>> Joining us once again on the show today
candidate in Texas's 31st district Donna Imam,
welcome back to The Damage Report.
>> Thank you so much, John really good to
be back.
>> It's good to have you back and it's been
a pretty big couple of months. The last time
you were on the show back in, I think it was
around the middle of June.
You were facing your runoff, and that has
since happened and you succeeded so congratulations
on the result there.
>> Well thank you so much. Like I said no
one believed we would be here but in this
entire primary process, we beat up 11 other
candidates, and in the run off, we beat our
runoff opponent, not just by a little bit
13 points.
Okay, so the district has made it very clear
and the cool part is in the runoff, we had
257% turnout, not 5%, not 10%, 257% turnout
July 14, right in the middle of this pandemic,
when fortunately cases in Texas were the worst,
but people came out to vote.
>> Wow, yeah, that is obviously awesome, one
of the conversations we've been having with
a lot of candidates during this entire pandemic
is how it's affecting their race. And obviously
it makes it more difficult to do certain things
but I wonder, we're the last time we talked
was a few months ago.
We've since gone through another big spike
in cases including as you pointed out in your
state, as of right now as you're going into
the homestretch just a few more months until
you'll go up against John Carter, who has
held the office for getting towards two decades
now.
The way that it's been handled, the way that
a lot of these big national issues have been
handled is that still having an effect on
the way your race is running right now?
>> Absolutely, I mean, look at Texas, right.
We had a shutdown for four to six weeks depending
on which, county you're in.
If during that time, our leadership, our GOP
governor didn't take advantage at all to do
the right things and open up in the right
way. First of all, when they opened up, they
didn't require masks anywhere, they left it
up to small businesses to police masks. Okay,
so then we had a huge spike in hospitalizations,
you saw, hospitals in Houston be maxed out
of ICU capacity.
And then four to six weeks later when the
death rate was going high we exceeded 10,000
deaths. They decided now they were going to
say masks are going to be required in Texas.
And within two to three weeks of, mask being
required, we now see hospitalizations go down
20%.
Look, the science has been telling us from
day one that if everybody wears masks if you
have 90% plus mask, you handle these challenges
the pandemic in a way that it really impacts
people's lives where people are not ending
up in the hospital. But these guys decided
despite all of the evidence, all of the science,
all of the physicians telling them what to
do that they were just going to leave it up
to other people to do what they wanted.
And we have thousands of deaths in Texas that
did not have to happen. I remind you guys
that we have over 170,000 families that have
had to put on a funeral in the middle of this
pandemic. Just imagine if you were one of
those.
>> Exactly, yeah, unfortunately, it's very
close to home.
So, I think it seems like we just went through
the RNC. And if there was talk about the pandemic,
it was in the past tense that we've moved
past this. And so they are trying to get people
to limit the damage that's being done to Donald
Trump the damage that's being done to potentially
incumbents like John Carter, to imagine that
we've moved past all this.
The pandemics done but then there's this alternate
reality, which I call reality, which is that
it's still killing more than 1000 people a
day, people still need economic assistance
that is being blocked. When you're talking
to people, how successful has the narrative
of ignore all of our troubles been?
Or do the people in your district realize
that, a lot of people are still out of work
it's likely to get worse, people are still
dying? Are they looking at John Carter and
wondering why he's not doing more or are they
ready to just move on and pretend that we're
past all of this?
>> Nobody who is impacted from this, who doesn't
know where their rent is coming from who hasn't
been able to go back to work, is wondering
how things are better. They are wondering
why isn't our government getting serious specially
right now? This is fall, we have parents trying
to decide, are they gonna home-school their
kids and do this distance learning, or are
they gonna to actually send their kids to
school?
Can you imagine, being a parent right now
and having to make that decision? And do you
think as a parent you would ever be able to
live with yourself? If you decided to send
your kids to school, and one of them died.
>> My God yeah.
>> So these are the challenges that every
single family is having to deal with.
On top of that, we now know that people in
the lower income status are having to deal
with evictions, where are they gonna live?
We just had Laura go through all of the southern
Louisiana part. People didn't know where to
go where to take shelter. It's almost as if
the GOP is looking at all of this and saying,
just don't show this on camera.
Just don't show this in mass media and everything
will be okay. They're not realizing the impact
day to day that people are dealing with. These
are major challenges for both people in my
district and across the United States.
>> And obviously while they're ignoring the
economic catastrophe and the pandemic, they're
talking nationally about the protests that
have been going on their view of it is obviously
very different than say mine, for instance.
And so what's interesting is that while we're
having this national conversation about possibly
reforming the police taking a look at, the
prison system and all of that really fundamentally
rethinking these things. Apparently you're
the person you're challenging, has a sort
of a dog in this fight has been receiving
money from some of these private prison groups
correct?
>> Yeah, so John Carter, who is my opponent,
and who has been in this position of representing
Texas's 31st district for nine terms has taken
money from the GEO Group and of course civic.
Now, Paul Civic actually owns a detention
center, an ice detention center in my district
in Taylor, Texas.
We're talking about a women's detention center
where there are allegations of sexual abuse
and abuse of all kinds. He took money from
both Paul Civic have and parent company companies
like GEO Group and they just got wait for
this, a 10 year contract, renewed contract.
And by the way, it's one thing that our politicians
are taking money from corporate PACs or corporations,
but it's another thing that they are being
sold out.
By tiny amounts of money is 5000, 30000, $35,000
for 10 year, 10 of millions of dollars worth
of contracts. Can you imagine that, this detention
center is in his district? These are people
in this district and, it's like, nobody knows
about it, nobody cares about it. This is how
our people are governing, what they don't
have to pay attention to what we're going
through.
They have people giving them $5,000 and they're
like, fine, great, I'm in good shape.
>> Yeah, I think a lot of Americans over the
past few decades have sort of wised up to
the idea that a lot of their politicians are
bought. But I think that there might still
be a little bit of naivety, thinking that
shortly they're the sums of money have to
be significant the idea that you could what
a return on an investment that you can turn
a couple of thousand dollars into millions
long term and God only knows how long by the
time it's fully done.
Man, if we're gonna have corruption, couldn't
they at least hold out for a little bit more
money?
>> You would think, right? You would think
that these people are sending them millions
of dollars that makes absolutely no sense.
And think about it this way, right now, throughout
this pandemic, we have more than 55 million
people file for unemployment, right?
And during this exact same time, billionaires
made hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds
of billions of dollars. We're not talking
about a billion here there. We are talking
about people in this country, trying to figure
out, where am I gonna live because I'm being
evicted because I lost my job and I don't
have enough money to pay.
Talking about people trying to figure out
I don't have anyone to look after my children
so I can go back to work. Yet we have billionaires
in our country that make hundreds of billions
of dollars. Something doesn't add up, this
doesn't make sense. We cannot wait a single
second for change to come, we have to skip
to come together solve our own problems.
And remember, just remember in the HEROES
Act, they took a $6,000 plus loan on every
single man, woman and child, that's you guys.
That's us that work for a living, get up every
single day in the morning and go work. And
they distributed the majority of it to billionaires
and major corporations that didn't need it
to be able to stay alive or stay solvent during
this time.
