Nina Turner Talks Economic Justice and the Military Industrial Complex

Nina Turner is a former Ohio State Senator, national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, and one of the most forceful advocates for working-class politics in the United States. She’s a longtime champion of economic justice and a leading voice in movements for peace and social uplift, including the new Up in Arms campaign challenging the power of the military-industrial complex. Turner joined Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss why the Democratic Party keeps failing to meet the needs of ordinary people, why insurgent primary challenges are essential to democracy, and how redirecting our vast military spending could transform the lives of millions. Nathan J. Robinson This is the first time we’ve ever talked. Our magazine was founded in 2016 around the time of the first Bernie Sanders campaign, and one of the first articles that we wrote said that if the Democrats didn’t pick Bernie Sanders for president and picked Hillary Clinton, they were destined to lose to Donald Trump. And that’s, in fact, what happened. I feel like there’s a great kinship between the work that we’ve done over the last 10 years and the work that you’ve been doing. In a way, you’ve been pushing this simple but ignored message, which is that the Democratic Party needs to push a certain  agenda—often called populist, or you might call it revolutionary democratic socialist: the Bernie agenda—and if they don’t, they’re going to continue to slide into irrelevance. It’s interesting, because it must have been frustrating over the last 10 years to be pushing that message and to often go so unheard. And I feel like now there’s more recognition that you and Bernie, what you were saying, have been vindicated a little bit.