April 9, 2024 • 37 mins
Ep. 160 D’Seanté Parks is founder and CEO of 1000 MORE, an app that makes it easier for people from underrepresented communities, like the ones she’s from, to engage in politics — a topic that is super important to everyone’s well-being and growth but often difficult to participate in. Her app provides digestible nonpartisan summaries of legislation coming up for a vote, written in a way that doesn’t require a law degree to understand. You can also find the popular arguments for and against bills. It also helps you connect with elected officials, and participate in crowdfunding campaigns for organizations you care about.
On this episode, D'Seanté speaks with AfroTech's Will Lucas about how to leverage technology for political change, building community and wealth simultaneously, and the underutilized power of each engaged citizen.
Follow Will Lucas on Instagram: @willlucas
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Check me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast Festival,
happening Saturday, April twenty seven in Atlanta. Live podcasts are
on deck from some of your favorite shows, including this one,
Black Tech, Green Money, and also some of the best
podcasts in the game like Deeply Well with Debbie Brown
and Carefully Reckless. Atlanta is one of my favorite cities
in the world. I've lived there for two years. Actually,
in my worldview, seeing us successful in every industry and
(00:23):
not having any limits on our potential largely was shaped
by Atlanta. So to be there with you doing this
podcast talking about how we build or leverage technology to
build wealth. Come on, man, doesn't get better. I want
to see you there. Get your tickets today at Black
Effect dot comback Slash Podcast Festival. I'm with Lucas and
this is Black Tech, Green Money. Deschante Parks is founder
(00:46):
and CEO at one thousand More and that that makes
it easier for people from underrepresented communities like the one
she's from, to engage in politics the top of that
is super important to everyone's well being in growth, but
often difficult to participate in. Her approvised, digestible, nonpartisan Summer
Reason legislation coming up for a vote written in a
(01:08):
way that doesn't require a law degree to understand. You
can also find the popular arguments for and against bills,
and it also helps you connect with elected officials and
participating in crowdfunding campaigns for organizations you care about. Her
mission of civic empowerment started at Louisiana State University and
she worked on the Senate campaign for now Vice President
(01:29):
Kamala Harris, and she has a Master of Public Policy
degree from Harvard Kennedy School. And preparing to talk with her,
my mind immediately went to lobbying and how the voice
that people can be suppressed by big money. So I
asked Deschante to break down how this happens time and
time and again, both negatively and positively for the issues
that might matter most to you.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
So I think we're actually kind of not even ever
taught about lobbyists and lobbying. I think what happens is
we hear it in the context of the big life
has all this influence, and so we think we're separate
from it. We think they're the enemy because they have
all this influence and they have a lot of money,
and maybe we feel like we don't have any right.
The term lobbying comes from the men who used to
(02:14):
stand in the lobby of the hotels where the elected
officials who would stay when they came to DC to vote,
because they would live in their districts most of the time,
all over the country, and then they would come into
DC to vote as a legislative body, and there would
be men who literally hung out in the lobby of
these hotels and would buy them drinks and would talk
(02:34):
to them and would therefore have an influence on whatever
they were voting on. That was a lobbyist. So the
way that they still have influence really, I tell people
all the time. The money is part of it, but
what's even more important is lobbyists full time jobs are
to talk to your elected officials. So while you're working
(02:57):
nine to five, and then you get home from work
and you got to cook for the kids, and you
gotta exercise, and you're tired, and then you got to
even make time to watch the news. Then you got
to digest the news, form an opinion, then call. They're
not even at the office to answer the phone at
that point. Whereas lobbyists, this is all they do. This
is our job, and by the way, it's not a
bad job, right there. I have friends that are lobbyists.
There are people who lobby for children's rights, you know,
(03:20):
there are people who lobby for education and lobby for
health care. You can lobby for all kinds of things,
and so lobbyists are not bad people. What is potentially
bad is this system that we've created in which it
does create an imbalance and power when it's when organizations
with a lot of money can afford to have people
(03:42):
full time staying engaged with your elected officials when you
don't have time to talk to them at all. So
what happens is your elected official hasn't heard from you
since the last time you voted, and they hear from
lobbyists every single day. So that's just who has their attention.
So that is that's what lobbying is. That's our relationship
to lobbing as people. I created an app that completely
(04:05):
dismantles that. So with one thousand more, you see every
bill coming up for a vote, So actually coming up
for a vote. There's a lot of bills that get
caught up in in committee and those are honestly kind
of a waste of our time because they're never going
to get an actual vote. I put in every bill
that's coming up for a vote. I write everything at
(04:26):
a third grade level, because fifty four percent of Americans
read below a sixth grade level. And also it shouldn't
take you an hour to digest what a bill is.
I spend an hour figuring out what the bill is.
I write the summary at a third grade level, so
you can spend a couple of minutes know what the
bill is. You can see the arguments for and against.
We're nonpartisan, and then you can take action on it,
including calling, email and tweeting. There's a little scripts in
(04:48):
case you're nervous about what to say, so the script
is different if you're for or against. And then you
also can donate to an organization that's advocating for the bill.
Because when we crowdfund our dollars, we actually outspend the
lobby here in America. So the lobby spends about three
point five billion dollars a year. Americans spend five billion
dollars a year crowdfunding philanthropy. So we're talking about things
(05:10):
like GoFundMe, So we quite literally are bigger than the
big lobby with our voices and with our dollars. But
before one thousand more, there was no mechanism for us
to crowdfund our dollars on policy, on every single piece
of legislation. So people have already figured out that small
dollar donations make a huge difference in politics. You know,
(05:33):
when I talk about small dollar donations, we're talking about
donations that are two hundred dollars or less. Those sorts
of donations power campaigns. Campaigns can't win without millions in
small dollar donations. We already know that. But before one
thousand more, there was no mechanism to make a small
dollar donation between election seasons. So you shouldn't only be
(05:56):
participating during an election cycle. You should be anticipating between
election cycles. Because that's how we hold our elected officials accountable.
That's how we stay informed, so that number one, we
can tell them what we want them to do, and
number two, when they don't do it, we can hold
them accountable when it's time to vote for them again.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So you said something that I found really interesting, and
perhaps it's you know, provides you an opportunity to build
this technology, and that it takes hours and hours to
digest what these legislative you know, documents say, and the
conspiracy theorist in me says, that's probably intentional. I don't
know if it's intentional, but I wonder what you think, Like,
is it intentional that we can't understand this language?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah? I mean, look, I didn't go to law school
for a reason. I people who go to law school,
I don't get it. I ended up getting my master's
in public policy because I was like, y'all are learning
how to work within a system that's broken. I don't
want to learn how to work within the system. I
want to learn how to change the system on a
systemic level. And so I went and got my master's
(06:59):
in public policy. But that said, yeah, I do think
it's intentional. I think we have an education system in
this country that rewards people that have money and punishes
people who don't. So you are assigned a public school
based on your zip code, and your zip code is
(07:20):
assigned a tax bracket based on the cost of housing
in that zip code, and based on that tax bracket,
your school is allocated resources. So schools in the neighborhoods
that have expensive houses get more resources than schools that
have inexpensive housing. And so, you know, if we have
(07:44):
an entire part of our society who's already not getting
the funding that they need, maybe in their personal lives,
so you know, their parents don't make a lot of money,
people don't make a lot of money. Then in school,
they're not getting the kind of education that would help
them move in status at all. Help them help themselves,
(08:05):
if you will, And then the people who are already
in power get to stay in power. So the people
who have money, they get a good education, they learn
how to make more money, and those people tend to
be people who have more access to politics. Even you know,
when I was out on the campaign trail, and so
my family's from Streetport, Louisiana. I was raised in Fort Worth, Texas,
and people would tell me all the time, like, you know,
(08:28):
it doesn't matter what I say, It doesn't matter what
I'm thinking. You think rich people think that rich people
don't think that they know it matters what they say
and what they think. Part of this is a mindset too,
So yes, I think the way our education system is
set up is the foundation for disenfranchisement. I think it
is directly tied to civic engagement. And I think that
(08:49):
the entire system was built in a way that protected
the interests of at the time slave owners. That was
that's when our country was founded, and it was founded
with those ideals. It the way that laws were structured
protected the people who already had power because the people
(09:09):
in power were making the laws. And of course, over time,
thank god, there have been revolutions and movements, but at
its core, the way the system works still does reward
people who already have money, who already have power, and
it takes disruptive It takes disruptive movements or tools, in
(09:34):
this case with one thousand more technologies to really flip
things on its head. So, you know, I hear people
all the time say, you know, we can't keep working
within the same systems. Okay, fine, here's the deal. We're
not going to see the lobby going anywhere in our lifetime,
you know. And I say all the time, if I
could go back in time and talk to the Native Americans,
(09:55):
what I have been like, you should really start a
yoga practice because there's some serious about.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
To you know.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
No, I'd be like, we need to get y'all some guns.
Where are the guns? Where are the bombs? You know,
so we can bring water balloons to a gunfight, and
I build one thousand more so we could have the
same tools and flip this system on its head. That's
the best I think we can do right now.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah, So I wonder if there are more Deshonnete's out there.
So I was doing some research before this, and I
was reading this article from the National It's Toue of Health,
and it was talking about how the more we have
issues in the country, the more people feel disenfranchised and
equality exists, people feel victimized, et cetera. The more they
(10:37):
engage civically. And we're I guess post COVID. I think
the I think they say we're post COVID. I mean
we are post COVID, but we're out of the pandemic era.
Do people still feel that level of engagement as we
felt after George Floyd? Immediately after George Floyd in the pandemic?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
So what's interesting is it always is just ship, is
the way I see it. So those people who are
like politics doesn't impact my life, Okay, Well it's impacting
somebody's life right now. I guarantee you. In fact, this
dude told me a couple months ago. This dude was like,
I don't vote. I just kind of do what's in
front of me, And I was like, do you have
(11:18):
running water at your house? Do you have trash pickup?
Do you have women in your life? Do you ever
get sick? Like you like, what do you? I don't
know what that means. If you think politics doesn't affect you,
you might be very rich, or you might be willfully ignorant.
You want to believe it doesn't affect you because it
(11:41):
is so psychologically difficult for you to confront that there
are people that have a lot of power over your life.
And that is really scary, and I know it's hard.
I think a lot about civic engagement is tied to
our willingness to confront some very difficult things about the
way the world works that we live in. But no,
(12:03):
I think I agree. I have not seen the stat
that you're talking about. I agree that when people are
personally impacted by a policy, there is outrage, and it
tends to happen in communities. And what's important is, you know,
as people try to build coalitions, they try to build
coalitions across communities because we're bigger together. But also what
(12:28):
I want to talk about is how even when we
think we're seeing civic engagement, Like, what is civic engagement? Yeah,
if you post something on Twitter, sure it's civic engagement.
Even if you just watch the news, that is in
theory civic engagement because you're engaging with what's going on.
You're engaging with the news in your own home. But
when we talk about civic engagement, that translates into action,
(12:52):
and specifically legislative action. What sorts of things move the
needle on that, and it's not talking on social media.
I built this so that it integrates into social media.
We built a web app and not a mobile app
because I didn't think people would want to download a
new app. I was trying to create something that could
integrate into Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, So wherever people were,
(13:13):
we met them where they were. And you don't even
have to leave the social media platform you're on. You
and your friends are talking about a bill. You drop
a link to one thousand more to the bill in
one thousand more. They click, They read a little a
bit about it, they read the arguments for and against.
They choose, if therefore against, they can call, email, tweet,
or donate, go right back to scrolling very quick so
(13:34):
that translates into actually letting your elected official know and
believe it or not that matters. People think that it
doesn't matter if you call your elect official, and it
absolutely matters. These people want to be re elected and
they know that it's only your votes that can do that. Now,
the money that they get from some of these big donors,
(13:56):
they will use it in like TV ads or digital
ads on social media when your vote. But if you
are already knowledgeable about their track record, if you've already
been paying attention, it's going to be very difficult to
get your vote. And they know that. So when you're
talking online, they do see that. When you're calling their office,
they see that it doesn't take long and they're just telling,
(14:17):
you know, how many calls did we get today about
that infrastructure bill or about that education bill, about that
healthcare bill? How many calls did we get today? And
then they're like, Okay, people really care about this. It
moves to the top of the agenda because when you're
not saying anything, then they don't even know how much
the people in their district care about this. And again,
(14:39):
those lobbyists are talking to them every day.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, so I'm gonna throw two things at you, And
I hate to do that because you should just give
one question, but you give me so much there and
so one, I've heard less people say that it doesn't
matter to them, and more people say that their one
vote won't make a difference. So I want you to
speak to that. And then on top of that is
i've heard this phrase of all politics is local, and
(15:03):
so if the important things that actually may make a
bigger difference to me are my local elections versus the
federal ones, even though the federal ones do have impact,
but the ones to your point, you know, is your street,
are the potholes you know covered up? You know, are
the women in my life able to go get healthcare, etc?
Can you talk about how it's important, how that one
(15:25):
vote does make a difference, and the other things you
should do beyond just that one vote, and how local
politics matters to your everyday life.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah. So, first of all, people aren't wrong. So bring
your friend, you know, bring your whole family, bring your friends,
you bring whoever, because I mean, you're not wrong. One
vote is one thing. But when we talk about anything
in life, right like, especially when we're talking about public policy,
(15:55):
when we're talking about a democracy. How do you think
we get to those millions of votes? Those are all people,
those are all individual people, those thousands of votes. There
have been elections that were decided on one vote. There
was one in Louisiana recently. So this stuff is real.
Like that person who thought my vote doesn't matter, that
(16:15):
would have tied it, and if they had brought their friend,
it would have been two votes, and then maybe the
other person would have won. This stuff is consequential. Also,
you're not wrong bring more than one person. That's why
people are out here building coalitions. So I think that
the intuition there is right in that you want to
(16:36):
try to advocate for your position so that you have
more people on your side. And honestly, most of us
are hanging out with people and spending time with people
who agree with us anyway, and so you just need
to get them to the poll or to the phone
or whatever it is. So there's that.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
And so to your point of hanging out people who
are like you, So if you're one vote, if you're
one person with think to your vote doesn't matter, you
probably got ten friends who think that same thing. So
that's actually ten votes and not.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
One exactly exactly, which is amounting to millions of votes.
And then you know, also so in this election, you know,
we didn't even have a Democratic primary. People didn't even
get a choice for who the Democratic presidential candidate was
going to be. People are very upset about that. So
people think, you know, I don't like either of the candidates.
(17:24):
I don't want to vote at all. And I'm saying
you need to vote at least independent, vote for someone else,
because they need to know that you matter. They need
to know that you're paying attention because then next time
they will be actually vying for your vote. If you
just don't show up at all, they think that person's
not even going to get off the couch. I don't
have to listen to them at all. And you can
(17:46):
see it is public record who is a voter. It
doesn't tell you who they voted for, but you can
see every time a person has voted. So if you're
if you are calling your elected officials office, you are
in theory, more likely to be listened to if they
know you're a voter, if they know that you vote
every single time, So go out and vote for somebody,
(18:06):
vote for something, because it really just signals to them
that you have some kind of value in what they want,
which is to get re elected. And also, by the way,
that's not the only thing. There's all types of civic engagement,
you know I mentioned earlier. So also not publicly shaming
them on social media. That's a way to get their attention.
(18:27):
All like any kind of civil disobedience. There's a reason
why people shut down interstates because money moves on interstates.
If people can't get to work, if shipments can't get
where they're trying to go, that disrupts the economy. There's
power in that too. So there's all sorts of power
in civic engagement. And you know, we can signal to
elected officials in all kinds of ways. Voting is one
(18:48):
of them, calling is one, emailing, social media stuff like that,
and then your other question.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Local that's right involvement here.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Okay, So people talk about that because you are I mean,
it's fractions or so, like out of one hundred people.
If it's if you're one in one hundred, then you
have a lot more impacts there. Then if you're one
in a million, you just have more impacts. There's more
(19:21):
of a chance that you know, your vote could be
the change could be sort of the tipping point. Uh,
And yes, local politics is really important, and a thousand
more of course wants to do local politics eventually. Right
now we only do federal We've only been doing this
for a short amount of time. But you know, I
(19:42):
would say that these things all work together. So America
has a very decentralized democracy, which means that it's not
one central government that makes all the decisions. It's decentralized.
We have the federal government, then we have our state governments,
then we have our local governments, and they all work
together in different ways. So if y'all will remember like
when California made marijuana ly, but then the federal governments
that marijuana was not legal. Remember that, and that caused
(20:04):
a lot of confusion and they were like, well, you
could still be arrested if you're driving with it whatever.
You know, it like depended on the circumstances of an arrest. Well,
that's that's sort of how our government works together. The
government also, the federal government can protect you from in
(20:26):
just laws locally. So a historical example of this is,
you know, the federal government. Oh, the Supreme Court ruled
that schools had to be integrated, and states still didn't
do it. You know, again, my family's from Louisiana. My
dad was in the first integrated class of his high school.
My dad's not that old, he's like fifty something. So
(20:49):
the federal government had to step in because state governments
were violating people's rights. And we see sort of the
same thing, the same concept when we talk about like
access to abortion. You know, when that thing happened in
Alabama where the court there ruled against the IVF clinic
(21:11):
and everyone with this was just a few weeks ago,
and everyone was like, IVF is going to be legal.
The federal government tried to put in place protections for
IVF so that it would then say that your local
government could not take that right from you. So they
all work together because there are going to be times
that you agree more with your local government. There are
(21:31):
going to be times when you agree with more with
your federal government. And you know, people talk about states
rights versus federal rights. There's a lot of Southern states
that are like, we want the federal government to stay
out of it. You know, we want states to be
able to make these decisions, and the decisions tend to
be decisions that are infringing on other on individual rights.
(21:55):
So yes, politics is local. The more local some thing is.
I By the way, I love working in municipal government.
It's my favorite place to work because you can move,
you can change something so quickly, you can get that
whole filled. You can you know, if there's a water issue,
you know what happened in Flint, for example. You can
very quickly put policies in place to protect people if
(22:17):
you're working in an efficient municipal government. So I love
municipal government. It's just I want people to understand how
all these things work together. It's important to vote on
every level totally.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
So from a tech CEO perspective, you know, when people
think about and I don't know if what your goals
are personally in building a technology, but I'm imagining there's
you know, a part of it is you know, benevolent,
and part of it is also there's an opportunity there.
I'm imagining you can you can correct me if I'm wrong.
And so community work is not something necessarily people think
(22:49):
about when they are trying to find a lot of wealth,
but I wonder I believe first that you can do
well while doing well? So can you speak to how
you find find wealth you know, unicorn opportunity with your
one thousand more company working in community, I want you
to speak to that the motivations here well.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
First of all, I never wanted to build a tech
startup at all. I grew up very poor. We did
not even when everyone else got the Internet, we didn't
get the Internet right away. So I was very much
behind the curve. Like I missed AOI ao whatever that
was called that in semester. I missed all that like MySpace,
like I missed it like I used to have to.
(23:31):
When I was at my friend's house, I was like, ooh,
y'all got the Internet. Let me, how do you do this?
Like I So, I never considered myself tech savvy at all.
What happened was I was working in politics. What I
always did want to do with civic engagement. What I
really wanted to do was have a political talk show
that was funny and entertaining for black people. I wanted
it to come on right after one o six in
(23:52):
Park because I knew no one was going to tune
into my show on purpose. I thought maybe they would,
you know, still be finishing their snack as one of
the park was ending, and maybe they would just hang around.
Maybe I would be funny enough that maybe people would
stick around and get the news of the day. That's
what I wanted to do. So I got a degree
in political communications from LSU, which was the journalism school.
(24:13):
I produced the first public affairs show on Tiger TV,
and then I ended up needing a job. In my
life took a different direction. I you know, I graduated,
I got a job offer, I took it. I was
working in politics, and I was very obsessed about how
(24:33):
do we get people to pay attention, how do we
get people to absorb information, how do we get people
to take action, and especially people like the people where
I'm from. So I knew that that had something to
do with like the intersection of pop culture. You know,
like if some celebrity was talking about a thousand more,
I would have a lot more weight than me talking
(24:54):
about one thousand more, a girl who just spent a
lot of time working in politics. And that's what I
was doing. I was working in politics all over the country.
I worked on Kamala Harris's usn and campaign in California.
I was on Jason Candor's usn A campaign in Missouri,
mary landrews USNA campaign in Louisiana. All over the country
working in politics, I end up and down the ballot
as well. There were lots of other races. But I
(25:17):
would always hear people say, why do we only hear
from these people when it's time to vote, And I'd
be like, no, you don't have to. And I would say, like,
just call me, just text me. And I just was
very obsessed about this. And one night, I and this
was at a time in my life when I was
just feeling very hopeless about the state of politics. I
(25:38):
was like, I've dedicated my whole life to this. I
don't think I'm making any difference. I'm not even doing
the job I originally wanted to do. I don't know
that I'm helping people. I don't even know that these
people that I've worked for are really upholding the values
that I wanted them to or hope that they would.
And I was just I was, you know, I was
(25:59):
feeling very frush and very hopeless about what I was doing.
And one night I had a dream and I saw
one thousand more in the dream. So in the dream,
there I was taking a nap. There was like a
ruckus outside. I walked outside and was like, why are
y'all being so loud? I'm trying to take a nap.
And this man was like, we're about to stop this bill.
And I was like, yeah, right, how are you going
(26:20):
to do that? Because I'm thinking I dedicated my whole
career to this and I don't even know how to
tell you to do that, So how you think you're
going to do it? And he was like, we use
this app? And I was like, what app? Show me?
And he showed me the whole thing. And I woke
up in the middle of the night and promised God
I would build it. And I've been building it ever since.
So it wasn't even about it wasn't about money. But
(26:41):
that said, this is a billion dollar idea, right, This
is the GoFundMe of politics. What the Robin Hood app
did to Wall Street is what we're doing in politics.
This is absolutely a billion dollar business. And I am
so grateful and can't wait for that moment. But yeah,
I think you can do good while doing good, and
I think, really my only advice about that is I
(27:01):
think there was so long that I was like, why
am I doing this? Like why am I out on
the campaign trail this, I'm not on TV, I'm not
doing what I want to do at all. I didn't
know why I was doing what I was doing, and
it made me really sad. And then I think one
day God just showed me a very clearer vision of
what I would be doing, and stuff started making sense,
Like A thousand more would not be what it is
if I hadn't spent all that time on the campaign
(27:24):
trail talking to tens of thousands of voters, hundreds of donors,
you know, thousands of politicians and community leaders and things
like that. It took all those perspectives and it took
all of that experience for me to build what I did.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
I love that. I was reading an article about how
there's so many more black people, young black people specifically
investing in the stock market, and while the title, I'm like, yes,
we should be doing that. Then I read the article
and they were like, what the problem is? Where we
get our education about what socks to invest in comes
from mostly social media, and I'm like, yeah, that's probably
(28:05):
not great because we invest in stuff that we don't
have education about. And I wonder what your thoughts are
on are we doing that same thing for the things
that we vote for.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
I think that is such an important question, so I
think we do. I think all people get a lot
of information from social media. I think that is a
symptom of people not trusting mainstream media, as they have
in for a very long time, and for good reason.
People don't trust media. Oftentimes people don't trust their governments.
(28:42):
So that's all fair, and I think what's important is
people finding sources who they can trust. And I built
one thousand more of the way that I did because
education is the foundation of it. Journalism is the foundation
of it. Again, my degree is in journalism, so I
built it so that it's all these summaries, all these
(29:03):
bill summaries are read by me. I make sure that
I have a team of people, of course, but I
make sure that they are a fair representation of what's
in the bill. I make sure that they're written in
a way that does not require a law degree to understand.
And I made sure that it was easily shareable because
I did want this to first and foremost be a
(29:23):
source of information that in itself breaks barriers. It gives
people a trusted source of information so that they can
even just verify what they're saying on social media. If
you hear it first from a friend, that's fine, but
you need a place to verify the information. And I yeah,
I think people get a lot of their news from
social media. I don't think it's always a bad thing,
(29:45):
but I think that there needs to be a real
education on media literacy. You know, how do you know
if something is factual? You should If you hear from
a friend, that's fine, but you should check it. You
should check the source. A lot of times people don't
even ask the source. I always will say where did
you get information from?
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah? Yeah, I know, I'm a witness. You do ask that.
I love it. I want to talk about how like
when you get an idea like this, you said it
can't he in his dream, which I love that. And
you said you were not dreaming to be a tech
entrepreneur growing up, So like what is this step? Like,
how do you had this dream? I had this idea,
(30:22):
now I'm going to go build it. How you do that?
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah? So again I think God had put everything already
in place and I didn't even know it. So I again,
I want to Lsu. I'm in an aka who wants lsu.
So my profile it was just a couple of lines
before me. It's a Vitral Wilson who built Resilia, and
so she's like, my friend, that's my sister, Like you know,
so I asked her. She was the first person. I
(30:48):
was like, I had this crazy dream and no, I
had already bought the domain at this point, but I
was like, what do you think about this? And she
was like, I think it's brilliant. And the advice that
she gave me is tell anyone who will listen. Most
people want to hold their ideas close to the vest
because they think that someone's going to steal their idea.
She was like, most people can't even execute their own visions,
(31:08):
much less yours, So tell anyone who listened. I had
already been accepted to Harvard at the time, so I
started my master's in public policy at Harvard, and I
was just telling anyone who listen. Now again, I know
that's a huge opportunity that most people don't have. Was
Harvard is just throwing money. If you get into Harvard,
they're throwing money everywhere. So yeah, there was like, you know,
(31:28):
a couple thousand dollars here and they're a pitch competition.
There was a class I took at the Business School
at HBS where they give you two thousand dollars to
execute a business plan. And I took the class twice,
like you know, and I ended up meeting. So the
first step was I ended up meeting a dude in
my class who he was a lot of people are
(31:50):
in transition at Harvard, going from one career to another.
His first career had been in projects like product management,
product tech, products management. So he was like, do you
have a product roadmap? I was like, I don't even
know what that is. And he was like, look, you
should make a prototype. I'm like, what's a prototype? He's like,
hire a graphic designer to draw a picture of what's
(32:12):
in your head. Wow, that makes so much sense. I
literally asked my girls back in Louisiana do we know
any graphic designers? Hired Morgan Hilliard, who is a black
woman graphic designer who happened to I didn't even know.
I hired her because I thought she was a good
graphic designer. Her husband owned a tech startup. Wow, so
she was like, I know how to make a clickable prototype.
I said, oh, we next level with it. I gave
her the money Harvard had given me, because at the
(32:34):
time I think I'd gotten like maybe twelve hundred dollars
or something. So she made a clickable prototype for me,
and then I gave that to a software developer. The
software developer built it. I mean we built it together. Obviously.
We even had to create our own language because I
didn't speak any of his coding language. He didn't know
anything about politics. So we started talking about it like
we were building a house. Like we'd be like, Okay,
we're in the living room. There's three different doors. This
(32:55):
is like the user experience, and yeah, we just truly
I think just being solutions oriented got me through this.
There was I knew there was always an answer, so
I just would talk to anyone who listen. I asked
a lot of questions, and I did what people told
me to do, and I, you know, got some of
the money. I went for the money and was able
(33:16):
to pay people who could help me build this thing.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
So in my view, you've got like two challenges. One
is to get people to use it. Too is you
got to convince people that getting engaged is worth their time,
and so can you give your pitch for why you
should really be engaged. This is your platform.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
It's life or death. It's literally life or death. I
mean it might not be life or death for you
the moment, but it could be. I had an uber
driver who told me he wasn't politically involved, and I
was like, okay, fine, we start talking. Turns out his
daughter's on insulin. I'm like, did you know there's a
bill right now moving on insulin? And he's like, no,
I didn't even know that. He did not even know
that his daughter's life depended on him being politically aware.
(34:02):
And you know, there's a there's a lot of people
like him, a million people like him, And when those
people come together and make it clear that this is
a priority for the community that these elected officials represent,
then things get done. And in so many ways, right
like the war on drugs, people being imprisoned wrongly, these
(34:23):
are these are people's lives, uh, And some people are
impacted more than others. But I'm sure you can, when
you really think about it, think of a way that
politics or policy has impacted you, or your family, or
your community. So what I would say is, don't be
afraid of that. Don't run from that confront why it's scary,
and know that there are people who you can trust,
(34:45):
and that I've created a way for you to engage
from the comfort of your own home, so you can
in a very safe environment. Just start tinkering with this,
Start reading about you know, a couple of bills. Try
to call. You're alone in your home. If you call
and hang up one time, no one's gonna know, you know,
Just call again. Read the script verbatim. If they ask
(35:06):
a follow up question, I don't have anything to say.
Just try. Just try. And the first time you do it,
it's going to be scaring. The tenth time you do it,
it's not. And that's like anything in life. You are
a person who matters in this democracy, even if, by
the way, even if you're not a citizen, if you
live in this community, if you live in this country,
(35:28):
you are important to this democracy. And you just need
to believe that. The thing is is I know it,
Your elected officials know it. The media knows that everyone
knows it, and they are banking on you to believe.
People who are currently in power are banking on you
believing that you have no power that's the easiest way
for them to take your power is to convince you
that you have no power. So if you think you
(35:49):
have no power, ask yourself who told you that, why
do you think that? And then know that it's not
true and take your power back. Get on one thousand more.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro
Tech on the Black Effect podcast Network in iHeartMedia. It's
produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with additional
production support by Sarah Ergan and Love Beach. Special thank
you to Michael Davis and Kate McDonald. Learn more about
my guests and other tech this weepons and innovators at
afrotech dot com. Enjoying Black Tech, Green Money, share up
(36:38):
to somebody go get your money, peace and love. Check
me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast Festival, happening Saturday,
April twenty seventh in Atlanta. Live podcasts are on deck
from some of your favorite shows, including this one, Black Tech,
(36:59):
Green Money, and also some of the best podcasts in
the game, like Deeply Well with Debbie Brown and Carefully Reckless.
Atlanta is one of my favorite cities in the world.
I lived there for two years. Actually, in my worldview,
seeing us successful in every industry and not having any
limits on our potential largely was shaved by Atlanta. So
to be there with you doing this podcast talking about
how we build or leverage technology to build wealth. Come on, man,
(37:22):
doesn't get better. I want to see you there. Get
your tickets today at black effect dot comback Slash Podcast
Festival
Check me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast Festival,
happening Saturday, April twenty seven in Atlanta. Live podcasts are
on deck from some of your favorite shows, including this one,
Black Tech, Green Money, and also some of the best
podcasts in the game like Deeply Well with Debbie Brown
and Carefully Reckless. Atlanta is one of my favorite cities
in the world. I've lived there for two years. Actually,
in my worldview, seeing us successful in every industry and
(00:23):
not having any limits on our potential largely was shaped
by Atlanta. So to be there with you doing this
podcast talking about how we build or leverage technology to
build wealth. Come on, man, doesn't get better. I want
to see you there. Get your tickets today at Black
Effect dot comback Slash Podcast Festival. I'm with Lucas and
this is Black Tech, Green Money. Deschante Parks is founder
(00:46):
and CEO at one thousand More and that that makes
it easier for people from underrepresented communities like the one
she's from, to engage in politics the top of that
is super important to everyone's well being in growth, but
often difficult to participate in. Her approvised, digestible, nonpartisan Summer
Reason legislation coming up for a vote written in a
(01:08):
way that doesn't require a law degree to understand. You
can also find the popular arguments for and against bills,
and it also helps you connect with elected officials and
participating in crowdfunding campaigns for organizations you care about. Her
mission of civic empowerment started at Louisiana State University and
she worked on the Senate campaign for now Vice President
(01:29):
Kamala Harris, and she has a Master of Public Policy
degree from Harvard Kennedy School. And preparing to talk with her,
my mind immediately went to lobbying and how the voice
that people can be suppressed by big money. So I
asked Deschante to break down how this happens time and
time and again, both negatively and positively for the issues
that might matter most to you.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
So I think we're actually kind of not even ever
taught about lobbyists and lobbying. I think what happens is
we hear it in the context of the big life
has all this influence, and so we think we're separate
from it. We think they're the enemy because they have
all this influence and they have a lot of money,
and maybe we feel like we don't have any right.
The term lobbying comes from the men who used to
(02:14):
stand in the lobby of the hotels where the elected
officials who would stay when they came to DC to vote,
because they would live in their districts most of the time,
all over the country, and then they would come into
DC to vote as a legislative body, and there would
be men who literally hung out in the lobby of
these hotels and would buy them drinks and would talk
(02:34):
to them and would therefore have an influence on whatever
they were voting on. That was a lobbyist. So the
way that they still have influence really, I tell people
all the time. The money is part of it, but
what's even more important is lobbyists full time jobs are
to talk to your elected officials. So while you're working
(02:57):
nine to five, and then you get home from work
and you got to cook for the kids, and you
gotta exercise, and you're tired, and then you got to
even make time to watch the news. Then you got
to digest the news, form an opinion, then call. They're
not even at the office to answer the phone at
that point. Whereas lobbyists, this is all they do. This
is our job, and by the way, it's not a
bad job, right there. I have friends that are lobbyists.
There are people who lobby for children's rights, you know,
(03:20):
there are people who lobby for education and lobby for
health care. You can lobby for all kinds of things,
and so lobbyists are not bad people. What is potentially
bad is this system that we've created in which it
does create an imbalance and power when it's when organizations
with a lot of money can afford to have people
(03:42):
full time staying engaged with your elected officials when you
don't have time to talk to them at all. So
what happens is your elected official hasn't heard from you
since the last time you voted, and they hear from
lobbyists every single day. So that's just who has their attention.
So that is that's what lobbying is. That's our relationship
to lobbing as people. I created an app that completely
(04:05):
dismantles that. So with one thousand more, you see every
bill coming up for a vote, So actually coming up
for a vote. There's a lot of bills that get
caught up in in committee and those are honestly kind
of a waste of our time because they're never going
to get an actual vote. I put in every bill
that's coming up for a vote. I write everything at
(04:26):
a third grade level, because fifty four percent of Americans
read below a sixth grade level. And also it shouldn't
take you an hour to digest what a bill is.
I spend an hour figuring out what the bill is.
I write the summary at a third grade level, so
you can spend a couple of minutes know what the
bill is. You can see the arguments for and against.
We're nonpartisan, and then you can take action on it,
including calling, email and tweeting. There's a little scripts in
(04:48):
case you're nervous about what to say, so the script
is different if you're for or against. And then you
also can donate to an organization that's advocating for the bill.
Because when we crowdfund our dollars, we actually outspend the
lobby here in America. So the lobby spends about three
point five billion dollars a year. Americans spend five billion
dollars a year crowdfunding philanthropy. So we're talking about things
(05:10):
like GoFundMe, So we quite literally are bigger than the
big lobby with our voices and with our dollars. But
before one thousand more, there was no mechanism for us
to crowdfund our dollars on policy, on every single piece
of legislation. So people have already figured out that small
dollar donations make a huge difference in politics. You know,
(05:33):
when I talk about small dollar donations, we're talking about
donations that are two hundred dollars or less. Those sorts
of donations power campaigns. Campaigns can't win without millions in
small dollar donations. We already know that. But before one
thousand more, there was no mechanism to make a small
dollar donation between election seasons. So you shouldn't only be
(05:56):
participating during an election cycle. You should be anticipating between
election cycles. Because that's how we hold our elected officials accountable.
That's how we stay informed, so that number one, we
can tell them what we want them to do, and
number two, when they don't do it, we can hold
them accountable when it's time to vote for them again.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So you said something that I found really interesting, and
perhaps it's you know, provides you an opportunity to build
this technology, and that it takes hours and hours to
digest what these legislative you know, documents say, and the
conspiracy theorist in me says, that's probably intentional. I don't
know if it's intentional, but I wonder what you think, Like,
is it intentional that we can't understand this language?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah? I mean, look, I didn't go to law school
for a reason. I people who go to law school,
I don't get it. I ended up getting my master's
in public policy because I was like, y'all are learning
how to work within a system that's broken. I don't
want to learn how to work within the system. I
want to learn how to change the system on a
systemic level. And so I went and got my master's
(06:59):
in public policy. But that said, yeah, I do think
it's intentional. I think we have an education system in
this country that rewards people that have money and punishes
people who don't. So you are assigned a public school
based on your zip code, and your zip code is
(07:20):
assigned a tax bracket based on the cost of housing
in that zip code, and based on that tax bracket,
your school is allocated resources. So schools in the neighborhoods
that have expensive houses get more resources than schools that
have inexpensive housing. And so, you know, if we have
(07:44):
an entire part of our society who's already not getting
the funding that they need, maybe in their personal lives,
so you know, their parents don't make a lot of money,
people don't make a lot of money. Then in school,
they're not getting the kind of education that would help
them move in status at all. Help them help themselves,
(08:05):
if you will, And then the people who are already
in power get to stay in power. So the people
who have money, they get a good education, they learn
how to make more money, and those people tend to
be people who have more access to politics. Even you know,
when I was out on the campaign trail, and so
my family's from Streetport, Louisiana. I was raised in Fort Worth, Texas,
and people would tell me all the time, like, you know,
(08:28):
it doesn't matter what I say, It doesn't matter what
I'm thinking. You think rich people think that rich people
don't think that they know it matters what they say
and what they think. Part of this is a mindset too,
So yes, I think the way our education system is
set up is the foundation for disenfranchisement. I think it
is directly tied to civic engagement. And I think that
(08:49):
the entire system was built in a way that protected
the interests of at the time slave owners. That was
that's when our country was founded, and it was founded
with those ideals. It the way that laws were structured
protected the people who already had power because the people
(09:09):
in power were making the laws. And of course, over time,
thank god, there have been revolutions and movements, but at
its core, the way the system works still does reward
people who already have money, who already have power, and
it takes disruptive It takes disruptive movements or tools, in
(09:34):
this case with one thousand more technologies to really flip
things on its head. So, you know, I hear people
all the time say, you know, we can't keep working
within the same systems. Okay, fine, here's the deal. We're
not going to see the lobby going anywhere in our lifetime,
you know. And I say all the time, if I
could go back in time and talk to the Native Americans,
(09:55):
what I have been like, you should really start a
yoga practice because there's some serious about.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
To you know.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
No, I'd be like, we need to get y'all some guns.
Where are the guns? Where are the bombs? You know,
so we can bring water balloons to a gunfight, and
I build one thousand more so we could have the
same tools and flip this system on its head. That's
the best I think we can do right now.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah, So I wonder if there are more Deshonnete's out there.
So I was doing some research before this, and I
was reading this article from the National It's Toue of Health,
and it was talking about how the more we have
issues in the country, the more people feel disenfranchised and
equality exists, people feel victimized, et cetera. The more they
(10:37):
engage civically. And we're I guess post COVID. I think
the I think they say we're post COVID. I mean
we are post COVID, but we're out of the pandemic era.
Do people still feel that level of engagement as we
felt after George Floyd? Immediately after George Floyd in the pandemic?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
So what's interesting is it always is just ship, is
the way I see it. So those people who are
like politics doesn't impact my life, Okay, Well it's impacting
somebody's life right now. I guarantee you. In fact, this
dude told me a couple months ago. This dude was like,
I don't vote. I just kind of do what's in
front of me, And I was like, do you have
(11:18):
running water at your house? Do you have trash pickup?
Do you have women in your life? Do you ever
get sick? Like you like, what do you? I don't
know what that means. If you think politics doesn't affect you,
you might be very rich, or you might be willfully ignorant.
You want to believe it doesn't affect you because it
(11:41):
is so psychologically difficult for you to confront that there
are people that have a lot of power over your life.
And that is really scary, and I know it's hard.
I think a lot about civic engagement is tied to
our willingness to confront some very difficult things about the
way the world works that we live in. But no,
(12:03):
I think I agree. I have not seen the stat
that you're talking about. I agree that when people are
personally impacted by a policy, there is outrage, and it
tends to happen in communities. And what's important is, you know,
as people try to build coalitions, they try to build
coalitions across communities because we're bigger together. But also what
(12:28):
I want to talk about is how even when we
think we're seeing civic engagement, Like, what is civic engagement? Yeah,
if you post something on Twitter, sure it's civic engagement.
Even if you just watch the news, that is in
theory civic engagement because you're engaging with what's going on.
You're engaging with the news in your own home. But
when we talk about civic engagement, that translates into action,
(12:52):
and specifically legislative action. What sorts of things move the
needle on that, and it's not talking on social media.
I built this so that it integrates into social media.
We built a web app and not a mobile app
because I didn't think people would want to download a
new app. I was trying to create something that could
integrate into Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, So wherever people were,
(13:13):
we met them where they were. And you don't even
have to leave the social media platform you're on. You
and your friends are talking about a bill. You drop
a link to one thousand more to the bill in
one thousand more. They click, They read a little a
bit about it, they read the arguments for and against.
They choose, if therefore against, they can call, email, tweet,
or donate, go right back to scrolling very quick so
(13:34):
that translates into actually letting your elected official know and
believe it or not that matters. People think that it
doesn't matter if you call your elect official, and it
absolutely matters. These people want to be re elected and
they know that it's only your votes that can do that. Now,
the money that they get from some of these big donors,
(13:56):
they will use it in like TV ads or digital
ads on social media when your vote. But if you
are already knowledgeable about their track record, if you've already
been paying attention, it's going to be very difficult to
get your vote. And they know that. So when you're
talking online, they do see that. When you're calling their office,
they see that it doesn't take long and they're just telling,
(14:17):
you know, how many calls did we get today about
that infrastructure bill or about that education bill, about that
healthcare bill? How many calls did we get today? And
then they're like, Okay, people really care about this. It
moves to the top of the agenda because when you're
not saying anything, then they don't even know how much
the people in their district care about this. And again,
(14:39):
those lobbyists are talking to them every day.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, so I'm gonna throw two things at you, And
I hate to do that because you should just give
one question, but you give me so much there and
so one, I've heard less people say that it doesn't
matter to them, and more people say that their one
vote won't make a difference. So I want you to
speak to that. And then on top of that is
i've heard this phrase of all politics is local, and
(15:03):
so if the important things that actually may make a
bigger difference to me are my local elections versus the
federal ones, even though the federal ones do have impact,
but the ones to your point, you know, is your street,
are the potholes you know covered up? You know, are
the women in my life able to go get healthcare, etc?
Can you talk about how it's important, how that one
(15:25):
vote does make a difference, and the other things you
should do beyond just that one vote, and how local
politics matters to your everyday life.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah. So, first of all, people aren't wrong. So bring
your friend, you know, bring your whole family, bring your friends,
you bring whoever, because I mean, you're not wrong. One
vote is one thing. But when we talk about anything
in life, right like, especially when we're talking about public policy,
(15:55):
when we're talking about a democracy. How do you think
we get to those millions of votes? Those are all people,
those are all individual people, those thousands of votes. There
have been elections that were decided on one vote. There
was one in Louisiana recently. So this stuff is real.
Like that person who thought my vote doesn't matter, that
(16:15):
would have tied it, and if they had brought their friend,
it would have been two votes, and then maybe the
other person would have won. This stuff is consequential. Also,
you're not wrong bring more than one person. That's why
people are out here building coalitions. So I think that
the intuition there is right in that you want to
(16:36):
try to advocate for your position so that you have
more people on your side. And honestly, most of us
are hanging out with people and spending time with people
who agree with us anyway, and so you just need
to get them to the poll or to the phone
or whatever it is. So there's that.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
And so to your point of hanging out people who
are like you, So if you're one vote, if you're
one person with think to your vote doesn't matter, you
probably got ten friends who think that same thing. So
that's actually ten votes and not.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
One exactly exactly, which is amounting to millions of votes.
And then you know, also so in this election, you know,
we didn't even have a Democratic primary. People didn't even
get a choice for who the Democratic presidential candidate was
going to be. People are very upset about that. So
people think, you know, I don't like either of the candidates.
(17:24):
I don't want to vote at all. And I'm saying
you need to vote at least independent, vote for someone else,
because they need to know that you matter. They need
to know that you're paying attention because then next time
they will be actually vying for your vote. If you
just don't show up at all, they think that person's
not even going to get off the couch. I don't
have to listen to them at all. And you can
(17:46):
see it is public record who is a voter. It
doesn't tell you who they voted for, but you can
see every time a person has voted. So if you're
if you are calling your elected officials office, you are
in theory, more likely to be listened to if they
know you're a voter, if they know that you vote
every single time, So go out and vote for somebody,
(18:06):
vote for something, because it really just signals to them
that you have some kind of value in what they want,
which is to get re elected. And also, by the way,
that's not the only thing. There's all types of civic engagement,
you know I mentioned earlier. So also not publicly shaming
them on social media. That's a way to get their attention.
(18:27):
All like any kind of civil disobedience. There's a reason
why people shut down interstates because money moves on interstates.
If people can't get to work, if shipments can't get
where they're trying to go, that disrupts the economy. There's
power in that too. So there's all sorts of power
in civic engagement. And you know, we can signal to
elected officials in all kinds of ways. Voting is one
(18:48):
of them, calling is one, emailing, social media stuff like that,
and then your other question.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Local that's right involvement here.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Okay, So people talk about that because you are I mean,
it's fractions or so, like out of one hundred people.
If it's if you're one in one hundred, then you
have a lot more impacts there. Then if you're one
in a million, you just have more impacts. There's more
(19:21):
of a chance that you know, your vote could be
the change could be sort of the tipping point. Uh,
And yes, local politics is really important, and a thousand
more of course wants to do local politics eventually. Right
now we only do federal We've only been doing this
for a short amount of time. But you know, I
(19:42):
would say that these things all work together. So America
has a very decentralized democracy, which means that it's not
one central government that makes all the decisions. It's decentralized.
We have the federal government, then we have our state governments,
then we have our local governments, and they all work
together in different ways. So if y'all will remember like
when California made marijuana ly, but then the federal governments
that marijuana was not legal. Remember that, and that caused
(20:04):
a lot of confusion and they were like, well, you
could still be arrested if you're driving with it whatever.
You know, it like depended on the circumstances of an arrest. Well,
that's that's sort of how our government works together. The
government also, the federal government can protect you from in
(20:26):
just laws locally. So a historical example of this is,
you know, the federal government. Oh, the Supreme Court ruled
that schools had to be integrated, and states still didn't
do it. You know, again, my family's from Louisiana. My
dad was in the first integrated class of his high school.
My dad's not that old, he's like fifty something. So
(20:49):
the federal government had to step in because state governments
were violating people's rights. And we see sort of the
same thing, the same concept when we talk about like
access to abortion. You know, when that thing happened in
Alabama where the court there ruled against the IVF clinic
(21:11):
and everyone with this was just a few weeks ago,
and everyone was like, IVF is going to be legal.
The federal government tried to put in place protections for
IVF so that it would then say that your local
government could not take that right from you. So they
all work together because there are going to be times
that you agree more with your local government. There are
(21:31):
going to be times when you agree with more with
your federal government. And you know, people talk about states
rights versus federal rights. There's a lot of Southern states
that are like, we want the federal government to stay
out of it. You know, we want states to be
able to make these decisions, and the decisions tend to
be decisions that are infringing on other on individual rights.
(21:55):
So yes, politics is local. The more local some thing is.
I By the way, I love working in municipal government.
It's my favorite place to work because you can move,
you can change something so quickly, you can get that
whole filled. You can you know, if there's a water issue,
you know what happened in Flint, for example. You can
very quickly put policies in place to protect people if
(22:17):
you're working in an efficient municipal government. So I love
municipal government. It's just I want people to understand how
all these things work together. It's important to vote on
every level totally.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
So from a tech CEO perspective, you know, when people
think about and I don't know if what your goals
are personally in building a technology, but I'm imagining there's
you know, a part of it is you know, benevolent,
and part of it is also there's an opportunity there.
I'm imagining you can you can correct me if I'm wrong.
And so community work is not something necessarily people think
(22:49):
about when they are trying to find a lot of wealth,
but I wonder I believe first that you can do
well while doing well? So can you speak to how
you find find wealth you know, unicorn opportunity with your
one thousand more company working in community, I want you
to speak to that the motivations here well.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
First of all, I never wanted to build a tech
startup at all. I grew up very poor. We did
not even when everyone else got the Internet, we didn't
get the Internet right away. So I was very much
behind the curve. Like I missed AOI ao whatever that
was called that in semester. I missed all that like MySpace,
like I missed it like I used to have to.
(23:31):
When I was at my friend's house, I was like, ooh,
y'all got the Internet. Let me, how do you do this?
Like I So, I never considered myself tech savvy at all.
What happened was I was working in politics. What I
always did want to do with civic engagement. What I
really wanted to do was have a political talk show
that was funny and entertaining for black people. I wanted
it to come on right after one o six in
(23:52):
Park because I knew no one was going to tune
into my show on purpose. I thought maybe they would,
you know, still be finishing their snack as one of
the park was ending, and maybe they would just hang around.
Maybe I would be funny enough that maybe people would
stick around and get the news of the day. That's
what I wanted to do. So I got a degree
in political communications from LSU, which was the journalism school.
(24:13):
I produced the first public affairs show on Tiger TV,
and then I ended up needing a job. In my
life took a different direction. I you know, I graduated,
I got a job offer, I took it. I was
working in politics, and I was very obsessed about how
(24:33):
do we get people to pay attention, how do we
get people to absorb information, how do we get people
to take action, and especially people like the people where
I'm from. So I knew that that had something to
do with like the intersection of pop culture. You know,
like if some celebrity was talking about a thousand more,
I would have a lot more weight than me talking
(24:54):
about one thousand more, a girl who just spent a
lot of time working in politics. And that's what I
was doing. I was working in politics all over the country.
I worked on Kamala Harris's usn and campaign in California.
I was on Jason Candor's usn A campaign in Missouri,
mary landrews USNA campaign in Louisiana. All over the country
working in politics, I end up and down the ballot
as well. There were lots of other races. But I
(25:17):
would always hear people say, why do we only hear
from these people when it's time to vote, And I'd
be like, no, you don't have to. And I would say, like,
just call me, just text me. And I just was
very obsessed about this. And one night, I and this
was at a time in my life when I was
just feeling very hopeless about the state of politics. I
(25:38):
was like, I've dedicated my whole life to this. I
don't think I'm making any difference. I'm not even doing
the job I originally wanted to do. I don't know
that I'm helping people. I don't even know that these
people that I've worked for are really upholding the values
that I wanted them to or hope that they would.
And I was just I was, you know, I was
(25:59):
feeling very frush and very hopeless about what I was doing.
And one night I had a dream and I saw
one thousand more in the dream. So in the dream,
there I was taking a nap. There was like a
ruckus outside. I walked outside and was like, why are
y'all being so loud? I'm trying to take a nap.
And this man was like, we're about to stop this bill.
And I was like, yeah, right, how are you going
(26:20):
to do that? Because I'm thinking I dedicated my whole
career to this and I don't even know how to
tell you to do that, So how you think you're
going to do it? And he was like, we use
this app? And I was like, what app? Show me?
And he showed me the whole thing. And I woke
up in the middle of the night and promised God
I would build it. And I've been building it ever since.
So it wasn't even about it wasn't about money. But
(26:41):
that said, this is a billion dollar idea, right, This
is the GoFundMe of politics. What the Robin Hood app
did to Wall Street is what we're doing in politics.
This is absolutely a billion dollar business. And I am
so grateful and can't wait for that moment. But yeah,
I think you can do good while doing good, and
I think, really my only advice about that is I
(27:01):
think there was so long that I was like, why
am I doing this? Like why am I out on
the campaign trail this, I'm not on TV, I'm not
doing what I want to do at all. I didn't
know why I was doing what I was doing, and
it made me really sad. And then I think one
day God just showed me a very clearer vision of
what I would be doing, and stuff started making sense,
Like A thousand more would not be what it is
if I hadn't spent all that time on the campaign
(27:24):
trail talking to tens of thousands of voters, hundreds of donors,
you know, thousands of politicians and community leaders and things
like that. It took all those perspectives and it took
all of that experience for me to build what I did.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
I love that. I was reading an article about how
there's so many more black people, young black people specifically
investing in the stock market, and while the title, I'm like, yes,
we should be doing that. Then I read the article
and they were like, what the problem is? Where we
get our education about what socks to invest in comes
from mostly social media, and I'm like, yeah, that's probably
(28:05):
not great because we invest in stuff that we don't
have education about. And I wonder what your thoughts are
on are we doing that same thing for the things
that we vote for.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
I think that is such an important question, so I
think we do. I think all people get a lot
of information from social media. I think that is a
symptom of people not trusting mainstream media, as they have
in for a very long time, and for good reason.
People don't trust media. Oftentimes people don't trust their governments.
(28:42):
So that's all fair, and I think what's important is
people finding sources who they can trust. And I built
one thousand more of the way that I did because
education is the foundation of it. Journalism is the foundation
of it. Again, my degree is in journalism, so I
built it so that it's all these summaries, all these
(29:03):
bill summaries are read by me. I make sure that
I have a team of people, of course, but I
make sure that they are a fair representation of what's
in the bill. I make sure that they're written in
a way that does not require a law degree to understand.
And I made sure that it was easily shareable because
I did want this to first and foremost be a
(29:23):
source of information that in itself breaks barriers. It gives
people a trusted source of information so that they can
even just verify what they're saying on social media. If
you hear it first from a friend, that's fine, but
you need a place to verify the information. And I yeah,
I think people get a lot of their news from
social media. I don't think it's always a bad thing,
(29:45):
but I think that there needs to be a real
education on media literacy. You know, how do you know
if something is factual? You should If you hear from
a friend, that's fine, but you should check it. You
should check the source. A lot of times people don't
even ask the source. I always will say where did
you get information from?
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah? Yeah, I know, I'm a witness. You do ask that.
I love it. I want to talk about how like
when you get an idea like this, you said it
can't he in his dream, which I love that. And
you said you were not dreaming to be a tech
entrepreneur growing up, So like what is this step? Like,
how do you had this dream? I had this idea,
(30:22):
now I'm going to go build it. How you do that?
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah? So again I think God had put everything already
in place and I didn't even know it. So I again,
I want to Lsu. I'm in an aka who wants lsu.
So my profile it was just a couple of lines
before me. It's a Vitral Wilson who built Resilia, and
so she's like, my friend, that's my sister, Like you know,
so I asked her. She was the first person. I
(30:48):
was like, I had this crazy dream and no, I
had already bought the domain at this point, but I
was like, what do you think about this? And she
was like, I think it's brilliant. And the advice that
she gave me is tell anyone who will listen. Most
people want to hold their ideas close to the vest
because they think that someone's going to steal their idea.
She was like, most people can't even execute their own visions,
(31:08):
much less yours, So tell anyone who listened. I had
already been accepted to Harvard at the time, so I
started my master's in public policy at Harvard, and I
was just telling anyone who listen. Now again, I know
that's a huge opportunity that most people don't have. Was
Harvard is just throwing money. If you get into Harvard,
they're throwing money everywhere. So yeah, there was like, you know,
(31:28):
a couple thousand dollars here and they're a pitch competition.
There was a class I took at the Business School
at HBS where they give you two thousand dollars to
execute a business plan. And I took the class twice,
like you know, and I ended up meeting. So the
first step was I ended up meeting a dude in
my class who he was a lot of people are
(31:50):
in transition at Harvard, going from one career to another.
His first career had been in projects like product management,
product tech, products management. So he was like, do you
have a product roadmap? I was like, I don't even
know what that is. And he was like, look, you
should make a prototype. I'm like, what's a prototype? He's like,
hire a graphic designer to draw a picture of what's
(32:12):
in your head. Wow, that makes so much sense. I
literally asked my girls back in Louisiana do we know
any graphic designers? Hired Morgan Hilliard, who is a black
woman graphic designer who happened to I didn't even know.
I hired her because I thought she was a good
graphic designer. Her husband owned a tech startup. Wow, so
she was like, I know how to make a clickable prototype.
I said, oh, we next level with it. I gave
her the money Harvard had given me, because at the
(32:34):
time I think I'd gotten like maybe twelve hundred dollars
or something. So she made a clickable prototype for me,
and then I gave that to a software developer. The
software developer built it. I mean we built it together. Obviously.
We even had to create our own language because I
didn't speak any of his coding language. He didn't know
anything about politics. So we started talking about it like
we were building a house. Like we'd be like, Okay,
we're in the living room. There's three different doors. This
(32:55):
is like the user experience, and yeah, we just truly
I think just being solutions oriented got me through this.
There was I knew there was always an answer, so
I just would talk to anyone who listen. I asked
a lot of questions, and I did what people told
me to do, and I, you know, got some of
the money. I went for the money and was able
(33:16):
to pay people who could help me build this thing.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
So in my view, you've got like two challenges. One
is to get people to use it. Too is you
got to convince people that getting engaged is worth their time,
and so can you give your pitch for why you
should really be engaged. This is your platform.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
It's life or death. It's literally life or death. I
mean it might not be life or death for you
the moment, but it could be. I had an uber
driver who told me he wasn't politically involved, and I
was like, okay, fine, we start talking. Turns out his
daughter's on insulin. I'm like, did you know there's a
bill right now moving on insulin? And he's like, no,
I didn't even know that. He did not even know
that his daughter's life depended on him being politically aware.
(34:02):
And you know, there's a there's a lot of people
like him, a million people like him, And when those
people come together and make it clear that this is
a priority for the community that these elected officials represent,
then things get done. And in so many ways, right
like the war on drugs, people being imprisoned wrongly, these
(34:23):
are these are people's lives, uh, And some people are
impacted more than others. But I'm sure you can, when
you really think about it, think of a way that
politics or policy has impacted you, or your family, or
your community. So what I would say is, don't be
afraid of that. Don't run from that confront why it's scary,
and know that there are people who you can trust,
(34:45):
and that I've created a way for you to engage
from the comfort of your own home, so you can
in a very safe environment. Just start tinkering with this,
Start reading about you know, a couple of bills. Try
to call. You're alone in your home. If you call
and hang up one time, no one's gonna know, you know,
Just call again. Read the script verbatim. If they ask
(35:06):
a follow up question, I don't have anything to say.
Just try. Just try. And the first time you do it,
it's going to be scaring. The tenth time you do it,
it's not. And that's like anything in life. You are
a person who matters in this democracy, even if, by
the way, even if you're not a citizen, if you
live in this community, if you live in this country,
(35:28):
you are important to this democracy. And you just need
to believe that. The thing is is I know it,
Your elected officials know it. The media knows that everyone
knows it, and they are banking on you to believe.
People who are currently in power are banking on you
believing that you have no power that's the easiest way
for them to take your power is to convince you
that you have no power. So if you think you
(35:49):
have no power, ask yourself who told you that, why
do you think that? And then know that it's not
true and take your power back. Get on one thousand more.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro
Tech on the Black Effect podcast Network in iHeartMedia. It's
produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with additional
production support by Sarah Ergan and Love Beach. Special thank
you to Michael Davis and Kate McDonald. Learn more about
my guests and other tech this weepons and innovators at
afrotech dot com. Enjoying Black Tech, Green Money, share up
(36:38):
to somebody go get your money, peace and love. Check
me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast Festival, happening Saturday,
April twenty seventh in Atlanta. Live podcasts are on deck
from some of your favorite shows, including this one, Black Tech,
(36:59):
Green Money, and also some of the best podcasts in
the game, like Deeply Well with Debbie Brown and Carefully Reckless.
Atlanta is one of my favorite cities in the world.
I lived there for two years. Actually, in my worldview,
seeing us successful in every industry and not having any
limits on our potential largely was shaved by Atlanta. So
to be there with you doing this podcast talking about
how we build or leverage technology to build wealth. Come on, man,
(37:22):
doesn't get better. I want to see you there. Get
your tickets today at black effect dot comback Slash Podcast
Festival
Host
Will Lucas
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