Yang takes high fives and freedom dividend to ACLU forum at law school

CONCORD, N.H. — The second-floor lecture hall at the University of New Hampshire Law School buzzed with anticipation on a Friday afternoon as a young crowd awaited the appearance of a long-shot candidate who has defied the odds to qualify for the third and fourth debates ahead of senators and governors with an army of small-dollar donors, a New York businessman who calls himself "the opposite" of the New York businessman who occupies the White House.

The dean of the law school, Megan Carpenter, had just concluded her remarks on civic engagement when entrepreneur Andrew Yang burst through a side door into the lecture hall, arms outstretched to high five audience members as he jogged up and down the aisle steps. Clipped to his suit jacket, his body microphone carried his fast-paced greeting through surround-sound speakers that dangled from the ceiling. He bent his knees and clapped back at the crowd like a basketball coach on the sidelines.

New York entrepreneur Andrew Yang addressed a law school lecture hall at a forum hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union in Concord, New Hampshire. He spoke for about 19 minutes and answered questions for additional 45.

It was an uncommon but refreshing scene on the campaign trail, more Apple CEO Steve Jobs or Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr than Montana Governor Steve Bullock. And it immediately highlighted that in a crowded field of almost two dozen candidates, Yang, for better or worse, is one-of-a-kind.

The Venture for America founder, who attended the prestigious boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire before Brown University and Columbia Law School, softened the edges of his privileged upbringing with a disarming honesty and a casual humor. "I didn't really have a good time here," Yang told the crowd about his four years in the Granite State.

He also distanced himself from his classmates with a stinging rebuke of their role in the 2008 financial crisis, a defining moment for his own career.

"I thought I knew why the financial crisis had happened, at least in large part: that all those smart kids out of Exeter and Brown and Columba had become Wall Street whiz kids and created the financial instruments that had wound up crashing the economy," he said. "And I thought well that's a disaster, what can we come up that would be a better use of their energies and ambitions and knowledge than becoming Wall Street whiz kids? So the idea I had is that they should move to places like Providence or Detroit or Baltimore or St. Louis or New Orleans to start a business."

In the controlled setting of his stump speech, Yang managed to better explain what the organization he founded actually does than in either of his two debate appearances, when he received three and nine minutes of speaking time respectively. He suggested a simple analogy, effective for an audience of mostly Democrats far away from the worlds of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Yang jogged up and down the aisles when he entered the room, arms outstretched to high five voters. He talked quickly through a body microphone that projected through surround-sound speakers.

"They could work at an early-stage company in one of those cities, get seasoned for two years, contribute and then maybe start a new business," Yang said. "Does that remind anyone of a program that they've heard of? Teach for America, right? It's Teach for America for entrepreneurs. So I thought to myself, what do you call Teach for America for entrepreneurs? Venture for America!"

More than anything else, it is Yang's association with the left-behind cities of the Rust Belt through Venture for America, his diagnosis of the problem in those places and his prescription for a solution for the whole country that has made him impossible to ignore in the Democratic primary. He cast himself as an outsider and a truth-teller, the candidate who best understands supporters of President Donald Trump — "a few people in this room likely were happy about [his election] because the odds are someone here supported Donald Trump," he said.

He asked members of the audience what they hear from cable news as explanations of Trump's unexpected victory. "Russia, Facebook, racism, Hillary Clinton, the FBI," Yang repeated before offering his critique. "They missed the central driver of his victory and the central of his victory is this: we automated away four million manufacturing jobs in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa — all the states he needed to win and did win," he said.

And he stressed that the problem is getting worse. He started with retail clerks, the most common job in New Hampshire and across the country, and predicted that Amazon would soon wipe out most of the sector. A middle-aged man attending his first political event after living in the first-in-the-nation state since fourth grade confessed the same fears in the lobby before the speech, when he noted that McDonald's is already replacing its minimum-wage workers with touchscreens.

Yang moved to call center employees — "In two or three years, the software's going to sound like this: 'Hey Andrew, how's it going?'" — and truck drivers — "My friends in California are working on trucks that can drive themselves" — next to underline his point.

Yang sparred with ACLU moderator Jeanne Hruska, who wanted the New York entrepreneur to commit to reducing the prison population by 50 percent during his administration.

The alarming prognostication, delivered from a place of authority by a well-connected entrepreneur, provided a built-in justification for drastic change. Yang was ready with the proposal. "If you're here today, at some point you heard this: There's an Asian man running for president who wants to give everyone $1,000 a month," he said.

After a laugh from the crowd, he defended the policy, which he refers to as a freedom dividend, as "a deeply American idea," supported by revolutionary writer Thomas Paine, civil rights leader Martin Luther King and libertarian economist Milton Friedman. He told the crowd that the U.S. House of Representative twice passed a guaranteed minimum income bill in the early 1970s and that one state has already implemented the plan.

"And what state is that?" Yang asked. What followed provided the best evidence that the New York entrepreneur has connected with a subset of voters, as members of the audience answered him, each time louder and faster, in a call-and-response.

"Alaska!"

"And how do they pay for it?"

"Oil!"

"And what is the oil of the 21st century?"

"Tech!"

Yang later that night appeared at a one-room public library, packed wall-to-wall with people, in Plaistow, New Hampshire. To his credit, the forum in Concord, New Hampshire, sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), did not allow him to continue with friendly questions from supporters all throughout the question-and-answer session.

The favorite candidate of many libertarian-leaning Democrats notably committed to reducing the prison population, but declined to put a number on his proposal. Both the ACLU moderator and a member of the audience pressed him to lower the incarceration rate by 50 percent.

"We love when people respond because they're thinking about our issues," said ACLU political director Jeanne Hruska. "The advantage of this forum is we have a forum where we get to talk exclusively about civil rights," she added later.

Yang answered questions about privacy rights, LGBTQ rights, disability rights and abortion rights in the ACLU forum. The toughest question of the afternoon asked whether his freedom dividend would cause inflationary pressure.

He answered questions about privacy rights and LGBTQ rights before fielding a difficult question on the inflationary pressure of his signature proposal to give every American adult $1,000 a month. His answer went back to the financial crisis, when he said the bank bailout did not cause inflation. "The inflation concern really is a fiction, more or less, because we've been printing money for the banks for a long time and there's not been inflationary pressure," he said.

Yvan Lamothe, a Haitian-American immigrant from Weare, New Hampshire who asked the question, described Yang as "fresh, genuine [and] down-to-earth," but said he is "looking for common sense" and "not over-promising."

Charlie Martone of Concord, New Hampshire similarly praised Yang as a "thoughtful individual" with "carefully considered positions on virtually every issue," but said for New Hampshirites, "that doesn't equal a vote." He said Yang is "doing the right thing" if he wants to break into the top tier of candidates by traveling across the Granite State and meeting with voters.

"He's becoming better known."

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.