Speaker 1: On March five, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed a ninety
Speaker 1: eight page elections bill that, among many other measures, dramatically
Speaker 1: restricts absentee voting limits, the number and location of ballot
Speaker 1: drop boxes, gives the legislature the power to replace local
Speaker 1: election boards, and makes it a crime to provide water
Speaker 1: or food to those waiting and long lines to vote.
Speaker 1: Passed on a party line vote by both Republican control
Speaker 1: chambers of the state legislature and signed by a Republican governor,
Speaker 1: the bill's provisions will have a disproportionate impact on the
Speaker 1: state's most heavily democratic urban counties, already notorious for their
Speaker 1: long lines on election day, and the law that was
Speaker 1: signed in Georgia is just one of more than two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty bills in forty five states that have been
Speaker 1: introduced to restrict voting access since last November's election. So
Speaker 1: why am I telling you this? Because the right to
Speaker 1: vote is both fundamental to individual liberty and to the
Speaker 1: opper functioning of representative democracy. When voting rights are denied, deluded,
Speaker 1: or restricted, the ability of our government to solve problems,
Speaker 1: seize opportunities, and serve everyone is impaired and its legitimacy
Speaker 1: is weakened. And right now all across America, after a
Speaker 1: historic ellection with a record turnout, the foundation of our
Speaker 1: democracy is at risk. That's why on today's episode, I'm
Speaker 1: grateful to be joined by one of our nation's most
Speaker 1: effective advocates for free and fair elections. After the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court got to the Voting Rights Act in opening the
Speaker 1: door to a wide range of discriminatory voting changes that
Speaker 1: disproportionately affect communities of color, like precinct closures and elimination
Speaker 1: of early voting, Stacy Abrams launched the New Georgia Project
Speaker 1: to register voters and protect voting rights. She methodically got
Speaker 1: to work registering the very people who are being targeted
Speaker 1: by voters of Russian efforts, and advocating for laws that
Speaker 1: make it easier, not harder, to participate in our democracy.
Speaker 1: In she became the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia,
Speaker 1: but lost the election by fifty five thousand votes, largely
Speaker 1: because of voter suppression and the removal of hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of voters from the rolls. But she channeled her
Speaker 1: setbacks and a positive change for the state of Georgia
Speaker 1: and for our entire country, doubling down on her efforts
Speaker 1: and starting her organization Fair Fight to protect voting rights
Speaker 1: in Georgia and across America. Her work resulted in a
Speaker 1: national voter protection network amid the pandemic, along with record
Speaker 1: turnout in Georgia in the election and the critical Senate runoffs.
Speaker 1: My conversation with Stacy was recorded shortly before the signing
Speaker 1: of Georgia's new law as part of the annual Clinton
Speaker 1: Global Initiative Meeting for University Students c g i U.
Speaker 1: Every year, CEU brings together hundreds of young change makers
Speaker 1: from around the world who are working to address urgent
Speaker 1: challenges on campus, in their communities, and across the lobe.
Speaker 1: This year, our virtual host campus was Howard University. I
Speaker 1: wanted our c g i USED students to hear from
Speaker 1: Stacy because she's provided an incredible blueprint for achieving real,
Speaker 1: meaningful change. No matter what you're setting out to do,
Speaker 1: you need a clear vision, a realistic plan to get there,
Speaker 1: the fortitude to stick with it, and the flexibility to
Speaker 1: adapt to changing circumstances. Stacy Abrams has done that as
Speaker 1: well as anybody I have ever seen. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy our conversation. Stacy, thank you for joining us today,
Speaker 1: and I think you should take it just a couple
Speaker 1: of moments and tell the people who are with us
Speaker 1: today how you got interested in this work and what
Speaker 1: you would say to young people about what are it's
Speaker 1: worth the time and effort and blood, sway tears put
Speaker 1: into it. Well, Mr President, first of all, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for inviting me to be a part of
Speaker 1: this conversation. Like you, I am a child of the South.
Speaker 1: I was technically born in Wisconsin, but I grew up
Speaker 1: in Mississippi, and my parents were both civil rights activists
Speaker 1: when they were teenagers. So by the time I came along,
Speaker 1: I was part of the whole history of people who
Speaker 1: had been fighting for the right to vote, the right
Speaker 1: to have access to democracy. And as you know, Jim Crow,
Speaker 1: the system in the South that denied access to the
Speaker 1: right to vote to black Americans existed from the end
Speaker 1: of slavery basically through nineteen sixty five, and so my
Speaker 1: parents were teenagers in sixty five. My dad was actually
Speaker 1: arrested helping register black people to vote. We tease him
Speaker 1: that my mom was doing the same work. She was
Speaker 1: just smart enough not to get caught. But I came
Speaker 1: of age knowing that the right to vote wasn't just
Speaker 1: about casting a ballot. It was the only way to
Speaker 1: tackle the poverty we lived in. And my parents both
Speaker 1: worked full time, and still we barely made ends meet.
Speaker 1: We were what they called working poor. And so my
Speaker 1: parents took us with them to volunteer because they wanted
Speaker 1: us to work our hands to make people's lives better.
Speaker 1: But they also took us with them to vote because
Speaker 1: they said, individually, we can make a little bit of change,
Speaker 1: but when we vote, we make collective change. Society changes
Speaker 1: when you vote. So when I was seventeen, I was
Speaker 1: a student at Spellman College. I set up my first
Speaker 1: table to register my fellow students to vote. And in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, I got to work on my first
Speaker 1: major campaign, and that was for then Governor of Arkansas,
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton. And so the very first campaign I was
Speaker 1: old enough to vote in, I voted in a primary.
Speaker 1: And I've worked to get people to vote in the
Speaker 1: nine two presidential election. And I used that one not
Speaker 1: only is an example of how long I've been at this,
Speaker 1: because that was thirty years ago. I also lifted up
Speaker 1: because it is a part of who I am. I've
Speaker 1: never stopped working on the right to vote. When I
Speaker 1: was seventeen and eighteen, I was trying to expand access,
Speaker 1: trying to make sure more people could vote. By the
Speaker 1: time I was in my forties, I was fighting to
Speaker 1: protect the right to vote because of the harm that
Speaker 1: had been done by the Supreme Court to the Voting
Speaker 1: Rights Act, the law that basically said states couldn't hurt
Speaker 1: the right to vote in the United States. And so
Speaker 1: I say all of this to say that, to answer
Speaker 1: your second question, it's worth doing this work because I've
Speaker 1: seen what happens when the right to vote is made real.
Speaker 1: When I was working on that campaign in ninety two,
Speaker 1: I got to see Bill Clinton become the President of
Speaker 1: the United States and start to address some of the
Speaker 1: terrible challenges, especially that we're facing poor people in the South.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand and twenty and twenty one, I
Speaker 1: helped elect Joe Biden and Raphael Warnock and John ass Off,
Speaker 1: and now we have a plan, the American Rescue Plan,
Speaker 1: that will lift half of the children in poverty out
Speaker 1: of poverty. And that's because of voting. It's because when
Speaker 1: we fight for our democracy, when we do the work
Speaker 1: not only to protect democracy but to encourage people to
Speaker 1: participate in it. We've got to do both. You can't
Speaker 1: do one and not the other. But when we do
Speaker 1: both together, real progress does happen. It's slow, it's sometimes plotting,
Speaker 1: it sometimes feels ineffective. But I know where I could
Speaker 1: be but for the times I voted, at the times
Speaker 1: my parents voted, and I know where we are, and
Speaker 1: I am very grateful that democracy can work. When you
Speaker 1: are the leader of the Democrats in the Georgia House,
Speaker 1: you ran for governor and you lost by volts, even
Speaker 1: though you got more votes than a Democrat ever had.
Speaker 1: And most of us who looked at the race or
Speaker 1: convinced that you would have won if several hundred thousand
Speaker 1: voters hadn't been purged, I think you believe that too.
Speaker 1: And UH. Since the election, well over two hundred bills
Speaker 1: have been introduced in more than forty states to restrict
Speaker 1: the franchise again to make it harder for people to vote,
Speaker 1: Some of them overtly targeted at African Americans, others more
Speaker 1: broadly targeted at UH, younger voters, disabled voters, lower income voters,
Speaker 1: people of color, immigrants. This used to be a by
Speaker 1: part of an issue. George W. Bush signed the extension
Speaker 1: of the voting rightside. Most Republicans voted for it, and
Speaker 1: then they said, we're digging our own graves. We gotta
Speaker 1: restrict the franchise again, and all of a sudden it
Speaker 1: became party orthodoxy. So what do we do now? And
Speaker 1: tell us a little about the John Lewis Voting Rights
Speaker 1: Act and the For the People Act and why you
Speaker 1: think it's so report to the president as you you
Speaker 1: very clearly laid out the the onslaught isn't new, and
Speaker 1: and I want to give just a little bit of background.
Speaker 1: The United States does not have an affirmative right to
Speaker 1: vote in the Constitution. What the Constitution lays out is
Speaker 1: how voting happens. It says that the Congress gets to
Speaker 1: determine the time, place in manner, and it delegates to
Speaker 1: each of the individual states and territories that get to
Speaker 1: participate in elections that they can administer the election. So
Speaker 1: there isn't a unlike in a lot of nations, especially
Speaker 1: most democratized nations, where there's a central universe of how
Speaker 1: democracy works. And then it plays out locally. Everything for
Speaker 1: most American elections happens at the state level, and so
Speaker 1: the federal government, like the work that was done under
Speaker 1: your administration. We have some laws that say here are
Speaker 1: things you can't do. And we have the constitutional amendments,
Speaker 1: the fifteenth Amendment that gave black men the right to vote,
Speaker 1: the nineteenth Amendment that gave white women the right to vote,
Speaker 1: the Amendment that gave young people the right to vote.
Speaker 1: And then we have the Voting Rights Act of nineteen five,
Speaker 1: which said, no matter where you live, they can't create
Speaker 1: laws that block you from voting. And we're going to
Speaker 1: make sure that states that have the right to administer
Speaker 1: these elections don't try to game the system. Because under
Speaker 1: Jim Crow, that was the most recent example, you had
Speaker 1: what we're called racially neutral and facially neutral rules. So
Speaker 1: Jim Crow didn't say in law for voting that black
Speaker 1: people couldn't vote. It just created restrictions that only applied
Speaker 1: to black people. So it should have applied to everyone,
Speaker 1: but they created exceptions so it only applied to black voters.
Speaker 1: The reason this is important is that when you look
Speaker 1: at what's happening today, they're using the same system you
Speaker 1: hear these very they sound logical, these logical rules like
Speaker 1: photo I D or you know, we're gonna limit the
Speaker 1: number of days of early voting. We're gonna end voting
Speaker 1: on Saturdays and Sundays, or make it uniform across the states.
Speaker 1: We're going to cut off the number of voters who
Speaker 1: can vote by mail. It applies to everyone in theory,
Speaker 1: but they've targeted these laws so that the people who
Speaker 1: are hurt by it are people of color, namely black
Speaker 1: people in the South, Latino and Native Americans in the West,
Speaker 1: young people across the country. And the intention is to
Speaker 1: target these communities because they are the ones who are
Speaker 1: the most likely to vote in a way that is
Speaker 1: opposite of what Republicans currently want. And let's be clear,
Speaker 1: Democrats did it first, and before Democrats, the federalists did it.
Speaker 1: So voter suppression isn't the proxy of the Republican Party alone,
Speaker 1: but they are the leaders now, and so any rules
Speaker 1: that will mitigate that harm, that will make it better
Speaker 1: or that can make it worse, Act Lee tend to
Speaker 1: start at the state level. And so, as you said,
Speaker 1: in response to more black people, more Latino, more Asian American,
Speaker 1: more Native American and more young people voting in one
Speaker 1: than in any election. The response has been two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty three bills in forty three different states to
Speaker 1: restrict access to the right to vote. And they use
Speaker 1: this term of art election integrity, but it is absolutely
Speaker 1: this code word for racial and age based discrimination. The
Speaker 1: only way to solve the problem is either to convince
Speaker 1: Republicans and the state legislatures that they control to not
Speaker 1: be bad people, to not do bad things. But they
Speaker 1: believe it's the only way they can win elections. They
Speaker 1: don't think they can compete with their ideas, so they're
Speaker 1: just going to stop voters they don't want to see
Speaker 1: show up at the polls. And that leads to congressional
Speaker 1: action that leads to the four The People Act HR
Speaker 1: one slash S one and the John Lewisvoting Rights Advancement
Speaker 1: Act h R four. What these bills do for the
Speaker 1: People Act for the first time in American history, it
Speaker 1: sets a standard for how people register to vote, for
Speaker 1: the fact that everyone gets automatically registered if you're a citizen,
Speaker 1: and that if you move from place to place, you
Speaker 1: can fix it the same day. The day you go
Speaker 1: to vote, you can vote, you can register to vote.
Speaker 1: It says that everyone gets to have at least two
Speaker 1: weeks of early voting because our economy is not the
Speaker 1: same economy we had in people who have different kinds
Speaker 1: of jobs, they can't all vote on a Tuesday. Number three,
Speaker 1: it says that everyone can vote by mail, which in
Speaker 1: a pandemic became a really important issue. And then those laws,
Speaker 1: those rules become the rules no matter where you live,
Speaker 1: So for the first time in American history, there will
Speaker 1: be a standardization of who gets access to the right
Speaker 1: to vote. The second part, though, is how do you
Speaker 1: stop the states that have a history of seeing good
Speaker 1: laws and trying to make them worse from doing so.
Speaker 1: And that's what the Voting Rights Advancement Act does. It
Speaker 1: restores Section five of the Voting Rights Act, which said
Speaker 1: that before you could do bad things to election laws,
Speaker 1: you have to get permission from the Justice Department. And
Speaker 1: it's going to hopefully fix what we know the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court is about to break, which is Section two of
Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act, which says you can't do anything
Speaker 1: that is going to have an effect of diminishing voters
Speaker 1: of color, and what they're arguing with the Republicans are arguing,
Speaker 1: and they set it in their presentation that if we
Speaker 1: don't stop these communities from being able to vote, Republicans
Speaker 1: can't win elections. And so we need both HR one
Speaker 1: S one, the four the People Act, and we need
Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Advancement Act. We need both pieces because
Speaker 1: we have to make sure everyone has the same rights.
Speaker 1: And then we have to have a law that gives
Speaker 1: people a remedy to go to court to fix what
Speaker 1: they break. And what we have to remember is it's
Speaker 1: happening from Republicans right now. But any time a party
Speaker 1: gets into power, they are loath to give that power up.
Speaker 1: And often the only way to hold onto power when
Speaker 1: demographics shift, when ideology shift, you can either change the
Speaker 1: way you run your campaigns and the policies you promote,
Speaker 1: or you can block people from voting. And in every
Speaker 1: authoritarian or autocratic government we see today that used to
Speaker 1: be a democracy, you will find that they started their
Speaker 1: dissent by limiting the voices of the minority because the
Speaker 1: minority was getting too loud. You know, a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, representative of Attorney General's Office in Texas actually
Speaker 1: said in an appeal and his defense of Texas voter restrictions.
Speaker 1: He said, absolutely, we're trying to make it harder for
Speaker 1: black and brown people to vote, but it's not race based.
Speaker 1: We wren make and harder because they don't vote for us.
Speaker 1: If they voted for us, we'd make it easy for
Speaker 1: them to vote. So that's an ultimant anti democratic statement,
Speaker 1: small D and I actually appreciated it. I wish I
Speaker 1: could meet the guy and thank you for being honest.
Speaker 1: I'm sick of all this, you know, sort of smarmy
Speaker 1: talk about voter integrity, which doesn't have a look of merit,
Speaker 1: and which many of them have already acknowledged about the election,
Speaker 1: that it was the election was honestly held and and
Speaker 1: the votes were honestly counted. I remember after the election,
Speaker 1: I talked to an African American woman who lives in
Speaker 1: not very far from me, and she and her husband.
Speaker 1: You know, they're wildly successful, they're well educated. And I said,
Speaker 1: I bet the place you live as a lot of
Speaker 1: people voted for Trump. She said, yeah, they do. And
Speaker 1: I said, did you ever ask him why they voted
Speaker 1: for him? And she said that they were really honest.
Speaker 1: They said, you had it for eight years we want
Speaker 1: it back, and he said they weren't talking about party.
Speaker 1: And so I think this is a sort of thing.
Speaker 1: You see this in the ethnic and religious and cultural tensions.
Speaker 1: We see it in Europe, we see it in Asia,
Speaker 1: we even see it in Africa. Sadly, you know, when
Speaker 1: people don't want to ever give up their power, they
Speaker 1: make up for reasons to hold onto it, and then
Speaker 1: they have to have an information system that puts the
Speaker 1: poison into the minds and hearts of the people they're
Speaker 1: talking to so they can have a base big enough
Speaker 1: to hold on. And this last election was really reassuring,
Speaker 1: and partly because the people who weren't with us showed
Speaker 1: up in big number two I think the highest percentage
Speaker 1: of registered voters where I saw a study that's at
Speaker 1: other registered uh, conservative evangelical Christians and ultra white nationalists voted.
Speaker 1: And you know, they didn't win. And I figured, we
Speaker 1: can't get higher, man, so we better change the rules.
Speaker 1: And the sad thing is that it looks like spring
Speaker 1: Court is going to back them and changing the rules
Speaker 1: or as they certainly have to this point, and therefore
Speaker 1: Congress is our only hope. Now let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: since the Constitution gives the states a lot of leeway
Speaker 1: and running these elections. How far can the Congress go
Speaker 1: and telling them how to run the elections. There's a
Speaker 1: false dispute that's out there. Article one, Section four of
Speaker 1: the Constitution says Congress has essentially the ability to set
Speaker 1: the time, place, and manner of elections. It delegates that
Speaker 1: to the states to actually administer it. But by and large,
Speaker 1: for federal elections, it is the responsibility of Congress to
Speaker 1: do what they think is necessary to set the time,
Speaker 1: the place, in the manor. Now they can't do that
Speaker 1: for a local election, for a mayor, or for a
Speaker 1: state legislative election. But the reality is there's not a
Speaker 1: single state that runs two parallel systems, one that's just
Speaker 1: federal and one that's just state. There there's some tweaks, like,
Speaker 1: for example, Louisiana. The state of Louisiana holds most of
Speaker 1: their elections on Saturdays, except for the presidential election because
Speaker 1: it has to be held officially on that Tuesday. But
Speaker 1: on the rest of their elections they hold it on
Speaker 1: Saturday because the federal government lets them do it. What
Speaker 1: would happen with HR one with the For the People
Speaker 1: Act is that there would be a baseline set where
Speaker 1: the federal government, much like the Motor Voter Act, and
Speaker 1: like the Act that created Provisional Ballots to Help America
Speaker 1: Vote Act, it would say that as a federal matter,
Speaker 1: we are saying that the time will be that you
Speaker 1: will have at least two weeks of early voting. The
Speaker 1: place will be that you allow multiple people to vote
Speaker 1: on different days, and the manner will be that they
Speaker 1: can vote in person early, in person on the day
Speaker 1: of or they can vote by mail. It is absolutely
Speaker 1: constitutional for the federal government, through Congress to set that up.
Speaker 1: And that's all the Four the People Act does. Now,
Speaker 1: the people pushing back against it don't like it because
Speaker 1: they like the fact that in the state of Oregon
Speaker 1: you can vote by mail exclusively, and they do an
Speaker 1: amazing job, have the single highest voter turnout, I think
Speaker 1: in the country. But you get to Mississippi, you can't
Speaker 1: vote by mail unless you are disabled, elderly, or you
Speaker 1: can prove that you're gonna be out of town. You
Speaker 1: don't get to vote early, and you can only vote
Speaker 1: on election day otherwise, And so the that we have
Speaker 1: such a disparate methods of voting means that the quality
Speaker 1: of your democracy differs depending on the state you live in.
Speaker 1: And here in Georgia, until we sued them and forced changes,
Speaker 1: you could vote by mail in one county and they
Speaker 1: would let you know if they saw a mistake on
Speaker 1: your envelope, but if you voted by mail in another county,
Speaker 1: they threw your vote out. So we sued them so
Speaker 1: that everyone got to be treated the same way. And
Speaker 1: that's why the federal action is so important. When the
Speaker 1: federal government says you have to vote this way, almost
Speaker 1: every state is going to vote using those rules for
Speaker 1: federal elections, but they're not going to change it for
Speaker 1: local and state elections because they don't they can't afford to.
Speaker 1: Running two separate systems is incredibly expensive, and so not
Speaker 1: only as a matter of law, but as a matter
Speaker 1: of practicality, Congress taking action will create a safe baseline
Speaker 1: for elections for everyone in the United States who is
Speaker 1: eligible to vote. Stay tuned for more of the conversation
Speaker 1: after this short break. Now we know the Congress is
Speaker 1: pretty closely divided in the House and the Senate, and
Speaker 1: the two of the Democratic senators have said they won't
Speaker 1: vote to abolish the fellow bus are altogether, which requires
Speaker 1: sixty votes to cut off debate on everything except the
Speaker 1: fundamental budget. Do you believe that we should say right
Speaker 1: now that when it comes two holding elections and who
Speaker 1: can vote, and how that's just as fundamental as the
Speaker 1: budget to our democracy and that there should also be
Speaker 1: a carve out for that. Do you believe that that
Speaker 1: we can can we justify if it comes to that,
Speaker 1: Let's say we got to senators that won't repeal the
Speaker 1: filipbuster are altogether, or can't we justify saying we got
Speaker 1: to protect our democracy here? Do you favor uh a
Speaker 1: specific exemption for election related voting on the grounds that
Speaker 1: it's the building blocks of democracy and you shouldn't use
Speaker 1: a procedural vote UH to destroy it. Absolutely, So let's
Speaker 1: start with this number one. The filibuster is not in
Speaker 1: the constitution. It is a rule that has been exacerbated
Speaker 1: over time. But it was a rule that was designed
Speaker 1: to encourage debate. It was designed encourage the minority to
Speaker 1: have a voice and not be overshadowed by the majority.
Speaker 1: But over time it became a procedural tool used to
Speaker 1: stop any bills that people didn't like, and the problem
Speaker 1: there is that when you do so, you not only
Speaker 1: shut down debate, you often shut down action against perfecty
Speaker 1: and bad behavior. There are three exemptions exist right now
Speaker 1: to the filibuster. The budget reconciliation one, so essentially, if
Speaker 1: it's needed to fund the government and make the government work,
Speaker 1: you can get around the filibuster. The second is for
Speaker 1: judicial appointments. If you look at Articles three of the Constitution,
Speaker 1: we have to have judges. Congress has the responsibility to
Speaker 1: confirm the judicial appointments of the president. So they said, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna carve that one out that won't be subject
Speaker 1: of filibuster. The third is cabinet appointments. They were blocking
Speaker 1: cabinet appointments, and it's the application of the president, which
Speaker 1: is Article two of the Constitution, to have a cabinet
Speaker 1: to help him do or her eventually do their work.
Speaker 1: And they carved out an exception for that. So I'm saying,
Speaker 1: if you've got a carve up for Article three, you've
Speaker 1: got to carve out for Article two. Article one. Section
Speaker 1: four also is an example of a carve out because
Speaker 1: it is exclusively the responsibility of Congress to decide if
Speaker 1: the time, place, and manner of elections is meeting our obligations,
Speaker 1: and right now it's not. Therefore we should absolutely carve
Speaker 1: it out. I don't want to have the debate about
Speaker 1: the larger issue of the filibuster, because if we don't
Speaker 1: get this part done, if we don't solve the democracy crisis,
Speaker 1: the rest of it is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: else they block, because most of the Americans who are
Speaker 1: trying to be heard won't have a voice in the
Speaker 1: process at all. And so it is not only I think,
Speaker 1: an existential crisis that we face. It is a moral
Speaker 1: imperative that we not allow a procedural rule to destroy
Speaker 1: the most durable democracy the world has known. First of all,
Speaker 1: thank you. That's as fine as accinct statement as I've
Speaker 1: heard on the subject. There is no example in the
Speaker 1: world of a truly successful society where there is real
Speaker 1: upward mobility and shared prosperity without shared responsibilities of citizenship
Speaker 1: and a shared sense of community. And all is started
Speaker 1: basically when President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act and
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Act, and then the reaction set in
Speaker 1: and by President Reagan was elected saying government is the problem.
Speaker 1: Announcing in Philadelphia, Mississippi, I liked Reagan personally, it broke
Speaker 1: my heart when he did that, and it was a
Speaker 1: terrible thing to do, and uh, but it made the point.
Speaker 1: And ever since then, I spent eight long years trying
Speaker 1: to restore the legitimacy of the federal government in the
Speaker 1: minds of a majority of American people. And when I left,
Speaker 1: it was the highest that had been in thirty years,
Speaker 1: but it was it's not sustainable under these relentless attacks.
Speaker 1: So my question to you is, what do we do
Speaker 1: to win the information war? What's your strategy for making
Speaker 1: people continuously believe this matters, Because let's be honest, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons where the fix we're in is that
Speaker 1: we passed off on too many mid term elections over
Speaker 1: the last twenty years when only the Republicans were voting practically,
Speaker 1: and they like that just fine. And so now you've
Speaker 1: got state government and many states way to the right
Speaker 1: of where people are. I would say three very quick things. One,
Speaker 1: we have to be very clear with people that voting
Speaker 1: is not magic. It is medicine. Magic makes things happen,
Speaker 1: makes things disappear. Medicine helps make things better. And when
Speaker 1: you don't take your medicine things get worse in a
Speaker 1: democratic society. When you are silent, then you are refusing
Speaker 1: to take your medicine, and the disease that you're fighting,
Speaker 1: whether it's a disease of racism, poverty, and justice, whatever
Speaker 1: the disease is that you think matters. If you are silent,
Speaker 1: the disease gets worse. So that's first. Second, we have
Speaker 1: to connect the dots. We unfortunately have seen not only
Speaker 1: forty years of denigration of government, we've also seen forty
Speaker 1: years of disinformation. People don't know who does what, and
Speaker 1: we've got so many layers of government and so many jobs.
Speaker 1: One of the most important responsibilities is getting back to
Speaker 1: the basics, explaining that if you care about criminal justice reform,
Speaker 1: you need to watch what the mayor is doing. If
Speaker 1: you care about housing, look at your county zoning laws.
Speaker 1: If you care about abortion, about reproductive choice, if you
Speaker 1: care about the environment, make certain you know who your
Speaker 1: state legislators are. Not everything happens at the federal government.
Speaker 1: In fact, most things happen at the state and local level.
Speaker 1: So that's number two, And then number three is stop
Speaker 1: trying to proselytize and convert someone's ideology. I start with
Speaker 1: the people that's who have never had anyone speak to them.
Speaker 1: And I would say this is true about your campaign
Speaker 1: for president, the work that President Obama did, what we
Speaker 1: are seeing happen now when we go to people who
Speaker 1: have been left out of the narrative and we actually
Speaker 1: talked to them by saying not just that we understand,
Speaker 1: but we listen. When you go to the people who
Speaker 1: are left out of the conversation, you expand the pool
Speaker 1: of opportunity for change. And the work we do here
Speaker 1: in Georgia, the work we've tried to do around the
Speaker 1: country through fair Fight and fair count is by talking
Speaker 1: to people who are so often ignored or silenced, because
Speaker 1: when someone finds their voice, it is a rare occasion
Speaker 1: that they shut up ever again. And so if we
Speaker 1: do that work, voting is medicine, not magic. That we
Speaker 1: have to connect the dots to who does what, and
Speaker 1: that we talk to the people who should be heard.
Speaker 1: I think that's how we overcome disinformation social media that
Speaker 1: is never going to tell us the whole truth. But
Speaker 1: it's also how we build the next generation of engagement
Speaker 1: and the next generation of democracy. I agree with you
Speaker 1: with one little caveat I think we talk about elections,
Speaker 1: who wins, who lost, loses as if they got eight
Speaker 1: percent of the vote, and very often it's a near
Speaker 1: run thing either way. And I believe that for particularly
Speaker 1: for the party of government, if you will, though we're
Speaker 1: not a party of government only, but a party that
Speaker 1: believes you have to have a good government and a
Speaker 1: good private sector to make a good society. What we
Speaker 1: have to do is to realize that a lot of
Speaker 1: these people out in the middle will respond to performance.
Speaker 1: We don't have to get them allog, just a few.
Speaker 1: It's like a bunch of metal on the floor, and
Speaker 1: to competing magnets, performance is the only thing. Once we
Speaker 1: get in, it makes our magnet stronger. And I think
Speaker 1: that's our aunts to get through this incredibly perilous time.
Speaker 1: We can do something about the increasing inequality of incomes.
Speaker 1: We can do something about every single one of these problems,
Speaker 1: but we have to have people committed to do it
Speaker 1: and to believe it. It's easy to sell the truth,
Speaker 1: I think if it's evident to people. But if you're
Speaker 1: just going on a digging expedition and and they're digging
Speaker 1: in your hate and we're digging in your hope, we
Speaker 1: don't always have a bigger magnet. If we had more
Speaker 1: people like you, we'd have the most powerful magnet on Earth.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. What makes you hopeful about the
Speaker 1: future in the United States and beyond? In I made
Speaker 1: my first trip of broad I went to Salzburg and
Speaker 1: I was there as a fellow on youth civic engagement.
Speaker 1: This was, you know, twenty years ago. I was there
Speaker 1: to talk about why young people had to be engaged,
Speaker 1: had to be candidates, had to be operatives running campaigns,
Speaker 1: had to be activists encouraging people, and had to be
Speaker 1: social workers in the sense of connecting people to their power.
Speaker 1: I did it because I believe then as I believe now,
Speaker 1: that we can win. My great great great grandparents were
Speaker 1: slaves in the United States. My great great grandparents were
Speaker 1: sharecroppers working on other people's land, making little money, barely
Speaker 1: able to make ends meet. My great grandparents were domestic workers.
Speaker 1: My grandparents were cooks who worked at a college. Their
Speaker 1: children were legally not allowed to attend because of their race.
Speaker 1: My parents, as I said, we're working poor despite having
Speaker 1: college degrees. But I became the first black woman in
Speaker 1: American history to be a nominee for governor, and as
Speaker 1: President Clinton knows, governors are powerful people who can help
Speaker 1: change the future society. I do this work because I
Speaker 1: have seen change happen. I am not where my grandparents were,
Speaker 1: I am not where they imagine me to be yet,
Speaker 1: but I am closer than we have ever been. And
Speaker 1: my responsibility is not to bemoan what has been passed,
Speaker 1: but to understand it and to do the work to
Speaker 1: make the next generation stronger and make the next story
Speaker 1: an even better story than my own. No one says
Speaker 1: it better than to you as well. Thank you so much, sir, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm myshe Alexander. I'm senior Impact and Design Manager and
Speaker 1: a proud alumni of the Clinton Global Initiative University c
Speaker 1: g I U. President Clinton and Chelsea often say that
Speaker 1: you're never too young to make a difference. Not c
Speaker 1: g I. You are working to engage the next generation
Speaker 1: of leaders on college campuses across the country and around
Speaker 1: the world to turn their big ideas for social change
Speaker 1: into meaningful action. Through our year round program of mentorship,
Speaker 1: skills training, and partnership building, we're cultivating a community of
Speaker 1: more than ten thousand students in alumni who are committed
Speaker 1: to taking real, concrete steps towards working together and solving
Speaker 1: the pressing global challenges that affect us all, from responding
Speaker 1: to COVID nineteen to expanding access to clean water, to
Speaker 1: supporting refugees and so much more. The students of c
Speaker 1: g I you demonstrate the future of impact. Learn more
Speaker 1: about this work and see how you can get involved.
Speaker 1: Visit www dot Clinton Foundation dot org. Slash podcast Why
Speaker 1: am I telling You? This is a production of our
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, the Clinton Foundation and at Will Media. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Craig Manascian and Will Malnadi. Our production
Speaker 1: team includes Mitch Bluestein, Jamison cat Sufis, Tom Galton, Sarah Harrowoods,
Speaker 1: and Jake Young, with production support from Tyler Scott and
Speaker 1: LaTavia Young. Original music by What White. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: John Sichs, Tina Finois, John Davidson on Hell Arena, Corey Gantley,
Speaker 1: Oscar Flores, Kevin Thurm, and all our dedicated staff and
Speaker 1: partners at the Clinton Foundation. If you have an idea
Speaker 1: of suggestion for the show, we'd love to hear from you,
Speaker 1: so please visit Clinton Foundation dot org slash podcast to
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Speaker 1: Am I Telling You This on the I Heart Radio app,
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Speaker 1: Clinton Foundation, so thank you.