We're in the season of hearings! Every bill in the State House has a hearing, most of them happening this fall. We discuss why hearings are designed to have little impact on the opinions of state reps, and how you can use hearings differently to help get your policies passed.
Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics. Check out the video of this episode on YouTube.
Sign up to get updates.
You’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal is to help people understand state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.
To stay informed:
* Subscribe to our YouTube channel
* Subscribe to this podcast
* Sign up to get updates at https://www.incorruptiblemass.org/
We're in the season of hearings! Every bill in the State House has a hearing, most of them happening this fall. We discuss why hearings are designed to have little impact on the opinions of state reps, and how you can use hearings differently to help get your policies passed.
Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics. Check out the video of this episode on YouTube.
Sign up to get updates.
You’re listening to Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our goal is to help people understand state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.
To stay informed:
* Subscribe to our YouTube channel
* Subscribe to this podcast
* Sign up to get updates at https://www.incorruptiblemass.org/
Producer 0:00
[This transcript was produced by a computer program then hand edited. It may still have errors. Incorruptible Massachusetts is unscripted conversation recorded live, so the audio is the authoritative version of the podcast. Updated 9/28/2021 by CFH and FL.]
Anna Callahan 0:00
Hey everybody, this is Incorruptible Massachusetts. Our mission is to help you understand state politics. We talk about why it's so broken. We're talking about what we could have here in Massachusetts if we fixed it, and also how you can get involved. And first, let's introduce ourselves nice and quick. So, Jordan Berg Powers, do you want to go first?
Jordan Berg Powers 0:22
My name is Jordan Berg Powers, I use he/him. And I work in progressive politics in Massachusetts,
Anna Callahan 0:28
Jonathan Cohn!
Jonathan Cohn 0:29
Jonathan Cohn, he/him, and I've been an active volunteer for progressive electoral and issue campaigns for the past eight years here in Massachusetts.
Anna Callahan 0:37
I'm Anna Callahan, she/her, Medford, also super interested in state politics, local politics, but state politics, especially. Today we're talking about hearings. It is the season-- 'Tis the season, is the season of hearings! All the bills that get proposed at the beginning of the session, they all have to have a hearing, so now we're having all the hearings, and we're going to talk about a few of those. We're also going to talk about how useful hearings are and what comes out of hearings. That's going to be the "how broken our state house is" part.
Anna Callahan 1:19
There are a bunch of hearings coming up. Jonathan, you were saying that tomorrow is a qualified immunity bill and some other policing bills. There's Medicare For All and Tenants' Opportunity to Purchase coming up in October, Life Without Parole-- I think you said that was today.
Jonathan Cohn 1:41
Briefing today. Hearing's probably coming up soon.
Anna Callahan 1:44
Yeah. So first, any comments on those in particular? I know Mass Care is organizing folks to put together stories about their personal life and how a lack of health care and lack specifically of a single payer Medicare For All style healthcare system has affected you. So that's a thing that you can get involved in. And I imagine that for all of these bills, it is a similar question, that they're always looking for people who can come to these hearings and provide testimony.
Jonathan Cohn 2:21
I can definitely say on that, whether they move legislators, some of the testimony that you do hear at hearings can be quite powerful. I have an example of that when I was at the hearing recently for the bill [INAUDIBLE] for an alternative community-based emergency response programs. And you had a number of people especially working in the mental health space and the social work space, talking about either their clients or even some people themselves, about how that bill could have made a positive difference, with its recognition that there are many things where a guy with a gun, typically a guy -- not all police are men, but -- typically a guy with a gun is not going to be the one to solve a lot of problems, and that you need somebody who actually has the right skill sets and the right de-escalation and service oriented mindset.
Jordan Berg Powers 3:17
Yeah. The thing that's so amazing about these hearings is some people share some really powerful stories, like, you know, especially around ACES. I mean, ACES is a groundbreaking idea that we understand trauma that kids face, and trauma, not just simply being violence, that we think of like gun violence, or physical violence, but the violence of poverty, the violence of instability, of food hunger, and the ways in which those impact the ability of kids to learn, the ability of kids to function, to form emotionally stable adulthoods. That trauma actually interrupts those things. If we are to help those kids, we need to understand those and give resources to those that are appropriate for those types of things. That's a groundbreaking and important thing.
Jordan Berg Powers 4:07
You hear some of these stories, they're really important. And so in that sense, I think the hearings could be places of true transformation, especially if you take to heart some of the things that you hear in these places. One of the other ones that I know is [INAUDIBLE] is in similarly, I don't know how you listen to the stories around medical debt and our inability to access health care in affordable ways. Like the Medicare For All hearings, those are some of the most powerful hearings I've ever been to. The criminal justice reform bill similarly.
Anna Callahan 4:48
Yeah, I am a huge believer in stories affecting all sorts of things. I mean, if you're canvassing, you want to tell personal stories with the people that you're knocking on the doors with. I mean, I think that we move the conversation. Bernie moved the conversation on Medicare For All from it basically being laughed out of the room to it being a overwhelmingly popular policy across the nation through these town halls that he did with personal stories. So I totally agree with you. But I think we need to recognize that these hearings, the purpose is not to spread the word about these stories, right? These hearings, they are not recorded in ways that make it easy for people to hear those stories, to see those stories, to read those stories. That is not the purpose!
Jordan Berg Powers 5:47
Yeah. Go ahead, Jonathan.
Jonathan Cohn 5:49
Okay. Yeah, thanks. I just want to note that it's a useful thing to keep in mind that if legislators can get by without actually having to hold hearings on bills, they would probably prefer not to have hearings on bills. There is a requirement though that every bill gets a hearing. That doesn't mean every bill gets an exact hearing devoted to that one bill itself. And to some extent that makes sense, if you have a bunch of bills about conveying land from the state to some municipality, or a bill that's about changing the name of something locally that a municipality wants to change, yeah, bundle them together. You don't need a full on hearing for each. However, the legislature often gives people very little notice for hearings, especially in a way of just making it something that's a rather pro forma step rather than any type of deep engagement a lot of the time. You can tell when they actually care about hearing from more people when they give more lead time.
Anna Callahan 6:56
Yeah, if only these stories were getting spread far and wide.
Jordan Berg Powers 7:01
Yeah, and I was just gonna say that the things about the hearings, I think, are relevant for our listeners, is that they encapsulate the total failure of our system as a democracy. And also I would argue, like everything about it, like all the things, it encapsulates all the things about it. So one, they are usually, because they rarely hear important testimony on bills individually, they bundle them together, so they marathon them. So these are really critical issues that all get put together into one place, as Jonathan just said. So legislators don't listen, they they just walk away, they barely pay attention. They are tired, and I get it.
Jordan Berg Powers 7:47
On Thursday, September 23, there is the Joint Committee for the Judiciary. So that's the Senate and the House, are going to be meeting on the judiciary, and I counted something like 40 bills that they are going to be hearing. And so if you think about like, just as a human, sitting there listening to compelling testimony on 40 bills is impossible! You're gonna have to get up, you're gonna have to walk around. But that is a problem that they themselves have created! So they create a system where they can't sit there to listen to a powerful testimony whose sole purpose is to is to change their minds, right, is to change their minds about those policies, and they can't be there for them.
Jordan Berg Powers 8:26
And I just want to give you an idea of some of the things that are going to be discussed on Thursday, September 23. Asset forfeiture, youth restorative justice, qualified immunity, an act relative to civil rights, drug overdose deaths, violent protection orders, abuse prevention. Abuse prevention-- really this is a big issue! Harassment orders, enhancing families harmed by lead, civil forfeiture reforms. There's several bills on forfeiture reforms. There's so many things. Body cameras, domestic violence, alcohol and substance abuse. It's just endless the amount of bills that are all going to be heard together, and all of those deserve an airing, an ability to affect the legislators for them to take in that information. Of the 40 bills, there's probably five hearings that are getting grouped into one hearing where legislators won't be able to sit there and so therefore won't listen and won't be compelled by the issues, let alone understand the issues which most of them don't.
Anna Callahan 9:41
Yeah. And the other thing I want to talk about is how much time progressive organizations put into these hearings. So they prepare for months, right? They find out when the hearing is going to be, they start looking for people who can tell personal stories. They reach deep into their networks. They often have a training on how to tell your personal story to make it the most impactful. You're gotta to prepare a three minute one, you got to prepare a one minute one, because you're not sure exactly how long you're going to get to speak. You've got to practice those. They've got to be doing all this mobilizing, they want to show that there are people there as well so it's not just the speakers. This is months of preparation work that go into these hearings. And when we first decided to talk about hearings today, I think the phrase that we used was "hearings and how little they matter," in terms of affecting the legislature.
Anna Callahan 10:46
We have, of course, talked a lot about how, in general, the legislature, the State House is really affected most number one by whatever the Speaker and leadership wants them to do. That seems to be the number one cultural thing affecting their decisions right now. But there could be so many other things affecting them, that have nothing to do with these hearings. And so when you're talking, Jordan, about how much they make these hearings so they literally can't even listen to them all, that fits into the total picture. And I know, Jonathan, you are also talking about the press and how that could be helpful if *only* these stories were being talking about in the press.
Jonathan Cohn 11:34
I like to say when thinking about hearings is the question of who your audience is, right? When you're attending a hearing, like with any speaking engagement, it's a useful thing to think of. Whom are you actually talking to? Because the legislators up on the stage or rostrum, or whatever the structure is, or just in the panel area, probably are not attending this to have their mind changed. They either have a strong opinion, one in support or strong opinion against or waiting for cues from somebody else in what they think. However, you have other different audiences that you could be talking to. One of them is the press. The problem is that most of the press don't stay very long for hearings. So if you're not in the first 30 minutes, you're probably not gonna be in any short write up that exists-- and they tend to be short. From that perspective, it's still good to get a good write up of the hearing that you just had. But it's beyond even that. It becomes the question of how can you make it so that, as an activist, the hearing is not we're trying to change the minds of those onstage, but we're trying to *use* this. So that rather than use this kind of as a tool, and that's where certain things, for example, like social media come in handy, that if this hearing happens, and it's kind of like, if the tree falls and no one hears did it make a sound? Then your hearing happens, and nobody knows about it, did it did it make a difference? That if you have the ability to, whether it's livestreaming the hearing itself, whether it's recording videos during the hearing of some of those powerful stories, so they can live on beyond that bounded period, whether it's using the written testimonies that maybe your members are going to submit that fall into a black hole with the legislature, but actually keeping them, posting them, sharing them, maybe having them write into a local paper with those, helping to make sure that is not a confined time bound event, but something that that you use to build upon in your advocacy.
Jordan Berg Powers 13:54
This is again the failure of the media. There's a Single Payer hearing. It was one of the most compelling hearings that I've been to. These people shared stories in public. You can quote them, made them public, they have their names attached to the ways in which our medical insurance system and frankly our hospital systems are milking and bankrupting people for the audacity to try to get care so that they don't die.
Jordan Berg Powers 14:28
These stories are compelling, and they're troubling, and they should be front page stories. But instead, you'll get, Statehouse news, which most of our local papers just copy and paste their stories, you get a press release that's from the insurance companies talking about how it can't happen, that's unaffordable. You'll get a lazy quote from the chair saying we're considering all options to tackle it, and you'll get buried in the story alive from somebody talking about their story. There's just no diving into these issues. As Jonathan said, on Thursday, September 23, there's going to be a compelling testimony on QI reform, I guarantee you that won't make it into the--
Anna Callahan 15:21
Qualified immunity.
Jordan Berg Powers 15:23
Qualified immunity, I guarantee you that won't make it into the Boston Globe. You know, there's going to be a whole hearing on a set of the way in which our judicial system wastes money, criminalizing poverty and addiction, and not protecting people who are most vulnerable, i.e. people who are fleeing domestic violence. People who actually need help barely get the help they need. You could do series-- you could do a Sunday thing on what will be testified to and bills to address our systematic failure in criminal justice and I guarantee you it won't even appear. It's a systematic failure on all levels. And I just think, are the progressive movement's focus on making sure that the hearing goes well, and that we testimony looks right, and getting the lineup of who's going to testify in the right order to something that's relatively meaningless is just bewildering, I think, for a lot of us. And also, frankly, just sad about how far something that should be used to, to inform our democracy is just like shouting into the wind.
Anna Callahan 16:35
Yeah, I mean, so there's, there's ways in which I think the system sets things up to get us to waste our time. And then we have to talk about, within the system that exists, how can we make the most of it? So the way that the hearings are set up, they don't affect the legislators, they were completely not covered in the press. They're incredibly time consuming. But what we're talking about today is how, as progressives part of why we're doing this podcast is we have realized that it's important that we spread the word about things, we're not going to get as much coverage in the press, as we think is necessary. The Statehouse doesn't get as much coverage in the press, the way that it actually works doesn't get covered in the press, these hearings don't get covered in the press. And so using social media, and using our own networks, to take these stories, and really bring them to the public, so that people understand what is happening in people's real lives and how these policies affect real people is super important. So any specific ways we talked a little bit about social media, but Jonathan?
Jonathan Cohn 17:53
Yeah, another thing for how hearings can be used, is if you take it as an opportunity to view that the legislature is convening people who agree with you on a piece of legislation, and thinking that you might get to me, this is more so when they're in person hearings again, so virtual for now, but you will get to connect with people who are working on a bill that you might not have already known. And to view it even from that perspective, as well is like, what are the relationships or the connections that I can get out of attending the same hearing as other people who also support the same bill as I do? And how can I build upon that?
Anna Callahan 18:35
Absolutely. Great. So hopefully, this has been pretty informative. Any final words on hearings? I think we've covered some of the ways that it doesn't work and some of the ways that we can use it to our advantage.
Jonathan Cohn 18:48
I'll just say live tweeting hearings is actually fun. At least I find it fun. I don't know if everybody finds it fun. I think it's fun.
Jordan Berg Powers 18:55
I definitely agree with that. I have one of my favorite things I ever live tweeted, was a hearing where all the DAs testified against criminal justice reform the then DAs, we've luckily replaced a bunch of them. And it's just some of the silly things that they say out loud. And you remember that they're the top lawyers in the cities for prosecuting. I don't know it's just another reminder of how broken our system is, but it was a lot of fun.
Anna Callahan 19:24
Wow. Great. Awesome. Well, thanks, everybody. We will talk to folks next week.