Here & Now

Pocan on Federal Police Reform, DACA & LGBTQ+ Workers Ruling

Frederica Freyberg:

Police reform is just one of the policy points Wisconsin U.S. Representative Mark Pocan has been pushing this week. Pocan also praises the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision that the 1964 Civil Rights Act does protect gay, lesbian and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex, while saying there is more to be done. Representative Mark Pocan joined us earlier this week to talk about those issues and thanks very much for being here.

Mark Pocan:

Yeah. Thank you, Frederica. Glad to.

Frederica Freyberg:

First of all, I wanted to get your reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling blocking the Trump administration from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Mark Pocan:

Yeah. It’s been a good week for the Supreme Court on a few fronts and this is one of those where the president unfortunately was using a group of people to be political leverage in his demand for a wall. And you never can use people like that. And the president of course did. And the Supreme Court overruled that ability for him to try to make people who have been here maybe since they were two weeks old, two months old, two years old, they may not speak the language of the country that they originally came from, and they were brought here at no fault of their own. To say you’re going to deport people like that made no sense. I think now the Supreme Court made sure that Donald Trump also understands that.

Frederica Freyberg:

What does it mean for people in Wisconsin?

Mark Pocan:

Well, it means I think that anyone who’s a DACA recipient of which there are many. I’ve had interns in my office. I’ve had people we’ve brought to the state of the union who are DACA recipients. We’ve had others that are very active as frontline essential workers who are DACA recipients. It tells them that they don’t have to worry about some politician using their lives as political fodder. So I think it provides a sense of relief. But the real relief will happen when there’s a new administration and a new approach toward immigration. Joe Biden, for example, has said on his first week in office, we’ll make sure DACA recipients aren’t used as political leverage. I think that’s an important signal to people so they can live their lives.

Frederica Freyberg:

On police reform, both the House and Senate have versions of bills that are expected to head to the floor next week. What’s your expectation that common ground on these can be found?

Mark Pocan:

Well, I would hope so. I mean I’ve seen some polling this week that was really amazing and very heartening that the public get it. They understand that we’ve had racism that hasn’t gone away. All the rallies and the fights from the ’60s, we should be much farther than we are and here we are decades later and people really aren’t created or treated as equal under the law in too many cases. But I think it’s really important that we have legislation that addresses things like chokeholds and no-knock warrants for drug cases, that keeps track of the police officers who are causing problems, that does all the things that we need to. That’s in the House bill that we’re going to be taking up next Thursday. But some of those I think are going to be in the Senate bill. At the end of the day, we’ll have to compromise to a final bill. But public support is certainly there and I think we need to rise to that.

Frederica Freyberg:

What’s your reaction to the historic Supreme Court ruling this week that protects gay and transgender workers?

Mark Pocan:

You know, it’s another issue that I was very heartened to see. You know, you shouldn’t be fired from your job simply for who you are or who you love. And that’s what the Supreme Court said. The problem is in a majority of states, you could be fired for who you love. You could lose your housing for who you love. And there’s a lot of other ramifications when you don’t have a law like Wisconsin had. We were the first state in the nation in 1982 to have a law protecting gays and lesbians but not transgender at the time. It took seven years for another state to have a law like that. But we still have a majority of states that don’t have that in place. So them saying that in the Supreme Court protects people on employment, but we have so much more too still do and that’s why we have the Equality Act in Congress. It passed the House with bipartisan support. Mitch McConnell apparently has put it in the back of a truck and driven it to Kentucky and buried it and someone’s backyard. It’s not coming up. But we can get that done I think with a different Senate and a different president.

Frederica Freyberg:

What would the Equality Act do?

Mark Pocan:

The Equality Act basically is a catch-all of everything that’s not covered by marriage equality under the law so that no matter where you live, what state in this nation, you’d be treated the same. Includes discrimination in housing, employment, whole bunch of areas. It’s a very comprehensive bill. Again, when we passed it in the House, we had bipartisan support. So the public is with us on the bill. It’s just unfortunately some political leaders still use this as a political leverage point. Again, I don’t think you should ever use people as leverage.

Frederica Freyberg:

On COVID, you’re blasting President Trump for holding this rally Saturday in Tulsa, but also for having people who attend it sign liability waivers. But the question might be why shouldn’t people get to make the choice whether to attend, first of all. And, second of all, whether they’re okay with signing this waiver.

Mark Pocan:

Well, I think it’s irresponsible for anyone, especially the president, who knows — should know better when it comes to COVID-19 that you can’t have a rally in an area with increasing cases in an indoor arena with 1,000 or more people. He’s talking 10,000 people. And you know it’s so bad that you’re asking them to sign a waiver so you can’t sue you. Everything about it stinks. And, you know, he should have better sense. But by now we’ve seen Donald Trump doesn’t have a lot of sense. So therefore I’m saying through the rallies act that if you try to do that in a condition in a community with 14 days or more of increasing cases, which is how we measure this, in an indoor facility with 1,000 or more people that you’re not allowed to have some liability waiver to protect yourself because you’re doing an event because you should have known better than to have that event in the beginning. I think a lot of local officials around the country where people are talking about these types of rallies don’t want them because it’s not in the best interest for the public in those communities. The president can fly in and out. Any politician can do that but the people in Tulsa or wherever else a rally is being held are going to live there with the consequences of those actions.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We need to leave it there. Representative Mark Pocan, thanks very much.

Mark Pocan:

Sure. Thank you.