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: Today we're talking about our democracy, which was really put
Speaker 1: to the test over these last four years. I was
Speaker 1: greatly relieved when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were finally
Speaker 1: declared the winners of the election that they had won,
Speaker 1: and I've been really encouraged by the steady way they've governed.
Speaker 1: The significant COVID package that was passed by the Congress
Speaker 1: sends a message to not just Democrats, but Republicans, independence,
Speaker 1: every American that guess what, they have a government again
Speaker 1: that cares whether they live or die, that cares whether
Speaker 1: their kids are in school, that cares, you know, whether
Speaker 1: their small business survives, or their local government is going
Speaker 1: to provide essential services. So I'm deeply relieved, but I
Speaker 1: think we have to be watchful because as we're speaking,
Speaker 1: lots of states are trying to turn the clock back
Speaker 1: on voting, So we still have to be vigilant about
Speaker 1: our democratic institutions. I'm excited to talk to two people
Speaker 1: who have thought about and contributed to the health of
Speaker 1: our democracy. We'll hear from Rashad Robinson, one of the
Speaker 1: most tireless activists I know. But first I'm talking with
Speaker 1: writer and journalist Masha Guessen. Masha is someone whose career
Speaker 1: I have followed for a long time. Masha grew up
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union and has written a lot about
Speaker 1: the resurgence of autocracy in Russia, and the day after
Speaker 1: the election was called for Trump, Masha wrote an essay
Speaker 1: called Autocracy Rules for Survival that really captured my attention.
Speaker 1: Masha told us we should be worried about autocracy right
Speaker 1: here in the United States, which I know sounded alarmists
Speaker 1: to a lot of people. I thought, however, that it
Speaker 1: had the ring of truth. So I asked Masha to
Speaker 1: join me on the podcast to talk about how our
Speaker 1: democracy fared under Trump and where we are now. Well,
Speaker 1: let me start by saying how really delighted I am
Speaker 1: to speak with you, Masha. I have been an avid
Speaker 1: reader and follower of your writing and speaking and appreciate
Speaker 1: very much all of your insights into what's going on
Speaker 1: in our world today. Thank you so much. It's just
Speaker 1: such a huge honor to be talking to you. Almost
Speaker 1: immediately after Trump was elected, you wrote an essay called
Speaker 1: Autocracy Rules for Survival, in which you argued that our
Speaker 1: laws are democratic ideals and institutions were at mortal risk.
Speaker 1: How did you come to that realization so early? You know?
Speaker 1: I mean I'd spent the couple of years before trump
Speaker 1: selection writing a book called The Future Is History? How
Speaker 1: to tell Aitarianism Reclaimed Russia? So I'd spent two years
Speaker 1: actively thinking about that every day and thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: how do you define to tell atarianism? What are the signs,
Speaker 1: how do you know you're in it? How do you
Speaker 1: know it's it's ending? And that was happening in parallel
Speaker 1: with having all these conversations obviously during the election about
Speaker 1: is he going to get nominated? Is he actually going
Speaker 1: to win? But the conversation I'd actually spent the most
Speaker 1: time thinking about was the conversation I'd had with somebody,
Speaker 1: you know, one of those lunches where you say, oh
Speaker 1: you think you know, do you think Trump can get elected?
Speaker 1: And I sort of said something like, yeah, but you
Speaker 1: know this isn't Russia, and the person I was talking
Speaker 1: to said, oh, so you think our institutions are strong
Speaker 1: enough to withstand someone like Trump? So do I? And
Speaker 1: sort of biking back from that, I thought, wait, do
Speaker 1: I think that our institutions are stronger than that. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I do. That was the exact question that
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about and had come to the conclusion
Speaker 1: they weren't. Do you have a kind of sense of
Speaker 1: what did better than something else? Like, were there institutions
Speaker 1: that withstood Trump's interference and his belittling and his undermining,
Speaker 1: you know, better than others? How would you in effect
Speaker 1: grade that? It's an interesting question. I think that our
Speaker 1: institutions of checks and balances did not hold up at all.
Speaker 1: I think that he really showed how well he could
Speaker 1: use his legal and extra legal powers, you know, to
Speaker 1: do things from firing the inspectors General to basically stonewell
Speaker 1: in Congress, and of course the disastrous period after the
Speaker 1: election when we saw, you know, it is Congress's actual
Speaker 1: job to exercise a check on the presidency, and it
Speaker 1: is what Congress failed to do. We've had, even after
Speaker 1: the insurrection, more than a hundred Republicans in the House
Speaker 1: vote against certifying the election, which I just think is terrifying,
Speaker 1: So failing marks all around there. Um. I think that
Speaker 1: he did an incredible amount of damage to the courts,
Speaker 1: more than we realized at this point by packing the courts,
Speaker 1: which is of course part of the autocrats playbook. And
Speaker 1: if we move on to the media, I think we
Speaker 1: you know, there's some there are a lot of failures.
Speaker 1: There were also some incredible successes. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: we saw investigative journalism unlike any that we have seen before.
Speaker 1: We saw also and I think this has even more
Speaker 1: important new collaborative models in investigative journalism that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have seen had it not been for Trump. And I
Speaker 1: think probably the part of our society that held up
Speaker 1: best is civil society organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union,
Speaker 1: which is all they did for four years was fight Trump. Um.
Speaker 1: Those kinds of projects there are integrity wasn't compromised. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think civil society probably comes out of the spirit
Speaker 1: stronger and then it went in And that's the only
Speaker 1: part of our democracy that we can say that about it.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to ask you now that we have
Speaker 1: seen a real life insurrection in the United States, with
Speaker 1: an attack on our capital, how would you, knowing as
Speaker 1: much as you do about autocracy and totalitarianism, have handled it.
Speaker 1: What else could we be doing or should we think about?
Speaker 1: There are a couple of things that I want to
Speaker 1: sort of take as su premises. At one you mentioned
Speaker 1: that in the book, I tried to set out the
Speaker 1: benchmarks for how an autocratic attempt happens. But I also
Speaker 1: try to grapple with something which is that it never
Speaker 1: happens overnight. The way that we learned history, you know,
Speaker 1: we collapse events that happen over time into single events
Speaker 1: like the reich Stuck fire. Right, we imagine that the
Speaker 1: entirety of Nazi rule came into being with Reich style fire.
Speaker 1: But the rech style fire happened in eight years before
Speaker 1: the Holocaust began. There were things happening over the course
Speaker 1: of those years that made it imaginable for Germans that
Speaker 1: they would try to take over the world. And I've
Speaker 1: always been obsessed with sort of what happens between the
Speaker 1: beginning and the end of a historical event, you know.
Speaker 1: So to me, looking at the insurrection and the outcome
Speaker 1: of the election in general, a lot of people have
Speaker 1: sort of breathed a sigh of relief and said, well, look,
Speaker 1: you know, our institutions held up. And what I see
Speaker 1: is that, well, look, you know, it takes time to
Speaker 1: destroy institutions. In Russia. In we're seeing the dregs of
Speaker 1: the court system still being used to jail Alexey Navy.
Speaker 1: But they're still using something that they're calling the courts. Right,
Speaker 1: it's like exactly founded them into the ground. They're holding
Speaker 1: court hearings in a police precinct, right, are charging them
Speaker 1: under nonexistent laws. But they're still using the remnants of
Speaker 1: the institutions. So what I see is evidence that our
Speaker 1: institutions haven't been entirely destroyed, but not that they not
Speaker 1: They are holding strong. I think that's a very important point,
Speaker 1: and I've often wondered about this myself, that authoritarians often
Speaker 1: remain committed to the charade of institutions. You know, they
Speaker 1: packed the courts, they change the laws, they subjugate those institutions,
Speaker 1: but they don't eliminate them. And there still is a
Speaker 1: recognition on the part of an autocratic regime that they
Speaker 1: have to have these kind of in disease of normalcy
Speaker 1: in order to run a government. You know, I always
Speaker 1: was struck how when Allied troops were liberating the death camps,
Speaker 1: the remaining Nazis before fleeing tried to destroy evidence. You know,
Speaker 1: they tried to burn the gas chambers. They tried to
Speaker 1: destroy the clear evidence of what they had done there
Speaker 1: because they knew, despite all of the efforts to propaganda
Speaker 1: e's and to brainwash and to turn them into cult members,
Speaker 1: they knew that there was something that would not withstand scrutiny.
Speaker 1: So what do we do? I mean, the long term
Speaker 1: effects of the Trump presidency are still being I think
Speaker 1: felt and assessed. So what are the rules for surviving
Speaker 1: autocracy that not only we as you know, citizens, but
Speaker 1: the press and other parts of society should be following.
Speaker 1: I think we need a huge storytelling project. Interesting, it's
Speaker 1: a crazy idea, but I mean it's not completely crazy.
Speaker 1: It's even actually been tried in this country in the
Speaker 1: nine right, there was a huge right during the w
Speaker 1: p A. I think that's what we need, because what
Speaker 1: do we know actually about surviving autocracy after the end
Speaker 1: of autocracy is that countries that do best, societies that
Speaker 1: do best, our societies that have a story, a story
Speaker 1: that promises a sense of belonging, which I think is
Speaker 1: so huge in the appeal of these past oriented autocrats.
Speaker 1: That's so important. I want to underscore what you said,
Speaker 1: because it's always an appeal to the idealized past, make
Speaker 1: America great again. It used to be, it isn't any longer,
Speaker 1: right Hitler's contemporaries Eric from the Great Psychoanalytic Social Psychologist
Speaker 1: wrote a lot about that idea that the autocrat comes
Speaker 1: in and promises return to this imaginary past when you
Speaker 1: didn't feel this extreme level of anxiety. There is an
Speaker 1: extremely high level of anxiety that of course gives us
Speaker 1: autocrats in the first place, right, a sense of social
Speaker 1: and economic displacement and a sense of profound uncertainty. And
Speaker 1: what you need for that is a story about the
Speaker 1: future that is as glorious as that story about the
Speaker 1: past is grant And a lot of people were really
Speaker 1: upset that, you know, politicians were saying, this is not
Speaker 1: who we are when we're looking at the insurgency. And
Speaker 1: I actually think that that's the seed of the kind
Speaker 1: of story that needs to be told, That this is
Speaker 1: not who we are should really be understood as aspiration,
Speaker 1: as this is not who we are in the way
Speaker 1: that we imagine ourselves. So how do we become, you know,
Speaker 1: the America that we were promised, that we promised ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know, in the book, I quote the Langston Hughes
Speaker 1: Home America right where he says America has never been,
Speaker 1: but America will be, which I think was echoed beautifully
Speaker 1: by the inaugural poem Amanda Gorman, who clearly referenced it
Speaker 1: and who I thought brilliantly talked about democracy as an aspiration,
Speaker 1: right as a project for the future. She talked about
Speaker 1: democracy if we're being out, but also a democracy can
Speaker 1: be delayed, right, and by saying democracy can be deligious
Speaker 1: saying democracy is always in the future. Democracy is the
Speaker 1: thing we're going towards. Those are the seeds of a
Speaker 1: kind of storytelling project that can be radically inclusive. I
Speaker 1: love this, Masha, I love this idea. You know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting to me how countries, how nations tell themselves stories.
Speaker 1: And I have to ask you, what is the story
Speaker 1: that Russians are telling themselves right now? Is there a
Speaker 1: different story or do Russians have to wait until Putin
Speaker 1: is somehow gone? And I think there is actually a
Speaker 1: collision of stories right. The story that Putin has been
Speaker 1: telling for years is this very nostalgic story about a
Speaker 1: glorious past. It is centered entirely around the Soviet victory
Speaker 1: in world War two. It's the ultimate legitimizing event of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century for the Soviet Union. It's what made
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union a superpower. And it also, by sort
Speaker 1: of legitimizing the post war period of being superpowered, also
Speaker 1: legitimized the pre war period of the Great Terror. Interesting,
Speaker 1: but for the Great Terror, you would not have had
Speaker 1: the victory exactly, and so that that manages to, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of gloss over the entire twentieth century and create
Speaker 1: this kind of beautiful story of victory and being right.
Speaker 1: And I think Navalni has actually been telling a very
Speaker 1: different story. He has this insistence on acting as though
Speaker 1: Russia could actually be a country with an accountable government,
Speaker 1: with transparent elections, with mechanisms that work. The basic story
Speaker 1: that he is telling is the story that it is
Speaker 1: possible to have good, accountable government in Russia, which is
Speaker 1: a radical idea which does throw it into the future,
Speaker 1: like you were suggesting, is one of the best ways
Speaker 1: to counteract the organized look back nostalgia that autocrats rely on. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He uses this phrase the wonderful Russia of the future,
Speaker 1: and he talks about what will happen in the wonderful
Speaker 1: Russia of the future. We're taking a quick break, stay
Speaker 1: with us. So I'd love to close with this because
Speaker 1: I love talking to and maybe when we are all vaccinated,
Speaker 1: we can continue this. But you know, you're an immigrant
Speaker 1: and you're a refugee, and those are two parts of
Speaker 1: your identity that have been long tied to the story
Speaker 1: of America. But as you wrote in Surviving Autocracy, the
Speaker 1: immigrant story was the story that the Trump administration abandoned.
Speaker 1: And there are lots of stories that the United States
Speaker 1: could tell now and moving forward, what do you hope
Speaker 1: the American story would be again? Well, I don't have
Speaker 1: to tell you that the immigrants story is at once
Speaker 1: inspiring and problematic. The idea that this is a nation
Speaker 1: of immigrants alliedes the story of those who came here
Speaker 1: against their will, and also the story of those who
Speaker 1: were here before the settlers exactly, and the extraordinary prejudice
Speaker 1: against wave after wave of immigrants who came in the
Speaker 1: years since. But you know that underscores the need for
Speaker 1: some kind of reinvention of the story. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: we are at a crossroads in terms of telling the
Speaker 1: story of this country. How do we combine the story
Speaker 1: of a country founded on a set of beautiful, abstract
Speaker 1: ideals that also systematically failed to live up to those ideals.
Speaker 1: And I hope it can be a story of these
Speaker 1: ideals are still possible, these ideas are still the foundation
Speaker 1: of our potential unity. I mean, I think we're so
Speaker 1: close to actually being able to grab it as a
Speaker 1: story and as a way to move forward, But it
Speaker 1: has to be a huge national project with like visible leadership.
Speaker 1: I mean, what I imagine is writers and facilitators going
Speaker 1: out to every public library in this country when we're
Speaker 1: all vaccinated and holding storytelling sessions, holding town halls. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have these beautiful American rituals, and I think some
Speaker 1: of the more interesting arguments about how we do the reckoning,
Speaker 1: if we do the reckoning now, has had to do
Speaker 1: with what kinds of rituals we employ. You know, do
Speaker 1: we employ the Senate hearings, that we employ court hearings.
Speaker 1: But I think we need to employ the existing rituals
Speaker 1: of public gatherings in the in the United States, you know,
Speaker 1: gather town halls, tells stories, come together in telling these
Speaker 1: stories and figure out how we move forward and rebuild
Speaker 1: on the basis of those ideas on which the country
Speaker 1: was founded, which is a very different something sort of okay,
Speaker 1: with the institution is held up, Let's go back to
Speaker 1: normal and act like none of this ever happens, which
Speaker 1: I'm really scared. I am scared about that too, and
Speaker 1: I think it would be such a serious error, and
Speaker 1: the next couple of years is going to be a
Speaker 1: a real test. I actually think that Biden is well
Speaker 1: suited for this period because of his personal story, which
Speaker 1: is a you know, deeply human resident story about suffering
Speaker 1: and redemption and and forgiveness and all that goes with it.
Speaker 1: But the organized approach that you're describing could be exactly
Speaker 1: what is needed. And so I, for one, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be promoting the idea. I will give you full
Speaker 1: credit for it. I don't need credit. I need somebody
Speaker 1: who's an organizer like you and not an agitator like me.
Speaker 1: So well to be continued, and thank you for your
Speaker 1: incredibly and fightful and very important writing over the last
Speaker 1: year's Thank you, secondary Clinton, It's been such an honor
Speaker 1: to talk to you. Masha Guessen is a staff writer
Speaker 1: at the New Yorker whose most recent book is called
Speaker 1: Surviving Autocracy. My next guest is Rashad Robinson. Rashad has
Speaker 1: been an activist his entire life, starting in high school
Speaker 1: when he led his classmates in a protest against a
Speaker 1: local drug store because of how it treated the students
Speaker 1: who hung out there after school. These days, he leads
Speaker 1: Color of Change, America's largest organization, helping people to take
Speaker 1: online action in support of racial justice. I've known Rashade
Speaker 1: for years, and I'm proud to say that Color of
Speaker 1: Change was one of our first partner organism nations in
Speaker 1: Onward Together, a group I founded after the sixteen election
Speaker 1: to support the people and groups doing the really hard
Speaker 1: work of repairing our democracy. Rashad is one of the
Speaker 1: most energetic people I've ever met, and he's also known
Speaker 1: for his trademark hats, which he's almost always wearing. I
Speaker 1: was thrilled to catch up with him. Hi, Rashad, Hey,
Speaker 1: how are you? I think they're calling me about a
Speaker 1: grocery haddemic moments yet, no problem? All right, there we go. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show, Rashad. I am so excited about
Speaker 1: having you as a guest on this podcast. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. It's an honor and a pleasure.
Speaker 1: I want to talk with you about what these last
Speaker 1: four years have been like, because in many ways, what
Speaker 1: color of change stands for, what you've been fighting for
Speaker 1: has been really on the lawn because of everything happening
Speaker 1: in our country, the threats to our democracy. What has
Speaker 1: it been like for you personally, Well, personally, it's been
Speaker 1: NonStop to see and to be in the midst of
Speaker 1: so much suffering and to feel like the levers that
Speaker 1: you relied on the poll, we're not there in so
Speaker 1: many ways. You know, right after the election, we had
Speaker 1: to figure out how we were going to move. You know,
Speaker 1: we had spent years during the Obama administration pushing and
Speaker 1: challenging right. We would you know, show up to d
Speaker 1: O J sometimes with petitions in hand, pushing. We would
Speaker 1: show up at hood or Education Department pushing right. It
Speaker 1: didn't mean that we got everything we wanted, but we
Speaker 1: knew that we were inside of a conversation. We recognized
Speaker 1: very clearly that we had to shift strategies, that we
Speaker 1: couldn't go hat in hand anymore, and that meant that
Speaker 1: we had to really figure out who we were going
Speaker 1: to be to actually build power, to not be inside
Speaker 1: of what we talk about is magical thinking, right. Magical
Speaker 1: thinking is like the stories we sometimes tell ourselves about
Speaker 1: how change happens. Right. A petition demanding Mitch McConnell stand
Speaker 1: up for firm and action is not a petition that's
Speaker 1: going anywhere, no matter how many people sign it, right,
Speaker 1: And so part of what we had to do was
Speaker 1: figure that out, and we really built what I feel
Speaker 1: was a new strategy that was focused not simply on
Speaker 1: resistance but on opposition. What would it mean to not
Speaker 1: just resist, but to build power to a post so
Speaker 1: that we could get back to governing, focusing on winning
Speaker 1: real world victories at the local level, while also recognizing
Speaker 1: that the game was not fair, that the rules were raped,
Speaker 1: and that we couldn't simply say that what happened in
Speaker 1: was democracy. Uh, it was what happened, and we are
Speaker 1: dealing with it, but we had to recognize it, fight
Speaker 1: and challenge to build something new. Those are really important insights,
Speaker 1: because you're right. Oftentimes when people get involved in any
Speaker 1: kind of movement for social justice for progress, they can't
Speaker 1: believe that just stating the problem won't get the results
Speaker 1: that you're seeking, and it is a slow, hard boring
Speaker 1: of hard boards. As Max Weber said decades ago about
Speaker 1: politics and political change. You know, when we look at
Speaker 1: what you had to face during the four years of
Speaker 1: the Trump administration, in your opinion, how close did we
Speaker 1: come to actually losing our democracy? Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's still under contention, right. You know, we right
Speaker 1: after the election, we started going on white nationalist sites.
Speaker 1: We work with the Southern Poverty Law Sitner, and we
Speaker 1: look at all these sites and one thing I noticed,
Speaker 1: and one thing my team noticed, was that you could
Speaker 1: put your credit card number in or your PayPal number
Speaker 1: it and you could donate money. You could and by
Speaker 1: merchant by merchant guise, right, So we started calling the
Speaker 1: credit card companies. We started calling these payment processing companies,
Speaker 1: and you know what they told us. They said, oh,
Speaker 1: we're with you, but you know, you have to talk
Speaker 1: to the banks. And then the bank said, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to talk to the credit card companies. So
Speaker 1: we start building the no Blood Money campaign, and we
Speaker 1: start building this platform, and you know, we're not quite
Speaker 1: done with it all when Charlotte's Felle happens. But the
Speaker 1: team goes in over the weekend, they like, get all
Speaker 1: the tools together, and we start going public. We gave
Speaker 1: the companies were like, we've been talking with you for months,
Speaker 1: We've given you these lists of white nationalist groups, and
Speaker 1: then within about twenty four hours they start sending us
Speaker 1: a list of white nationalists organizations that they are cutting
Speaker 1: off for processing fees. No law had changed exactly, and
Speaker 1: so to the extent of what institutions will allow to happen,
Speaker 1: that will put us all in harm's way because it
Speaker 1: serves some sort of interest. We all have to recognize
Speaker 1: that that hasn't gone away, and that part of what
Speaker 1: we have to do is really a double down on
Speaker 1: all of the vehicles that I believe actually get us
Speaker 1: closer to real change. And I think that there are
Speaker 1: no greater drivers right now than racial justice and gender justice,
Speaker 1: not only because there are motivating forces if you think
Speaker 1: about the Women's March, or if you think about the
Speaker 1: uprisings over this summer, as some of the strongest vehicles
Speaker 1: to actually getting people into the streets, to getting people mobilized,
Speaker 1: but they also are forced multipliers and actually undoing the norms,
Speaker 1: that practices, the ideas that got us into this in
Speaker 1: the first place. And so we have to lead into
Speaker 1: those things. Not because a true democracy produces gender justice
Speaker 1: or produces racial justice. It's because racial justice and gender
Speaker 1: justice actually get us to that true democracy. Moving towards
Speaker 1: the private sector and corporate power was an incredibly smart approach.
Speaker 1: But one of your biggest targets was Facebook, and I
Speaker 1: think Rashad you understood before many many people did, the
Speaker 1: really negative role that Facebook played and being literally an
Speaker 1: organizing tool for the far right, for white supremacists, for extremists.
Speaker 1: Explain to our listeners you know what brought that insight
Speaker 1: to your mind and how you then proceeded. At first,
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter activists were being docked on the platform,
Speaker 1: and so we sort of reached out and we started
Speaker 1: pushing and we tried to get some action, and we
Speaker 1: were getting all sorts of stalling that just didn't make sense,
Speaker 1: like why wouldn't you just deal with this right And
Speaker 1: then you know, there was a woman by the name
Speaker 1: of Korean Gains, woman who was having a mental health episode.
Speaker 1: She had her Facebook Live on. She was having an
Speaker 1: interaction with police. Her young son was there in the
Speaker 1: city of Baltimore, and the police called Facebook and had
Speaker 1: them turn off her Facebook Live and Korene Gains ends
Speaker 1: up debt and there's no video, and we were like,
Speaker 1: what are the rules here? Like what like, what's the
Speaker 1: rules around working with law on first? And we found
Speaker 1: out that they were actually providing information to law enforcement
Speaker 1: about activists without warrants, without you know, sort of the
Speaker 1: proper sort of protocols. And seeing how this platform relied
Speaker 1: on our data in many ways, mind our data and
Speaker 1: then could sell it, could use it, could do all
Speaker 1: sorts of things with it, we recognize that there had
Speaker 1: to be new rules, and we were pushing Facebook around
Speaker 1: a number of things, and we got them to agree
Speaker 1: to do a civil rights audit, so we dealt with that,
Speaker 1: and then we found out in eighteen that why we
Speaker 1: had been at the table, I think of those end
Speaker 1: of while we've been at the table, why I'd been
Speaker 1: going back and forth with Facebook, they had hired a
Speaker 1: pr for UH called Definers to attack us. And I
Speaker 1: only found out from the New York Times. The New
Speaker 1: York Times called us and maybe you have comment on
Speaker 1: this story we just published, and like what story we
Speaker 1: just published? And I at this point we had been
Speaker 1: at the table. They had been talking about the uder
Speaker 1: we have been working with them, and it was like
Speaker 1: very clear that they had no intent on moving. It
Speaker 1: was a charade, wasn't it. That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: We will always lose with both Facebook and even with
Speaker 1: big corporate power in Washington or in Silicon Valley, we
Speaker 1: will always lose in the back rooms. If we don't
Speaker 1: have millions of people lined up at the front door,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. We know we still face these
Speaker 1: structural obstacles to democracy. All the progress that was made
Speaker 1: in turning out voters and the huge numbers of black
Speaker 1: voters who made the difference not just in in the
Speaker 1: Georgia win for Biden, but in electing two new senators
Speaker 1: in Georgia, uh Tino voters, Native American voters in Arizona.
Speaker 1: You know, we saw what it means when voting actually
Speaker 1: reflects the electorate of our country. So now we know
Speaker 1: that there's a concerted effort in a majority of states
Speaker 1: at this moment to try to make it hard again.
Speaker 1: So what will Color of Change and all of your
Speaker 1: allies be doing to make sure that your voice has
Speaker 1: heard in this effort as well? Well, we are gonna
Speaker 1: be there three d and sixty five days a year,
Speaker 1: and so part of what we've already pivoted to is
Speaker 1: the base building grassroots work and voter contact work and
Speaker 1: engagement work we do year round, focusing on places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and Georgia which all has Senate races, and focusing on
Speaker 1: places that will have key races in the house around
Speaker 1: the country, pushing the Biden administration like part of our
Speaker 1: job is to hold the line between what a real
Speaker 1: saluttions and fake solutions and make sure that a vast
Speaker 1: administration with a lot of people doing a lot of
Speaker 1: different things, is constantly focusing on giving us the narrative,
Speaker 1: the tools, and the real change that we can go
Speaker 1: out and sell. You know, one thing that I've you know,
Speaker 1: told to focus in the administration is budgets are moral
Speaker 1: documents more than anything that we say, and ensuring that
Speaker 1: the budgets match the aspirations that if we say we
Speaker 1: want to hold people accounting for corruption and stop prosecuting
Speaker 1: low level crimes, that that actually has to show up
Speaker 1: in a d o J budget, because prosecuting corruption is
Speaker 1: actually more expensive than going after people who can't afford
Speaker 1: lawyers and researchers and and um infrastructure to defend them.
Speaker 1: And so that's what we're gonna be doing, and then
Speaker 1: you know, to be very clear, we're gonna be fighting
Speaker 1: against the rollbacks of this. And you know, one thing
Speaker 1: that I've been thinking about since, you know, we led
Speaker 1: our campaign against the American Legislative Exchange Council ASKS, which
Speaker 1: was so instrumental in passing so many of those voter
Speaker 1: ID laws, the discriminatory idea laws, you know, the one
Speaker 1: in Texas that says you can vote with your gun
Speaker 1: license but not your student I D which are like
Speaker 1: really just on their face clear about what they're trying
Speaker 1: to do. You know, we have been working to wold
Speaker 1: corporations accountable. I just recently had a conversation with our
Speaker 1: Reverend Barbera about this in North Carolina, about the corporations
Speaker 1: in North Carolina that have stayed silent as their black
Speaker 1: and brown employees are attacks on their voting rights. The
Speaker 1: corporations in Georgia, the Coca Colas and Deltas and and companies,
Speaker 1: what are they gonna say when their employee base are
Speaker 1: being attacked in terms of their ability to vote and
Speaker 1: cast a vote. And so part of this is, yes,
Speaker 1: we've got to be in those legislatures, but I'm also
Speaker 1: very clear that the political project of many of those
Speaker 1: legislators is to like hold onto power as long as
Speaker 1: they possibly can, even if the people don't want them
Speaker 1: there exactly. And so what we have to do is
Speaker 1: go to the institutions that say by our products, use
Speaker 1: our services, and say that you can't come for our
Speaker 1: money by day and take away our vote by night.
Speaker 1: I love that well. I just can't tell you how
Speaker 1: much I love talking to Rashad. I love your sensibility,
Speaker 1: I love your strategic understanding of what we're up against
Speaker 1: in the in the world today. I want to end
Speaker 1: on a personal note. You've been, as I pointed out earlier,
Speaker 1: on the front lines of activism. Now you lead really
Speaker 1: one of the most consequential racial justice activist organizations in
Speaker 1: our country in the twenty one century. What makes you hopeful?
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you get up in the morning
Speaker 1: and feel like sometimes it's pushing the same rock up
Speaker 1: the hill that you're pushed yesterday and the day before.
Speaker 1: But you just, you know, get your energy up, you
Speaker 1: put on that hap that you know it's your trademark,
Speaker 1: and you start pushing. How do you keep yourself motivated?
Speaker 1: You know? So I have so much hope and optimism
Speaker 1: in this summer. You know, being quarantined before the uprisings
Speaker 1: was really top I'm a people person. I like to
Speaker 1: be out in the world and spend most of my
Speaker 1: time on the road in the other world, and so
Speaker 1: it was really tough, and then the uprisings happened. Up
Speaker 1: until the uprisings, the best that many of us thought
Speaker 1: could happen was we would uplift investigative journalism and we
Speaker 1: would clap outside of our windows for essential workers who
Speaker 1: deserved all of the support and love. But it was
Speaker 1: racial justice that got people into the streets, got people
Speaker 1: motivated to see people of all races, all walks of
Speaker 1: life coming into the streets. Employees incorporations pushing their companies
Speaker 1: to have to say things that they previously did not
Speaker 1: believe they had to, and certainly many of them did
Speaker 1: not want to. You know, Color of Change does not
Speaker 1: take direct corporate dollars. And every morning I was waking
Speaker 1: up to all of these announcements of corporations giving us
Speaker 1: money or you like, well, they can agree to the
Speaker 1: things we max and to doo, but we're not going
Speaker 1: to take this money. But it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: but it was a surreal moment of saying, like, so
Speaker 1: much is possible, right, and to think about the deep
Speaker 1: pain that had to get there, but also the opportunity
Speaker 1: to create generational change. And as I see millions in pond,
Speaker 1: millions of Americans sometimes taking their first steps into activism,
Speaker 1: believing that something new is possible. That gives me so
Speaker 1: much hope. What a great way to wrap up our conversation,
Speaker 1: and I hope our listeners will learn more about the
Speaker 1: work of Color of Change because I so admire the
Speaker 1: way you're on the front law nds of what real
Speaker 1: change looks like. Thank you so much, Rashad. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having its an honor. To learn more
Speaker 1: about the incredible work Rashad and his colleagues are doing,
Speaker 1: go to Color of Change dot org. And if you
Speaker 1: want to hear more about Reverend William Barber, who were
Speaker 1: shod mentioned, check out the very first episode of this podcast,
Speaker 1: You and Me Both, which is about faith. It's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite episodes, in part because Reverend Barber has
Speaker 1: so many profound things to say about how his faith
Speaker 1: fuels his work for racial and social justice. But I
Speaker 1: want to end today's episode with a question for you.
Speaker 1: What do you think about the state of our democracy?
Speaker 1: Do you know someone who is working hard to make
Speaker 1: it stronger? I'd love to hear from you with your ideas,
Speaker 1: so please send an email to You and Me Both
Speaker 1: pod at gmail dot com. You and Me Both is
Speaker 1: brought to you by I Heart Radio. We're produced by
Speaker 1: Julie Subran, Kathleen Russo and Lauren Peterson, with help from
Speaker 1: Juma Aberdeen, Nicky Etour, Oscar Flores, Lindsay Hoffman, Brianna Johnson,
Speaker 1: Nick Merrill, Rob Russo, and Lona Valmorrow. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Zack McNeice, and the original music is by Forrest Gray.
Speaker 1: If you like You and Me Both, spread the word,
Speaker 1: post about it on social media, send it to your friends,
Speaker 1: and make sure to hit the subscribe button so you're
Speaker 1: the first to know when a new episode drops. You
Speaker 1: can do that on I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. See you next week.