Atto celebrating the release of disrupt dc, the rise of uber and the fall of the city the first city to fight back against uber. Washington dc was also the city where such resistance was defeated. It was here that the company a playbook for how to deal with entrenched intransigent sorry regulators and within the realm of local politics. The company the city already as the nations capital. Now is also the blueprint for how uber conquered cities around the world and explains why so many embraced. The company with open arms. Drawing on interviews with gig workers, uber lobbyists and organizers, disrupting demonstrates that many share the blame, lowering the nations hopes and dreams for what cities could be. In a sea of broken transit, underemployment and racial polarization, uber offered a lifeline. But at what cost . This is not the story of one company in one city. Instead, disrupting dc offers a36 view of urban america in crisis. Uber arrived promising a new future for workers, residents, policymakers and, others. Ultimately, ubers success and growth was never a sign of urban strength or innovation, but a sign of urban weakness and low about what City Politics can achieve. Understanding why uber rose reveals, just how far the rest of us has fallen have. Dr. Katie wells is a postdoctoral fellow at georgetown university. She studies how tech affects the way we live in cities and especially how we govern them. She has published findings on data surveillance, labor rights and Public Policy in, an academic journals and discussed the real time impacts of her research in plus media stories. She lives dc. Dr. Coffee ato is an associate professor of urban studies at cuny school of labor and labor and urban studies. Research interests are in the political economy of cities. The politics of public space and debates in and around the idea of the right to the city. He is the author of rights in transit Public Transportation and the rights of the city and californias east bay, as well as numerous articles in both academic and public venues. Dr. As well as anatole will be in conversation with Malcolm Harris harris, is a freelance writer and the author of palo alto, a history california capitalism in the world. Has up and and kids these. His next book is about political strategies in the climate. He lives in dc. Please me in welcoming to politics and prose doctors. Katie wells dr. Katie wells and dr. Coffee at home. All right. It seems like these are working. Excellent. Thank you all so much for joining us here. Wow, its amazing. Crowd we cant see how many people are out here until we walk out. So its a genuine like, joy to see so many of you here. Obviously, this is the hometown crowd for this book. So give yourselves a round of applause before we get started. Our. This book, i think, is the best single text example we have of how of these platform transforms an individual city. So its a real privilege to talk about this. With two out of three authors. Were missing declan. Sadly, ill filling in. I dont know the great accent, but try my best to be talking about it here with all of you so that the comments, i think will hit home a little harder because were in that home today. So without any more, my i turn to authors thats not true because i have to introduce my questions as well. One of the things thats really great about this book is how poorly vocal it is. Both the text itself in terms of how many like perspectives you get as well as the authorship. So i was hoping if you could talk a little bit about first the genesis of this project. Did you end up writing it together and with declan, because its not just to sort of like one person, one person, one person, the way these academic things kind of tend to be, its really a cohesive project. Yeah, thanks. Hi, guys. Its so nice to be here. This project began because i had a baby sitter take an uber home one night at time when we were in logan circle and, the babysitter lived five blocks away and i wanted to know what was it that would allow someone to pay someone else 5 to drive them five blocks on a friday night in the rain. So this project began with that sort of odd experience and coffees of looking at bus transits struggles and so kafui declan i went to graduate School Together and embarked on doing this project and we had not intended way were we going to write a book. We were writing academic pieces. But then the pandemic arrived. We were on zoom too much and we decided that if we were going to write a book, we wanted it to have a that spoke not just each other but to others. And the writing process for me was a pleasure. Yeah, im, you know, we didnt break up in the process. Yeah, i was. We were still friends, so, you know, i think the each of us came to the project, you know, with backgrounds, you know, declan does a lot of historical work in. Canada i had done a book on on transit and katie had done a lot of writing and research and publication on housing in dc and, you know, i, we liked other and wanted to do something collectively after working solo for for while and and then we embarked on this we got a grant, we got money and then we embarked on this on this project and the writing process, you know, i, i learned a lot about myself through it, but i think the book reads really well and. Its cohesive and. I became a better writer by working with people that something i expected to say. But, you know, the truth. So the book is composed, takes a lot of different perspectives, which i think is really essential when youre tackling issue thats involving a lot of peoples lives in different ways. Can you talk about some of the different perspectives and sense of interests that you were trying to explore in the text . So its its flat. Its five chapters, you know, the kind of the over arching argument is of, you know, understanding as a as a, as a, as a political project, as much as a kind of technology company, how it intervene in the kind of local politics and each chapter takes a different approach to that politics. We look at uber and the politics of data uber and the politics of race in dc uber and the politics of regulation and in each of those, you know, which i just think chapters we talk with different people, we try to bring out and highlight different. And you know, across all of that we talk about what, what means for how we understand, you know, urban, urban, public life largely arguing that its symptomatic of a set of larger structural issues that beset almost all cities in philly. Yeah, no, its great. The project really began as we followed 40 individual is who drove for uber in 2016 in the d. C. Area and we did not intend to do longitudinal study, but we got quite doing it and we were captivated with back to the same workers year after year after year as they moved and off the apps, especially the pandemic. And so at the same time we were following their stories. We were also curious how a city like dc, which like im from northeast ohio, like dc to me was a labor mecca. And so i was really curious how could a city like dc get in bed and become, you know, known as the most uber friendly city in the country. And so at the same time that we were to workers over and over and over, we were also talking to 30 local policymakers, some of whom are here, you know, to ask them, how are you thinking about data . How are you thinking about your relationship with these Silicon ValleyTech Companies . So talk a little bit more about that, the interaction between this company that comes into the city and the Civic Infrastructure here that its encountering because write about uber not just as a enemy force attacking the labor in the city but is exploiting real cracks in the city, in city life. Yeah. So the opening, the introduction begins with a kind of mini protest that no one will remember because it was very small that was protesting that the metro system and this was. 2016. Yeah. And you know, its a period when, you know, the, the metro system was on fire, it was safe traffic. You guys remember steve track in summer. This was metro pocalypse is metro on fire was the actual real website that year a lot of nods in the crowd its a good to do it in dc you know yeah i remember was on fire and so we you know we opened with this of protest about metro and then we you know make reference to this great book which is probably that tracks the Great Society rail, which is about the history of the metro. And we, you know, contrast that kind of initial vision of the metro as this public good with kind of the reality and then we kind of intervene say, look, theres all these people at protests talking about metro as a loser. I took an uber and it kind of captures kind of what we wanted to say in terms the kind of crumbling infrastructure uber in many cities is able to exploit or intervene in. And yeah, so the overarching argument. Right, is that basically that uber is a symptom of the crumbling infrastructure that urban life right now. So we want to understand why is it that Government Employees that were tasked with paratransit turn to uber. Well, its because their own systems were failing. Right. If we want to understand why, you know so many residents were turning to uber when they couldnt get home late at night. Well, metro wasnt running right. Or why workers were turning to uber while their full time jobs werent giving them regular or they couldnt pay and they werent earning enough to get by. And so part of the argument we try to unearth is why is it that uber just makes sense . So many of us right now, especially if we think its undermining politics as it exists and, the ability of cities to govern themselves in future, one of the other cracks in to the Public Transit system is the existing private Transit System has not developed a great reputation in the city and with policymakers talking about cab drivers, the cab systems and Racial Discrimination and in particular was another crack uber was ready to exploit. Can you talk that one in particular . Sure. I mean its an interesting kind of i dont know that you know that when when uber i lived in dc in 2011 it you know its the same years that dc stopped becoming a majority city and think this what we found talking with people reading reports about uber is often issues of race and Racial Discrimination in. The taxi industry emerged and came up in, you know, debates about about uber and its regulation alongside broader anxiety over kind of the racial shifts in the city. So part of what we try to do in this chapter, which we call lubricant, is to kind of explore the ways in which uber has kind of mobilized this race in dc, but then we show all the ways its mobilized in other cities to kind of win over policymakers. But its mobilized a very narrow and very vision of racial justice, a totally narrow and we try we try to show how how narrow it is. But at the same time how receptive communities and peoples are. People were to kind of ubers arrival on those those terms. Well same same about what it was like what is that appeal that ubers making on these racial terms. Yeah. So the beginning of the chapter we begin with this kind of it was a it was Cornell Belcher wrote an op ed in the post you know about, his own experience of Racial Discrimination in the taxi industry in d. C. And its a its you know, its a real piece of his sorry. Its a hes talking about real experiences as a black man. As a black man. Sorry. That should be thats important for the story. Were a good team. This is like takeaway. Okay, thats crucial. Keep point. Black man in d. C. Trying to get a cab and then its revealed later the day the post, a ton of correction. Thats actually Cornell Belcher had done a Research Study on racial that had been funded you know by uber and and and so part of what we is okay that seems pretty cynical but then you look all the comments that emerged that like flooded the inboxes of council people. In 2012 when kind of debates over regulation really you know erupted and like a good of those are about i cant get a to go here i cant they wont pick me up and uber does pick up right and so you part of the chapter is it is a complicated one because its both, you know pointing to the sort of cynicism that, you know, uber deploys, but also the real experiences of people, you know, in hailing while black right that it is an issue and uber this very narrow solution. Right. But its one that only took into consideration consumer, not one that took into a broader, we argue, is a Broader Vision of racial that would think about the majority black workforce that you know is being exploited from the policymaker standpoint. Can you a little bit more about how uber appeal to them as a sort of readymade to these problems, the way the may Platform Companies in general suggest themselves to policy makers in need of Solutions Real problems. Yeah mean no one wants to be a dinosaur, right . Uber came in and basically convinced, you know, understandably policymakers that, if they were going to stop uber, they were standing in the way of progress that is going to save us all and maybe believe that. Right. We all have iphones now. Innovation is going to save some us. But the problem was that i think that policymakers overlooked other very real options in getting in bed with uber and we are now a decade later still paying the price and i think we have theres a phrase we use over and over again over and over again in the book which is just uber do it and part of what i think i think we try to be as fair policymakers as we possibly can because part of we lay out are all the constraints that policymakers face or all the constraints that legislators, a council, people face given kind of broadest cultural issues that limit what cities can and cant do and that compel them to promote Economic Development above everything else. Right. And we can look at whats how have you guys seen whats happened in minnesota this summer around the gig economy . So thats sort of an interesting issue where it im seeing a few heads that are nodding. So in minnesota the state, what do you call it, state legislature . Yeah. Adopted a bill to say were going to give uber drivers and gig a minimum wage the right to a minimum wage like a decent labor law and the governor of minnesota in the first use his first veto in five years against this even though he is a prolabor governor. Right. And the reason that he did this and he undermined the ability of gig workers in that state to earn minimum wage in the future is because he was afraid he was convinced by arguments that if uber and lyft pull of the state, who else is going to offer rural areas with transit for disabled and elderly residents. So yeah and thats tim walz lets Farm Labor Party minnesota but it yeah that could have been thats captured kind of the book in a in a week you know the kind of commentary on that now from ubers perspective can talk a little bit about how they come in and their strategy when theyre approaching policymakers and how they used to really develop that strategy, which i think theyre pretty well known. They certainly are. I can say from my research were one of the leaders in this sort of urban reclaiming for platform economy. So i wonder if you can talk about it a little bit from the the invading perspective. So i so operation thunder, what no relation ship though to vietnam. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Operate well so the book kind of begins and goes back to multiple times the the kind of ubers entrance into d. C. And so candidly since 2011 but it really started. In 2012 there was early pushback from the taxi and limousine, the commission from. Linton and then that summer, the same summer, there was a debate dealing with the council over minimum, minimum fares, which have, you know. Put it was going to it was it was going to put a floor on so these debates in 2012 it was sort of the first uber debates. But they were also that debate was really important because was also considering whether or not to require these companies to adhere to the american act and came in and texted every Single Person that had downloaded their app and sort of that new version of collectivism and said, hey, tell your council dont want us to be regulated. And so the council was inundated with 50,000 emails and of course, in a 24 hour period, 3700 tweets. Well i guess. Yes, tweets, it still existed. Twitter and the council for it. I mean, they they rolled it and so is the kind of it provided like a clear example of ubers power its ability to reach its consumers and, but also Silicon Valleys power and its ability go in and reshape laws. Right. This was a new of this wasnt just lobbying to curry favor. This is also regulatory. You know entrepreneurship. This was writing laws or writing themselves out of laws. So dc, you know, allowed to make itself uber convince dc to not regulate it. And that was sort of a new monument or thing that then uber picked up and dropped in cities and states across the country. That was before new york, right . With the showdown, famous showdown with de blasio over control. They went head to head and the city of new york folded. All right. Well, weve got we did the the rider, the company, the policy maker. We can finally talk about the driver, which i think is the real core of book. Um, and its the one where i think its most like anecdotally rich. So i wonder if there were some like driver stories that you wanted to share with the audience because there are some good ones. Im yeah, no, thats great. We really could not have done book without the relationships that we developed with the 40 workers that we first met in 2016 and then continue to interview and survey the next five years. And then it became six and then seven. Im in. I share one story about a a woman whos pseudonym for the book is diana and diana grew in dc and she started using the metro by herself at age she eventually went to utc time the university of the district of columbia. We have some faculty here and while she was going to school, mcdonalds was accommodating her schedule, but she hated the fast food. And so when she heard of uber 2016, she said, hey, be my own boss, set my own schedule. That would work with her classes. So she signed up to over the next few years. The work was hard. She encountered Sexual Assault incident she incurred damage incurred damage to her steering wheel. The work was