street? Or is she going to go to the White House? If she goes to Florida, that will be complete capitulation, and we can expect more of the same. If she goes to the White House, she is standing her ground. But if she is going to be a change agent, she may request that he meet her at a location they agree on outside the White House. That will help determine the direction, breadth, and depth of her administration.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

Not only did Mayor Bowser scrape Black Lives Matter off the street, but I had a sign in my front yard. Since my house was the first house you came into in Washington, D.C., I put up a billboard explaining to people that if they moved to D.C., they were going to lose their rights. It was up for three or four years. People took pictures in front of it. But as soon as Trump came in, the city cited me and made me take it down, claiming it was on their property. It was not. It was in my yard. The only part that was not in my yard was on federal Park Service property, so D.C. had no jurisdiction. The only reason we took it down is because my wife and I were going to sell the house a month later.

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

I took a picture of that sign, Senator Brown. Unfortunately, it was on a phone that was seized by the U.S. Attorney's Office and has not yet been returned to me. I do not have that picture anymore.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

I will send you another one. This time I will have Liberty posed in front of it, so it will be a better picture. Liberty, go ahead.

Speaker 4 - Liberty Jones

That is a very interesting observation about the difference between Muriel Bowser and Janice. How would you pick up the phone and engage if Trump were to set up a meeting with you?

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

That thought has never occurred to me. We have had a couple of firsts on this show. I made my announcement, and you asked the first question ever proposed to me like that. I would have to put thought into it, but my gut reaction is that unless we were talking about a change of position on statehood, unless it was explicitly expressed that we were there to discuss a new direction for D.C. statehood, I would most likely decline to meet.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

I do not blame you. It is ridiculous that he has already threatened to take over the city because Janice has announced that she is a Democratic Socialist. The problem goes back to education and ignorance. I have several degrees in political science, so I understand socialism and Democratic Socialism. But the average person who has not been educated in it thinks socialism, communism, and fascism are all the same, and they are not. There are many examples of Democratic socialist countries that are doing just fine, including the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. I blame the Democratic Party for not educating people on these things.

After Trump was elected, I went to one of my first meetings, and a woman stood up and said, as Democrats, we have nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to regret. I said, are you kidding me? That man is in the White House because of us. If we were doing our job, he would have never made it.

I think we all learn from our experience. I know you have. I hear it every time you talk. I grew up an orphan from the time I was a teenager. I have been supporting myself since I was 14. I was never poor, because I always had people who loved me and cared for me. But I was close enough to poverty to see it.

When I moved from Newark, New Jersey, from living behind a factory, to Montgomery County, I changed my life. The white kids in Montgomery County were not treated like the kids in Newark. In Montgomery County, I had a hall monitor who would give you a hall pass if you made a sad face. When I went back to Newark to visit my friends, there were National Guard troops walking through the halls of the high school because of unrest.

It is simple to me. If you believe God made all people equal, then when they end up unequal at the end of the road, you have to look at what intervened between the time they were born and the time they died. You have to ask what changed these two perfect babies who were essentially the same at birth. Is there anybody in America who does not understand that Black and brown people make less money, are less educated, and have less access to decent health care than white people? I do not know why we find ourselves so divided.

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

In the nation's capital, the average white family has 81 times the wealth of the average Black family. To your point about the Democratic official saying they had nothing to be ashamed of, that means they are proud of maintaining the status quo. They are proud of denying citizens health care. They are proud of wars committed in their name and carnage wrecked around the world with our tax money.

For those still caught in the platitudes around socialism, the best way I can describe it is this: capitalism without socialism is fascism, and socialism without capitalism is communism. There are plenty of social programs in this country right now, Social Security being one of them, which is why it is always under attack.

I also want to point out that here in Washington, D.C., Busboys and Poets has agreed to host a debate between me and Mr. White. We are not expecting Mr. White to accept because this would be his debate to lose, but they are making the call.

What I do have confirmed is a general-election town hall on August 12 at Busboys and Poets on V Street here in the nation's capital. It will be livestreamed. Your audience can check that out by subscribing to We Act Radio's YouTube channel. We are going to have journalist Sam Husseini on it. People may know of him because he just had a run-in with Chuck Schumer last week.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

Send me the link, and we will post it on our website for anybody listening who wants to see it. Before we run out of time, tell people one more time how they can contribute to your campaign.

Speaker 3 - Kymone Freeman

Thank you again. It is freeman4congress.com. They can make contributions there. We need all the support we can get. As I said, my opponents raised $2 million in their failed primary attempt, and the current primary winner has more than half a million dollars in his coffers. We are not going to outspend them, and that is not the goal. But your support will help us hit the ground, because we are spreading this word.

If people spread this information, this interview, and this platform, we can go further in having qualitative change not only here, but around the country. D.C. statehood is not a D.C. issue alone. It has the potential to have a ripple effect throughout the country because it would tip the balance of power in the House and the Senate if we had two more progressive senators and more representation in Congress.

Another issue I am campaigning on is that no one should spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing plus utilities. That is already a HUD guideline used as a metric for funding. Imagine if it were a law that put a cap on housing costs. I also said that private equity should be banned from owning homes. Someone has already submitted a bill moving forward on that. I do not know if it will pass, but shout out to whoever started that ball rolling. These are national issues.

Speaker 2 - Michael D. Brown

I never understood why we paid $40 million to get two Democratic senators from Georgia elected when, if you put $40 million into D.C. statehood, you could get two liberal Democratic senators tomorrow. That is why Janine Pirro canceled the suit about the reflecting pool.

Our time is up. Thanks so much for being with us, Kymone. Every time we have a guest, we dedicate the song that we play out to them. Tonight, all I could think of was John Lennon's "Imagine" because Kymone Freeman is a man who thinks big and always thinks of a better tomorrow.

Liberty Jones, thanks for being brilliant as always. Kymone, thanks for being here. Everybody, we will see you next week. I am going to Las Vegas, so pray for me. Bye, everybody. Have a good week.

Speaker 1 - Show Theme / Announcer

Come with your questions. Come with your history. Come with your hope. America is calling. This time we listen. Shadow Politics makes the blue notes rise. Put the unheard city right before the nation's eyes. Senator Michael D. Brown, Liberty Jones by his side, turning conversation into a rising tide. From statehood dreams to the truth we defend, from the stranger at the door to the voice of a friend. Shadow Politics. Let the whole room sing. Representation is where freedom begins. Leave one light on in the window tonight. Leave one chair open. Leave one question bright. The shadows are empty. They are waiting to be heard. Sunday night, we give the people the word.