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This week I had the pleasure to sit down for the second time with Ramsey Robinson, who is running third-party for Governor of California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. Ramsey is a mental health social worker and community organizer who has been on the front lines of the housing crisis and anti-war movements. Because we both share deep roots working in schools, this conversation immediately hits a personal note before diving into the hard-hitting policy. We break down his catalyst moments in activism, the mechanisms he plans to use on Day One to halt evictions, his response to corporate propaganda, and why he believes the youth are the vanguard leading our future. The complete, uncut interview transcript is available below. 📋 The Transcript: Ramsey Robinson for Governor 🎥 Intro & The Catalyst for Organizing Speaker 2 (Angel): I’ll start with a quick intro and then like afterwards, I’ll start asking you questions. Speaker 1 (Ramsey): Sure. All right. We got a clap. So we can. Nice things. Great. Three. Two. One. Speaker 2 (Angel): Saludos familia. Welcome back to Hello Brown and Hello Loud. I have the amazing Ramsey with me. Ramsey who’s running for governor. I actually met him before. It’s the second time that I meet him. Homie works in schools, so I have a lot of love for people that work in schools in general. Ramsey, do you want to quickly introduce yourselves to people that don’t know you? And I forgot to tell you, you can look directly into the camera if you ever want to look at the people. But do you want to introduce yourself real quick? Speaker 1 (Ramsey): I will, thank you, brother, and good to see you again. Yeah. So for those who don’t know me yet, and there’s a reason why you might not know me, because the billionaires and the Democrats and Republicans are scared of us. The Peace and Freedom Party. And I am the candidate for governor of California with the Peace and Freedom Party. The Peace and Freedom Party is the fastest growing political party in California. Not the Democrats, not the Republicans. And I’m running for governor of California because like so many of us that are watching this, and the 40 million of us in California, I’ve not only been a worker, but a worker in crisis. And so when we talk about these challenges that folk like us face—that a million of us are behind on rent, that 2.5 million of us don’t even have health insurance—this was never me on the outside looking in. That has been my life, too. And that oppression that folk like us feel, it always elicits a response from the cruelty and the inhumanity of the system that we live in. It elicited a response from me, and it made me want to fight. I started to realize the power of fighting through organizing and meeting other organizers where we could actually put pressure on the people responsible for the changes that we need. And then I saw it happen. I can give two quick examples: one was in 2020 when George Floyd was murdered and I had never been out in the streets, I have to say humbly, and it elicited that response. I have to get out there. And 36 million of us got out there in the streets. I was organizing at the time with the party and still do—I’m a proud member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Many people remember what that was like. Right now as we record this, Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd, is in prison. And that is because we linked up and connected our struggles and fought back. So I got a taste of the power of organizing. Then in San Francisco, when Banko Brown, who was a trans brother, was murdered for the crime of being hungry, we organized the PSL with other organizations. Hundreds of people on the street put pressure on Brooke Jenkins, the DA, to release the footage to prove his innocence. He was innocent. And also, I think this goes to say, the power of a party, too. We were also able to say that in a $4 trillion economy, there’s no excuse that anyone goes hungry. ✊ Shared Origin Stories & Double Consciousness Speaker 2 (Angel): Yeah, I love that you just shared your origin story because I was going to ask you what was the origin of Ramsey Robinson that’s running for these political spaces to hold space, to speak truth to power. Because I think in the same way that you mentioned the Black Lives Matter movement really got things going, I remember for me it was around the children in cages. Right? And seeing so many people being outspoken in support of the community, that really got me started. For people that don’t know your background, can you tell us where you come from, what you stand for, and how that background influences what you’re trying to achieve now? Speaker 1 (Ramsey): Listen, the power that we have is when we connect our struggles. My daddy’s Black, and knowing as a child that my descendants were slaves—I say that to say that they were workers who were unpaid. It sounds a lot like what’s going on now when bosses intimidate undocumented workers who are saying, “Hey, you’re not paying our wages. We just worked a 40-hour workweek and we’re not getting it.” They intimidate them and steal their wages. As a matter of fact, $7 billion are stolen from us workers here in California every single year. So when I was growing up, I knew, okay, damn, my descendants were slaves. Besides the cruelty and inhumanity of that, we weren’t paid for our labor. So when we say for our campaign that Black people in California will get reparations in direct cash payments, that’s because of the centuries of stolen labor. Being Black early on cracked open an awareness for me that something’s up. Something’s not right here. How could it be that a whole group of people are so oppressed? Right off the bat, that made me have this double consciousness—that yeah, I’m a human and a child and I’m growing up and going to high school, but I’m also a Black kid and the police are messing with me. Just the other day, Angel, I was trying to count in my head all the times that I’ve been pulled over. It’s like a dozen times. That’s where my consciousness started growing. I started reading Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon and W.E.B. Du Bois, and being like, okay, I see what’s up now. This isn’t by accident. The struggles that folk like us face—this is a rigged system that from the jump got the money it’s using right now from unpaid slavery, from extricating resources from people who were here first. That made me think, okay, there’s a root to our problem, and it has a name. It’s capitalism. Capitalism is a huge factor in the fact that my ancestors were imprisoned. Capitalism is a huge factor in the fact that our undocumented siblings right here in California are super exploited. When we talk about that $7 billion taken from us, that disproportionately falls on our Black and Brown brothers and sisters. I’ll tell you one story from 2020 that really put it over the edge for me. Very simply, this one data point changed my life: when I learned that there are half a million unhoused people in our country, but 17 million empty homes. Something about that clicked, and I’m like, oh, there’s no excuse. It’s one thing if we just live in a racist society or get our wages stolen, but it’s another thing if there is actually more than enough, and a small group of people are keeping that from us and sitting back laughing while we’re suffering. Here in California, we have 187,000 unhoused people, but 1.2 million empty homes. Let’s get everyone in a home. When we say for our platform that guaranteed housing for everybody is a human right, we’re not just saying it—we can do that. 🏫 Representation in Schools & The Youth Vanguard Speaker 2 (Angel): Yeah, it’s possible. A lot of people don’t realize—I think one of the things that I hear on my platforms often from people that are part of the opposition is that, quote-unquote, “illegal immigrants” are taking all the homes, and that’s why they can’t afford one. The reality doesn’t match up. One of the things that you were talking about right now is the reason why a lot of folks are looking at your platform and supporting you. There are a lot of people that don’t even live in California leaving comments like, “You gotta look at Ramsey.” It’s because you clearly understand the struggle of underprivileged and underrepresented people. You work in schools right now, right? What do you think that representation means for Black and Brown people who don’t see themselves in politics? That’s part one. Part two is a little more personal: how are your students reacting to this? I used to be a high school principal and a high school teacher, and that’s when I started getting my audience on social media. So I got to see my students’ reactions—seeing like, “Oh, my principal is famous on the internet sometimes, that’s so weird, but if he can do it, I can do it.” What does it mean when they see the
