Speaker 1: You and Me Both is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Hillary Clinton, and this is You and Me Both.
Speaker 1: You know, I think it's safe to say that this
Speaker 1: last year has certainly turned our lives upside down, and
Speaker 1: along the way, a lot of people have found themselves
Speaker 1: thinking about our society, our economy, our democracy, our world
Speaker 1: in new ways. In other words, we've been experiencing a
Speaker 1: paradigm shift. And today I'm talking to three people who
Speaker 1: are actually in the business of helping to bring about
Speaker 1: new ways of thinking. We'll hear from Reschmasa Johnny, who
Speaker 1: created an incredible organization called Girls Who Code, and she's
Speaker 1: working hard now to change the way our country thinks
Speaker 1: about and values women's work. I'll also be talking to
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania State Representative and US Senate candidate Malcolm Kenyada, who
Speaker 1: is part of a generation of young people changing the
Speaker 1: face of our politics. But first, I'm talking to Politzer
Speaker 1: Prize winning writer Isabel Wilkerson. I first came across Isabel
Speaker 1: Wilkerson when she published her bestseller, which won the Pulitzer Prize,
Speaker 1: called The Warmth of other Sons, which chronicled the great
Speaker 1: migration of Black Americans out of the Jim Crow South.
Speaker 1: Last summer, Isabel published another groundbreaking historic book, this one
Speaker 1: called Cast, The Origins of Our Discontents. In Cast, she
Speaker 1: argues that America is divided up into a rigid hierarchy.
Speaker 1: There's a dominant cast, a subordinate cast, and systems that
Speaker 1: keep them separate and unequal. Race, writes, is the visible
Speaker 1: agent of the unseen force of Cast. It's a profound
Speaker 1: insight and like so many other readers, I could not
Speaker 1: put her book down. So I was delighted to welcome
Speaker 1: Isabel to the podcast. This book Cast is such an
Speaker 1: important effort to help us all better understand how we
Speaker 1: ended up where we are. And you know, the word
Speaker 1: cast is not one that historically has been used in
Speaker 1: reference to America. Yes, you're absolutely right. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I would say is that when you are
Speaker 1: seeking to inspire a paradigm shift and how we think
Speaker 1: about ourselves, and sometimes it requires new language to be
Speaker 1: able to see beneath what we thought we knew about ourselves,
Speaker 1: and the word cast sort of forces us to think differently,
Speaker 1: just because that's something that we think of for other
Speaker 1: kind treats. That's something we applied to India. Maybe feudal Europe.
Speaker 1: How would that apply to us? You know, I first
Speaker 1: came to the term when I was doing research for
Speaker 1: the Warmth of other Sons, in which I was writing
Speaker 1: about the experiences of people who had fled the gym
Speaker 1: Pro South and trying to describe what that world was like.
Speaker 1: What was it that would propel people, six million people,
Speaker 1: the largest internal migration in our country's history, to flee
Speaker 1: all that they known and to seek refuge in the
Speaker 1: rest of the country. And it ended up being that
Speaker 1: there were people who anthropologists who went to the gym
Speaker 1: Pro South during the depth of that era, and they
Speaker 1: did field work and they were they emerged from their
Speaker 1: work using the term cast. And so that's how I
Speaker 1: came to use the word cast. But cast essentially is,
Speaker 1: you know, an artificial, arbitrary graded ranking of human value
Speaker 1: in a society. And I want you to explain to
Speaker 1: our listeners why you choose not to talk about racism
Speaker 1: and instead focus our attention and your argument and un
Speaker 1: cast because you write, race in the United States is
Speaker 1: the visible agent of the unseen force of cast. Cast
Speaker 1: is the bones, race is the skin, right, And well,
Speaker 1: the reason is because when we look at it from
Speaker 1: a perspective of cast, and we look at it. You know,
Speaker 1: I identified eight pillars of cast, eight characteristics that would
Speaker 1: be present in any cast hierarchy, and it turns out
Speaker 1: that every single one of those is evidenced in our society,
Speaker 1: every single one. You know, starting with the laws of
Speaker 1: nature or divine will, the presumptions that a group of
Speaker 1: people is, by divine order to be assigned at the
Speaker 1: very top, and then there are those who are consigned
Speaker 1: to the very bottom. Often scriptures used to support that.
Speaker 1: History shows that going all the way back to Noah
Speaker 1: and his sons, with the assumptions about it happened to
Speaker 1: Ham compared to his brothers, was deeply and very common
Speaker 1: presumed justification for slavery in early in our country's history,
Speaker 1: and then going towards pollution versus purity, the idea that
Speaker 1: there was one group that was to be protected at
Speaker 1: all costs from the potential pollution that could accrue from
Speaker 1: exposure to interaction with those who were deemed beneath them.
Speaker 1: You know, only until the nineteen sixties the Civil rights legislation,
Speaker 1: African Americans could not swim in the same waters as
Speaker 1: white people. There were strict laws on who could marry whom,
Speaker 1: which is a term known as endogamy. And we as
Speaker 1: a country had laws that prohibited people from marrying across
Speaker 1: you know, these divided lines has created lines for most
Speaker 1: of our country. System didn't end until seven, of course,
Speaker 1: with the loving case. So I described these things as
Speaker 1: a reminder to ourselves to see beneath what we have
Speaker 1: grown accustomed to work customed to the language of race,
Speaker 1: which is merely one of the many metrics that could
Speaker 1: be used to divide any group of people. And we
Speaker 1: know that in other societies that have deep hierarchies, such
Speaker 1: as ours, they might use a different metrics. They might
Speaker 1: use religion, they might use ethnicity, they might use language,
Speaker 1: they might use any number of things. This is a reminder.
Speaker 1: This allows us to see what is underlying the divisions
Speaker 1: that we are accustomed to identifying among ourselves, and to
Speaker 1: see that there are points of intersection that we can
Speaker 1: learn from. So for a lot of people, this is
Speaker 1: a new way of talking about American society. And I'd
Speaker 1: be interested in what kind of responses you've gotten. Well,
Speaker 1: you know it is it is unaccustomed language. So this
Speaker 1: is of course not to diminish the impact unroll that
Speaker 1: race has become in our society. You know, race, of
Speaker 1: course is a social construct, but racism is real underneath.
Speaker 1: That is the underlying purpose for why this metric was
Speaker 1: used at all. And the metric was used because there
Speaker 1: needed to be a way, they felt, the colonists felt
Speaker 1: there needed to be way to maintain both the power
Speaker 1: of those at the top and then to make sure
Speaker 1: that things get done in the society that people might
Speaker 1: not otherwise want to do. So. Yes, there are people
Speaker 1: who have been awakened by this, you know, have I
Speaker 1: hear from people all the time who say, once you
Speaker 1: become aware of it, you can't stop thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Once you see it, then you start seeing it everywhere
Speaker 1: you turn. You know, I have lots of metaphors in
Speaker 1: the book, and one of them has to do with
Speaker 1: the house. I mean, we are the inheritors of an
Speaker 1: old house. And when you have an old house, you
Speaker 1: never say, well, I've I've got a new furnace, so
Speaker 1: I'm all done. I don't have to do anything else
Speaker 1: to the house. The houses done, I don't have to
Speaker 1: think about it again. With an old house, you know,
Speaker 1: the work is never done. There's always something that needs
Speaker 1: to be addressed. You don't expect it to be done,
Speaker 1: and you you often you don't want to go in
Speaker 1: the basement after a reign. But you know that if
Speaker 1: you don't go into the basement to check out what
Speaker 1: has happened, the inaction is at your own peril. You know,
Speaker 1: ignorance is no protection against the consequences of inaction. So
Speaker 1: I've found that people you know, they you know, are
Speaker 1: marking up the book, they should put pictures of the
Speaker 1: of the book up there. They I mean, I'm amazed
Speaker 1: that in the era of COVID, it's been its own
Speaker 1: kind of solace and inspiration or insight to people who
Speaker 1: at a time when people are looking for ways to
Speaker 1: understand how in the world did we get here? And
Speaker 1: I should also say that, you know, this is an
Speaker 1: era that we're in in which so many people have said,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't recognize my country. This is not
Speaker 1: this is not the country that I know, or um,
Speaker 1: this is not what America stands for. And whenever I
Speaker 1: hear that, I, you know, say to myself, and they're
Speaker 1: far too many people don't really know our country's true history.
Speaker 1: And you know how people struggle with this if they're
Speaker 1: at all conscious, you know, if they have any amount
Speaker 1: of self awareness. Because one of the common refrains, and
Speaker 1: you take this on in the book, and I'm very
Speaker 1: happy you do, is people say, well, look, I wasn't
Speaker 1: here four hundred years ago three d two hundred, a
Speaker 1: hundred years ago. My people came from filling the blank
Speaker 1: wherever people came from. I didn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with this. You can't hold me responsible. Well, that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I used the house metaphor, because
Speaker 1: you know, when you take possession of an old house,
Speaker 1: you did not build that house, and no one says
Speaker 1: that you built the house. However, you are now the
Speaker 1: current occupants of that house. Anything good or bad that's
Speaker 1: going on with it is your responsibility. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: so much how we got there when it comes to
Speaker 1: the condition that we find ourselves in. It's not this
Speaker 1: is really not about a portioning blame, because obviously these
Speaker 1: are we're going back many many centuries. We're not talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the the guilt that someone should feel because
Speaker 1: of something that happened long ago. We're talking about taking
Speaker 1: responsibility for and being accountable for that which you are
Speaker 1: doing now. Being responsible for taking seriously um what one
Speaker 1: can do now now that you are in possession of
Speaker 1: this old house. I would also say that one reason
Speaker 1: that the cast can, I think be so helpful for
Speaker 1: us is because it focuses us on the structure of
Speaker 1: a thing as opposed to the personal. It focuses us
Speaker 1: on the infrastructure of the hierarchy that we have inherited.
Speaker 1: You're born to it. You did not ask to be
Speaker 1: born to the group that is dominant in this country.
Speaker 1: You did not ask to be going to born to
Speaker 1: the groups that maybe in the middle, you didn't ask for.
Speaker 1: This is what we've all inherit. Then the question that
Speaker 1: comes what does that mean? And that has created unearned
Speaker 1: benefits to people without having done anything. For example, when
Speaker 1: we look at housing, any person who was born to
Speaker 1: what has been historical dominant casts in our country, if
Speaker 1: they had parents, grandparents, and great grandparents who owned property
Speaker 1: before nineteen, then they were the beneficiaries, through no action
Speaker 1: on their own, of a system that legally excluded people
Speaker 1: who were born to what I call the subordinated group.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about hating or not liking a certain people.
Speaker 1: It was the structure that we inherited, and this is
Speaker 1: to awaken people to the structure that we've inherited so
Speaker 1: that we can recognize how we got to where we are.
Speaker 1: That it's not personal. It has to do with the
Speaker 1: infrastructure that we were born to. We're taking a quick break.
Speaker 1: Stay with us. As you point out, uprooting the cast
Speaker 1: system in hearts and habits can be even and more
Speaker 1: complicated than removing it from our laws. So how do
Speaker 1: we go about challenging these deep seated beliefs, Well, that
Speaker 1: is a really big question. And you know, as I
Speaker 1: approached this book, I approached as a building inspector. Would
Speaker 1: you know, this is the old This is the old
Speaker 1: house that we are now currently in possession of all
Speaker 1: of us, And this is the report on the health
Speaker 1: and condition of this old house that we're in. The
Speaker 1: building inspector is not the one that makes the repairs.
Speaker 1: They are the ones that issue the report. This is
Speaker 1: not a ten point plan, it's not a how to.
Speaker 1: Book is shining a light on what we otherwise could
Speaker 1: not see in hopes that those who know these systems
Speaker 1: best can begin to do the work of what is
Speaker 1: necessary to overhaul those parts of our society and overhaul
Speaker 1: is what is needed in so many parts of our society,
Speaker 1: and criminal justice and mass incarceration, education of course, so
Speaker 1: many elements. I mean, we this our era has reminded
Speaker 1: us of the need to do this tremendous inspection so
Speaker 1: that we can get to have a chance at truly
Speaker 1: getting beneath what we have inherited. But I also like
Speaker 1: to think of this as a way of recognizing maybe
Speaker 1: the most important thing of all, you know, to begin with,
Speaker 1: is to at least know the history. I mean, you
Speaker 1: cannot fix what you don't know. So I would say
Speaker 1: my first wish would be for people to learn the history.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the countries, one of the societies
Speaker 1: that I looked at with this book was Germany. What
Speaker 1: had that country done um in the intervening years after
Speaker 1: the war? And it turns out that they have spent
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of energy to educate the population. You know,
Speaker 1: school children begin learning about the history from as early
Speaker 1: as they can begin to comprehend it. There's a massive,
Speaker 1: massive structure in the middle of Berlin, a major world city.
Speaker 1: It takes up several of all fields of space. It
Speaker 1: is the memorial to those who Paris in the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: and you know it's there, but it has no signage
Speaker 1: because the people get they know the history, they learned
Speaker 1: the history. And I think that that's why I would
Speaker 1: suggest that that would be the first place to start,
Speaker 1: like actually read the instruction manual for whatever it is,
Speaker 1: you just have taken possession of That's what history is.
Speaker 1: As the owner of an old house, I truly relate
Speaker 1: to that metaphor. But when you write about Nazi Germany,
Speaker 1: I think it's shocking to most American readers that you
Speaker 1: go into the history, which very tragically points out how
Speaker 1: those around Hitler looked to Jim Crow America for the
Speaker 1: kinds of laws that were used to enforce cast distinctions
Speaker 1: in every aspect of life. It is just it's shocking
Speaker 1: that German eugenicists were in dialogue, constant dialogue with American
Speaker 1: eugenicis and the years leading up to the Third Roich
Speaker 1: and it's just absolutely stunned to learn that. And then
Speaker 1: it turned out that American eugenesis were writing these books
Speaker 1: that were huge bestsellers in Nazi Germany, and we're so
Speaker 1: popular with the Nazis that they incorporated the books written
Speaker 1: by American eugenicists into their own curriculum for their children.
Speaker 1: And then, of course the Nazis did not need anyone
Speaker 1: to teach them how to hate at all. They did
Speaker 1: not need that. But they did send researchers to the
Speaker 1: United States to study how America have the United States
Speaker 1: had managed to subjugate African Americans. They looked at those
Speaker 1: anti missaggenation laws and I mentioned earlier, Uh, they look
Speaker 1: at the ways that the United States had managed to
Speaker 1: define who was white, and who was black, and who
Speaker 1: was Chinese. They were fascinated with the fractions that were
Speaker 1: assigned to an individual to determine what their quote unquote
Speaker 1: race was, and they studied that as they were formulating
Speaker 1: what would ultimately become the Nuremberg Loss. I imagine you
Speaker 1: had some dark moments when you were writing this book,
Speaker 1: because it's so powerful to come to grips with what
Speaker 1: led to this system that we are living in. But
Speaker 1: at the end of your book, to me anyway, you
Speaker 1: sound a very hopeful note and I just wanted to
Speaker 1: read a little bit of truly the very end of
Speaker 1: your book is about because I found myself tearing up.
Speaker 1: You know, you read this book and it's hard going.
Speaker 1: I mean there were times when I had to put
Speaker 1: it down, you know, take a deep breath or two,
Speaker 1: and then pick it back up. But I want our
Speaker 1: listeners to hear what you say as you end this book.
Speaker 1: In a world without cast, being male or female, light
Speaker 1: or dark, immigrant or native born would have no bearing
Speaker 1: on what anyone was perceived as being capable of. A
Speaker 1: world without cast would set everyone free. Oh to read
Speaker 1: that at the end, even now, I'm getting all emotional
Speaker 1: about it. Um, So I want to give you the
Speaker 1: you know, the last however, many words to talk about
Speaker 1: whether you're hopeful and what makes you hopeful if you
Speaker 1: are well. I wouldn't have written the book if I
Speaker 1: wasn't hopeful, you know. I wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: point the way to what was holding us back so
Speaker 1: that we could actually have a reason for that hope.
Speaker 1: And you know, to your point of the last lines
Speaker 1: of the book, I'm kind of haunted by all that
Speaker 1: our species has lost as a result of these false
Speaker 1: divisions of cast. And I think about how on all
Speaker 1: those sugar plantations and cotton fields and tobacco fields were
Speaker 1: opera singers and jazz musicians and playwrights and novelists and
Speaker 1: lawyers and accountants, and all kinds of people who never
Speaker 1: ever had the chance to be what they could have
Speaker 1: been or should have been in their hearts. You think
Speaker 1: about how slavery went on for so long, two and
Speaker 1: forty six years. He had twelve generations of people held
Speaker 1: back in a fixed place, unable to be who they
Speaker 1: actually were inside, followed by another nearly one hundred years
Speaker 1: of Jim crofmal segregation. And so I think about all
Speaker 1: that was lost for them, of course, the prime targets
Speaker 1: of the Cassistan, but also for the rest of our society.
Speaker 1: Where would we be if, instead of the of holding
Speaker 1: back an entire group of people down for so long,
Speaker 1: if people have been permitted to live out their lives
Speaker 1: and to pursue the strengths that they had innately, as
Speaker 1: opposed to the false assignments roles that are forced upon
Speaker 1: a person based upon in our society, the lineage that's
Speaker 1: associated with what we call race, where would we be
Speaker 1: as a society? And I wrote this so that we
Speaker 1: would would finally recognize the depth of what we're facing,
Speaker 1: so that we can begin the hard work of moving
Speaker 1: forward and making the creed that our country stands for,
Speaker 1: make it real, Make it real for every one of us.
Speaker 1: Isabel Wilkerson. I just hope that your strong sense of
Speaker 1: what's possible can be embraced by our larger society. Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining me today. I wish you the very best,
Speaker 1: stay safe and healthy as we go through the end
Speaker 1: of this pandemic. Do you as well? Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. Isabel Wilkerson's most recent book is called Cast,
Speaker 1: the Origins of Our Discontents, and I have to say
Speaker 1: you will be changed if you read Cast. I first
Speaker 1: met Reshma so Johnny years ago. I had met her
Speaker 1: around New York as a bright young woman, first generation American,
Speaker 1: who was interested in politics and public service. And I
Speaker 1: have watched her career as she has created this extraordinary organization,
Speaker 1: Girls Who Code, an educational nonprofit that introduces young girls
Speaker 1: to coding and computer science. Almost ten years later, Girls
Speaker 1: who Code has reached more than three hundred thousand girls
Speaker 1: throughout the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In two six,
Speaker 1: Reshma gave a Ted talk titled Brave Not Perfect about
Speaker 1: changing the way we raise and treat girls, and boy,
Speaker 1: that talk really struck a chord with me. These days,
Speaker 1: Reshma is focused on how the pandemic has cast a
Speaker 1: bright light on gender inequities that put women, especially mothers,
Speaker 1: at a disadvantage. Rushma lives in New York City with
Speaker 1: her husband, The Hall, and their two sons, six year
Speaker 1: old Sean and Si, who was born during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: It is so great to see you, Rushmat, and I
Speaker 1: have to ask, first of all, how are you and
Speaker 1: your family doing as we enter, you know, the second
Speaker 1: year of the pandemic. We're doing great, as great as
Speaker 1: you could be. I mean, I definitely feel like I'm
Speaker 1: reaching the point where I'm about to lose my mind,
Speaker 1: but you know, we're hanging in there and we're just
Speaker 1: grateful for our health. Amen to that. I'm so happy
Speaker 1: to hear it. You know, you had a powerful Ted
Speaker 1: talk a few years ago with a phrase that has
Speaker 1: become something of a mantra for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Brave not perfect. What does that mean to you? Starts
Speaker 1: when we're really young. If you like, take five minutes
Speaker 1: and you sit in any playground in America, you'll see
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm talking about. You know, we tell our
Speaker 1: boys to climb to the top of the monkey bars
Speaker 1: and just jump head first. But with our girls, it's like,
Speaker 1: be careful, honey, don't swing too high. Did you take
Speaker 1: that toy away from her? Give it back? And it
Speaker 1: begins with this need to protect them from physical harm,
Speaker 1: and then it extends to emotional harm. And it's different
Speaker 1: with our boys. You know, my son Sean a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, was afraid of the dark. So I
Speaker 1: go to BUYE Bye Baby, I get the nightlight, plug
Speaker 1: in the night light to go to bed. Two minutes
Speaker 1: later the hall. My husband would come up the stairs
Speaker 1: and you take out the nightlight and Seawan would scream.
Speaker 1: So we would do this for a week and finally
Speaker 1: I said, to know, what's your problem. You know, he's
Speaker 1: afraid of the dark. And my husband, my feminist husband,
Speaker 1: looks at me and says, we got to toughen him up. Ah,
Speaker 1: And I said, no, home, if Sean was a girl,
Speaker 1: would you let her have the nightlight? And to its credit,
Speaker 1: he admitted it. He's like, you're right, I would. So
Speaker 1: it's like not conscious, but it has severe implication. This
Speaker 1: you know, this perfection is because what happens is we
Speaker 1: get addicted to perfection. That's a great phrase. We draw
Speaker 1: within the lines, right, We stick in the jobs that
Speaker 1: were good at because we don't want to feel failure
Speaker 1: and rejection. And so that sense of perfection affects every
Speaker 1: aspect of our life. You know. You see it in college,
Speaker 1: where when young women get to be in an economics major,
Speaker 1: they drop out, whereas better like I got a d
Speaker 1: I'm running for president, right, completely different ramifications. You see
Speaker 1: it in mental health, you know, women suffer from anxiety
Speaker 1: and depression at twice the rate of men. And then
Speaker 1: you see it in leadership, where women won't apply for
Speaker 1: a job unless they meet a hundred percent of the qualifications,
Speaker 1: whereas for men. It's so you know, my point is
Speaker 1: is like, if we're waiting to be perfect to lead,
Speaker 1: we'll never close the leadership gap. That's exactly right. I
Speaker 1: think the antidote to perfectionism is bravery. I think bravery
Speaker 1: cures it all. And I don't even mean bravery in
Speaker 1: the big moments of you know me too, or even
Speaker 1: running for Congress. I mean bravery in the small moments
Speaker 1: when you raise your hand and you don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what you want to say, but you want to take
Speaker 1: up space, or when someone bumps into you in the street.
Speaker 1: You don't immediately say I'm sorry. I think when you
Speaker 1: build up bravery and all of those small moments, when
Speaker 1: that big moment comes, you're ready. Well, I think that's
Speaker 1: a perfect segue into the amazing work that you've done
Speaker 1: for the last ten years, because you really were animated
Speaker 1: by your understanding of the differences that girls and boys
Speaker 1: faced in technology. When did you first realize that was
Speaker 1: a problem. So I was I'm a weird person to
Speaker 1: have started a movement to teach girls to code, because
Speaker 1: I wasn't a coder. I would have been that that
Speaker 1: woman and that young woman who said to you, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not good at math and science. But in I
Speaker 1: was running for Congress, and as you know, as part
Speaker 1: of that, you go into schools and visit communities, and
Speaker 1: I remember seeing like lines and lines and lines of
Speaker 1: boys who are learning how to code or learning how
Speaker 1: you know, to do robotics. And I thought to myself, like,
Speaker 1: that's strange, Like where are the girls. And I knew
Speaker 1: that like we had Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, these
Speaker 1: companies were blowing up. I knew the consumer base was female,
Speaker 1: but all the founders were men. I also knew as
Speaker 1: the daughter of refugees that like education and job, opportunity
Speaker 1: is everything, and that when I heard you can make
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty dollars as a software programmer and
Speaker 1: there were no women and no women of color, I
Speaker 1: was like, this is sometimes not right. And so when
Speaker 1: I lost my race for Congress, I knew that I wasn't,
Speaker 1: you know, going to go back to the private center.
Speaker 1: That I wanted to make a difference. And I said,
Speaker 1: you know, of all the things that I saw on
Speaker 1: the campaign trail, what's the one thing that I kept
Speaker 1: thinking about because it didn't make sense, and it was
Speaker 1: girls and coding. So I spent about a year and
Speaker 1: a half just talking to everybody knew and just understanding, like,
Speaker 1: why aren't there women at tech? What happened? When did
Speaker 1: it start? You know? And I learned that the world's
Speaker 1: first programmer was a woman in a lovelace that's right
Speaker 1: back in the early nineteenth century, right, and that you
Speaker 1: had all of these women, you know, that had built
Speaker 1: the foundation. But then around the nineteen eighties, you know,
Speaker 1: when computer science started becoming lucrative, when coding started being cool,
Speaker 1: it was no longer seen as secretarial right, because in
Speaker 1: hidden figures you saw all those women. You saw the
Speaker 1: room full of white women, the room full of black
Speaker 1: women who were in effect coding, and it was considered,
Speaker 1: you know, a kind of lesser job. Absolutely, and that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we've seen this happen in in
Speaker 1: the law and other professions, was that it became lucrative,
Speaker 1: it became prestigious, it became respected, and then you started
Speaker 1: seeing these images of the Barbie doll that says I
Speaker 1: hate mathelitical shopping instead, or weird science or revenge of
Speaker 1: the Nerds were suddenly built this product type that what
Speaker 1: a computer scientist was was a dude sitting in a
Speaker 1: basement somewhere drinking a red bull. And little girls looked
Speaker 1: at that image and they said, well, that's not me, because,
Speaker 1: as you know, you cannot be what you cannot see.
Speaker 1: And so in the eighties and the nineties you just
Speaker 1: started seeing this massive decline. And you'll talk to women
Speaker 1: who were majoring in computer science in nineteen eighties and
Speaker 1: they were like, it was all of a sudden, we
Speaker 1: went from the women in my engineering class to less
Speaker 1: than So then you decided to do something about it,
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons why I love talking
Speaker 1: with you because you see a problem, you want to
Speaker 1: try to figure out how to fix it. And you
Speaker 1: began Girls who Code. Talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: origin story of Girls who Code. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: I take about a year trying to understand. And it
Speaker 1: felt like because we had pushed all these women out,
Speaker 1: the solution at that moment was to put more young
Speaker 1: women in it. So to build a pipeline. You know,
Speaker 1: less one out of ten high schools offered computer science.
Speaker 1: It wasn't really being offered in middle school. So if
Speaker 1: felt like the right intervention was to build a program
Speaker 1: over the summer because as you know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: get new curriculum into the school day, and to teach
Speaker 1: young women of code, you know, in the hopes that
Speaker 1: they would go on to major minor and computer science
Speaker 1: and then go into the field. And you know, again
Speaker 1: being the daughter of refugees, I also saw in this
Speaker 1: pipeline problem there were no black and Latina women, and
Speaker 1: so to build the pipeline, I wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that half of those women were under the poverty line,
Speaker 1: that half of those women were black and Latina. And
Speaker 1: so in two thousand and twelve, I'm going to just
Speaker 1: start a pilot program. I asked my friend Brian O'Kelly
Speaker 1: if I could borrow his conference room in his office
Speaker 1: because he had plenty of space. The first year, I
Speaker 1: gave all the girls like fifty dollars and pizza every
Speaker 1: day because I was like, there's no way that they're
Speaker 1: gonna last. But like I literally, like an organizer, hand
Speaker 1: picked my first twenty girls, found some brilliant teachers to
Speaker 1: help me design a curriculum, and it was magical. And
Speaker 1: I remember one week I had invited my friends from
Speaker 1: the New York Immigration Coalition. The task that I asked
Speaker 1: her to come talk to my students was if you
Speaker 1: could build anything with technology to help undocumented students, what
Speaker 1: would you build. I remember sitting there looking around that
Speaker 1: room and watching these young women come up with these
Speaker 1: incredible ideas. I remember saying to myself, you know what,
Speaker 1: these girls are going to be the change makers. That's
Speaker 1: when it clicked for me that this wasn't just about coding.
Speaker 1: This was about building a generation of young women to
Speaker 1: solve the problems of today and tomorrow and to be brave,
Speaker 1: and to be brave absolutely and in fact many of
Speaker 1: the girls who code alumni have gone on to do
Speaker 1: some really incredible things themselves, and tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about you know, just a couple of stories about
Speaker 1: the alumni. There's so so many. I mean, one of
Speaker 1: our first students, you know, built an algorithm to help
Speaker 1: detect whether a cancer is benign or malignant corus. She
Speaker 1: went on to major in computer science at Michigan, and
Speaker 1: another student, Anastasia, got the youngest patent at the University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania. She early her whole life experienced school shootings,
Speaker 1: and so that was the thing as a young woman
Speaker 1: that she kept thinking about the problem that she wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out how to solve. And so she built
Speaker 1: this microchip when she was a freshman in college, so
Speaker 1: that you could put it into a gun, so when
Speaker 1: a gun was in an area like a school, it
Speaker 1: would immediately alert the police. One of my students most
Speaker 1: recently started printing three D equipment for PPE for doctors
Speaker 1: here in New York during COVID. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: I could go on and on, but has it changed
Speaker 1: tech Because you created a pipeline, you have filled it
Speaker 1: with these amazing young women who have gotten patents, who
Speaker 1: have created inventions who have changed lives themselves. Are the
Speaker 1: technology companies, in your opinion, more welcoming to women, especially
Speaker 1: women of color or not. Well, here's the first thing
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of. Remember we started talking about basically
Speaker 1: pretty much ten years ago. If you looked into the
Speaker 1: computer and engineering departments at any university, it would have
Speaker 1: been like lean eighteen. The number now is at like
Speaker 1: Stanford car Oh yeah, it's at the M I. T
Speaker 1: s and the Stanfords, and it's almost at like, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty percent at at Harvard. So it's moved up significantly.
Speaker 1: So now I I thought to myself, well, great, like
Speaker 1: we built the pipeline, so Google, Facebook, Microsoft, all the
Speaker 1: places that you hire from, so there shouldn't be a
Speaker 1: problem now, guess not. So that was a big I like, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's not a pipeline problem. It is a gender problem.
Speaker 1: It is a raised problem. It's not about talent. You
Speaker 1: have a broken hiring system. The problem is as the
Speaker 1: engineers hold so much power, and we just can't assume
Speaker 1: that people want to give up power easily, or that
Speaker 1: they want to change and they want to have you know,
Speaker 1: real sexual harassment training or real you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: changing the way they interact with women so they don't
Speaker 1: feel they have microggressions are straight out racism and sexism.
Speaker 1: So that is the next step, and we were starting
Speaker 1: to do that work, and then COVID nineteen happened. I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to that. COVID nineteen happened, and one
Speaker 1: of the things that it did was reveal what a
Speaker 1: huge digital divide still existed in our country and how
Speaker 1: disadvantage so many people were, particularly kids trying to be
Speaker 1: educated remotely, and as you know so well being the
Speaker 1: mom of a young son in the New York public schools,
Speaker 1: I mean, trying to help your son keep learning is
Speaker 1: a full time job, but you and your husband are
Speaker 1: well equipped to try to do it. But the divide
Speaker 1: with so many families is just creating a huge amount
Speaker 1: of inequity, isn't it. Absolutely It's an impossible balancing act.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the women in frontline jobs, essential
Speaker 1: worker jobs, lower paid jobs, they were let go and
Speaker 1: they had no savings to fall back on. They had
Speaker 1: no real rescue safety net for them. So you've been
Speaker 1: thinking a lot about that, and how would you describe
Speaker 1: what women in this time of COVID in our country
Speaker 1: are confronting. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Look, I you know,
Speaker 1: I found myself at the beginning is epidemic with a newborn,
Speaker 1: a five year old, running a women in girls organization.
Speaker 1: As you know, when global pandemics hit, the first budgets
Speaker 1: to be cut our ours. And I remember I'd gotten COVID.
Speaker 1: I barely registered because I was working sixteen hours a
Speaker 1: day and I'm one of the lucky ones. I had help.
Speaker 1: I was able to work from home. But when I
Speaker 1: looked on my zoom screen, every woman I knew was
Speaker 1: just exhausted. And I think in the beginning of the
Speaker 1: pandemic we were grinning and burying it because we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: this will end. And then I think when September happened
Speaker 1: and the schools didn't open, we weren't even asked, like
Speaker 1: you know, when they figured out the cost of the
Speaker 1: HVAC equipment and you know, teacher safety, no one said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: if we're going to do this remote, who's going to
Speaker 1: log them on at nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock
Speaker 1: and twelve o'clock. And it was this nine fifties sensibility
Speaker 1: that someone was going to do it, and that someone
Speaker 1: was mobs, and especially for single moms, that is just untenable,
Speaker 1: and nobody gave it a thought. And so I started really,
Speaker 1: you know, advocating on this and thinking about this because
Speaker 1: I was also seeing this happen in the tech companies
Speaker 1: that I was talking to, because I just saw women
Speaker 1: leaving and leaving and leaving and leaving and leaving. And
Speaker 1: what scared me was that when I looked at the numbers, right,
Speaker 1: our labor market participation is where it was night nine,
Speaker 1: So we had lost thirty years of progress in nine months.
Speaker 1: That's frightening. And the recent jobs reports showed that, you know,
Speaker 1: seven thousand women actually gained jobs that didn't have children,
Speaker 1: So this was really affecting women who had children. One
Speaker 1: because of the schools, right, and as you've talked about before,
Speaker 1: or the kind of instability are they open, are they closed?
Speaker 1: How do I manage daycare? How do I manage childcare?
Speaker 1: And the fact that we have a broken childcare system
Speaker 1: like exacerbated that sense of uncertainty. And I think the
Speaker 1: second thing is many women were in jobs that weren't
Speaker 1: pandemic proof retail, education, healthcare, Many of these jobs weren't
Speaker 1: coming back. And so for so many low income women
Speaker 1: who are in these jobs that are the breadwinners, right
Speaker 1: the vast them are the breadwinners of their family. When
Speaker 1: they lose their job, the entire family suffers. You looked
Speaker 1: at all of this and you thought about the consequences
Speaker 1: of what has happened to women during the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: you've come up with some very creative ideas. And I
Speaker 1: want to applaud you for you know, thinking broadly and
Speaker 1: systemically about what the pandemic has revealed and what should
Speaker 1: be done going forward, and you came up with an
Speaker 1: idea for what you call a martial plan for moms.
Speaker 1: What is that? So mar plan for moms is a
Speaker 1: three sixty plan you know that builds motherhood back better.
Speaker 1: And some of the tenants of those plans is one,
Speaker 1: you know, monthly short term payments for mothers, because what
Speaker 1: we've seen in this pandemic is like we're not all
Speaker 1: going through the same thing. Some might need childcare, you know,
Speaker 1: some might actually need money for food, and especially when
Speaker 1: you don't have time, because mothers don't have time, it's like,
Speaker 1: just give me resources so I can figure this out.
Speaker 1: The second thing is, you know, paid leave and you
Speaker 1: know affordable daycare. As you know, and we have so
Speaker 1: many of our friends who have been working on this
Speaker 1: for for so long. You know, our childcare system is
Speaker 1: just broken, totally broken. We have to make childcare affordable,
Speaker 1: you know, available for every single family, because we are
Speaker 1: one of the only nations that don't provide these services
Speaker 1: for parents. Well, you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: your campaign for the Martial Plan for Moms really reminded
Speaker 1: me of, because I've been, as you know, advocating for
Speaker 1: paid family leave and for quality, affordable childcare and other
Speaker 1: support systems for parents. But we know, particularly from others,
Speaker 1: is that this has always been an economic issue, and
Speaker 1: it was always treated either as quote, a family issue
Speaker 1: or a woman's issue. But just the other day, the
Speaker 1: current chairman of the Federal Reserve, Chairman Powell, said, we
Speaker 1: need to do something about takecare and childcare. I nearly
Speaker 1: fell off my chair because I held the first White
Speaker 1: House conference on childcare and I called up then Treasury
Speaker 1: Secretary Bob Rubin and asked him to open the conference.
Speaker 1: He says, well, I don't know anything about childcare, I said,
Speaker 1: but you do know about the economy, and if you
Speaker 1: don't have childcare, you're not going to grow the economy.
Speaker 1: So finally the linkage is beginning to be understood. But
Speaker 1: we still face a lot of blowback. And you've you've
Speaker 1: seen that as you've been out advocating, you've been writing articles,
Speaker 1: you've been running full page ads, you've been doing interviews.
Speaker 1: You know, what are some of the pushback that you're
Speaker 1: getting over this idea. I think the first blowback is
Speaker 1: motherhood is a choice. You chose this, Why are you
Speaker 1: asking the government for help? We're supposed to be martyrs.
Speaker 1: And I think this argument about motherhood is a choice
Speaker 1: needs to be debunked, you know, once and for all.
Speaker 1: I think on the left too, it's complicated. I've gotten
Speaker 1: some pushback and you know, framing it around motherhood and
Speaker 1: why not parents and why not caregivers? And look, when
Speaker 1: I started Girls with Code, people said, well, shouldn't all
Speaker 1: kids learn how to code? And I said, yes, but
Speaker 1: the gender disparity is for girls. And if you don't
Speaker 1: name it, if you don't focus on it, you'll never
Speaker 1: fix it. And I don't think ten years later I
Speaker 1: would be able to say that you were almost at
Speaker 1: fifty in computer science classes. If I had called it
Speaker 1: kids for code, I agree with that. Similarly, here I'm
Speaker 1: putting the focus on mother's focus, not exclusion, because what
Speaker 1: we do for mothers will benefit everybody, because I'm not
Speaker 1: waiting twenty years, thirty years to get back to where
Speaker 1: we were twelve months ago. And it really is about
Speaker 1: the way treat mothers, I e. Parents, you know in
Speaker 1: the society that really needs to be examined and looked at.
Speaker 1: And I also think we have an opportunity we need
Speaker 1: to tap into that populous mom rage. Every mom I
Speaker 1: knowe is just about done. And as someone who's been
Speaker 1: fighting for you know, daycare, childcare and paid leaf your
Speaker 1: whole life, you didn't see moms marching from childcare, marching
Speaker 1: for paid leaf. You know what I think now we can.
Speaker 1: I agree with you. Let's do it. The time and
Speaker 1: the circumstances and the issues and the needs all seem
Speaker 1: to converge now. And what you're trying to do, and
Speaker 1: I really applaud you for this, Reshima, is you're trying
Speaker 1: to create a movement. You're trying to build on the
Speaker 1: work that so many others have done. And more power
Speaker 1: to all of us who have been on the front
Speaker 1: lines advocating and arguing for these changes. But this pandemic,
Speaker 1: which has been so painful and hard on so many,
Speaker 1: does give us an opportunity, and shame on us if
Speaker 1: we don't use that opportunity to try to create a
Speaker 1: political movement. I agree, and I think it's a global movement.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was teased like, you can't even
Speaker 1: call our unpaid labor unseen because our partner saw exactly
Speaker 1: what we're doing and it still didn't make a difference.
Speaker 1: And that just shows you that it's deeper. And it's
Speaker 1: just it's in my family room, it's in Bombay, it's
Speaker 1: in Karachi. Every single family is having, every single mother,
Speaker 1: every single woman is having this conversation right now. Well,
Speaker 1: you are an excellent person to try to lead and
Speaker 1: focus that conversation so that we can move towards action.
Speaker 1: Reshma and I have loved our conversation and I can't
Speaker 1: wait to see what you do next. Thank you. Reshma
Speaker 1: is the author of Brave Not Perfect, and you can
Speaker 1: keep up with her on social media at Reshma Sa
Speaker 1: Johnny that's r E S H M A s A
Speaker 1: U j A N I at thirty years old, My
Speaker 1: next guest is already making his mark on Pennsylvania politics.
Speaker 1: He got his start as an eleven year old serving
Speaker 1: as a junior block captain in his neighborhood in North Philly.
Speaker 1: I met Malcolm Kenyatta during my sixteen campaign when he
Speaker 1: was a wonderful supporter of mine in Philadelphia. He would
Speaker 1: introduce me at events, talk to anybody who uh he
Speaker 1: could button hole, and I saw a charisma and capacity
Speaker 1: for communicating in him that I found incredibly impressive. Back
Speaker 1: in Malcolm Kenyatta was elected state representative for Pennsylvania's one
Speaker 1: undered an eighty first district, becoming the first lgbt Q
Speaker 1: person of color ever to serve in the state Assembly.
Speaker 1: Ever since then, he's been working hard on raising the
Speaker 1: minimum wage, protecting workers rights, increasing access to mental healthcare,
Speaker 1: reducing gun violence, and strengthening our digital infrastructure. And Malcolm
Speaker 1: has big plans for two First of all, he'll be
Speaker 1: marrying his fiancee, Dr. Matt Miller, and second he's running
Speaker 1: for the United States Senate. Well, I am delighted to
Speaker 1: welcome you to this podcast. Malcolm. It's been a long
Speaker 1: time since I've gotten to see you in person. And
Speaker 1: a lot has happened, uh since then, But I want
Speaker 1: to start with congratulations on your engagement. And your proposal
Speaker 1: went viral on social media. You know, tell to what happened.
Speaker 1: So you know what it Everything worked out. There's this
Speaker 1: beautiful Japanese garden in here in Philly. And the whole
Speaker 1: idea of it was that Matt was supposed to come
Speaker 1: take pictures of me because my birthday is at the
Speaker 1: end of July, and so I said, you come take
Speaker 1: some pictures of me. And so he's snapping away and
Speaker 1: he's taking these pictures of me, and I get down
Speaker 1: on one knee and he's like, He's like, that's not opposed.
Speaker 1: You have to get out. What are you doing? Well?
Speaker 1: You made a lot of people happy and and that's
Speaker 1: been kind of a pattern for you, my friend. What
Speaker 1: gave you the confidence and the inspiration to run for
Speaker 1: office in the community where you had grown up? Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: you know, I grew up in a very working, poor family.
Speaker 1: My parents divorce and I was very young. My dad
Speaker 1: was a social worker, my mom was a home health
Speaker 1: care aid and you know, I out of taste very
Speaker 1: early of how upside down this economy is for working people.
Speaker 1: My mom, you know, at the being at her company
Speaker 1: years and years and years. I think the highest sage
Speaker 1: she ever got twelve fifty. I mean, how unfair for
Speaker 1: this woman who I saw working overtime, triple time all
Speaker 1: the time, and still at the end of the year
Speaker 1: we were barely, you know, scraping by. I moved four
Speaker 1: or five different times as a kid. I got my
Speaker 1: first gig at the age of twelve, washing dishes at
Speaker 1: a vegan soul food restaurant. If you believe it's like
Speaker 1: a contradiction, that's right. So you can tell President Clinton
Speaker 1: we have some vegan soulfa. He's coming. He's on the
Speaker 1: train right now. And you know the story, really you
Speaker 1: can draw a direct line from this story that I'll
Speaker 1: tell briefly to me running now for the United States Senate.
Speaker 1: I was eleven years old and we're living on this
Speaker 1: block in my district called Woodstock Street. And so I
Speaker 1: came home day and I'm just like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: in all rage, complaining about the stuff on the block,
Speaker 1: and I'm like mom and this and that blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and my mom, you know, without skipping a beat, she said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, boy, if you care so much, why don't
Speaker 1: you go do something about And I said, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: And so I ran for Junior Black Captain. And it
Speaker 1: was the first thing I ever did to get typically
Speaker 1: engaged at the age of eleven. I want everybody listening
Speaker 1: to tell some young person that story, because you know,
Speaker 1: it does take that initiative. And your mom gave you
Speaker 1: the push. But you went out the door and got
Speaker 1: to work. And I know it hasn't always been easy.
Speaker 1: You responded so gracefully to the homophobia displayed by your
Speaker 1: opponent's supporters when you ran. Describe what happened and how
Speaker 1: you figured out how to deal with what we're very
Speaker 1: personal attacks. Yeah, you know, uh, I laugh a lot um,
Speaker 1: you know something about having a good laugh. It really
Speaker 1: keeps me ground it because it gave me a sense
Speaker 1: that if they're spending time, you know, putting out these
Speaker 1: homophobic little flyers and riding around. One of my opponents
Speaker 1: brothers literally got a car with a megaphone and was
Speaker 1: standing outside the poles reminding people that I was. I
Speaker 1: was like I told everybody from the beginning, but okay,
Speaker 1: I was like, that is true, that is that good.
Speaker 1: That's true. You know. It gave me a sense that
Speaker 1: one they didn't have ideas for a district like mine,
Speaker 1: where I represent the third poorest district in the Commonwealth
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania. People desperately need government to do something, and
Speaker 1: I don't think folks have to look like me or
Speaker 1: love like me to know that I will fight for them.
Speaker 1: And that is what people want from their elected officials,
Speaker 1: folks who go in, who work with folks where they
Speaker 1: can um. I'm also not a safe harbor for nonsense,
Speaker 1: and so I call out my Republican colleagues when they're
Speaker 1: talking nonsense. But I'm also committed to getting things done
Speaker 1: because when you grow up like I did, where you're
Speaker 1: doing that cha cha dance of poverty and maybe you'll
Speaker 1: pay the lights this month, you'll pay the electric next month.
Speaker 1: When I was running for State rep. My heat was
Speaker 1: turned off. I have these little space heaters that were
Speaker 1: eating my home. Praying that no wire went off caused
Speaker 1: the big caused the big fuss. But I think ultimately
Speaker 1: we need people who understand what it feels like when
Speaker 1: government doesn't work to be there when big decisions are
Speaker 1: being made well, and I love the fact that you
Speaker 1: got through it, you won, and you won by a
Speaker 1: resounding majority. This wasn't a squeaker, this was a landslide.
Speaker 1: So how does it feel to be changing really the
Speaker 1: paradigm of what an elected official looks like? And have
Speaker 1: you ever had the experience now that you're in the
Speaker 1: legislature of realizing at some moment, boy, it's really good
Speaker 1: that I'm in this room right now because I'm the
Speaker 1: only one who can speak to what's actually going on here.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm thinking about when the Republicans who
Speaker 1: have really they don't they don't like elections anymore. I
Speaker 1: seem to be anti anti election. And so I'm sitting
Speaker 1: on the Secretary of the State Government Committee. One of
Speaker 1: the most important responsibilities is it oversees elections laws in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: And the former chairman who has retired, introduced this uh
Speaker 1: Election Integrity Committee, this resolution which would have empowered um
Speaker 1: and really bastardize our subpoena power to subpoena ballots, to
Speaker 1: impound voting machines, and to physically compel elections officials to
Speaker 1: come before these sham gearings as the election was happening,
Speaker 1: mind you, And so I certainly called that out. It
Speaker 1: went viral. I talked about it. I talked about how
Speaker 1: how wrong that was, how disgraceful it was, and I
Speaker 1: looked around that room. I'm the only person of color
Speaker 1: in that room, including staff, including reporters and doing members,
Speaker 1: the only person in that room. And I stand on
Speaker 1: the shoulders of my grandfather Mohammed Kanyado, is a civil
Speaker 1: rights leader, and so many others who fought and bled
Speaker 1: and died for the right to vote. And so this
Speaker 1: idea that in this moment, I was just going to
Speaker 1: be a no vote and just quietly let it happen.
Speaker 1: And they had all the votes to pass it, and
Speaker 1: they passed it. But we were able to block it
Speaker 1: because I brought those same tools that I learned as
Speaker 1: a junior Black captain as a community organizer, of be
Speaker 1: clear with the facts and engage everybody you can. And
Speaker 1: folks in the middle of a pandemic and the cold
Speaker 1: were standing out in front of the leader's offices demanding
Speaker 1: that they that they stopped this, and we were able
Speaker 1: to get them to pull back and to not do it.
Speaker 1: And it's a great relief because we know, seeing their
Speaker 1: behavior after the election, that they would have utilized those
Speaker 1: tools had they been available, And so there are often
Speaker 1: moments like that where I wreck ignized the power of
Speaker 1: being in the room and not just being there to
Speaker 1: be ornamental, but of actually speaking up. But when young people,
Speaker 1: particularly see somebody who's had the life that I had
Speaker 1: now being a serious candidate for the United States Senate,
Speaker 1: I hope that they look and don't say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: look what Malcolm has done. But my hope is that
Speaker 1: they look and say, oh my god, look what I
Speaker 1: can do. Difficult to be what you can't see. That
Speaker 1: is music to my ears, because you really are part
Speaker 1: of a rising generation of young people who are changing
Speaker 1: the face of politics in our country. And I'm so
Speaker 1: proud that Onward Together, the organization I started after the
Speaker 1: election has worked so closely with Run for Something, an
Speaker 1: organization started by two members of my campaign family to
Speaker 1: help more young people like yourself run for office. And
Speaker 1: making the leap from being oh, a concerned citizen to
Speaker 1: somebody who runs for office is particularly daunting. I probably
Speaker 1: get asked that question more than any other, like, well,
Speaker 1: how do you do it? How do you prepare yourself?
Speaker 1: How do you deal with the criticism and One of
Speaker 1: the reasons I support groups like Run for Something is
Speaker 1: because they are trying to help individuals answer those questions
Speaker 1: for themselves so that they can run for something. How
Speaker 1: do you talk to young people and how do you
Speaker 1: encourage them to maybe take the steps to prepare to run.
Speaker 1: So I give you know, simple sort of in some ways,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's kind of intuitive, but really
Speaker 1: simple advice that says, first of all, you just have
Speaker 1: to run, knowing that there will be these challenges, knowing
Speaker 1: that it will be difficult. You have to accept all
Speaker 1: of that and just do it because you'll be shocked
Speaker 1: by the folks who will step up to support you.
Speaker 1: And so that's the first thing I say. The second
Speaker 1: thing I say is I think a big part of
Speaker 1: the reason that a lot of folks don't want to run,
Speaker 1: it's because they asked this question, Oh my gosh, am
Speaker 1: I qualified enough to do with? There are these other
Speaker 1: people who have been in office longer or whatever, And
Speaker 1: I tell them, listen, I work in this building, like
Speaker 1: not these are not always the brightest, These are not
Speaker 1: always the brightests. Like I promise you you you can,
Speaker 1: you can do it. And then the final thing I
Speaker 1: think that has to happen is we have to when
Speaker 1: we talk about what qualifications look like, start looking to
Speaker 1: a broader set of skills, because so often right now,
Speaker 1: what we say when we say somebody qualified, the question
Speaker 1: is how many membership cards do they have to a
Speaker 1: lot of the elite institutions that don't want anything to change,
Speaker 1: But there is a lived experience that is deeply valuable,
Speaker 1: not just from an aesthetic symbolic perspective, but the stories
Speaker 1: that I told these things are important to policy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we eat allies. It's great when people say, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't have I didn't have that experience,
Speaker 1: but I care and I'm gonna step up. But we
Speaker 1: then also have to actually listen to the people who've
Speaker 1: been there, who've been there, who've dealt with it, And
Speaker 1: that is something you know. When I was making the
Speaker 1: pretty big decision to run for the United States Senate,
Speaker 1: that was something that was key for me because there
Speaker 1: are very few people who know what I know about
Speaker 1: what it means when we don't address the systemic and
Speaker 1: persistent issues that keep folks up at night. And we've
Speaker 1: seen the commercials so many times where folks are fumbling
Speaker 1: through the bills and talking about how hard it is,
Speaker 1: and then some person walks in front and says, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fix all your problems. How about we actually
Speaker 1: listen to the person who's at that table. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Well, my impression from knowing you and then
Speaker 1: watching your campaigns is that you are so rooted in
Speaker 1: your neighborhood. As I said, you grew up in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood in North Philly that you now represent in the
Speaker 1: State Assembly, and you've been serving that community since you
Speaker 1: were eleven years old. So what makes this neighborhood so
Speaker 1: special to you now that you are literally representing all
Speaker 1: of it? You know, every day I walk into the
Speaker 1: House Chamber and you know, no offense to the forty
Speaker 1: nine other state houses a state sentence, But I think
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania is by far the most beautiful chamber. It's our
Speaker 1: Nate and it's beautiful. A lot of bad decisions made
Speaker 1: there sometimes, but about a beautiful place nevertheless, And I
Speaker 1: walk in and I'm so still struck that I have
Speaker 1: the great privile legion honor of not just representing some folks,
Speaker 1: but representing people who really raised me and made me
Speaker 1: and who poured into me, and it reminds me of
Speaker 1: how resilient my neighbors and my family are. You know,
Speaker 1: when you think about the level of poverty that folks
Speaker 1: are living in the Fair Hill section of my district
Speaker 1: average anuine income nine thousand, seven sixty something bucks. You know,
Speaker 1: when you think about that, if if folks made the decision,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm just going to keep my head
Speaker 1: under the blanket and not peek out. You know, I
Speaker 1: couldn't blame them, Like it's like, thanks are incredibly challenges.
Speaker 1: I couldn't blame them. But that's not what they do. Instead,
Speaker 1: they get up, they go out. There's so many small
Speaker 1: little organizations who have zero dollars but are flush full
Speaker 1: of hope and optimism for what the community can and
Speaker 1: should be. And that's what I said in my first campaign,
Speaker 1: that this was about what our neighborhoods, Cannon should be.
Speaker 1: And I see that every single day people who refuse
Speaker 1: in the face of would often feel like insurmountable challenges
Speaker 1: to accept that as the finals say, and that has
Speaker 1: really molded me that sometimes when I introduced a good
Speaker 1: piece of legislation and we don't have the votes, you know,
Speaker 1: I say, a no is a yes that just hasn't
Speaker 1: gotten there yet. So they really armed me with a
Speaker 1: level of persistence that is, as you know, really necessary
Speaker 1: Um in politics. I love that, uh, I know is
Speaker 1: a yes that just hasn't gotten there yet. And so
Speaker 1: you have made this really momentous political decision to run
Speaker 1: for the United States Senate. I'd love to hear what
Speaker 1: your process was like leading you to say, Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: going for it. I want to represent the entire stay
Speaker 1: the way that I represent my district. Yeah, for me,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a single decision. I think it was a
Speaker 1: series of decisions. I had spent the entire cycle last
Speaker 1: cycle as like the most requested sarag it all around
Speaker 1: the Commonwealth, helping my state House and Senate colleagues, some
Speaker 1: who are running for re elections, some who are running
Speaker 1: for election for the first time, and go into all
Speaker 1: these communities that maybe you know I passed through or
Speaker 1: stop by, but now but you know, it's different when
Speaker 1: you're going to campaign and talk to people about what
Speaker 1: they want to see in their neighborhoods and what's really
Speaker 1: at stake for them in this selection. And so I
Speaker 1: think going around and having those conversations with people, first
Speaker 1: of all, really made me get a sense of Wow,
Speaker 1: there's something out here and something that I have to say,
Speaker 1: and things that are really connecting and resonating. From my
Speaker 1: experience with folks in Scranton, or in Cranberry Township, or
Speaker 1: in Beaver or up in Murder Sir and Erie, all
Speaker 1: these places, I got to talk to people who were
Speaker 1: all just asking a simple question, when does government gonna
Speaker 1: work for working people? You know what I mean, not
Speaker 1: as a talking point, but actually gonna center the needs
Speaker 1: and concerns of of working people. And when it became
Speaker 1: clear that, you know, to me wasn't gonna run. I
Speaker 1: knew it would be a big field. But I also
Speaker 1: felt like if folks like me who have seen the
Speaker 1: promise of America so often not include me, and not
Speaker 1: include folks who are in my economic rung of the ladder,
Speaker 1: and not include folks who are from neighborhoods like mine,
Speaker 1: if we continue to wait on somebody else to come
Speaker 1: fix this for us, we're gonna be waiting a long time.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody's coming to save us. But I
Speaker 1: think the good news is we don't need anybody to
Speaker 1: save us. When we build big coalitions, coalitions that are
Speaker 1: big enough and bolden of to meet the moment. I
Speaker 1: think we can do what generations before us have done
Speaker 1: to take that promise of America, these ideas of freedom
Speaker 1: and justice and fairness, which the founders, as prescian as
Speaker 1: they were, they weren't talking about you and I. Okay,
Speaker 1: they didn't mean us at that moment. But every generation
Speaker 1: has said, oh wait, wait, wait, this promise is big
Speaker 1: enough for me, and we have to expand it, and
Speaker 1: we have to make sure that these things aren't just
Speaker 1: words on a page, that they're real. And I fundamentally
Speaker 1: believe if we're gonna get from where we are to
Speaker 1: where we need to go, it's gonna be people who
Speaker 1: have experienced the brokenness of our system that are going
Speaker 1: to be able to best rebuild it. And we are
Speaker 1: at an inflection point. And I felt like the experience
Speaker 1: I had as a legislator, as a community organizer, and
Speaker 1: as somebody who does not take no for an answer,
Speaker 1: I felt like those would all be good skill sets
Speaker 1: in the United States. All we we need leaders who
Speaker 1: are going to do exactly that. Malcolm Kenyada, it is
Speaker 1: always a joy to be with you even virtually in
Speaker 1: this setting, and I just really wish you the very best.
Speaker 1: Thank you, my friend. Take care of yourself. You can
Speaker 1: follow Malcolm on social media at Malcolm Kenyata. That's k
Speaker 1: E n y A T t A. Speaking of paradigm shifts,
Speaker 1: We're going to be doing something special on our next show.
Speaker 1: We've been collecting questions from you, our listeners for me,
Speaker 1: and next week I will be answering them, and as
Speaker 1: master of ceremonies, we're going to have a very special guest,
Speaker 1: my friend James Cordon, the host of The Late Late Show.
Speaker 1: And I can tell you right now that although we
Speaker 1: won't be doing any karaoke since I literally can't carry
Speaker 1: a tune, I know we're going to have lots of fun.
Speaker 1: So don't miss it. You and Me Both is brought
Speaker 1: to you by I Heart Radio. We're produced by Julie Subran,
Speaker 1: Kathleen Russo and Lauren Peterson, with help from Kuma Aberdeen,
Speaker 1: Nikki E Tour, Oscar Flores, Lindsay Hoffman, Brianna Johnson, Nick Merrill,
Speaker 1: Rob Russo and Lona Valmorro. Our engineer is Zack McNeice
Speaker 1: and the original music is by Forest Gray. If you
Speaker 1: like you and me both, please help spread the word,
Speaker 1: tell your friends about it, post about it on social media,
Speaker 1: and make sure to hit the subscribe buttons so you
Speaker 1: never miss an episode. You can do that on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
Speaker 1: M