September 29, 2020 • 36 mins
Voting is hugely important – especially right now. In this episode, Hillary is joined by musician John Legend and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams to discuss the ongoing struggle to expand voting rights, and their thoughts as America approaches a hugely consequential election. Hillary also reflects on the legacies of her heroes and friends Congressman John Lewis and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
John Legend is an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award-winning musician and the founder of Free America, a criminal justice reform advocacy organization. He recently helped launch “Free The Vote,” a fundraising campaign to pay the fines and fees preventing ex-felons in Florida from casting their ballot. He released his newest album, Bigger Love, in June.
Stacey Abrams was the 2018 Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia and previously served as the minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives. As the founder of Fair Fight and Fair Count, she has been a major force in the push to advance voting rights and ensure fair elections. Her new book is Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You and Me Both is a production of I Heart Radio.
When the President of the United States says that he
can't win an election of every eligible citizen votes, we
should take him at his word and test his theory.
I'm Hillary Clinton and this is You and Me Both,
where I get into some of today's biggest questions with
(00:22):
people I admire and find fascinating. Today we're talking about
an important, timely critical subject, voting. Now you might guess
I would be pretty focused on voting, but I would
be I think even if I'd never run for office
or held it, because when you get right down to it,
(00:42):
it is a power that every one of us has,
no matter who we are, where we live, how much
money we make, and if we don't exercise it, we
leave the field to people that don't agree with us.
So protecting the right to vote is an issue that
gets to the heart of every their issue that I
care about and all of the progress that we need
(01:04):
to make together. Today I'm talking to two guests who
really understand the power of voting. Stacy Abrahams, who you
just heard, the woman who should be governor of Georgia,
because let's not kid ourselves her election against Brian Kemp
(01:24):
was marred by blatant voter suppression, so she founded an
organization called Fair Fight to protect the right to vote
in Georgia and around the country. But first I'm talking
with John Legend. You know, if you watch the Democratic
National Convention in August, the Virtual Convention, you'll remember this
(01:46):
incredible performance. One day one look alicaus you will be
as you'll be. Oh. John wrote that song Glory with
the rapper Common for the movie Selma's. It won the
(02:06):
Best Original Song at the Academy Awards in John has
also won multiple Grammy Awards for his music to mention
an Emmy and Tony, making him the fifteen of only
sixteen people who have an EGOT and the only black
man who has achieved that Emmy, Grammy, Oscar Tony distinction.
(02:32):
He's also a very proud dad. He and his amazing
wife Chrissy Teagan have two wonderful kids, Luna and Miles,
and another on the way. But the reason I'm talking
to him today is because he's also a really strong
voice on issues of justice and voting. Last week, he
launched Free the Vote to raise money to pay the
(02:53):
fees and finds preventing over one million former felons in
Florida from sting their balance. I'm thrilled to be talking
with John Heve, my friend. Always a joy to see you.
I'm still smiling about the dinner we had at your
house pre covid um and and pre your latest news.
(03:16):
So give me give me a quick check in on
the whole family. Well, of course, Chrisy is pregnant with
our third child. She's having definitely her roughest pregnancy yet.
It's been a bit of a physical challenge for her.
Our doctor has her on bed rest right now, and uh,
we're just you know, taking good care of her. And
I'm trying to be home as much as possible and
(03:36):
help her as much as possible so she doesn't have
to move around and she can take good care of
that that little growing baby inside of her. Well, give
her a big virtual hug. You have been a staunch
supporter of not only candidates but causes. Where does that
come from, John? I mean, when you were young, did
you have some experiences that you really felt prepared you
(04:00):
or motivated you or was this something that you came
to later in life. Well, when I was young, my
parents first of all impressed on us that success wasn't
defined by how much you do for yourself, but it
was defined by how much you do for other people.
Part of that was kind of a Christian ethos, but
also just being good human beings. No religion has a
(04:22):
monopoly on that concept of being philanthropic, being generous, being humble,
caring about people who are struggling and and need your help,
but it came to us through a Christian ethos. They
also homeschooled us when we were kids for some of
our grade school years, and one of the things that
we would do as a family was we would go
to the county Public Library and we would kind of
(04:45):
be let loose on the library and we would go
and find whatever books interested us. And for me, from
a very young age, I always was interested in politics, leadership,
people who fought for justice. I particularly was interested in
act civil rights leaders and abolitionists who looks like me
and also were people who put their lives on the
(05:06):
line to fight for the rights of others. So I've
always had that conception, that ideal that those kinds of
people are the people we should look up to and
treasure in our society, and that if I had any
sort of success in life, I would try to use
it to be one of those kinds of people who
spoke out when I saw something, jus who tried to
(05:27):
fight for people whose voices are often overlooked. I wrote
an essay when I was fifteen years old in high
school that said exactly that that I I planned to
make Black history by becoming a successful musician and using
my success as an artist to get back and fight
for equality and justice in this world. And That's what
I've been doing since you were fifteen. Where did you
(05:49):
grow up? I grew up in Springfield, Ohio, a small
city between Dayton and Columbus. One. Wow, I love I
love that story about your parents dedication and determination to
you know, really set you on the right path. Did
you start being musical and singing in church as so
many people have, Yeah? Absolutely so. I grew up in
(06:12):
a Pentecostal church and my grandmother was the church organists,
my grandfather was our pastor, my mother was the choir director.
My dad was a deacon and taught Sunday school and
also saying in the choir and played the drums sometimes.
And so I grew up around a lot of music
and a lot of church, and that was my musical
foundation and remains a huge part of the story of
(06:35):
who I am as a musician. Well, let's talk about
your life as an activist, and certainly as someone who's
been involved in and supportive of political campaigns and causes.
I know that you've been particularly involved over the years
in protecting voting rights, making sure anybody eligible can actually
(06:57):
vote in practice, not just on paper. And you combined
your deep concern about incarceration and the injustices in the
criminal and penal systems with a real commitment to something
called the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, and your initiative Free
(07:20):
America launched something called free the Vote. And maybe you
could describe for our listeners you know how all of
this fit together for you. So let's start with how
I got interested in this issue. First of all, Um,
like many black and brown people in this country, I
had relatives and neighbors and community members who had gotten
caught up in the criminal justice system, including people as
(07:43):
close to me as my mother, but also good friends
that I went to high school with. Some of them
were in prison for a significant period of time. And
when you're a kid. I think your parents rightfully teach
you if you just don't get in trouble, then you
won't have to worry about those kinds of things. But
as you start to understand the system a little better,
you understand that it's not as cut and dry as that,
(08:04):
and it's not as fair as that sounds. For far
too many people, there's a different criminal justice system depending
on your poverty or lack thereof, depending on the color
of your skin, and how you're perceived by police and
by judges and by juries. All those things affect so much,
and we've come to think that these sentences that are
(08:25):
prescribed by law are just the way they are. They're
almost like their biblical or so so fixed that we
can't imagine an alternative. But what we have to realize
is those were all political choices that were made, and
they don't have to be this way. We're the most
incarcerated country in the world, so we've made policy decisions
(08:45):
that have been inhumane, and the consequences of that have
been felt throughout our society. And not only that. Every
time we've made the choice to spend more on policing,
more on jails, more on prisons, there's an oper tunity
costs because we're spending less on all the things that
would help prevent crime, help make people feel more safe,
(09:06):
help people live healthier, more productive lives in every other way.
And so Free America was born out of me kind
of discovering how big this issue was and how unjust
it was, through reading, through listening, through talking to folks,
and through there just the gut feeling of what I've
seen my family and neighbors go through, and then starting
(09:27):
to organize around listening to other people and trying to
find out where we could get involved to help. So
we went around and visited jails and prisons and immigration
detention centers and juvenile facilities. We also sat with district attorneys,
We sat with corrections officers, we sat with all kinds
of folks who had a stake in the system, and
(09:49):
everybody told us that it wasn't working, it wasn't humane,
it wasn't right, and we needed to change it. And so,
coordinating with organizations like the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and
other grassroots organizing efforts, a lot of them lad by
formally incarcerated people, we started to figure out initiatives that
we wanted to get behind initiatives. We wanted to uplift, amplify,
(10:12):
get out there in the public conversation. I know, for example,
you went to um A court hearing in Miami back
in the fall, like last year, I think November, to
watch former felons have their right to vote restored, which
must have been incredibly Oh. I was crying a lot
of that day because just think about how many people
(10:33):
take voting for granted, how many people just can't be
bothered or or you know, there's all kinds of reasons
people don't vote, and some of them are are because
of voter suppression by the state. But you could just
tell that these people wanted to be part of society again.
They had made a mistake most of them. Most of
them were a lot older, and if anybody knows anything
(10:55):
about crime, most people's period of being prone to crime
is pretty much over by the time there. But too
often our society punishes them for so long, well after
the mistakes that they've made, and when they're completely new
people by that point. So some of these people were
forty five, fifty fifty five and hadn't been able to
vote for decades. The founder of f R R C.
(11:19):
Desma Meat. He is a returning citizen himself and had
committed a felony when he was young, and he hadn't
voted for thirty years. And these people want to be
a part of society again. They want to contribute. Desmond's
doing all these amazing things in this community, one of
the most exemplary citizens we could possibly imagine, but he
(11:39):
wasn't able to vote until this year. Voting is not
a privilege, it's a right, and it's a part of
being a citizen of this country because all of us
are affected by the laws that are written by our representatives.
All of us are affected by the decisions of our executives,
and all of us should have a say and who
those people are. Even if we've made mistakes in our lives,
(12:00):
even if we've harmed people in our lives, it's not
a right that should be taken away. You know. It's
interesting because after the amendment passed in Florida, the Republican
legislature tried to, you know, basically obstructed, didn't they. I Mean,
they said, okay, fine, you've served your time in prison,
that's okay. But some of you may have fines or
(12:20):
other kinds of restitution. So you're not going to be
able to vote until you pay all of that out.
How did that make you feel? Well, it's so enraging
and frustrating that there's an entire political party that has
built their entire political program on trying to discourage voting.
So anytime there's an expansion of the vote, anytime there's
(12:42):
an attempt to expand the vote, Republicans have decided that
it's against their interests for those things to happen, so
they fight it at every turn. In this particular instance,
the public voted sixty to thirty five. We're not talking
about a close margin here, and those those were voters
from everywhere, all everybody did that. The people of Florida
(13:03):
overwhelmingly voted for an expansion of voting rights. But because
some of these institutions, like our state legislatures, aren't as accountable, arnest, transparent,
aren't as small d democratic in their response to what
people want, the state legislators wanted to maintain their hold
on power in Florida, and so they tried to devise
(13:26):
any tactics they could to reverse the will of the people,
and they found basically a loophole that if they determined
that you hadn't paid certain court fees and fines, that
you hadn't actually served your sentence. So essentially they're saying,
pay up or you can't vote. And we know poll
taxes are unconstitutional in America, but this was their way
(13:50):
of essentially charging people to vote. Some of them can't
afford it, and so what we've been trying to do
is pay those fees and fines so these folks could
actually realize the gains in a suffrage that we fought for.
And so we've raised about million dollars with the help
(14:10):
of them really high net worth folks, but also tens
of thousands of ordinary people, individuals who have given what
little they can to help support these folks and extend
the vote to as many people as possible. We'll be
back right after this quick break. You know, there are
a lot of people who don't vote for many different reasons,
(14:30):
and people who don't think it will make a difference,
people who don't believe that anything will change. They just
are at a stage in their life where it seems
like such a low priority. I'd love to hear you
really speak to people who may not yet be convinced
or may still be on the fence about whether they're
going to vote or not as to what they should
(14:53):
be considering that might encourage them to get out and
actually exercise that vote. Well, I think first of all,
we need to realize that this choice is not even
close when it comes to thinking about who would be
a better leader for this country, who would restore our
moral authority in the world, who would restore our credibility
(15:14):
in the world, that our word actually means something, that
we actually believe in science, that we can be trusted
as a partner to get major things done in the world,
as we think about climate change, as we think about
this pandemic. All of the solutions to these major problems
that the world faces require America to be a respected,
trusted partner in the world, and we are the opposite
(15:36):
of that right now. We're the laughing stock of the world.
I think climate change is the most pressing, most urgent
issue that we face in this country and in the globe,
and there's no way we make any progress on that
if Donald Trump is reelected, and it is guaranteed that
if Joe Biden is reelected and we have a democratic Senate,
that we will pass some version of the Green New Deal.
(15:59):
Joe put his plan up on his site, which I
think is robust and has been seen by a lot
of activists as a really strong plan that is critical.
And if we don't elect Joe Biden, I don't know
if we will ever be able to reverse the damage
that Donald Trump is doing and has done. That's enough
reason for me. Yeah, well, I know, I mean, that's
(16:22):
what you know. I think it's fair to say everything
that anybody cares about is on the ballot, and that
is on the ballot. Yeah, healthcare is on the ballot.
You know, better jobs for the future, you know, dealing
with the COVID vaccine issue. I mean, everything you care
about is on the ballot. And let's let's focus on
COVID for one second. Just look at what's happened in
(16:44):
other countries when it comes to death rates, when it
comes to overall spread of the disease. We have just
been terrible at it. And it makes perfect sense. We
have a terrible leader. He has no capability of thinking
long term about anything. He has no capability of thinking
about anyone outside of himself. He is a liar, He
is a conspiracy theorist, and he particularly doesn't care about
(17:07):
certain people, and a lot of those people are the
people who are being most affected by this, black and
brown people. So all of the things that would combine
to make him bad for COVID nineteen are present in
Donald Trump. There's nothing about him that says he would
do a good job handling this. And now that there's
a possibility of a vaccine, we can't even trust him
as the president to uh to lead an administration and
(17:32):
f d A as c d C that's going to
handle it properly in a way that all Americans can trust.
So in every single way, he is exactly the wrong
person to be in charge in a crisis, particular crisis
of this magnitude and of this complexity. You've seen this
utter failure of a president. It's obvious that Joe Biden
(17:54):
is a better choice. And if you want to see
what his policies are, because I I kind of got
frustrated on Twitter one day and I was like, just
go to his website, because because Joe Biden's actually very yes,
he's actually worked with a lot of policy people on
the left to really formulate some really great ideas, and
(18:16):
the choice between his plans and Donald Trump's plan that
he keeps saying he has. I don't even understand what
that means. It just means it doesn't happen when. But
it's kind of amazing that he would even say that
with a straight face. It's so obvious that Donald Trump
should never lead anything that is of concern to anyone,
(18:39):
like any CEO, anyone who's in charge of hiring people.
He has all of the characteristics that you would red
flag and say this kind of person could never work
for me. I would never let him run anything, not
the dog pound, not the local fire department, Like, there's
nothing you would trust him to run. He has no plans.
(19:01):
But everybody needs a plan to vote, right, So people
to vote, you've got to have a plan to vote.
If you can vote early, vote early. If you are
going to vote by mail, get it in the you know,
the mail, as soon as you can. And then, no
matter how long they make you wait, if you're going
to vote on election day, don't go anywhere. Stay there,
bring a lunch, whatever it takes, you know. My advice
(19:22):
to folks is if you can vote early in person,
that's probably the That's what I'm gonna do you know.
John Lewis said that democracy is not a state, it's
an act. Exactly exactly we have to act for us
to maintain our democracy, and it is in peril right now,
(19:42):
is it is? Amen. I'm so grateful that you joined
me today because you have such a perspective and understanding
about what's at stake, and the life you've lived and
the way you've used your talents speak louder than words
ever could. So thank you so much, John. Give big
hugs to Chrissie and Luna and Miles. Okay, absolutely, I
(20:05):
love to build to Chelsea and all the grandkids, and
we love your family and want to send all of
our best team. Take care, Take care. If you want
to learn more about Free to Vote, the fund John
Legend created to help returning citizens exercise their right to vote,
please visit his website Let's Free America dot com. I'm
(20:31):
devastated to share with you that two days after we
published this episode, John and Chrissie lost their baby. I'm
sending them my love and my prayers, and I know
that you all join me in doing that. I first
(20:57):
met Stacy Abrams when she was a leader in the
Georgia Legislature. You know, from that very first meeting, I
could just tell that she was someone who had a
big future ahead. She ran a heroic campaign for governor
of Georgia. In her opponent, the Secretary of State at
the time, Brian kemp rewrote the rules on voter registration,
(21:22):
purged more than three hundred thousand people from the voter rolls,
and closed more than two hundred polling places across the state.
After that election, Stacy started a new organization called Fair Fight,
dedicated to making sure everyone can vote and have their
(21:42):
vote counted. It wasn't just that election that motivated Stacy.
She was also spurred on by the work of her
parents and grandparents to get started. I asked Stacy to
share a story from her book, Our Time Is Now.
That story is about a conversation she had during a
visit with her grandmother in the middle of Stacy's campaign
(22:05):
for governor. We were just talking about the election and
what was happening, and she was chiding me about, you know,
whether I was taking care of myself. But we started
talking about voting and and spontaneously I didn't know to
ask about the story. She grabs my hand and she
tells me about the first time she voted. And she
tells me that she was sitting in her bedroom in
(22:31):
November of nineteen sixty three years after the passage of
the Voting Rights Act, and you still had all of
the ignominies of Jim Crow, all of the challenges of
white folks who did not want this new thing to
be true, especially in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And so my grandfather
and his brother were in the front room getting ready
(22:53):
to go, and they called from my grandmother, and she
tells me about sitting frozen on the bed and she
just could not move. She was paralyzed. And she said
that she just kept thinking about the dogs and the
batons and the hoses, and just those mean men who
had made their lives work denying her agency. And she
(23:14):
did not believe that it was really different. And so,
you know, my grandfather, you know, calls for her. Finally
comes back, and it's like, you know, he calls her,
sugar honey. He's like, sugar, honey, come on, we've got
to go vote. And my grandmother's like, I don't want to.
And my grandfather reminds her that her son, at the
age of fourteen my dad got arrested registering people to vote,
(23:36):
that she and he had paid bail for their kids
to get them out of jail, when they would do
things because of their commitment to civil rights. Why would
you not now hold this power? And fundamentally, what she
was telling me was that the power scared her. And
what I think about every time I fight the fight
(23:56):
for voter suppression. Why I pushed so hard for the
senses to be completed by the communities who've been told
to be afraid of it. It's the power is terrifying,
the power to vote, the power to be seen. But fundamentally,
the power of citizenship is terrifying. And a woman who
had raised her children to want it, who had done
(24:17):
her part to make it so, I just didn't believe
it was true. It's not enough to tell some when
they have power. We've got to make that power real,
and we've got to make sure people are prepared to
wield it. You know, reading that story in your book,
I thought back to when I moved to Arkansas. I
moved in late summer of ur and my then boyfriend
(24:41):
was running for Congress, and I was teaching at the
law school there and on weekends, I'd go out and
knock on doors and ask people to vote for him.
And I kept running into black women who said they
hadn't paid their poll tax, and I said, well, there
is no more poll tax, because oh yeah, there is.
(25:03):
And I said, well, you know it's been struck down,
it's been eliminated that you know, you can't be charged
a poll tax. And they look at me like, you know,
what planet are you from. Of course they're going to
stop us from voting. The other thing that would happen
often with white women is I would knock on the
door and I'd maybe be with a young volunteer, and
I'd say I was, you know, here campaigning for you know,
(25:25):
Bill Clinton or somebody else that I was campaigning for,
and the women would say, my husband does the voting
in our house. You know, those two real world experiences,
to me, really are in line with your experience and
your understanding that the reason we are having this very
(25:48):
intense and deep struggle over voting is because, at the
end of the day, it is the single power that
every citizen and has. So if people can be discouraged,
can be frightened, can be intimidated, can have their votes stolen,
(26:09):
not counted. You know, it does create a lot of
dissonance in people. They get scared, they get worried that
maybe there's going to be some kind of terrible consequence
for them trying to vote. So, how do you now
see where we are here at this point in our history?
(26:29):
And are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic? Are you both? What?
What do you think? I described myself as an ameliorist.
I've always loved the world amiliorg you to mitigate the harm.
And I believe in shorthand that the glass is half full.
It's just probably poisoned. And so my job is to
(26:49):
try to find the antidote. Our job is to try
to find that antidote. Whether that antidote is justice, that
antidote is mercy, if that antidote is investment. We've got
to find a way to fix what's broken. But we
can never believe that it won't be broken again. And
I think that's why I'm not an optimist. Optimism presumes
(27:10):
there's going to be some end state where good triumphs.
I've lived too long a life for that. But what
I do know to be true is that it gets better.
I mean, you you reference those women black and white.
And I think about being in South Georgia having a
conversation about folks going to vote and being told, well,
(27:31):
we don't vote early because if you want to vote early,
you've got to go to jail. And I was like,
what do you mean. The only place to early vote
was in the justice complex, which meant you had to
go to jail. And if you had a child who
had a warrant, if somebody had been pulled aside, and
in parts of Georgia where you were more likely to
(27:51):
be arrested just because of your race, why would you
risk your freedom to exercise your citizenship. And so my
clare and call about voter suppression was in part to
live out what you did in the election. With all
the other instrumentalities that were arrayed against Americans in that election,
(28:14):
you were the avatar. And I want us to be
really clear, you me any candidate. We are avatars for
people's dreams, for their beliefs, for their values, for their
demands for their life. And when voter suppression hits, it
is not to deny me a job, you a job.
It's not about the title. It's about the work that
we were going to do for those people, and the
(28:37):
righteous indignation that comes with suppression is because yeah, I
didn't get the title. Okay, what I'm angry about it
those black women, those brown women, those white women, those
young people who for the first time screwed their courage
up and went inside that jail to cast their vote
only to be told their vote wasn't going to be counted.
(28:57):
And so I am an amelioris because I never believe
that power will ever say you can have me, and
that shared power is ever going to be permanent. But
I believe in the permanence of trying. I do too.
I believe in the permanence of trying. That's my job.
We'll be back right after this quick break. You know,
(29:18):
That's exactly how I am. And you know, sometimes people
get frustrated with folks like us because, you know, they think, well,
you know, can't you just see we just waive the
magic one, we run certain people for office and then
everything changes. And I said, well, no, I don't know.
I've read a lot of history, I've read the Bible,
I've experienced a lot. I don't think that's how it works.
(29:40):
And I love your your phrase, ameliorist. You know, When
some of us saw what happened in the Georgia primary
this past spring, we worried that it was a dry
run for the upcoming November election, not just in Georgia,
but in a lot of other states where the Trump
administration and the Republicans know that if there's a fair
election and people are given the right to vote and
(30:02):
that right is protected, they're not likely to get reelected.
So what do you think about where we are now
in all the lawsuits were bringing. I'm supporting lawsuits through
my group Onward Together and the Democracy Docket, the advocacy,
You're doing everything that we are all so focused on.
(30:22):
What worries you about the upcoming November election? What worries
me is that Republicans know that their time is nigh,
and when cornered, they are willing to do whatever they
can to stave off the inevitable. And so we know
that they have agreed to spend twenty million dollars fighting
(30:44):
these lawsuits. We know they're going to raise an army
of fifty thou pull monitors to intimidate voters in ways
they haven't been permitted to do since. But back to
the amiliarist know fair fight exists, fair count exists, the
Sawyer's Committee, the Leadership Council, the a c P. These
exist because we know that we can fight back in
(31:08):
ways that we had never organized around before, and we
have to talk about this. You cannot solve a problem.
You will not call out and call by name and
give people roadmap to understanding what it is. But the
second part is you have to have some solutions. Litigation
is a solution because the Lawyer's Committee, in the a
c L you are winning these suits, they are getting
(31:31):
changes made. The worst thing that can happen is that
we get surprised by what they intend to do. I
don't believe that every Republican is bad. I don't believe
every Democrat is good. But I do believe that the
party that calls itself the GOP has thrown its lot
in with fevery and suppression as opposed to running a
(31:53):
fair race and letting the chips fall where they may.
When the President of the United States says he can't
win an election if every eligible citizen votes, we should
take him at his word and test his theory. Sounds
like a plan to me, my friend. Thank you so much, Stacy,
and keep going we're gonna be ameliorating in every way
(32:15):
we know and hopefully taking our country back come November.
It has been a delight. Thank you so much to
Madame Secretary. Make sure to check out Stacy's new book
called Our Time Is Now, Power, Purpose, and the Fight
for a Fair America about how we can create a
(32:38):
more equal country. This year, we lost two people who
really understood how fundamental the right to vote is in
our democracy if we're going to keep a democracy. One
was my friend John Lewis, and what a loss in
the middle of a pandemic and at a time and
(33:00):
we need heroes like John more than ever. There wasn't
anybody who put his life on the line more often
to stand up for the right to vote than John Lewis.
The other loss was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I think
about Ruth a lot because she changed the law. She
(33:23):
got constitutional interpretation that literally changed my life. You know,
when I was a young woman, I couldn't even get
a credit card in my own name. But she knocked
down barriers and obstacles to make sure that equality meant something,
and not just for women, but for all people. She
was famous for her descents and I've been thinking a
(33:45):
lot about the descent she made to a Supreme Court
decision in a case called Shelby. The holder back in
that case struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act,
and Justice gins knew the decision would make it much
more difficult for people to vote, especially people of color
(34:06):
and young people, low income people, the elderly. And she
said so in her descent. But she left us with
a rallying cry that sums up so much of her
philosophy on life. Here she is reading from that descent
from the bench. The great man who led the march
(34:27):
from Selma to Montgomery, and they are called for the
passage of the Voting Rights Act foresaw progress even in Alabama.
The ak of the moral universe is long, he said,
but it bends toward justice if there is a steadfast
commitment to see the task through to completion. If there
(34:53):
is a steadfast commitment to seeing the task through to completion,
that a s and sums up Ruth Bader Ginsburg's life
and work, and it gives the rest of us our
marching orders. There is no better way to pay tribute
to Justice Ginsburg than to get out and vote and
(35:15):
work as hard as you can to protect that right
for everyone. This election could come down to the slimmest margin,
take it from me, and the best way to win
is to turn out in overwhelming numbers. So happy voting
and onward we go. You and Me Both is brought
(35:40):
to you by I Heart Radio. We're produced by Julie
Subran and Kathleen Russo, with help from Huma Aberdeen, Nikki
etur Oscar Flores, Brianna Johnson, Nick Merrill, Lauren Peterson, Rob Russo,
and Lona Valmorrow. Our engineer is Zack McNeice. Original music
(36:02):
is by Forest Gray. If you like You and Me Both,
don't keep it to yourself. Tell a friend. You can
subscribe to You and Me Both on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
While you're there, leave us a review. I'd really appreciate it.
We'd love to hear from you, so send us your questions, comments,
(36:24):
or ideas for future shows at You and Me Both
pod at gmail dot com. Come back next week when
we're talking to some amazing women leaders, including the one
and only Gloria Steinhum
You and Me Both is a production of I Heart Radio.
When the President of the United States says that he
can't win an election of every eligible citizen votes, we
should take him at his word and test his theory.
I'm Hillary Clinton and this is You and Me Both,
where I get into some of today's biggest questions with
(00:22):
people I admire and find fascinating. Today we're talking about
an important, timely critical subject, voting. Now you might guess
I would be pretty focused on voting, but I would
be I think even if I'd never run for office
or held it, because when you get right down to it,
(00:42):
it is a power that every one of us has,
no matter who we are, where we live, how much
money we make, and if we don't exercise it, we
leave the field to people that don't agree with us.
So protecting the right to vote is an issue that
gets to the heart of every their issue that I
care about and all of the progress that we need
(01:04):
to make together. Today I'm talking to two guests who
really understand the power of voting. Stacy Abrahams, who you
just heard, the woman who should be governor of Georgia,
because let's not kid ourselves her election against Brian Kemp
(01:24):
was marred by blatant voter suppression, so she founded an
organization called Fair Fight to protect the right to vote
in Georgia and around the country. But first I'm talking
with John Legend. You know, if you watch the Democratic
National Convention in August, the Virtual Convention, you'll remember this
(01:46):
incredible performance. One day one look alicaus you will be
as you'll be. Oh. John wrote that song Glory with
the rapper Common for the movie Selma's. It won the
(02:06):
Best Original Song at the Academy Awards in John has
also won multiple Grammy Awards for his music to mention
an Emmy and Tony, making him the fifteen of only
sixteen people who have an EGOT and the only black
man who has achieved that Emmy, Grammy, Oscar Tony distinction.
(02:32):
He's also a very proud dad. He and his amazing
wife Chrissy Teagan have two wonderful kids, Luna and Miles,
and another on the way. But the reason I'm talking
to him today is because he's also a really strong
voice on issues of justice and voting. Last week, he
launched Free the Vote to raise money to pay the
(02:53):
fees and finds preventing over one million former felons in
Florida from sting their balance. I'm thrilled to be talking
with John Heve, my friend. Always a joy to see you.
I'm still smiling about the dinner we had at your
house pre covid um and and pre your latest news.
(03:16):
So give me give me a quick check in on
the whole family. Well, of course, Chrisy is pregnant with
our third child. She's having definitely her roughest pregnancy yet.
It's been a bit of a physical challenge for her.
Our doctor has her on bed rest right now, and uh,
we're just you know, taking good care of her. And
I'm trying to be home as much as possible and
(03:36):
help her as much as possible so she doesn't have
to move around and she can take good care of
that that little growing baby inside of her. Well, give
her a big virtual hug. You have been a staunch
supporter of not only candidates but causes. Where does that
come from, John? I mean, when you were young, did
you have some experiences that you really felt prepared you
(04:00):
or motivated you or was this something that you came
to later in life. Well, when I was young, my
parents first of all impressed on us that success wasn't
defined by how much you do for yourself, but it
was defined by how much you do for other people.
Part of that was kind of a Christian ethos, but
also just being good human beings. No religion has a
(04:22):
monopoly on that concept of being philanthropic, being generous, being humble,
caring about people who are struggling and and need your help,
but it came to us through a Christian ethos. They
also homeschooled us when we were kids for some of
our grade school years, and one of the things that
we would do as a family was we would go
to the county Public Library and we would kind of
(04:45):
be let loose on the library and we would go
and find whatever books interested us. And for me, from
a very young age, I always was interested in politics, leadership,
people who fought for justice. I particularly was interested in
act civil rights leaders and abolitionists who looks like me
and also were people who put their lives on the
(05:06):
line to fight for the rights of others. So I've
always had that conception, that ideal that those kinds of
people are the people we should look up to and
treasure in our society, and that if I had any
sort of success in life, I would try to use
it to be one of those kinds of people who
spoke out when I saw something, jus who tried to
(05:27):
fight for people whose voices are often overlooked. I wrote
an essay when I was fifteen years old in high
school that said exactly that that I I planned to
make Black history by becoming a successful musician and using
my success as an artist to get back and fight
for equality and justice in this world. And That's what
I've been doing since you were fifteen. Where did you
(05:49):
grow up? I grew up in Springfield, Ohio, a small
city between Dayton and Columbus. One. Wow, I love I
love that story about your parents dedication and determination to
you know, really set you on the right path. Did
you start being musical and singing in church as so
many people have, Yeah? Absolutely so. I grew up in
(06:12):
a Pentecostal church and my grandmother was the church organists,
my grandfather was our pastor, my mother was the choir director.
My dad was a deacon and taught Sunday school and
also saying in the choir and played the drums sometimes.
And so I grew up around a lot of music
and a lot of church, and that was my musical
foundation and remains a huge part of the story of
(06:35):
who I am as a musician. Well, let's talk about
your life as an activist, and certainly as someone who's
been involved in and supportive of political campaigns and causes.
I know that you've been particularly involved over the years
in protecting voting rights, making sure anybody eligible can actually
(06:57):
vote in practice, not just on paper. And you combined
your deep concern about incarceration and the injustices in the
criminal and penal systems with a real commitment to something
called the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, and your initiative Free
(07:20):
America launched something called free the Vote. And maybe you
could describe for our listeners you know how all of
this fit together for you. So let's start with how
I got interested in this issue. First of all, Um,
like many black and brown people in this country, I
had relatives and neighbors and community members who had gotten
caught up in the criminal justice system, including people as
(07:43):
close to me as my mother, but also good friends
that I went to high school with. Some of them
were in prison for a significant period of time. And
when you're a kid. I think your parents rightfully teach
you if you just don't get in trouble, then you
won't have to worry about those kinds of things. But
as you start to understand the system a little better,
you understand that it's not as cut and dry as that,
(08:04):
and it's not as fair as that sounds. For far
too many people, there's a different criminal justice system depending
on your poverty or lack thereof, depending on the color
of your skin, and how you're perceived by police and
by judges and by juries. All those things affect so much,
and we've come to think that these sentences that are
(08:25):
prescribed by law are just the way they are. They're
almost like their biblical or so so fixed that we
can't imagine an alternative. But what we have to realize
is those were all political choices that were made, and
they don't have to be this way. We're the most
incarcerated country in the world, so we've made policy decisions
(08:45):
that have been inhumane, and the consequences of that have
been felt throughout our society. And not only that. Every
time we've made the choice to spend more on policing,
more on jails, more on prisons, there's an oper tunity
costs because we're spending less on all the things that
would help prevent crime, help make people feel more safe,
(09:06):
help people live healthier, more productive lives in every other way.
And so Free America was born out of me kind
of discovering how big this issue was and how unjust
it was, through reading, through listening, through talking to folks,
and through there just the gut feeling of what I've
seen my family and neighbors go through, and then starting
(09:27):
to organize around listening to other people and trying to
find out where we could get involved to help. So
we went around and visited jails and prisons and immigration
detention centers and juvenile facilities. We also sat with district attorneys,
We sat with corrections officers, we sat with all kinds
of folks who had a stake in the system, and
(09:49):
everybody told us that it wasn't working, it wasn't humane,
it wasn't right, and we needed to change it. And so,
coordinating with organizations like the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and
other grassroots organizing efforts, a lot of them lad by
formally incarcerated people, we started to figure out initiatives that
we wanted to get behind initiatives. We wanted to uplift, amplify,
(10:12):
get out there in the public conversation. I know, for example,
you went to um A court hearing in Miami back
in the fall, like last year, I think November, to
watch former felons have their right to vote restored, which
must have been incredibly Oh. I was crying a lot
of that day because just think about how many people
(10:33):
take voting for granted, how many people just can't be
bothered or or you know, there's all kinds of reasons
people don't vote, and some of them are are because
of voter suppression by the state. But you could just
tell that these people wanted to be part of society again.
They had made a mistake most of them. Most of
them were a lot older, and if anybody knows anything
(10:55):
about crime, most people's period of being prone to crime
is pretty much over by the time there. But too
often our society punishes them for so long, well after
the mistakes that they've made, and when they're completely new
people by that point. So some of these people were
forty five, fifty fifty five and hadn't been able to
vote for decades. The founder of f R R C.
(11:19):
Desma Meat. He is a returning citizen himself and had
committed a felony when he was young, and he hadn't
voted for thirty years. And these people want to be
a part of society again. They want to contribute. Desmond's
doing all these amazing things in this community, one of
the most exemplary citizens we could possibly imagine, but he
(11:39):
wasn't able to vote until this year. Voting is not
a privilege, it's a right, and it's a part of
being a citizen of this country because all of us
are affected by the laws that are written by our representatives.
All of us are affected by the decisions of our executives,
and all of us should have a say and who
those people are. Even if we've made mistakes in our lives,
(12:00):
even if we've harmed people in our lives, it's not
a right that should be taken away. You know. It's
interesting because after the amendment passed in Florida, the Republican
legislature tried to, you know, basically obstructed, didn't they. I Mean,
they said, okay, fine, you've served your time in prison,
that's okay. But some of you may have fines or
(12:20):
other kinds of restitution. So you're not going to be
able to vote until you pay all of that out.
How did that make you feel? Well, it's so enraging
and frustrating that there's an entire political party that has
built their entire political program on trying to discourage voting.
So anytime there's an expansion of the vote, anytime there's
(12:42):
an attempt to expand the vote, Republicans have decided that
it's against their interests for those things to happen, so
they fight it at every turn. In this particular instance,
the public voted sixty to thirty five. We're not talking
about a close margin here, and those those were voters
from everywhere, all everybody did that. The people of Florida
(13:03):
overwhelmingly voted for an expansion of voting rights. But because
some of these institutions, like our state legislatures, aren't as accountable, arnest, transparent,
aren't as small d democratic in their response to what
people want, the state legislators wanted to maintain their hold
on power in Florida, and so they tried to devise
(13:26):
any tactics they could to reverse the will of the people,
and they found basically a loophole that if they determined
that you hadn't paid certain court fees and fines, that
you hadn't actually served your sentence. So essentially they're saying,
pay up or you can't vote. And we know poll
taxes are unconstitutional in America, but this was their way
(13:50):
of essentially charging people to vote. Some of them can't
afford it, and so what we've been trying to do
is pay those fees and fines so these folks could
actually realize the gains in a suffrage that we fought for.
And so we've raised about million dollars with the help
(14:10):
of them really high net worth folks, but also tens
of thousands of ordinary people, individuals who have given what
little they can to help support these folks and extend
the vote to as many people as possible. We'll be
back right after this quick break. You know, there are
a lot of people who don't vote for many different reasons,
(14:30):
and people who don't think it will make a difference,
people who don't believe that anything will change. They just
are at a stage in their life where it seems
like such a low priority. I'd love to hear you
really speak to people who may not yet be convinced
or may still be on the fence about whether they're
going to vote or not as to what they should
(14:53):
be considering that might encourage them to get out and
actually exercise that vote. Well, I think first of all,
we need to realize that this choice is not even
close when it comes to thinking about who would be
a better leader for this country, who would restore our
moral authority in the world, who would restore our credibility
(15:14):
in the world, that our word actually means something, that
we actually believe in science, that we can be trusted
as a partner to get major things done in the world,
as we think about climate change, as we think about
this pandemic. All of the solutions to these major problems
that the world faces require America to be a respected,
trusted partner in the world, and we are the opposite
(15:36):
of that right now. We're the laughing stock of the world.
I think climate change is the most pressing, most urgent
issue that we face in this country and in the globe,
and there's no way we make any progress on that
if Donald Trump is reelected, and it is guaranteed that
if Joe Biden is reelected and we have a democratic Senate,
that we will pass some version of the Green New Deal.
(15:59):
Joe put his plan up on his site, which I
think is robust and has been seen by a lot
of activists as a really strong plan that is critical.
And if we don't elect Joe Biden, I don't know
if we will ever be able to reverse the damage
that Donald Trump is doing and has done. That's enough
reason for me. Yeah, well, I know, I mean, that's
(16:22):
what you know. I think it's fair to say everything
that anybody cares about is on the ballot, and that
is on the ballot. Yeah, healthcare is on the ballot.
You know, better jobs for the future, you know, dealing
with the COVID vaccine issue. I mean, everything you care
about is on the ballot. And let's let's focus on
COVID for one second. Just look at what's happened in
(16:44):
other countries when it comes to death rates, when it
comes to overall spread of the disease. We have just
been terrible at it. And it makes perfect sense. We
have a terrible leader. He has no capability of thinking
long term about anything. He has no capability of thinking
about anyone outside of himself. He is a liar, He
is a conspiracy theorist, and he particularly doesn't care about
(17:07):
certain people, and a lot of those people are the
people who are being most affected by this, black and
brown people. So all of the things that would combine
to make him bad for COVID nineteen are present in
Donald Trump. There's nothing about him that says he would
do a good job handling this. And now that there's
a possibility of a vaccine, we can't even trust him
as the president to uh to lead an administration and
(17:32):
f d A as c d C that's going to
handle it properly in a way that all Americans can trust.
So in every single way, he is exactly the wrong
person to be in charge in a crisis, particular crisis
of this magnitude and of this complexity. You've seen this
utter failure of a president. It's obvious that Joe Biden
(17:54):
is a better choice. And if you want to see
what his policies are, because I I kind of got
frustrated on Twitter one day and I was like, just
go to his website, because because Joe Biden's actually very yes,
he's actually worked with a lot of policy people on
the left to really formulate some really great ideas, and
(18:16):
the choice between his plans and Donald Trump's plan that
he keeps saying he has. I don't even understand what
that means. It just means it doesn't happen when. But
it's kind of amazing that he would even say that
with a straight face. It's so obvious that Donald Trump
should never lead anything that is of concern to anyone,
(18:39):
like any CEO, anyone who's in charge of hiring people.
He has all of the characteristics that you would red
flag and say this kind of person could never work
for me. I would never let him run anything, not
the dog pound, not the local fire department, Like, there's
nothing you would trust him to run. He has no plans.
(19:01):
But everybody needs a plan to vote, right, So people
to vote, you've got to have a plan to vote.
If you can vote early, vote early. If you are
going to vote by mail, get it in the you know,
the mail, as soon as you can. And then, no
matter how long they make you wait, if you're going
to vote on election day, don't go anywhere. Stay there,
bring a lunch, whatever it takes, you know. My advice
(19:22):
to folks is if you can vote early in person,
that's probably the That's what I'm gonna do you know.
John Lewis said that democracy is not a state, it's
an act. Exactly exactly we have to act for us
to maintain our democracy, and it is in peril right now,
(19:42):
is it is? Amen. I'm so grateful that you joined
me today because you have such a perspective and understanding
about what's at stake, and the life you've lived and
the way you've used your talents speak louder than words
ever could. So thank you so much, John. Give big
hugs to Chrissie and Luna and Miles. Okay, absolutely, I
(20:05):
love to build to Chelsea and all the grandkids, and
we love your family and want to send all of
our best team. Take care, Take care. If you want
to learn more about Free to Vote, the fund John
Legend created to help returning citizens exercise their right to vote,
please visit his website Let's Free America dot com. I'm
(20:31):
devastated to share with you that two days after we
published this episode, John and Chrissie lost their baby. I'm
sending them my love and my prayers, and I know
that you all join me in doing that. I first
(20:57):
met Stacy Abrams when she was a leader in the
Georgia Legislature. You know, from that very first meeting, I
could just tell that she was someone who had a
big future ahead. She ran a heroic campaign for governor
of Georgia. In her opponent, the Secretary of State at
the time, Brian kemp rewrote the rules on voter registration,
(21:22):
purged more than three hundred thousand people from the voter rolls,
and closed more than two hundred polling places across the state.
After that election, Stacy started a new organization called Fair Fight,
dedicated to making sure everyone can vote and have their
(21:42):
vote counted. It wasn't just that election that motivated Stacy.
She was also spurred on by the work of her
parents and grandparents to get started. I asked Stacy to
share a story from her book, Our Time Is Now.
That story is about a conversation she had during a
visit with her grandmother in the middle of Stacy's campaign
(22:05):
for governor. We were just talking about the election and
what was happening, and she was chiding me about, you know,
whether I was taking care of myself. But we started
talking about voting and and spontaneously I didn't know to
ask about the story. She grabs my hand and she
tells me about the first time she voted. And she
tells me that she was sitting in her bedroom in
(22:31):
November of nineteen sixty three years after the passage of
the Voting Rights Act, and you still had all of
the ignominies of Jim Crow, all of the challenges of
white folks who did not want this new thing to
be true, especially in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And so my grandfather
and his brother were in the front room getting ready
(22:53):
to go, and they called from my grandmother, and she
tells me about sitting frozen on the bed and she
just could not move. She was paralyzed. And she said
that she just kept thinking about the dogs and the
batons and the hoses, and just those mean men who
had made their lives work denying her agency. And she
(23:14):
did not believe that it was really different. And so,
you know, my grandfather, you know, calls for her. Finally
comes back, and it's like, you know, he calls her,
sugar honey. He's like, sugar, honey, come on, we've got
to go vote. And my grandmother's like, I don't want to.
And my grandfather reminds her that her son, at the
age of fourteen my dad got arrested registering people to vote,
(23:36):
that she and he had paid bail for their kids
to get them out of jail, when they would do
things because of their commitment to civil rights. Why would
you not now hold this power? And fundamentally, what she
was telling me was that the power scared her. And
what I think about every time I fight the fight
(23:56):
for voter suppression. Why I pushed so hard for the
senses to be completed by the communities who've been told
to be afraid of it. It's the power is terrifying,
the power to vote, the power to be seen. But fundamentally,
the power of citizenship is terrifying. And a woman who
had raised her children to want it, who had done
(24:17):
her part to make it so, I just didn't believe
it was true. It's not enough to tell some when
they have power. We've got to make that power real,
and we've got to make sure people are prepared to
wield it. You know, reading that story in your book,
I thought back to when I moved to Arkansas. I
moved in late summer of ur and my then boyfriend
(24:41):
was running for Congress, and I was teaching at the
law school there and on weekends, I'd go out and
knock on doors and ask people to vote for him.
And I kept running into black women who said they
hadn't paid their poll tax, and I said, well, there
is no more poll tax, because oh yeah, there is.
(25:03):
And I said, well, you know it's been struck down,
it's been eliminated that you know, you can't be charged
a poll tax. And they look at me like, you know,
what planet are you from. Of course they're going to
stop us from voting. The other thing that would happen
often with white women is I would knock on the
door and I'd maybe be with a young volunteer, and
I'd say I was, you know, here campaigning for you know,
(25:25):
Bill Clinton or somebody else that I was campaigning for,
and the women would say, my husband does the voting
in our house. You know, those two real world experiences,
to me, really are in line with your experience and
your understanding that the reason we are having this very
(25:48):
intense and deep struggle over voting is because, at the
end of the day, it is the single power that
every citizen and has. So if people can be discouraged,
can be frightened, can be intimidated, can have their votes stolen,
(26:09):
not counted. You know, it does create a lot of
dissonance in people. They get scared, they get worried that
maybe there's going to be some kind of terrible consequence
for them trying to vote. So, how do you now
see where we are here at this point in our history?
(26:29):
And are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic? Are you both? What?
What do you think? I described myself as an ameliorist.
I've always loved the world amiliorg you to mitigate the harm.
And I believe in shorthand that the glass is half full.
It's just probably poisoned. And so my job is to
(26:49):
try to find the antidote. Our job is to try
to find that antidote. Whether that antidote is justice, that
antidote is mercy, if that antidote is investment. We've got
to find a way to fix what's broken. But we
can never believe that it won't be broken again. And
I think that's why I'm not an optimist. Optimism presumes
(27:10):
there's going to be some end state where good triumphs.
I've lived too long a life for that. But what
I do know to be true is that it gets better.
I mean, you you reference those women black and white.
And I think about being in South Georgia having a
conversation about folks going to vote and being told, well,
(27:31):
we don't vote early because if you want to vote early,
you've got to go to jail. And I was like,
what do you mean. The only place to early vote
was in the justice complex, which meant you had to
go to jail. And if you had a child who
had a warrant, if somebody had been pulled aside, and
in parts of Georgia where you were more likely to
(27:51):
be arrested just because of your race, why would you
risk your freedom to exercise your citizenship. And so my
clare and call about voter suppression was in part to
live out what you did in the election. With all
the other instrumentalities that were arrayed against Americans in that election,
(28:14):
you were the avatar. And I want us to be
really clear, you me any candidate. We are avatars for
people's dreams, for their beliefs, for their values, for their
demands for their life. And when voter suppression hits, it
is not to deny me a job, you a job.
It's not about the title. It's about the work that
we were going to do for those people, and the
(28:37):
righteous indignation that comes with suppression is because yeah, I
didn't get the title. Okay, what I'm angry about it
those black women, those brown women, those white women, those
young people who for the first time screwed their courage
up and went inside that jail to cast their vote
only to be told their vote wasn't going to be counted.
(28:57):
And so I am an amelioris because I never believe
that power will ever say you can have me, and
that shared power is ever going to be permanent. But
I believe in the permanence of trying. I do too.
I believe in the permanence of trying. That's my job.
We'll be back right after this quick break. You know,
(29:18):
That's exactly how I am. And you know, sometimes people
get frustrated with folks like us because, you know, they think, well,
you know, can't you just see we just waive the
magic one, we run certain people for office and then
everything changes. And I said, well, no, I don't know.
I've read a lot of history, I've read the Bible,
I've experienced a lot. I don't think that's how it works.
(29:40):
And I love your your phrase, ameliorist. You know, When
some of us saw what happened in the Georgia primary
this past spring, we worried that it was a dry
run for the upcoming November election, not just in Georgia,
but in a lot of other states where the Trump
administration and the Republicans know that if there's a fair
election and people are given the right to vote and
(30:02):
that right is protected, they're not likely to get reelected.
So what do you think about where we are now
in all the lawsuits were bringing. I'm supporting lawsuits through
my group Onward Together and the Democracy Docket, the advocacy,
You're doing everything that we are all so focused on.
(30:22):
What worries you about the upcoming November election? What worries
me is that Republicans know that their time is nigh,
and when cornered, they are willing to do whatever they
can to stave off the inevitable. And so we know
that they have agreed to spend twenty million dollars fighting
(30:44):
these lawsuits. We know they're going to raise an army
of fifty thou pull monitors to intimidate voters in ways
they haven't been permitted to do since. But back to
the amiliarist know fair fight exists, fair count exists, the
Sawyer's Committee, the Leadership Council, the a c P. These
exist because we know that we can fight back in
(31:08):
ways that we had never organized around before, and we
have to talk about this. You cannot solve a problem.
You will not call out and call by name and
give people roadmap to understanding what it is. But the
second part is you have to have some solutions. Litigation
is a solution because the Lawyer's Committee, in the a
c L you are winning these suits, they are getting
(31:31):
changes made. The worst thing that can happen is that
we get surprised by what they intend to do. I
don't believe that every Republican is bad. I don't believe
every Democrat is good. But I do believe that the
party that calls itself the GOP has thrown its lot
in with fevery and suppression as opposed to running a
(31:53):
fair race and letting the chips fall where they may.
When the President of the United States says he can't
win an election if every eligible citizen votes, we should
take him at his word and test his theory. Sounds
like a plan to me, my friend. Thank you so much, Stacy,
and keep going we're gonna be ameliorating in every way
(32:15):
we know and hopefully taking our country back come November.
It has been a delight. Thank you so much to
Madame Secretary. Make sure to check out Stacy's new book
called Our Time Is Now, Power, Purpose, and the Fight
for a Fair America about how we can create a
(32:38):
more equal country. This year, we lost two people who
really understood how fundamental the right to vote is in
our democracy if we're going to keep a democracy. One
was my friend John Lewis, and what a loss in
the middle of a pandemic and at a time and
(33:00):
we need heroes like John more than ever. There wasn't
anybody who put his life on the line more often
to stand up for the right to vote than John Lewis.
The other loss was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I think
about Ruth a lot because she changed the law. She
(33:23):
got constitutional interpretation that literally changed my life. You know,
when I was a young woman, I couldn't even get
a credit card in my own name. But she knocked
down barriers and obstacles to make sure that equality meant something,
and not just for women, but for all people. She
was famous for her descents and I've been thinking a
(33:45):
lot about the descent she made to a Supreme Court
decision in a case called Shelby. The holder back in
that case struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act,
and Justice gins knew the decision would make it much
more difficult for people to vote, especially people of color
(34:06):
and young people, low income people, the elderly. And she
said so in her descent. But she left us with
a rallying cry that sums up so much of her
philosophy on life. Here she is reading from that descent
from the bench. The great man who led the march
(34:27):
from Selma to Montgomery, and they are called for the
passage of the Voting Rights Act foresaw progress even in Alabama.
The ak of the moral universe is long, he said,
but it bends toward justice if there is a steadfast
commitment to see the task through to completion. If there
(34:53):
is a steadfast commitment to seeing the task through to completion,
that a s and sums up Ruth Bader Ginsburg's life
and work, and it gives the rest of us our
marching orders. There is no better way to pay tribute
to Justice Ginsburg than to get out and vote and
(35:15):
work as hard as you can to protect that right
for everyone. This election could come down to the slimmest margin,
take it from me, and the best way to win
is to turn out in overwhelming numbers. So happy voting
and onward we go. You and Me Both is brought
(35:40):
to you by I Heart Radio. We're produced by Julie
Subran and Kathleen Russo, with help from Huma Aberdeen, Nikki
etur Oscar Flores, Brianna Johnson, Nick Merrill, Lauren Peterson, Rob Russo,
and Lona Valmorrow. Our engineer is Zack McNeice. Original music
(36:02):
is by Forest Gray. If you like You and Me Both,
don't keep it to yourself. Tell a friend. You can
subscribe to You and Me Both on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
While you're there, leave us a review. I'd really appreciate it.
We'd love to hear from you, so send us your questions, comments,
(36:24):
or ideas for future shows at You and Me Both
pod at gmail dot com. Come back next week when
we're talking to some amazing women leaders, including the one
and only Gloria Steinhum
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