October 23, 2025 • 17 mins
In this My Legacy Bonus Drop, Congressman Maxwell Frost is joined by his father, Patrick, for a heartfelt conversation about how vinyl, values, and a shared love of music that shaped his path.
Together they explore:
- The father-son playlists that became a lifelong “music appreciation class”
- Why the arts and activism are inseparable in lasting change
- Lessons from loss, legacy, and learning to lead with community
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is my legacy.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
In this week's Bonus Drop, Congressman Maxwell Frost sits down
with his father Patrick to reflect on the vinyl, the voices,
and the values that shaped him from the Beach Boys
to Stevie Wonder to the activism and community building that
fuel his work today.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Let's jump in.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Patrick Cuve had a decade long career as a musician,
playing still pan on stages around the world. And as
you mentioned, you gave a drum set to your son
in second grade. How are those moments of those love
of music together at that time you're listening and enjoying music.
How has that helped to really open doors to a
deeper conversation for the two of you.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Max and I shared music mostly on the way to school.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
On the drive to school, I would developed a play
this on my iPod and it was basically my music
appreciation class for Maxwell, and I play him everything from
you know, Frank Zappa, John Coltrane, Igor Stravinsky. But I
planned it out and I can remember spending a lot
of time thinking about the playlist and playing in the music,
(01:04):
and he'd really listened to it, and we listened to
it in the car on the way to school or
on the way back to school or wherever we were going,
and that was the music appreciation class. It seemed to
me that it happened more in the car than anywhere else.
Speaker 5 (01:17):
Yeah, I feel like in the car and in the studio.
I feel like A good example too, is recently I
was doing an interview and I get a text from
a dad. You know, you shouldn't really be looking at
your text during an interview, but I just got a
text from like my phone lit up and I look
and you sent me a text that said I'm speechless.
And I was like, okay, well I got to oh,
(01:38):
I got to open and see it. And I clicked it.
And it was the day Brian Wilson died. And you know,
growing up that we talked about this. My dad and
I would listen to there's like a few key people
Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson was one of them that we
would listen to all the time, and he'd use that
music to teach me about music. And we'd always talk
(02:00):
about hearing the intervals and hearing the emotion in that
story and and it it was obviously the death of
one of the great American songwriters. But not just that.
It is a huge part of our relationship as of
you know, his father and son.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
It was in two thousand and four Brian Wilson released
the Smile music that he had started in the sixties
and gave up.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And it was the.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
First time we heard it and Max and Max I
played it for him and and the music is very
infectious and once you once it gets into you, it's
you have earworms.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
You can't turn the music off.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
And the tour came through and was in Melbourne here
in Florida, and I took Maxwell. He was I think
like eight years old, yeah, eight or so like that.
We went to see Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys
and his band performed Smile and uh and and Max
was the youngest person and the darkest person in the
in the audience, and he knew every line of this.
(03:00):
By that time, we knew the music inside and out.
And I had ever musician buddies that were there and
they were saying they were looking at Maxico and it
he knows he knows this music.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And I go, yeah, he knows this music. He knows
it really well.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
And it was and we had experiences like that with
different ever, different kinds of music we would just.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Turn on to.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
I remember he took my uh A Love Supreme John
col Frane album and and he put it.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Into a frame and put it on the wall in
his bedroom.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
And I said, hey, that's my Club Supreme out and
and he said, yeah, I like it. I want to
put And so anyway, I found it at a good
Will story. I found that Love Supreme cover was no
record in it. I bought it for fifty nine cents
and I went into his room and I took my record.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Out of the yempty one in the frame, and he
didn't even really.
Speaker 6 (03:44):
Realize, Well, I didn't know that till now you it's
in your office, sons or if there's no record in it,
because I found it. I found just a cover, and
I snuck in there and put the cover in and
took my record with the vinyl in it and got
it back.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Patrick.
Speaker 7 (03:57):
I call that ninja parenting. I'm a bit opponent of
ninja parenting.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
It's a very hard record to find it because I
sell vinyl records online. I have a little online retail
store for and I sell I have I have six
thousand vinyl albums in my house I tell my wife.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
We live in a record store. We really do. We
live in a record store.
Speaker 7 (04:15):
We finally found the person that has more vinyl than
Mark my husband has. He has a storage full of vinyls.
I think, I think you top him, but we are.
We're in the one, two, three, We're in the five.
We're in the five digits as well.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Wow, those records at Atlanta.
Speaker 7 (04:35):
Yes, yes, yes, and you also you know I love
music and playlists. In fact, every year I have at
the beginning of the year, I do a playlist for
the year with all kinds of genres on there. So
I do have two questions for you about this. Is
that for the playlist, how often did you make them
for the entire school year? Or like when did you
change them? And then secondly, how long did that because
(04:57):
after a while the kids start driving themselves, and so
how long did that last?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And do you all just exchange them? Now, when he
was in elementary school, we would ride bikes.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
He would ride his bike and I would ride my
bike and I would escort into elementary school. Then when
he went to the School for the Arts, that's when
I began to drive with him. And that's when the
playlist thing really kind of started, and that was very
close to the time I was just talking about in
two thousand and four when we got so involved in
in that Brian Wilson record. But I would change the
(05:28):
playlist based on what I was listening to or based
on things I would say, Oh.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Max needs to hear this, Max needs to hear this.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
We went through, you know, I talked about the Stevie
Wonder record, starting from Music of My Mind and going
up through the five albums all the way through really
hotter than July.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
But but really, you know, songs in the key of Life.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
So do you.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
Travel with your drumsticks at this point? Do you just
bring your drum sticks everywhere?
Speaker 5 (05:56):
Because I do have a pair in DC. I had
to buy like a few pa to have in DC
for events up there. But even in the Commina campaign there,
I'm looking at my trip manifest for a trip in
Michigan and it said Flint Jazz fundraiser and they were like, yeah,
we want to go. We got some students. We want
you to play with these students and I was like, okay,
a high school jazz man, I can sit in with them.
(06:16):
I haven't played swing in a long time, but I
can sit in with them and I show up and
it's a master's program like jazz Combo. Like these guys
were killer, how they were ringers, that they were a
rings They were crazy good and I was so I
was like, wait, I can't hang with these guys. But
I played with them a little bit.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
They were you know, we played like.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
A blues or something. I don't know, understanding music on
that on a little bit of it, on that level,
a very emotional level, I think is something I learned
from my dad that you know, I'll have for me
with me the rest of my life. That you don't
really get that from even reading music, you know, you
you get that from learning how to listen. It's like
learning how to learn, which I think is really important.
Speaker 8 (06:56):
We're building something real here, one episode at a time.
If you want to be part of it, subscribe, it's free,
it matters, and we're just getting started.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Now.
Speaker 7 (07:10):
Back to my legacy, what would you say to a
young person now, because I think that and our daughter
has run into this a little bit. Sometimes kids now
can be almost apathetic. But if there's a young listener
that's listening, that really wants to organize how you did
when you were young, Like what type of like just
(07:33):
small advice would you would you give to a young person.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
You know what I always tell people. You know, the
really cool thing about my generation is gen z is
very entrepreneurial. We love starting new stuff, and I think
that's a good thing. But something I learned quickly when
I got back from Sandy Hook or when I got
back from DC from the vidual. The first thing I
did is a friend and I started a group called
(07:59):
Fight a Florida Youth Takes Action against Gun Violence, and
we had a logo made and we were trying. We're like,
we're going to do this thing, and we quickly found out, wait,
there's a lot of people doing this work already in
the community who have their own collaboratives and organizations, and
we click quickly found out that we should just join
(08:19):
with them because we have a lot to learn, and
we have a lot to learn, we have a lot
to give, and we're better when we joined together. So
Fido was a very short lived project. I think the
Facebook page is a lot there. But that's what I
always tell people, because I think we have an inkling
to like start something new, which look if you're in
a community and you don't like what's going on there,
you can start your own thing. But I always encourage
people if there's something already going on around you join them, because,
(08:44):
to be honest, the way, a lot of people ask me,
you know, how do you do this work in Congress
with everything going on? Because I've spent ten years in
the gun violence prevention movement as a kid, where the
days were the most people cared about our issue were
connected to the days where most people were dying, you know.
And it's a traumatic thing to kind of a movement
(09:05):
to grow up in because most of the people I
would meet when I'd go to vigils, you know, and
different events like that, were people who just lost someone
of the gun violence. And it became very normal for
me to be friends and be in community with all
these people who have lost loved ones. And I remember
when I was running for Congress, I went to my
(09:26):
mom and I was like, can you help me find
pictures or this and that. I'm trying to figure out
how many vigels I've been to that I can prove right,
And I went through all my texts. My mom sent
me some photos at different ones and I realized that
between the ages of fifteen and twenty four, I've been
to sixty memorials or vigels of people I've never met
in my life who were done down due to gun violence. Wow,
(09:49):
it's sixty that I could find proof of right could
be a little bit more. Organizing is so much about culture,
and you create this culture and this family and this
collaborative with people around you and people you've never met before,
and that really, in of itself, is what keeps you
(10:09):
going in this work, especially when it's very traumatic work.
And so I always tell people, you know, we're in
this age of authoritarianism and the rise of fascism, and
the authoritarians thrive when the opposition works in silos, when
the opposition is not in community, when the opposition is
not together, And so I always encourage people get together, like,
(10:33):
get with people who want to do this work with you,
and even if you don't have all the answers on
what to do next, you'll figure it out or someone
will tell you, or something will be happening in your community.
And so that's what I always ask me all the time.
You know, I'm traveling the country, people are like, what
can we do now. I always tell them I can
rattle off a million different tactics to you, but the
most important thing I'll tell you is get involved in
(10:55):
a group that'll answer this question for you every day
right here in your community.
Speaker 7 (11:00):
Where do we go from here? Chaos or community? Congressman Frost,
you recently joined speaking of going out into community. Senator
Chris Murphy for town halls all across the country, and
many were in or not many, I think they all
were in Republican districts.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Yeah, it's been great to be on the road with
Senator Murphy, and I think, you know, for us, we're
trying to get it out of the partisan conversation here
because there's something deeper happening in this nation. And I
feel like we're getting to the place point where we
could be a country that just has one term presidents
for one hundred years. Why because the situation is so
bad that whoever's in power will be viewed upon negatively.
(11:42):
And we see this happen in South America as well.
I spent you know, I went to El Salvador on
the Kilmwar Abregio, Garcia case, and I was speaking there
with people locally, you know, this president there. Bukelli enjoys
a very high favorability rating. He was elected with what
was it like, eighty percent of the v or something,
but eighty percent of the people don't agree with him.
(12:03):
But it just got so dangerous in Alsalvador that people
suspended their beliefs on a whole host of issues to
vote for the person who gave kind of the most
radical solution to fixing a very prevalent problem. I think
we're in this place in this nation in terms of
our economy and people's livelihood, and it's really dangerous place.
(12:24):
Authoritarians like Trump don't come to power when everyone's doing well,
you know, So I just I'm worried about that part
of things, and I think we have to go out
and meet people where they're at to explain, you know,
how they've been lied to, and then what we're going
to do better. I really believe that part of what
we have to do in this moment is bridge that
gap between cool and consciousness.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
What do I mean by that?
Speaker 5 (12:46):
I'm always figuring out ways to bring We talk a
lot about the arts, the arts and advocacy together because
the most successful mass social movements have one thing in common,
and it's when the culture becomes morphed with the advocacy
and it becomes one thing. And I think a lot
(13:09):
about March for Our Lives just because I was a
part of that. I remember being at the March of
Our Lives here in Orlando and walking around, you know,
tens of thousands of people, and I run into a
group of friends that I knew from like elementary school.
I'd kept up with them on Facebook, but I knew
they didn't care about politics. Actually, in fact, I knew
two of them hated politics. And I asked them, why'd
you come? I'm just curious, and like one of them says, uh,
(13:32):
you know, I just felt like I needed to be here.
My friends came, I came with my friends. Beyonce told
me to cough, and I don't know, I can't quite
explain it. I just felt like I needed to be here.
And what all those answers indicate is that that movement
became part of the culture of this nation. And my
(13:52):
favorite answer was actually a last one. I don't know
why I am here, but I just felt like I
needed to be here. And I feel like all too
opt in, like we're we get we're very preachy towards
not derogatory term towards preachers, but like we're we talk
at people about what they need to do instead of
figuring out a ways to sometimes just connect the dots
(14:13):
for folks. I mean, maybe I'm a little too optimistic,
but I we all have different calls to action, right,
And I don't put all this pressure on myself to say, well,
when Maxwell Frost speaks to people he disagrees with, they're
all gonna say, you're right, I'm wrong, you change my life.
I don't think that you know that that's gonna happen.
(14:34):
But I see that conversation as a part of a
longer thing for them, and like I'm very honored to
play that part. And that's the job of an organizer.
You know, when we stay it at that crossroads, when
something happens in somebody's life or they witness something or
they see something or hear something and they make that decision,
they're gonna go one of two ways. It can actually
(14:55):
drive people further into apathy or they can get driven
into action. And we have to stand there and help
people find a political home. And it might be with
my campaign, it might not be. It might be with
a different organization, right, And what I try to do
locally is build those coalitions with different groups who do
a lot of different work. I have a music festival
(15:16):
every year here. We're gonna invite you guys to come.
It's called Mad Soul, And the whole purpose of the
festival is it is a music festival. Right. We have
artists that come that are local, but in between the sets,
we have community leaders that speak about the work we're doing.
And instead of like booths to buy stuff, we have
thirty organizations there that you get to go hear from.
(15:39):
And I don't think people will get involved with thirty,
but I hope people will get involved with one, and
the cool thing is they'll be able to pick the one.
It's an event that I raise money for that my
team puts together. But I'm not so obsessed with people
just doing stuff for me that it's just about me.
It's about Central Florida. It's about like this ecosystem. That's
(16:01):
obviously something that your father deeply understood, that there were
so many different parts of this big puzzle, and that
he was always looking for a fight that was local
in scope but national and impact. And I think of
the work that we do here in here in Florida
and in the South generally as very similar, you know,
(16:25):
and it's just the honor to be be a small
part of this bigger work that we're doing.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe, share, and follow us
on at my Legacy Movement on social media and YouTube.
New episodes drop every Tuesday, with bonus content every Thursday.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
At its core, this podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Honors doctor King's vision of the beloved community and the
power of connection. A Legacy Plus Studio production distributed by
iHeartMedia creator and executive producer Suzanne Hayward Come executive producer
Lisa Lyle. Listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
get your podcasts.
This is my legacy.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
In this week's Bonus Drop, Congressman Maxwell Frost sits down
with his father Patrick to reflect on the vinyl, the voices,
and the values that shaped him from the Beach Boys
to Stevie Wonder to the activism and community building that
fuel his work today.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Let's jump in.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Patrick Cuve had a decade long career as a musician,
playing still pan on stages around the world. And as
you mentioned, you gave a drum set to your son
in second grade. How are those moments of those love
of music together at that time you're listening and enjoying music.
How has that helped to really open doors to a
deeper conversation for the two of you.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Max and I shared music mostly on the way to school.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
On the drive to school, I would developed a play
this on my iPod and it was basically my music
appreciation class for Maxwell, and I play him everything from
you know, Frank Zappa, John Coltrane, Igor Stravinsky. But I
planned it out and I can remember spending a lot
of time thinking about the playlist and playing in the music,
(01:04):
and he'd really listened to it, and we listened to
it in the car on the way to school or
on the way back to school or wherever we were going,
and that was the music appreciation class. It seemed to
me that it happened more in the car than anywhere else.
Speaker 5 (01:17):
Yeah, I feel like in the car and in the studio.
I feel like A good example too, is recently I
was doing an interview and I get a text from
a dad. You know, you shouldn't really be looking at
your text during an interview, but I just got a
text from like my phone lit up and I look
and you sent me a text that said I'm speechless.
And I was like, okay, well I got to oh,
(01:38):
I got to open and see it. And I clicked it.
And it was the day Brian Wilson died. And you know,
growing up that we talked about this. My dad and
I would listen to there's like a few key people
Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson was one of them that we
would listen to all the time, and he'd use that
music to teach me about music. And we'd always talk
(02:00):
about hearing the intervals and hearing the emotion in that
story and and it it was obviously the death of
one of the great American songwriters. But not just that.
It is a huge part of our relationship as of
you know, his father and son.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
It was in two thousand and four Brian Wilson released
the Smile music that he had started in the sixties
and gave up.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And it was the.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
First time we heard it and Max and Max I
played it for him and and the music is very
infectious and once you once it gets into you, it's
you have earworms.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
You can't turn the music off.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
And the tour came through and was in Melbourne here
in Florida, and I took Maxwell. He was I think
like eight years old, yeah, eight or so like that.
We went to see Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys
and his band performed Smile and uh and and Max
was the youngest person and the darkest person in the
in the audience, and he knew every line of this.
(03:00):
By that time, we knew the music inside and out.
And I had ever musician buddies that were there and
they were saying they were looking at Maxico and it
he knows he knows this music.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And I go, yeah, he knows this music. He knows
it really well.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
And it was and we had experiences like that with
different ever, different kinds of music we would just.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Turn on to.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
I remember he took my uh A Love Supreme John
col Frane album and and he put it.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Into a frame and put it on the wall in
his bedroom.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
And I said, hey, that's my Club Supreme out and
and he said, yeah, I like it. I want to
put And so anyway, I found it at a good
Will story. I found that Love Supreme cover was no
record in it. I bought it for fifty nine cents
and I went into his room and I took my record.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Out of the yempty one in the frame, and he
didn't even really.
Speaker 6 (03:44):
Realize, Well, I didn't know that till now you it's
in your office, sons or if there's no record in it,
because I found it. I found just a cover, and
I snuck in there and put the cover in and
took my record with the vinyl in it and got
it back.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Patrick.
Speaker 7 (03:57):
I call that ninja parenting. I'm a bit opponent of
ninja parenting.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
It's a very hard record to find it because I
sell vinyl records online. I have a little online retail
store for and I sell I have I have six
thousand vinyl albums in my house I tell my wife.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
We live in a record store. We really do. We
live in a record store.
Speaker 7 (04:15):
We finally found the person that has more vinyl than
Mark my husband has. He has a storage full of vinyls.
I think, I think you top him, but we are.
We're in the one, two, three, We're in the five.
We're in the five digits as well.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Wow, those records at Atlanta.
Speaker 7 (04:35):
Yes, yes, yes, and you also you know I love
music and playlists. In fact, every year I have at
the beginning of the year, I do a playlist for
the year with all kinds of genres on there. So
I do have two questions for you about this. Is
that for the playlist, how often did you make them
for the entire school year? Or like when did you
change them? And then secondly, how long did that because
(04:57):
after a while the kids start driving themselves, and so
how long did that last?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And do you all just exchange them? Now, when he
was in elementary school, we would ride bikes.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
He would ride his bike and I would ride my
bike and I would escort into elementary school. Then when
he went to the School for the Arts, that's when
I began to drive with him. And that's when the
playlist thing really kind of started, and that was very
close to the time I was just talking about in
two thousand and four when we got so involved in
in that Brian Wilson record. But I would change the
(05:28):
playlist based on what I was listening to or based
on things I would say, Oh.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Max needs to hear this, Max needs to hear this.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
We went through, you know, I talked about the Stevie
Wonder record, starting from Music of My Mind and going
up through the five albums all the way through really
hotter than July.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
But but really, you know, songs in the key of Life.
Speaker 5 (05:50):
So do you.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
Travel with your drumsticks at this point? Do you just
bring your drum sticks everywhere?
Speaker 5 (05:56):
Because I do have a pair in DC. I had
to buy like a few pa to have in DC
for events up there. But even in the Commina campaign there,
I'm looking at my trip manifest for a trip in
Michigan and it said Flint Jazz fundraiser and they were like, yeah,
we want to go. We got some students. We want
you to play with these students and I was like, okay,
a high school jazz man, I can sit in with them.
(06:16):
I haven't played swing in a long time, but I
can sit in with them and I show up and
it's a master's program like jazz Combo. Like these guys
were killer, how they were ringers, that they were a
rings They were crazy good and I was so I
was like, wait, I can't hang with these guys. But
I played with them a little bit.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
They were you know, we played like.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
A blues or something. I don't know, understanding music on
that on a little bit of it, on that level,
a very emotional level, I think is something I learned
from my dad that you know, I'll have for me
with me the rest of my life. That you don't
really get that from even reading music, you know, you
you get that from learning how to listen. It's like
learning how to learn, which I think is really important.
Speaker 8 (06:56):
We're building something real here, one episode at a time.
If you want to be part of it, subscribe, it's free,
it matters, and we're just getting started.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Now.
Speaker 7 (07:10):
Back to my legacy, what would you say to a
young person now, because I think that and our daughter
has run into this a little bit. Sometimes kids now
can be almost apathetic. But if there's a young listener
that's listening, that really wants to organize how you did
when you were young, Like what type of like just
(07:33):
small advice would you would you give to a young person.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
You know what I always tell people. You know, the
really cool thing about my generation is gen z is
very entrepreneurial. We love starting new stuff, and I think
that's a good thing. But something I learned quickly when
I got back from Sandy Hook or when I got
back from DC from the vidual. The first thing I
did is a friend and I started a group called
(07:59):
Fight a Florida Youth Takes Action against Gun Violence, and
we had a logo made and we were trying. We're like,
we're going to do this thing, and we quickly found out, wait,
there's a lot of people doing this work already in
the community who have their own collaboratives and organizations, and
we click quickly found out that we should just join
(08:19):
with them because we have a lot to learn, and
we have a lot to learn, we have a lot
to give, and we're better when we joined together. So
Fido was a very short lived project. I think the
Facebook page is a lot there. But that's what I
always tell people, because I think we have an inkling
to like start something new, which look if you're in
a community and you don't like what's going on there,
you can start your own thing. But I always encourage
people if there's something already going on around you join them, because,
(08:44):
to be honest, the way, a lot of people ask me,
you know, how do you do this work in Congress
with everything going on? Because I've spent ten years in
the gun violence prevention movement as a kid, where the
days were the most people cared about our issue were
connected to the days where most people were dying, you know.
And it's a traumatic thing to kind of a movement
(09:05):
to grow up in because most of the people I
would meet when I'd go to vigils, you know, and
different events like that, were people who just lost someone
of the gun violence. And it became very normal for
me to be friends and be in community with all
these people who have lost loved ones. And I remember
when I was running for Congress, I went to my
(09:26):
mom and I was like, can you help me find
pictures or this and that. I'm trying to figure out
how many vigels I've been to that I can prove right,
And I went through all my texts. My mom sent
me some photos at different ones and I realized that
between the ages of fifteen and twenty four, I've been
to sixty memorials or vigels of people I've never met
in my life who were done down due to gun violence. Wow,
(09:49):
it's sixty that I could find proof of right could
be a little bit more. Organizing is so much about culture,
and you create this culture and this family and this
collaborative with people around you and people you've never met before,
and that really, in of itself, is what keeps you
(10:09):
going in this work, especially when it's very traumatic work.
And so I always tell people, you know, we're in
this age of authoritarianism and the rise of fascism, and
the authoritarians thrive when the opposition works in silos, when
the opposition is not in community, when the opposition is
not together, And so I always encourage people get together, like,
(10:33):
get with people who want to do this work with you,
and even if you don't have all the answers on
what to do next, you'll figure it out or someone
will tell you, or something will be happening in your community.
And so that's what I always ask me all the time.
You know, I'm traveling the country, people are like, what
can we do now. I always tell them I can
rattle off a million different tactics to you, but the
most important thing I'll tell you is get involved in
(10:55):
a group that'll answer this question for you every day
right here in your community.
Speaker 7 (11:00):
Where do we go from here? Chaos or community? Congressman Frost,
you recently joined speaking of going out into community. Senator
Chris Murphy for town halls all across the country, and
many were in or not many, I think they all
were in Republican districts.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Yeah, it's been great to be on the road with
Senator Murphy, and I think, you know, for us, we're
trying to get it out of the partisan conversation here
because there's something deeper happening in this nation. And I
feel like we're getting to the place point where we
could be a country that just has one term presidents
for one hundred years. Why because the situation is so
bad that whoever's in power will be viewed upon negatively.
(11:42):
And we see this happen in South America as well.
I spent you know, I went to El Salvador on
the Kilmwar Abregio, Garcia case, and I was speaking there
with people locally, you know, this president there. Bukelli enjoys
a very high favorability rating. He was elected with what
was it like, eighty percent of the v or something,
but eighty percent of the people don't agree with him.
(12:03):
But it just got so dangerous in Alsalvador that people
suspended their beliefs on a whole host of issues to
vote for the person who gave kind of the most
radical solution to fixing a very prevalent problem. I think
we're in this place in this nation in terms of
our economy and people's livelihood, and it's really dangerous place.
(12:24):
Authoritarians like Trump don't come to power when everyone's doing well,
you know, So I just I'm worried about that part
of things, and I think we have to go out
and meet people where they're at to explain, you know,
how they've been lied to, and then what we're going
to do better. I really believe that part of what
we have to do in this moment is bridge that
gap between cool and consciousness.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
What do I mean by that?
Speaker 5 (12:46):
I'm always figuring out ways to bring We talk a
lot about the arts, the arts and advocacy together because
the most successful mass social movements have one thing in common,
and it's when the culture becomes morphed with the advocacy
and it becomes one thing. And I think a lot
(13:09):
about March for Our Lives just because I was a
part of that. I remember being at the March of
Our Lives here in Orlando and walking around, you know,
tens of thousands of people, and I run into a
group of friends that I knew from like elementary school.
I'd kept up with them on Facebook, but I knew
they didn't care about politics. Actually, in fact, I knew
two of them hated politics. And I asked them, why'd
you come? I'm just curious, and like one of them says, uh,
(13:32):
you know, I just felt like I needed to be here.
My friends came, I came with my friends. Beyonce told
me to cough, and I don't know, I can't quite
explain it. I just felt like I needed to be here.
And what all those answers indicate is that that movement
became part of the culture of this nation. And my
(13:52):
favorite answer was actually a last one. I don't know
why I am here, but I just felt like I
needed to be here. And I feel like all too
opt in, like we're we get we're very preachy towards
not derogatory term towards preachers, but like we're we talk
at people about what they need to do instead of
figuring out a ways to sometimes just connect the dots
(14:13):
for folks. I mean, maybe I'm a little too optimistic,
but I we all have different calls to action, right,
And I don't put all this pressure on myself to say, well,
when Maxwell Frost speaks to people he disagrees with, they're
all gonna say, you're right, I'm wrong, you change my life.
I don't think that you know that that's gonna happen.
(14:34):
But I see that conversation as a part of a
longer thing for them, and like I'm very honored to
play that part. And that's the job of an organizer.
You know, when we stay it at that crossroads, when
something happens in somebody's life or they witness something or
they see something or hear something and they make that decision,
they're gonna go one of two ways. It can actually
(14:55):
drive people further into apathy or they can get driven
into action. And we have to stand there and help
people find a political home. And it might be with
my campaign, it might not be. It might be with
a different organization, right, And what I try to do
locally is build those coalitions with different groups who do
a lot of different work. I have a music festival
(15:16):
every year here. We're gonna invite you guys to come.
It's called Mad Soul, And the whole purpose of the
festival is it is a music festival. Right. We have
artists that come that are local, but in between the sets,
we have community leaders that speak about the work we're doing.
And instead of like booths to buy stuff, we have
thirty organizations there that you get to go hear from.
(15:39):
And I don't think people will get involved with thirty,
but I hope people will get involved with one, and
the cool thing is they'll be able to pick the one.
It's an event that I raise money for that my
team puts together. But I'm not so obsessed with people
just doing stuff for me that it's just about me.
It's about Central Florida. It's about like this ecosystem. That's
(16:01):
obviously something that your father deeply understood, that there were
so many different parts of this big puzzle, and that
he was always looking for a fight that was local
in scope but national and impact. And I think of
the work that we do here in here in Florida
and in the South generally as very similar, you know,
(16:25):
and it's just the honor to be be a small
part of this bigger work that we're doing.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe, share, and follow us
on at my Legacy Movement on social media and YouTube.
New episodes drop every Tuesday, with bonus content every Thursday.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
At its core, this podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Honors doctor King's vision of the beloved community and the
power of connection. A Legacy Plus Studio production distributed by
iHeartMedia creator and executive producer Suzanne Hayward Come executive producer
Lisa Lyle. Listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Craig Kielburger
Marc Kielburger
Martin Luther King III
Arndrea Waters King
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