How to Empower Voices Through Political Engagement

What if the power to transform your community was right at your fingertips? J

Join me, Carmen Cauthen, on "Quiet, No More" as I unravel my compelling journey into civic engagement, revealing the profound influence political participation can hold for those historically left unheard. I will share my personal awakening through early involvement in election campaigns, where I discovered the human connections that drive political change. 

Together, we'll confront the challenges of political transitions and societal polarization while uncovering the potential for dialogue and understanding across divides. 

My story is not just a recounting of past experiences but a passionate call to turn despair into proactive advocacy, encouraging each of us to take meaningful action in our local governance.

Journey with us into the past as I highlight the invaluable work being done to preserve history through the WPA slave narratives. By tracing these oral histories, families are reconnecting with their roots and discovering a rich tapestry of heritage previously unknown. 

 It underscores the importance of dialogue and active engagement in shaping our political landscape, with organizations like Better Angels leading the way in fostering understanding between diverse viewpoints. Whether through writing, attending civic meetings, or simply showing up, every action contributes to the collective journey of learning and community involvement. 

This episode is more than a listen; it's an invitation to be part of the conversation and a catalyst for change in your world.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Unseen, unheard.
We've lived like that far toolong.
I'm Carmen Coffin and this isQuiet, no More.
So I've talked to a lot ofpeople since the election and

(00:22):
it's amazing that one of thefirst things especially Black
women ask me is so how are youfeeling?
Well, I wonder sometimes if Ijust don't have feels, because a
lot of times people ask me howI'm feeling about stuff and I'm
just merely going along my way.

(00:43):
I'm just merely going along myway because I can't fix or
change things that have happened.
I just have to deal with them.
So, after the election andbefore the inauguration, I just
have questions for you.
So, first of all, were you everpersonally involved in any kind

(01:03):
of campaign, election campaign?
I was.
I grew up being involved inelection campaigns.
I grew up canvassing.
I grew up standing at a placewhere people were going in to
vote, passing out ballots,especially starting around the

(01:25):
time when my mom ran for theschool board.
I was still a kid and I wouldstand in front of the elementary
school that was down the streetfrom us and pass out ballots
that said, please vote for CliffWimberley.
And I would say will you votefor my mom?
Will you vote for my mom, willyou vote for my mom?

(01:46):
And so that has never been athing that I was afraid of.
I would work the polls, I wouldwork in campaign offices, I
would volunteer, and so I wouldget to see the inside of what
politics looks like, and it wasno different than when I worked

(02:07):
at the legislature.
I saw the inside of whatpolitics looked like.
I saw end results of whathappens after an election is
over people take office and whatthe workload looks like, and
one of the things that I had toand I think all of us are going
to have to do that if we haven'tin the past is recognize that

(02:32):
everybody's a human.
We're all humans and we allcome to everything.
We come to with what we learned, with what somebody else has
shared with us maybe goodknowledge, maybe bad, but we're
just people.
Somehow in there there was afemale and a male who got

(02:56):
together and they made a kid,and the kid grew up until they
were of age to run for publicoffice.
Some people run for publicoffice because they want to
create a better life for others.
Some run for public officebecause they're angry about

(03:18):
something that happened to themor their family members, and in
a lot of cases, we want the samethings.
We don't necessarily want themthe same way, and the things

(03:41):
that we want may not be namedthe same, but we are not as far
apart as we think we are.
We just don't talk about it.
We don't sit down one-on-oneand talk with people who are on
the opposite side, and it'sgotten so bad now that we just
we cut people off.
But that's not how we solveproblems.
That's not how you solve thingswhen you've got an issue at
work.

(04:02):
But, be that as it may, what areyou going to do between now and
the inauguration?
And, furthermore, what are yougoing to do afterwards?
There's always been a period oftime between an election and an
inauguration and the Americanpublic has never really paid

(04:23):
attention to that, that space.
What's going to happen there?
What the transition looks like?
We are so polarized today thatwe are looking for things to
demonize.
Now, I'm not saying that thereis anything in Project 2025 or
that I supported President-electTrump, because I didn't, but

(04:50):
I've been down this road before.
I think our elders went downthis road, and there's always,
for me, been the choice betweenthe best candidate and the other
candidate, the choice betweenthe best candidate and the other
candidate.
It hasn't had necessarilyanything to do with race or how
they were going to treat people.
It's just been this one or thatone.

(05:14):
That's the choice I have, andso I talk.
I want to find out what you'redoing, what you're planning to
do, and I don't want to get leftout because it's too important,
right?
So what did you do after theelection?
I know a lot of people cried.
I didn't have time to do thateither.

(05:36):
I had concerns.
I know that there are peoplethat I haven't talked to since
2016,.
Not because I cut them off Well, maybe one or two people I cut
off but just because we've gonedown different paths.

(05:57):
We're growing in differentdirections and everything that
comes down doesn't normally comedown from the federal
government.
But I think that's going tochange and I think that people
who have not in the past, beeninvolved in an election other
than to vote or what happensafterwards, are going to find

(06:21):
that they need to speak out.
They need they're going to needto go to city council meetings
or town council meetings.
They're going to need to findout what's on the agenda.
They're going to need to findout what's on the agenda.
They're going to need to havesome input Surveys that come out
.
They're going to have to fillthem out.
If they don't have time to dothat, they're going to have to

(06:43):
write letters or emails and sendthem to people who represent
them at the state, at the locallevel and at the federal level,
because life as we knew it isgoing to change.
So it's time to stop feelingbad about it and get on with
what comes next, and I'm sureI'll get some pushback on that.

(07:09):
I'm not saying what you need todo, but I'm saying you need to
be prepared.
You need to be prepared to dosomething, to speak out, to be
your community advocate, to bethe advocate for yourself and
your family, for your childrenand your grandchildren, for your
parents, for your aunts anduncles, because there are some

(07:31):
people who aren't capable ofspeaking out because of age and
illness.
There are some people whoaren't capable of speaking out
because they don't know they'rebeing treated badly, and if you
haven't been practicing that,then you need to get into
practice.
So, between now and January20th, look, see what's happening

(07:57):
around you, see what things youneed to talk about.
If your legislature is meetingand you have a concern about
something, write your legislator.
If you know somebody that knowssomebody, talk to them.
If you have the opportunity tospeak to people, do it.

(08:19):
It doesn't have to be a fight.
When I talk about history andlegacy, I'm just telling the
truth and I try to have thingsthat back up what I say.
And I try to have things thatback up what I say, and so I
think it's important for you todo that.
And you know, a lot of times weonly listen to people or
podcasts or read news that sayswhat we want to hear or what we

(08:45):
want to say.
Well, maybe we need to take theopportunity to look at
something that somebody elsesays that we don't agree with,
and see what's in there.
And let's just use trustedplaces.
Let's just don't go to the darkside of anything.

(09:05):
Let's look at places that haveactual facts.
That's important.
That have actual facts.
That's important.
Were you concerned about theelection?
Were you concerned about whatwas going to happen in your

(09:27):
county or your city or yourlocal district?
Have you been concerned aboutthings in the past?
And when you're concerned aboutsomething, what do you do?
Do you just say to yourself oh,I can't change that, I can't do
anything about that.
I'm going to tell you about afriend of mine who moved to

(09:52):
North Carolina from anotherstate and he said he really
hadn't heard anything aboutracism, didn't know anything
about it.
And I laugh at him and I justtell him you know, there weren't
any Black people in your state.
So he's white and so, yeah, ifyou're white in a Midwestern
state, you may not have everheard anything about racism

(10:13):
because you don't see any peoplewho look like anybody but you.
So that wasn't an issue.
But when you come heresometimes it just slaps you in
the face because it's sodifferent.
Well, he didn't know what hecould do other than speak out

(10:34):
and he didn't know how speakingout would make a difference.
If you see the back of his car,you'll know that he has learned
that putting stickers on theback of his car that are
anti-racist is one way ofspeaking out, but another way
that he speaks out.
He has taken the WPA slavenarratives and some of you may
not have ever heard of them.

(10:55):
I'll tell you about them in aminute.
But he takes those slavenarratives and he digs in the
background of people whose oralhistories were done and he finds
out where they were enslaved.
He finds out where they livedafter slavery ended.
He comes forward, he looks forwhat their family members have

(11:16):
done and then he tries to findsomebody from their family and
tell them about their familymember.
And you know, for a lot of uswe don't even know that people
that were part of our familywere written up in the WPA slave
narratives.

(11:36):
So the WPA slave narratives werethe Works Progress
Administration oral historiesthat were done in the early
1930s.
The WPA was a federally fundedprogram.
In many sections.
That was actually how ourhighway system started to be

(11:57):
built.
Urban Renewal came out of that.
That was part of the WorksProgress Administration of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt afterthe Depression and this was a
way that the federal governmentwas able to help pay people and
help put them back to work tokeep there from being so many

(12:20):
long food lines, from being somany long food lines, and there
were housing projects built.
As I said, there were highways.
The transportation system forthe country started out of that.
But there were people who werewriters and poets, who actually
got money to go into the homesof formerly enslaved people who

(12:44):
were still alive and to do oralhistories to let them tell their
stories and those were bound up.
There are 17 states that peoplewere able to go in and
interview people.
There are hundreds of names andthere are books for each state

(13:05):
and they're online at theLibrary of Congress and other
places.
You can buy these books in thebookstores or on Amazon and read
the stories, and this is how weknow so much of the history
from the point of view of peoplewho had been enslaved.
These people were still aliveand they were interviewed, and

(13:29):
I've heard that you have to takesome of that with a grain of
salt, because actually somepeople say that they thought
they were better off enslaved,because it was hard to live
without having an education,without being able to read and
write, without being able tofarm as other than a
sharecropper.
But everybody was not that way,and so it's important that my

(13:56):
friend has gone back and donethese histories and then reached
out to family members andshared this information Because,
as I said, some people have noidea that they have this part of
their genealogy and historywritten in a book, and so there
are ways we can make adifference.

(14:17):
Sometimes there are very smallways, sometimes there are large
ways.
The point is you have to dosomething, you have to have
conversations.
There's an organization that Ihave belonged to called Better
Angels, and it's for reds andblues to sit down and talk, and

(14:40):
invariably we find out that theheart of it we kind of want the
same things, but we want to goabout it in different ways and a
lot of times we don't recognizethat some ways hurt people that
we don't think about because wedon't have those experiences to
build off.

(15:02):
So how did the election affectyou?
What are you going to dobetween now and the inauguration
and what are you going to doafterwards?
You have to learn to speak, andyour speaking doesn't have to
be with your mouth.
It can be with your hand.
It can be typewritten, it canbe emailed, it can be put in an

(15:24):
envelope, it can be with yourhand.
It can be typewritten, it canbe emailed, it can be put in an
envelope, it can be showing up,just showing up at a city
council meeting and making yourpresence known.
But there are things that youhave to do because you will be
affected, just like you havebeen affected by every other
election since before you wereborn, and you're going to have

(15:48):
to learn to be quiet.
No more you've been listeningto quiet no more where I share
my journey.
So you can be quiet, let'sconnect at wwwcarmencoffincom.