Civic Cocktail: Exiting Councilmembers & Rick Steves

The following program is a co-production of Seattle Channel and Seattle City Club and sponsored by Comcast.

The Seattle City Council will have a new look as three familiar faces decide to move on.

I believe in one Seattle.

It became the most divisive issue that we have had on the council in my now 10 years.

My colleagues are not afraid of making those hard decisions.

And renowned travel expert Rick Steves delves into deeper subjects.

I've come to realize that our democracy is not a given.

We could lose our democracy if we're not vigilant.

It's all coming up on Civic Cocktail.

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Civic Cocktail.

I'm Joni Walter here this evening with three Seattle City Council members who choose not to serve on the next council.

Council President Bruce Harrell and Council Members Sally Bagshaw and Rob Johnson are here tonight to dish a little, we hope.

The journalists helping with the questions this evening, Paige Browning from KUOW and David Croman of Crosscut.com.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you for being here.

Let's start with you, Council President Bruce Harreld.

What do you think of district elections, and how did they change the council?

Would you say for better or worse?

And I know I sound like the eye doctor when I say that.

Well, thanks for that lob of a question, a nice softball on the first one.

I thought I should start that way.

You know, it passed with nearly 66%, so I'd be hard-pressed to say the voters were wrong.

I have a lot of concerns about it.

I think that it has the sort of the...

It can be very parochial in terms of how people look at their issues.

I get the accountability.

People want that accountability for their local person.

But I continue to worry about whether people are so focused just on their particular avenue or their district, and they're not looking at the citywide issues, such as homelessness, such as education.

So I think it's an experiment that the voters obviously passed, but I still think it bears watching to see if we're addressing the issues citywide as I think we should.

You know, I remember the election, and I remember there wasn't, because the mayoral election at the time was so heated that people didn't really, I don't know, it just wasn't discussed that much.

I believe in one Seattle.

I mean, everything about me, I have friends that work all over the city.

It's 88 square miles of what I think is a beautiful city.

And again, I don't want to say the voters were wrong.

I just think for the years to come, it is an experiment.

You said it almost twice, maybe.

Well.

Six out of every 10 folks voted for it.

But again, when I look at it, if you think about it, it actually eroded a voter's ability by one third.

They can vote for one person in their district.

They vote for two at large.

They cannot vote for a quorum of five people on the council.

And I think everyone wants to have smart, committed, elected officials looking at these major issues in the city.

Now, I'm not saying I'm against it.

I mean, I'm smart enough to say that.

But I tell you, hopefully we'll be around for the next couple of years if it really does bear watching to see if we want to revisit that issue.

Council Member Bagshaw, the Seattle City Council collectively is not very popular right now.

I've seen polls that show job approval ranging from about 35 percent, the cross-cut poll maybe low 40s, 43 percent.

That's putting it optimistically.

Perhaps, but so what should the next council and you guys in the time that you have remaining do to restore some of that lost luster, earlier luster?

Well, I'd like to answer what Council President Harrell said first.

I voted against district elections, but I don't think it's as bad as I had feared.

And I think one of the things that we can do is continue to be out with groups like this, to have conversations honestly within our own district about what people are looking for.

And then frankly, for those of us who are here to pass the torch to people that we believe will carry on what I consider to be the most important thing, which is to talk to people in our communities, be able to come towards consensus, and then talk about the big picture.

For me, around homelessness and housing, I will tell you, we have come a long way in a decade, but we've got a long way to go, and I'd love to talk to you more about that.

Council Member Rob Johnson, the council sometimes seems, to me anyway, really removed from the people, not connected.

So it's a similar question, but with a different feel to it.

What can we do to be more connected to the voters?

So my office, we've got a booth at the University District Farmers Market every Saturday morning.

From 10 until noon, you can find us there.

My colleague, Councilmember Deborah Juarez, has a district office that she staffs every Friday where constituents don't need to come to City Hall.

We believe, I think, as we move forward into the future, we see more focus on the parochial nature of districts.

that we're going to see more and more of that devolution to a system of government that has district council members in particular out in their district one or two days a week, spending a lot of time with people.

I feel like it's given me the opportunity to interact with people in a very informal way.

If you're going through the farmer's market, you're not expected to talk to me about policy or democracy or other things, but it's one of the great ways to connect with people in a very unexpected and fun way.

Rob Johnson, while we're with you, how do we create a city that can handle overwhelming growth?

Is it all bicycles and density, or will the Seattle of the future still have some single-family neighborhoods?

I think we will always have single-family neighborhoods.

But I also think that as a fifth-generation Seattleite who's raising two eight-year-olds and a five-year-old who are sixth-generation Seattleites, we have to recognize that we need to make more room for more people.

That growth that we've seen over the last couple years has been significant.

We're in the largest growth in this city's history.

When I ran for office in 2015 versus when I leave office in 2019, we'll have added almost 100,000 new people to this city.

That's tremendous growth that we couldn't have anticipated in such a long period of time.

And that's gonna come with challenges, infrastructure challenges, housing challenges.

It takes a while for us to figure that out.

The thing that I love about this job is that my colleagues are not afraid of making those hard decisions and tackling those hard decisions.

And maybe that is what is affecting our job approval rating.

But we are rolling up our sleeves and we're tackling hard issues.

And those hard issues could be swept under the rug and we could choose to ignore them.

But I think we're meeting them head on.

And I think that that isn't necessarily the smartest thing for a lot of us to do politically, but it is the right thing for the city.

David Cromer, join us.

So all three of you, and we have to talk about the head tax.

All three of you a year ago last fall voted against the head tax.

Then all three of you voted for a head tax.

And then all three of you voted against the head tax.

That sounded inconsistent to you, anyway.

So what was going on?

Was there ever a point when you truly believed it was the right thing to do?

If yes, why didn't you vote for it earlier?

And if no, why did you vote for it in the first place?

And this truly could go to all three of you.

Who's the question for?

Let's start with Council Member Bagshaw.

Good.

Well, I will tell you that when it first came up, what was disappointing to me is that the business community was not included.

And businesses large and small needed to be at the table.

Because I feel that if you're going to tax somebody, that person or entity that's going to be taxed needs to be talking to you.

And it became the most divisive issue that we have had on the council in my now 10 years.

And it was very sad because clearly we need that revenue.

There is no question when we start talking about human services and housing, the way that you're going to end homelessness is to have more housing.

We're doing what we can around the levy.

We know that.

But for the head tax to be a part of this, I felt that we needed to have a better community conversation.

That really devolved.

And as we have oftentimes said, the most unhappy time on our council was really during many of those months, because it really was so confrontational.

I would take a step back and say, yes, we definitely need, as a city, to be looking at this.

Is the head tax one thing?

Possibly.

but also things like tax on unearned income.

And I believe it's constitutional.

It's something that we could do.

There's a whole package of things that we ought to be looking at, but not just as the city of Seattle, as a whole region.

And so that's the direction that I'm going for these next 10 months, and I hope my successor continues.

Paige Browning.

Yes, I'd like to follow up on this question.

And for you, Council President Harrell, I was reading on your blog post that announced you weren't going to run for reelection.

I'm not?

We're breaking news here.

You said that you're concerned about the misalignment between what government wants and what corporations want.

And you said that this is going to be a focus of yours.

We've got months left to go.

So what does that mean when it comes to homelessness?

What focus are we going to see?

Thanks for that question, Paige.

I sort of want to take another stab at the other question about our popularity because I've said publicly, and I'll answer your question directly, that we actually have a very smart council.

I would measure the IQ of our council to any council in this country.

We are dealing with some pretty challenging issues, however.

And I'd also say that with respect to the head tax, I was one of the persons that believed that it wasn't good policy, it just wasn't It was an ineffective policy to tax the same employers at that amount to try to establish a nexus between that and homelessness.

That we had not convinced the public that our spending strategy was the most efficient and the most effective.

You have to make that case first.

I also believe that we were decisive in how we approached it because people that weren't even affected directly by the tax became offended by the tax by saying, well, what kind of city are you creating?

When you hear the mantra that Amazon is the devil and they're the worst corporation ever, come here.

That's not spewed by the majority of council members.

That's rhetoric that seems to be publicized a lot, but one that I don't personally share, that I welcome a strong business climate.

And to say that in Seattle sometimes is heresy.

So to make the point that

Harold C. Harold C?

Harold C, OK.

They'll blog that one.

But the point being is that how we looked at that tax, we did oppose it.

And I was one of the few council members that opposed it the first time in 2008, 2009. that it doesn't still get to the issue that these corporations still have to pay their share.

That even if you look at the B&O tax and how many large corporations, and I was a chief counsel of a major corporation, how they are still able to circumvent some of the taxes that should be put into a local economy.

We need to look strongly at that.

So when I talk about corporate social responsibility, you don't extract billions from an economy.

You don't use this great place we live and work and create the kind of wealth that is all around us without giving back.

And so we have to align ourselves with that wealth that is created and make sure they hear what we're trying to do.

Will we see you act on that before your term's over?

I got to tell you, Comcast was mentioned earlier.

In the 11 years I've been on the council, I've been acting on that.

What I came up with is called the Great Student Initiative resulted in a national rollout by Comcast called Internet Essentials, which is how they give all of the students on free and reduced lunch a very inexpensive high-speed internet.

What many of us pay $30, $40, they get for like $8 or $9.

And so that's been what I've been trying to do all along.

I mean, I don't look at large corporations as the enemy.

I look at them as potential partners.

And again, they have the obligation to give back to our local economy.

So moving along to the big up zone that seems to be coming, Councilmember Johnson, can you very briefly explain what it is and what's the public reaction, which is what I'm more interested in.

Does the public know about this?

Are they calling your offices, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no?

Based on the emails and phone calls that we get, I think many members of the public do know about it.

Over the last four years, the city's been struggling with a way to generate more housing while also generating more revenue for affordable housing.

The simplest way that I can talk about our upzoning process is that it allows for us to ask developers to do one of two things, pay into a city fund to build affordable housing or build affordable housing in the building that they're building.

The up zone that we're contemplating right now, which would make zoning changes in 26 neighborhoods throughout the city, is the most aggressive.

Changes, up zones.

They're all up zones.

That's right.

It's the most aggressive set of zoning changes in the city's history.

But it will allow for us to generate funding to create 6,000 units of new affordable housing at a time when we desperately need it.

And it has been four years in the making.

And so we've had 45 council-led conversations about this topic.

We've had more than 200 community-led conversations.

It has been literally four years' worth of meetings.

At some point, you have to say yes or no.

And is the public saying yes or no?

In your emails and this feedback, that's what I'm trying to get at.

We've implemented this program in six neighborhoods already.

We've had unanimous votes of the council in all six of those neighborhoods.

I anticipate that we're going to have a unanimous vote on this when it comes to the council in March.

Councilmember Bagshaw, congestion pricing.

You and I talked about this when we met.

Right.

Do a little pre-meet.

How is it, if implemented the way I understand it, not a kick in the head to the voters who spent big, they spent big on the Move Seattle levy.

How does it not, they're pretty much saying like, okay, thanks for that, we're making all these improvements, but don't bother coming downtown.

Right, and I think that we've really got to explore that seriously, and the point that you just raised is a good one, and I've heard that too.

People say, we spent a lot of money, and we're taxed a lot, and so are you going to tax us more to drive our single...

occupancy vehicle downtown.

And I think that it's something to look at because we know that Stockholm and London and other big cities are looking at it as well.

And it's reducing congestion.

But at the same time, I'm not sure, and I don't believe at this point, that we're ready to jump.

If you had to vote tomorrow.

I don't have to, thank goodness.

Play along with me.

We're dishing.

Remember this is a big show.

Exactly.

No, I don't think the evidence is in.

And I would be careful to say yes or no until we've seen it all.

Another sensitive question that applies to all three of you.

The allegations against former Mayor Ed Murray that led to his resignation were obviously a very difficult time.

But the timing of it was interesting because it happened before the Harvey Weinstein allegations.

And so it really was not ever seen as part of the Me Too movement.

And I'm curious to hear.

How would that have played out differently had those allegations come out in what we now know as the MeToo movement?

And Councilmember Johnson, happy to start with you.

A really, really important question.

I think for those of us who had spent a lot of time working with Ed Murray before he was mayor as a legislator, had heard from other folks who had purported that these allegations were part of his past history.

I think those of us who had fought with him were predisposed to believe those as the most baseless of attacks, as people who were trying to tear down a very openly gay mayor with a lot of homophobic rhetoric.

And so I think it's within that context that a lot of us were reviewing those renewed calls for review of those allegations.

And I think it is incumbent upon all of us to spend more time and energy reflecting on how in that moment, myself included, chose a pathway that I think we regret.

And believing victims who are coming forward with their stories is a very powerful point in the US history.

And I have to own and take responsibility for the way that I reacted in that moment, which was to trust somebody that had spent a lot of time and energy working with versus people who were victims.

It has, that entire discussion was one of if not the most difficult times I think for me as an elected official and it was a murky pathway for all of us and I really wish that the outcome had come out differently.

Now, I've got a little, maybe slightly different perspective.

I was a prosecuting attorney before I became a member of the city council.

And my reaction when I first heard about it was trust but verify.

And I wanted evidence.

And I will tell you that Mayor Murray stood as close to me as Rob is, looked me in the eye, and said, I am not guilty of these charges.

That was April.

As things unfolded, as you will recall, it went back and forth.

By August, it became pretty clear that the evidence was coming forward.

By September, when he resigned, I think that there was a lot of support on the council.

Glad that happened.

Council President, I have a question for you, and that is, and I would be remiss if I didn't ask this, there's some sense that the council climate, you said your colleagues were very smart.

Not quite what I said, but...

EQ, IQ, all of that.

What do you think?

You set some of the rules for how the council meetings will go.

Is there some concern about the way some council members conduct themselves on the dice?

Well, I've been meaning to talk to Councilor Bagshaw about that.

It's because we get along so well.

Yes.

I mean, if you watch how I chair the meetings, I try to use both my humor and my love for people to set some kind of ground rules.

But having said that, it's hard to even hear yourself think sometimes because of the anger.

But I think there's real anger in the city right now.

There's anger from affluent folks, from poor people.

There are many ill people out there that are coming to City Hall.

And it's just in how we treat ourselves.

Sometimes I think we are projecting that anger toward us on the dice.

And we try I try to minimize it and deal with it, but sometimes that does get tough.

I have to admit that.

I have a question for you, Councilwoman Bagshaw.

I want to ask about women in leadership in City Hall.

I know we have a female mayor now.

The majority of the city council is women, but I can't forget what happened when the council voted down the Soto Arena campaign.

proposal and got some pretty ugly backlash.

So are there still obstacles for women in leadership in the city?

Yeah, and I think it will always be that way until we're at a point where we can say to each other, we're looking and we're voting for the most skilled, the most intelligent, the most capable person.

We're not, regardless of gender, regardless of skin color, regardless of age.

I will tell you that that SOTO vote was, for me, it was It wasn't a question about right or wrong.

I did that because I believed it was the right thing to do.

But the backlash was incredible.

The words that we were called, the names, and that goes on still till today.

People were saying, well, you've just killed us for having basketball.

I'm like, are you crazy?

Look at what has just happened with the arena up in Seattle Center.

Not only have we collectively really built something that is going to be wonderful, and Seattle Center, and Deborah Dowst is here from Seattle Center.

It's going to be extraordinary.

And for our property, we're going to have a National Hockey League, and I think it's going to be the best chance we're going to get around national basketball coming back in probably 2025 is what we hear.

So I'm like all in.

Yes, women have to be strong.

We are.

So I'm there.

Thanks.

So I wanted, I promised you all that you get to say a favorite or piece of legislation that happened during your term.

And so we have to keep these tight because we're actually already running out of time.

So you start, Councilmember Johnson.

You know, it's hard for me to pick, but I will say my favorite thing to work on as a councilmember has been the role that I have on the Sound Transit Board.

The passage of the $54 billion Sound Transit 3 program is going to result in mobility options for generations to come.

For me, as somebody who grew up here, who is a fifth-generation Seattleite, and watched us have so many fits and starts in the 60s and 70s where we could have had that generational infrastructure that went to Atlanta, to be able to say to my kids and my grandkids that we didn't make that mistake and that we're going to be able to really build out a light rail infrastructure that's going to really work well for future generations is the thing that I'm most proud of.

Council President Harrell, your favorite moment?

My favorite moment is actually very personal, and I'll share it with my 100 good friends here.

200, to be precise.

200, to be precise.

In my capacity on the council, I got a chance to go to Japan.

And I was raised here in Seattle by a Japanese mother that would say, lead with love, be kind.

But my African-American father would say, be the toughest one on the football field.

Hit it if it moves.

That happened at Garfield High School, right?

The Japanese culture would say, don't bring attention to yourself.

Be humble.

I got a chance to go to Japan.

I met Prime Minister Abe.

I had a very formal tea with the mayor of Kobe.

And my wife was with me, and it was very structured.

Every word was like a slow cadence.

And my wife, and there are all these dignitaries around us, and my wife had the tickle in her throat.

all during this beautiful, remarkable speech that I had memorized.

And I felt sorry for her.

And finally, I had to say in the middle of this passionate speech, I'm in Japan.

I've never been here.

I was indoctrinated in this wonderful culture that I'd been deprived of my entire life.

And I had to look at Joanne and say, really, Joanne?

Really?

And everyone there laughed.

But that was a life-changing experience, being able to travel there.

Not the really Joanne part.

Not the really Joanne part.

but to be able to understand more about the Japanese side of my culture that I just had never been exposed to.

Council Member Bagshaw.

I wish I could tell you that my favorite thing was the success that we've had around housing and homelessness.

We've made strides, but that's not my favorite thing because we haven't done what we really wanted to do.

My favorite thing, frankly, has been the work around the waterfront.

I started on that 15 years ago when I was chairing Allied Arts Waterfront for All, and we went through this a major spat about, are you going to build another viaduct?

Can you do a tunnel?

Can't do a cut and cover?

If you were around in 2007, you remember the no-no vote.

So we ended up with a wonderful approach with the state, the city, the county, the port working together.

And if you were all there this last weekend, I mean, what other city do you know that comes out and walks through a tunnel and brings 100,000 of their friends to walk on top of the viaduct, right?

But it was just marvelous.

And Marshall Foster, who is the head of our waterfront and civic development office, he just said there were 35,000 people that walked through that little trailer that they had set up to show what the waterfront was going to look like.

And people said, oh, this is a good idea.

How are you going to do this?

Or how are you going to fund it?

And Marsha was like, we have been working on this thing for a decade.

We have the money.

It is funded.

It's underway.

The viaduct's coming down.

And that waterfront, 20 blocks, is going to be spectacular.

So I want to say thanks to the port, too, for the work that they were doing and supporting us and all the labor that went into this.

I just want to recognize the people the union workers that has helped us on this.

And that is going to be the thing that I'm going to take away saying, thank goodness that we were able to do it because I'm really proud.

So each of you has decided to...

to leave at the end of the term, although Councilmember Johnson, you might be leaving earlier, am I correct or incorrect?

No, no.

It's just a vicious rumor.

Just a vicious rumor.

I think my colleagues might be able to write off in a retirement.

Not retiring.

The young age of 40 still have a mortgage and three little kids to raise.

So I'm excited to go join the NHL Seattle team and help them think about how we get people to and from the new arena and how to get folks to the games.

But, no, I'm not planning on leaving early.

I'm planning on sticking around.

We've got a lot of stuff to do.

Okay, you heard it here.

heard it here no kidding and i will say that when i heard that he was going to work for oakview group that i texted the two folks that are the head of that and just said that was a brilliant hire he has been one of the best colleagues i've really enjoyed it um and if they snag him you know blessings on him i keep telling her to lay off the texts but she just the council they never use text that's what i heard um uh so

Before we wrap this up, I want to kind of capture the amount of change that is coming to this council.

We have council member, former council member, Heidi Wills here from a few councils ago.

But three council members leaving at the same time.

Yes, it has happened a couple times before, but not very often.

Can you, Bruce, Tell us, you know, sort of how much sort of sweeping change that will really bring with three of you leaving like that.

Well, I'll tell you what I'm hearing, and I'm hearing a lot of people just worried.

They're worried that, you know, politics at the end of the day, it reflects a person's values.

But it also reflects the level of compromise and trying to work really intentional to hearing the other point of view.

And people are afraid we're going to lose that kind of centered approach and that the bar has been set a little lower and that they're worried about many of the candidates that see themselves.

In fact, you have one out there.

I think Alex Zimmerman is running for office.

yelling at us as we came in but they see they they worry about what it could mean for the city i'm the eternal optimist that i continue to think good people will continue to serve and you'll see some superstars come out so i think it's going to be fine i just hope that again that our smart voters really are discerning and they really look at the rhetoric and the values of these potential candidates but i would be dishonest if i didn't say i have some concern about the balance that i think a good city needs

I have 30 seconds left, council member Bagshaw.

Just advice to somebody coming on the council how to kind of get it.

get those popularity numbers up or something.

You know, I don't worry about the popularity numbers.

One of the things that Rob said I really appreciate, we're out there six days a week.

So this job is not one where we're hiding under rocks.

What we do need are people who have good thinking abilities, good listening abilities, willing to work and compromise and come to solutions and think of this as a region.

It's not just the city of Seattle by itself.

Thank you very much.

We have been talking to three Seattle City Council members who are not seeking re-election this fall.

Back shortly to talk with travel guru and documentarian Rick Steves.

He is the prize of Edmonds, Washington.

Thank you.

chatting it up with travel author, guide, and documentarian, Rick Steves.

Hi, Rick.

So glad to see you here.

Thank you.

So, Rick, it's not all fondue and wine out there in the world of travel.

You have produced a very serious documentary, The Story of Fascism in Europe.

This may sound obvious, but why this?

Why now?

Why my show about fascism right now?

Well, I thought about producing this 10 or 15 years ago.

I really wanted to.

And different ideas have the right time.

And I'm so thankful when I'm doing a show that it's timely.

We did our show on Iran.

It takes two years to hatch an idea and get it out into the public.

And we happened to do it just at the right time, because that was the greatest need to humanize 70 million people in Iran.

And I was thankful about that.

You know, we try to anticipate.

We just did a show on Luther and the Reformation, anticipating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, 2017. So if you have something on television, it needs to be timely.

We produced our fascism show in the last year, and now it's running all over the country.

And when...

When you think about politics today, not just in the United States, but in Poland and Hungary and Turkey with Brexit, there's so much going on.

And it's all tied together.

And it seems to me that history is speaking to us.

And we need to listen.

And I'm so thankful I've got my position in public television where I can take what I'm passionate about as a tour guide, bring it home, and share it with our public with a television show.

So your documentary takes us to locations, specific locations, where fascism rose throughout Europe long ago.

Was there any one place, I'm sure there were more than one, but I'd ask you now to just pick one, a place you traveled to that gave you particular shivers?

What gave me shivers was traveling in Europe when I was a kid, in the early 70s, and meeting people who were still traumatized by the whole Nazi experience.

Before PTSD had a word, Germany was covered with people suffering from PTSD.

I remember concentration camp victims who I got to know, I kept thinking of one, concentration camp survivors.

I remember a piano player, and I watched him play the piano when I was a kid, and as he played, the serial number of his concentration would slide in and out of his sleeve as he played.

And I got to talk to these people, and now it occurs to me the living memory of the Holocaust and the living memory of Europe's experience with fascism is dying out and we have to heed the victims of the, the wishes of the victims of the Holocaust that we don't forget and more important than ever we have to learn from our history.

So that impacted me when I was a kid and then in doing our TV show over the last 20 years, whenever we get a chance to teach some history, we like to film it.

We went to Oradour-sur-Glane.

That's the city that the Nazis just completely destroyed in France as a retribution for something the French Resistance did.

We filmed that.

We went to Hitler's Eagle's Nest.

We filmed that.

We went into the bombed out headquarters of the SS and the Gestapo.

And we had all of these.

disjointed experiences that we filmed and put into TV episodes.

And I realized, we've got to weave these together and make a one-hour documentary so Americans can learn from the difficult history of Europe in the 1920s and 30s.

And so it was a gradual thing.

It's something I've long wanted to do.

And this last couple years, it was just the right window to produce that.

What countries, now you rattled off a few countries real quickly here, but which of the countries in Europe right now do you think are sort of most vulnerable to fascism?

Where did you see it firsthand?

Where have you seen it firsthand?

Well, what strikes me, Joni, is the fragility of democracy.

I've always thought democracy here is rock solid.

We can complain about this or that issue.

We can disagree on this or that.

But I've come to realize that our democracy is not a given.

We could lose our democracy if we're not vigilant.

And that was something, if I had an agenda with our special, I just wanted to wake up Americans and remind them that great societies have lost their freedom by taking their hands off the wheel.

In our society today, and I've been teaching for ages, for 30 years I've been giving talks about budget European travel or finding all the back doors, but slowly I've found my talk more passionate about ways we can learn about our country by leaving it.

It's striking to me how you can be in the middle of our country all your life and learn more about it in a lot of ways by leaving it and looking at it from a distance.

And you complement that by being a bit of a historian.

I have a degree in European history.

So you can go back in time and look at us today, and you can leave our country and look at us from a distance, and then you can do some thinking about what are we struggling with right now.

And it's so important that we don't let ourselves be dumbed down.

In my talks, I talk about the frustration of me as a tour guide taking Americans around Europe, dealing with a society that's just dumbed down.

People want to go to the beach and have fun in the sun, and they want to do their frequent flyer miles and their duty-free shopping, and they get the right sunscreen.

That's all fine.

But you've got an opportunity to travel and learn about the world and learn lessons of other people who have screwed up and come home and be more impactful in your citizenship.

And as a tour guide, that's the real gratifying reward of that work.

And I find that there's powerful forces in our society that would find it convenient if we're all just dumbed down.

Just go shopping.

And...

And truth be told, corporations, I think, a lot of them believe they can make more money off of a society that is dumbed down.

And Germany learned the consequences of having a society that was dumbed down, I think.

And it was a very expensive price they paid.

And today, this is not something that came out of my fascism work.

I've just known for the last 20 years, Germany, very...

curiously and strikingly invests in the collective wisdom of its electorate.

They will have all sorts of programs designed to teach their society how to learn from history.

Regardless of your political stance, that to me is really a wise idea.

And we have just the opposite problem here.

Just dumb people down.

And I decided in my own work as a travel writer and a tour guide and a TV producer to expect my viewers, my travelers, my readers to be smarted up instead of dumbed down.

It's a decision you make as a business person.

And I think it's important that all of us in our own realm expect our neighbors and our fellow citizens to be engaged and smartened up.

Because the stakes are high and the challenges confronting us are greater than others.

So you're dancing pretty close to a question I may regret asking, but I'll ask anyway.

What are the comparisons, or are there any comparisons between Mussolini and Hitler that play today in America?

Well, you know, we produced this show, and you can imagine the temptation if you're doing a show about fascism in Germany in the 1930s to draw all sorts of overt comparisons.

to our president today.

And Germany is singing, Deutschland über alles.

And we're wearing red hats that say, make America great.

We did not allow ourselves to drop what we call the G-bomb, make America great.

We couldn't make any overt connections to today's politics.

It was just such an important.

rule for us when we made the fascism show.

Just teach Germany, just teach Italy, just teach Franco in a context of the 1920s and 30s and give our viewers the respect that they can draw their own conclusions.

That's a much better way to teach.

So we've got a little clip, I think, that shows, a little clip that just lets you take a look at what was going on in Germany in 1932 or something like that.

And also with this clip, you'll see the importance of trying to see what Germany was struggling with in the 30s with the rise of Hitler, and then talk to local voices.

When we made our show, something which is different from most of our episodes is we relied a lot on stock footage, and we relied a heck of a lot on local voices.

sharing their perspectives as Germans and as Italians whose families suffered through this.

And I was so thankful for the ability to factor both of those things into our one-hour lesson on how we can help America learn from the story of fascism in Europe.

Let's take a look at this clip, and I think you'll be able to look at that and see how this documentary can really be a strong teaching tool as we deal with the challenges confronting us today.

Hitler was a powerful, mesmerizing speaker.

People were taken by Hitler's speech, not so much by the beauty of his arguments, but by his sheer fanaticism, by his anger, by his rage, and his repetitive rhetoric.

And people, eyewitness accounts, describe it as a barbaric, primitive effect.

What he was telling people was a disaster, but the performance he delivered was a big artistic show.

He repeated a lie endlessly, and he didn't make it a small lie, he made it a big lie, and he kept hammering it into their heads.

He also dumbed it down as much as possible.

OK, repetition, lies, dumbing things down, which we've talked a lot here.

I will just say one observation that I've had, and that is, and I'm sure a lot of people have thought of this, sometimes during the 2016 campaign, President Trump use these repetitive, short, little put-down names for people.

Little Marco, Crooked Hillary.

And then also there are some repetitive proclamations.

No collusion.

I sometimes think it's like hypnotism.

You know, there's that repeating.

And that's what they say about Hitler.

He was able to tell a lie so convincingly and so repeatedly and so doggedly that people would eventually follow him.

But the more you study this, the more it's like wannabe autocrats, whether they're far right or far left.

I mean, it's not just against the right wing.

Anybody that wants to derail a society's democracy, it's like they're reading out of the same playbook.

You've got to muzzle the, you've got to discredit journalism.

You've got to insult intelligent thinking, no critical thinking.

You've got to build up fear.

There's obvious things you need to do.

It's incremental.

That's one scary thing about losing your democracy to me.

It's incremental, little, little, little, little.

You build up fear.

You scapegoat.

You've got need for a law and order society.

When somebody tells me, we need a law and order, law and order, that's an excuse to, well, militarize your own way of keeping your people down.

And you get all that fear and everything built up.

And then you get the answer to any wannabe autocrat's prayer.

You get your 9-11.

It can be a burned Reichstag building, like in the case of Germany, that let Hitler get rid of the communists and lock up all the politicians that disagreed with him and then assert his dictatorship.

It could be Poland, where many important people of their government died in one plane crash, which contributed to where they are today.

It could be Turkey, where you had a failed coup.

You know, you get that horrible situation where your leaders get then the opportunity to jump right in there and in the name of law and order.

And you have a clip now to show.

We've got a clip now to show?

All right.

Let's see a clip and we'll see if this has anything to do with what I was just saying.

We'll hope.

We'll hope.

What I understand now is that it was like a collective dream.

It was like hypnosis.

Standing in the crowd with thousands of people all focused on one man who was terrific at using his body, his facial expressions, and language to reach their hearts.

They were going ballistic, even for a hand gesture or a facial expression of Mussolini.

Mussolini was an actor, and when he eventually showed up in that window and he stood in his typical posture with his imposing chin, for the Italians, he was the personification.

of a greater Italy.

Wow.

Well, there you go.

Wow.

You know, it's really fun as a TV producer to see your show viewed in public, because you actually hear the response.

Because we have no idea when we look at it in our editing studio what people are going to really react to.

But I've screened this show three or four times in public, and that's the clip that gets the audible response.

Because you look at that gesturing, that posturing, that pomposity, and you think of who his base is.

And you think about how he...

How he leads an entire society astray and the cost that Italy paid.

It's tragic.

It's so sad.

And you wonder, how could he do it?

And you have to wonder, could it happen today?

And I'm not just talking America.

I'm talking any democracy.

I mean, that's the thing, yeah.

Question from Peyton.

The historical footage in this film is amazing.

And I want to pivot to ask about some other writing you've done, which is Travel as a Political Act.

I'm wondering, as you've seen, as we've all seen politics in the US change, if you've seen people traveling as a political act in different ways.

Are there new trends that you've witnessed?

I've always noticed there's two kinds of travel.

There's recreational travel, which is great.

And then there's travel for people that want to learn.

I call it reality travel.

And I've been doing reality travel in partnership with my recreational travel ever since I was a kid.

In the 80s, I would go to Central America on many tours with educational tour companies from different colleges that you didn't go to the beach, you didn't go to the amusement park, you didn't go to the museums.

You talked to different political, the workers union, the press relations of the military, the American embassy, you know, the all of the church rights groups, the indigenous rights groups, the land ownership groups, and that's a choice you make in your travels.

When you go to the Holy Land, most Americans who go to the Holy Land, I would imagine, are on religious tours, and they do nice Christian or Jewish tours, and then they make a little beeline from Jerusalem into Bethlehem, see the church and the nativity, and quickly come back.

But a lot of people that go to the Holy Land are on more political religious tours or political tours where they'll actually stay in the West Bank and learn both narratives.

You know, if you go all the way to the Holy Land trying to sort things out and you only hear one narrative, you're going to come home without any balanced experience.

I know from my travels in any trouble zones, whether it's Central America, Iran, the Holy Land, or whatever, you've got to make a point to learn both narratives.

So that's been, all along there's been that option.

But when you have a chance to go on vacation, are you going to go to Mazatlan or are you going to go to Managua?

Let me ask you, you're famous for knowing so much about Europe, and you still love Europe, right?

What is the coolest town that you have discovered recently in Europe?

Well, the coolest town I've discovered recently in Europe It's called Tomar.

It's in Portugal.

I've got 50 books covering all of Europe.

We took 1,000 groups around Europe, 30,000 travelers last year.

And for 25 years I was leading our tours.

Now I just take our tours.

Every year I just sign up on one of our tours.

I get a special price.

Last year I took our Portugal tour, and I like to see how our tours are working.

I sign up with a pseudonym, so they don't even know I'm on the tour.

And I surprise them on the first day.

And this guide happened to be from a little town called Tomar, which is in the heartland of Portugal.

And normally when I write a book, it's kind of baked in.

I've done all the scouting, and I think, these are the cities that make the cut.

And it's a real headache to rethink and add another town.

But we went to Tomar, T-O-M-A-R.

And it was just so charming and so historic that we added it to the book, redid the maps, and have a whole new chapter.

But this is what I do is I spend four months a year in Europe, not in places like beyond that.

Because Europe is our, my whole mission is to inspire Americans to venture beyond Orlando.

What do you make of the fact that Barcelona and some of these other towns are overrun with tourists so much so that they put in tourism taxes?

Do those even work?

Well, they talk about tourism taxes, but I don't know if they're there yet.

But what Venice has done, for instance, they haven't overtly taxed the tourists for coming in, but locals can ride the Vaporet or the floating city buses for like $1, and tourists pay like $8 for one ride.

It's the most expensive bus ride in Europe.

And that really is a tax on tourists that can't get the local bus pass, you see.

And there are a handful of cities in Europe that come to mind.

Barcelona, like you mentioned, Joni, Amsterdam.

Venice, and a few more, that it's really becoming a big problem.

And locals are actually becoming ornery about tourists.

That's what I think.

If I was a local living on the Ramblas, I'd have a bad attitude about tourists.

You can't move on the Ramblas.

We're talking about Barcelona.

In my new edition of my Spain book, it's Ramblas, rest in peace.

Right.

The Ramblas that we all fell in love with when we were kids traveling, there's not a hint of it anymore.

Because back then, that charm was possible because it was a local community, where grandma would take the granddaughter to the little market and buy a little bird for their house, where people would go to the Boqueria market to get their groceries and stuff, where the old men would sit together and gossip on those benches at the top.

Now, it's so expensive that all the local pensioners and real families have been driven out And Airbnb has inhabited it, and lots of shops designed for travelers.

And it's just a giant river of tourists going up and down.

And you go to the Boca Ria market, and there's not much real local people buying their local mussels and cockles and so on.

It's fruit skewered on sticks and slushies and things for tourists.

I love the Ramblas, but it's not what it used to be.

And David Croman has a question.

Following up on that, as a travel writer and a very successful one, do you have qualms or concerns about contributing to that?

I have definitely done my best to find these delicate, wonderful little flowers of European culture and then crush them with all the tourists.

Wait a minute.

That totally sets up my story.

Tony has a story about that, I think.

I won't go into too much detail, but my family lived in Italy and we had never heard of Rick Steve.

And, but every guest that came, and a million guests come, had a Rick Steves book.

So, you know, we went to past 400 gelatarias to get to the Rick Steves recommended place.

Well, anyway, so we finally, you know, we didn't know enough about, we were developing a little resistance to.

On the way out, we finally stayed at a Rick Steves recommended place with a cute little restaurant.

And everyone came into the dining room.

And they all were going, Rick Steves, Rick Steves.

And they had their little books with them.

And it was Rick Steves this.

And my six-year-old at the time slams his hand on the table and says, Rick Steves has to be stopped.

So my question, there's a question there.

You're talking about the Ramblas.

Some of the towns that you've recommended, I'll start and say Vernazza and the Cinque Terre.

They're overrun.

They're like loved too much by race.

Well, and that's your question, too.

So that's an interesting philosophical issue.

Now, I've been going to the Cinque Terre since before there were hotels there.

when it was a very poor community.

These are the five little towns on the Italian Riviera, which I can honestly say is my favorite stretch of the entire Mediterranean coastline.

And when I first went there, no good restaurants, almost no hotels, very, very rustic, very poor.

And it was exactly what I was looking for.

And then I do my best.

I build my first edition of my first book in 1980 around my 20 favorite discoveries, my back doors.

And there's 20 places like the Cinque Terre that I said, these are the places to go if you want to really experience the real Europe, the back doors.

Well, over 20 years of hitting them and making TV shows and taking tours there, They have changed, and they have slowly evolved from poverty-stricken little communities to boutique communities with all sorts of wonderful hotels and little restaurants and charming cafes.

The local people, I mean, hordes of tourists are enjoying it.

The local people are now very wealthy, and they're so excited to see me, they stutter when I get off the plane.

I mean, Rick Steves, you know?

I dropped your name.

I said I was a friend of yours.

And then every once in a while, I bump into somebody like Joni that says, why didn't you keep this a secret and just tell me?

No, it's just a natural thought.

But my job, I'm the hired hand of my guides, people that get my book.

And I don't want to keep secrets, but I do make it really clear.

These books really have a huge influence on a few places.

But nowadays, more than ever, you've got to learn by, be inspired by these places and branch out and find other places.

This is a great idea.

We have an audience question.

Hi, big fan.

Thank you for one of my best meals in Cinque Terre 20 years ago.

The question I have for you as a gay man is pogroms, and you can probably elaborate.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear the question.

Pilgrims?

No, pogroms, like in World War II where people were self-policed and they were killing Jews on the street.

My fear, traveling abroad, which I love to do, is places like St. Petersburg, Jamaica, wherever, where they lynch and kill their own people.

I'm really worried about nationalism and the far right taking hold globally.

And I'm just curious what your thoughts are on what people are doing to resist that.

that you've witnessed.

You know, this is such an important issue, is if there's a problem, if there's homophobia, if there's any kind of violence against any minority groups or whatever, do you boycott that country?

Do you go to that country and try to let people get to know what they're afraid of?

Is it dangerous?

Is it reckless?

Are you contributing by going there?

Should you not give them your money?

Everybody needs to make their own decision on that.

I know a lot of people that we used to take tours to Turkey when people wanted to boycott Turkey because their treatment of different ethnic groups.

People don't want to go to Russia because of their treatment of gay people.

It's not boycotting.

Your life is in danger.

Yeah.

Well, I would say I know a lot of gay people that have gone to Russia and had a wonderful time, and they went because they wanted to not be defeated by that hateful bigotry that's going on there.

Would I go there if I was gay?

Probably not.

But I've interviewed people on my radio show who are openly gay that have gone to Russia because they felt as a matter of principle they should.

And they told me they felt safe there.

They told me they felt there's people that are in different parts of our country that would be...

bigoted about gay people and fearful about minorities that they've never met and so on.

Yeah, I wouldn't pretend to have an answer for anybody on that.

Gay people go there and they go there safely and the government also has policies that result in gay people being killed.

So I'm sorry I don't know a good answer.

Okay, question?

Hi.

I'm a downtown resident and I hear other downtown residents being very concerned about the overrun of the Pike Place market by tourists.

And I'm wondering your perspective as a suburban Seattleite and how does a town stay local when we've been hearing about some of the smaller towns that maybe become tourist towns?

And museums instead of a living, breathing city.

Well, if Seattle's feeling like it's becoming a living museum, it needs to go to Amsterdam or Bruges or Venice.

Because I never feel that at all here.

I find it refreshing to see foreigners in our city.

It can get out of hand.

Does Seattle stack up well as a tourist town?

I think Seattle's a great tourist town, yeah.

But a city has to decide how encouraging does it want to be of tourists.

So you've got to decide.

Every Alaskan community, it seems, has to decide do they want cruises or not.

And it's really expensive to have your standards and say, no, we don't want to be owned by the cruise lines.

And they become off of the mainstream.

They become less jobs, less affluence.

And then the sitkas become relatively affluent, and they are the plaything of the cruise lines.

And it's not a right or wrong choice.

Societies have to choose.

And I know in Europe, societies make that hard choice.

Some don't want the tourism, and others promote the tourism.

30 seconds.

Quick question, quicker answer.

Quick question, comment.

Two questions.

First one is having to do with your political tourism, I happened to see your program on Cuba.

And I know that's not something you specialize in.

And I happened to see the program after I had been there three times.

And I thought it was wonderful.

Extremely well done.

And it seems to me that that's the place to go for political tourism that's pretty darn close.

Okay, we're out of time.

I'll just mention, if you want to see any of these shows, you can watch them anytime at ricksteves.com.

So the Cuba show was a one-off, and really, Cuba's important to visit, and I'm all for it.

And you can go there.

Cuba is one of the best-selling Lonely Planet guidebooks if Americans go there or not.

But I'm going to Guatemala and Ethiopia next month.

There's all sorts of reality travel you can choose to do, or you can just go back to the same tourist-friendly places.

And we'll hold it there.

We have been talking about the rise of fascism and travel wisdom with author and documentarian Rick Steves.

We're coming back next month with Washington Governor Jay Inslee.

Thank you so much for watching.

Thank you.