What does it mean to truly resist and build community against violent colonial powers manifesting as billionaires actively orchestrating the rise in global authoritarianism as we speak?
This conversation with Maurice Mitchell dives into the dying MAGA era, the importance of building community, telling compelling stories, and taking collective action to create a more just and equitable future in the face of authoritarian and oligarchic forces.
E.g.
- Unpacking what is actively going on in American and global politics as we speak
- How you are a part of a bigger ‘We’
- The importance of building community, solidarity, and collective power to challenge systemic injustices
- The role of year-round political engagement, organizing, and governing beyond just electoral politics
- The significance of personal stories and lived experiences in shaping one's political motivations and approach
- The power of creativity and storytelling in shifting the dominant narrative and inspiring action
Maurice Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party. Maurice is a nationally-recognized social movement strategist, a visionary leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and a community organizer for racial, social, and economic justice.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:02):
Hey, everyone, welcome to supersede a series of
conversations between me,Madeleine MacGillivray and
passionate folks from allsectors who have found their
superpowers. This is abouttaking that big existential
question of what can I do andturning it into specific,
grounded actions and takeaways.
We want to inspire you all tosupersede the systemic powers of
oppression and sit in your ownpowers to collectively build
(00:26):
towards a joyful and equitableworld. Well, welcome to
supersede. It's good to be here.
Thank you so much for beinghere. For sure, I am just going
to dive right in. I'm going toread your bio for folks. Maurice
(00:46):
Mitchell is the NationalDirector of the Working Families
Party. Maurice is a nationallyrecognized social movement
strategist, a visionary leaderin the movement for black lives
and a community organizer forracial social and economic
justice. Born and raised in NewYork to Caribbean working class
parents. Maurice beganorganizing as a teenager, and
never stopped as a high schoolstudent, Maurice served as a
(01:08):
student leader for the LongIsland student Coalition for
peace and justice at HowardUniversity after a classmate was
killed by police officers,Maurice led organizing efforts
against police brutality and fordivestment from private prisons.
Maurice went on to work as anorganizer for the Long Island
progressive coalition, downstateorganizing, Director for citizen
(01:28):
action of New York and directorof the New York State civic
engagement table, seeing theneed for an anchor organization
to provide strategic support andguidance to movement for black
lives activists across thecountry. Maurice co founded and
managed Blackbird. Maurice was akey organizer for the movement
for black lives convention inCleveland in 2015 in 2018
(01:49):
Maurice took the helm of theWorking Families Party as
national director. He's applyinghis passion and experience to
make WFP the political home fora multiracial working class
movement. Thank you, Maurice,I can attest that all of those
things are true. I remember allof those things all happen well.
(02:13):
I hope we, I hope we touch uponall of them in this
conversation. I Yeah. I mean,there's so much that I want to
talk about, there's so much thatwe can get to. I think that it
would be wise to right now, talkabout the current political
moment that we're in. I justwant to dive right in. Okay,
let's go. Let's go, dive rightin. We have to, we have to.
(02:36):
So we now, you know, in betweenactually scheduling this
interview and sitting with younow, we have essentially an
unelected billionaireeffectively orchestrating a coup
to erode our political anddigital systems of democracy. So
(02:59):
a few days after the election.
Back in November, you wrote amemo to the Working Families
Party National Committee calledwhat happens next. This was
November 11, and your openingidea sort of was quote, though
it may not feel like it today.
This is the beginning of the endof the Trump and the Maga era.
(03:19):
End quote. So you know now, didyou foresee what's happening
now? And just kind of, can youexpand on this idea from where
you were writing it on November11 to today, February 10, like
in the present moment?
Absolutely, yeah. And when Iwrote that,
(03:42):
what I and we meant, and westill believe, is that Maga is
an old idea, right? In someways, the Maga coalition is a
group of people who seek to goback to 1850 can even say 1750
right in some ways, in terms of,philosophically, what they want
(04:06):
to visit upon all of us, andmaybe some billionaires that
want to go back to 1880 like theguild the gildanate age, right,
seeking to seduce many Americansto believe that they could go
(04:26):
back to their imagined idea ofwhat 1950 was, right? So it's
basically leaving together a setof old ideas and seeking to
shoehorn these past sort ofimaginings of these idealized
ideas based on who you are, thebillionaires, some sliver of
(04:50):
white working class peopleand some white Christian
nationalist rightto today and. I'm saying is that
that does not compute, thatcannot happen, that will not
happen, but they were able toweave it together enough to
against all you know, despiteall those contradictions, to be
(05:13):
able to win this election. Butwe live in the present, and it's
our job not to decide whether ornot we're going back to some age
that no longer exists, but it'sactually our job to develop and
construct and build a futurethat's really exciting to me.
And when I look at the even thedebate inside of the Democratic
(05:35):
Party, in some some ways, it's adebate between people who are
trying to go back to the Clintonera, and some folks are trying
to go back to the Obama era, andthey're in a kind of debate, and
but I'm like, there's this wideopen terrain that is our present
and our future, and I get reallyexcited about that. So when I
say this is the beginning of theend, that's,
(06:00):
in part what I mean, what I alsomean is that
this is Trump's last presidency,and sometimes we equate Trumpism
and maggot with the RepublicanParty. Trump is, in some ways,
is a is a singular force, andmany people voted for Trump and
(06:23):
Trumpism. They didn'tnecessarily vote for Republican
rule. Many people voted forTrump and Trumpism, whatever it
meant for them. They didn'tnecessarily vote for a
billionaire engaging in a smashand grab robbery of our
collective resources. You know,when we talk about government,
(06:43):
government is just like thestuff we do together, in some
ways, like that's whatgovernment is. What democracy
is. When you talk aboutdemocracy, it's like these
systems and these institutions.
It's like how we roll and how weshare, and most people didn't
vote for Elon Musk and others,kind of deciding that they
wanted to, you know, bring downour government, which is the
(07:06):
things that we share together,so that they could pick through
all the valuable parts and throwus the scraps. And so that's
also what I mean, thatthat idea is not popular.
They were able to convinceenough people that they were
(07:27):
buying something else. Yeah, andnow it's our job, when all these
contradictions are so clear, tobe able to tell a popular story
about how we build a futuretogether. The other thing I want
to say is, yeah, yeah, I did. Idid know. I did feel pretty
confident that that these thingswould happen, not because I'm
(07:49):
some sort of a soothsayer oranything like that. I just chose
to, and I choose to take themseriously and literally. So when
the president's son in law saidthat Gaza looks like really
attractive real estate. I choseto take that seriously and
literally. When the authors ofproject 2025, laid out in detail
(08:13):
about what they were going todo, minute one day one, I took
them seriously and literally.
And you know, you could go backour our statements all
throughout this campaign seasonwere essentially us, you know,
sharing as far and wide as wecan the things that they were
would plan on doing. And it'sinteresting, these things were
so horrible that many peoplecould not process the reality of
(08:38):
them, yeah. And so for somepeople, it feels like a shock,
but if you actually listened toand took seriously the things
that they would say on live micslike this, you know, in writing,
you could just download a PDFand read it right. Listen to
Steve Bannon, listen to SteveMiller, listen to Donald Trump.
(08:59):
Listen to Russ Vought, whorecently just got, you know, got
confirmed, and he's now head ofthe OMB. He is the framer and
architect of project 2025 if youremember, we were saying that
there is a direct line betweenTrump and project 2025 and Trump
said, No, there isn't. And even,even though there was so much
(09:27):
evidence of that being the case,and there was this whole debate,
this false debate, as to whetheror not Trump's agenda day one
agenda would be project 2025 butwe now know that, in fact, the
day one agenda is the day oneagenda that they said that they
said they would execute, right?
(09:47):
So I don't give me any creditfor for knowing and believing
these things because they saidit yeah and so yes, I'm not
surprised. And we you. I havebeen preparing for this scenario
doesn't make the scenario anyless horrible. And in your
(10:08):
mind's eye, preparing for ascenario doesn't necessarily
approximate what it feels like,yeah, you know, so definitely,
just as a person, it's horrific.
The headlines are really hard toprocess. And you know, the whole
flood the zone thing that theytalked about, they talked about
(10:29):
that they were like, look, we'regoing to do as many things as
possible, as soon as possible.
And it would overwhelm bothpeople like me, who organize
every day people like you whoare using your platforms in
order to inform your audience,the institutions, right from the
(10:49):
judiciary to all the to media.
And there is something to thattheory that's they're testing
this flood the zone thing out,and it's going to be our job
people who believe in democracy,to attempt to challenge their
thought, their flood the zonetheory, which I'm excited about
so I don't feel overwhelmed. I'min it. Like, as an organizer,
(11:11):
I'm like, game. I'm not gonnalet Steve Miller out organize
us. Like, let's go. Yeah, yeah.
There's like, two sort of waysthat I want to take that, what
you just said, because there wasso much there, yeah, one is
that, I think that, and we weretalking about this a little bit
before recording, actually, whenyou were talking about a very
(11:34):
normal and kind of naturalresponse to All of what's going
on from people is, is to kindof, what was the word that you
used? Yeah,there's a, there's a, there's,
I've noticed as an organizer,there's several kind of
conditioned tendencies, right inthe face of really stark odds,
really stark political odds,like, when you know, a
(11:59):
authoritarian force like DonaldTrump in a right wing populist
movement like Maga teams up withthe richest person on the
planet, a cartoon villainbillionaire, it's just like, Oh
my God. How can I, you know,with a like heavily organized
(12:20):
and meticulous, meticulouslydetailed plan like Project 2025,
you as a just everyday personwho knows this stuff is bad,
could just be so overwhelmedthat you you retreat to
abstentionism, right? And it'sjust like I I do not believe
(12:41):
that any of this matters. Votingdoesn't matter nothing. And so
I'm going to attend to maybe thesmall and beautiful corner of my
life, and sort of, in some ways,distance myself from all of
this, right? And what I want tosay is that I think that that is
a perfectly natural andunderstandable emotional
(13:05):
response to something thatterrible, and I have a lot of
compassion. Yeah, you know, Iknow there's, there's people
like, we engage in a lot ofactivity that's focused on
voting, getting people elected,and there's people in my
position that I think engagepeople who choose not to vote in
(13:25):
ways that don't, I thinkappreciate the natural emotional
place that would bring somebodyto that or also somebody's
experience, right, right?
There's so many experiences thateveryday people have, of
(13:46):
government, of voting, of thetwo party system, of the
Democratic Party, specifically,of liberal politics, you know,
where, like, understandably, whywould anybody come away from
those experiences. Let's justsay your experience of
government is the DMV and thepolice and a shitty education.
(14:10):
That's your experience, or, youknow, all those things, and you
know public assistancebureaucrats that when you engage
with them, you feel lessdignified. That's your
experience of government or andperhaps on top of that, a local
elected official who is notresponsive to you. Why would
(14:33):
somebody who that's your day today experience believe, Oh, I'm
powerful. My vote matters.
Government could do good andpowerful things. Organizing
matters. And so I think it'sreally important to appreciate
that disconnect if you'reinterested in organizing, rather
than, I don't know, shamingpeople for not doing the the
(14:54):
shit that you think they shoulddo, right? Um, and so, yeah.
Yes, there's a, I think, anatural emotional response to
truly ghoulish political actorsout here trying to take our
money and our power. And there'speople's everyday, working
(15:15):
people's lived experience of thesneaky suspicion that things are
not right, that there are a setof people who have more money
and power than they do, thathave rigged the system against
them, that are stealing money,power, dignity from them, that
there's something happening,that believe your eyes and ears.
(15:35):
There are there are those thingsare happening. And what's ironic
is, I think, and this is notjust in the United States, but
one of the things, one of theslights of hand that right wing
populists sort of engage in, isthey tend to be a little bit
more compassionate when it comesto people's feelings of
(15:59):
powerlessness and loss ofdignity and fear. More
compassionate, compassion Yes,enough to be able to prey on
that right and offer acompelling story, right, right?
Whereas what happens is a lot ofthe forces that are pro
democracy forces in the worldlike the because these pro
(16:23):
democracy forces are big Unitedfronts that are are led by,
oftentimes, like these powerfulcenter left or center right
political parties Who are notthe whole problem, but are kind
of part of the problem. Yeah,right. So they tend to miss the
(16:44):
mark often when it comes to thestarting premise of believe your
eyes and ears Yes. And a lot ofright wing populists start off
with Yes, believe your eyes andears, and then they tell a story
that leads to a bunch ofscapegoats, right? It's a very
compelling story. And so, yeah,I do think this is a period of
(17:08):
time where we should be asking alot of questions. Be listening a
lot more. Be in a posture ofhumility. Be curious about about
why so many people do not feellike they have a sense of
connection to their own power.
And what we have to do to reinspire people in a sense of
(17:33):
connection to their own power,which is something very
different than when I'm watchingthe news, what people are
talking about, they're like,let's do this autopsy on the
Democratic Party, you know. Andthe question is, how do people
re establish trust with theDemocrats? How do people
reestablish a connection to theDemocrats? I'm like, that's the
wrong question. How are wereestablishing a connection to
(17:56):
one another? Yeah, and how arewe reestablishing a trust with
one another and a trust in myown sense of power. Yeah, that's
the question we need to answer.
So the you know, I,I don't know if I've fully
answered the question, but wekind of
doesn't matter. Okay, yes, no,and this is the question that
(18:20):
myself and kind of everybody inmy circles are asking ourselves,
I think I when it comes to folksfeeling like they have agency,
folks having any semblance oftrust in the process and the
processes that we work within toshare resources, as you put in
(18:44):
the past couple weeks. I mean,basically the first time I've
ever seen people be like, Oh, weactually, really do have to call
the people that we've electedinto office and tell them how we
feel about this, and tell themthat we don't tolerate X, Y and
Z. And I think that there are,there's like, I can feel the
(19:06):
palpable overwhelm from a lot ofpeople that absent absenteeism,
yeah, absention, abstentionism.
Abstention right?
Yeah, abstentionism. Now we'reall gonna get
absention. Is abstentionism,a better word,
(19:28):
the head in sand, the, you know,the whatever that I can feel it
and and I understand. I alsothink that, as you're saying,
there's a lot of right now this,this freeze response from the
fact that we don't know, likewhere this is gonna go, so to
speak. But as you're saying, weactually do in many ways. So
(19:49):
there's, there's actually a lotof ways to feel more grounded by
kind of doing what feelspainful, and actually reading
project 2520 25 and being. Awareand listening to what these
people are actually saying, asopposed to being like, oh my
gosh, are we devolving intototal you know, yes,
absolutely. And that's kind ofthe trick, right? And this is a
(20:12):
playbook that isn't new. Like,these people are not magicians,
these people are not wizards.
Their ideas are actually prettyboring, right? Many of them are,
are, are in some ways violentlymediocre, right? And one of the
tricks is they first have totrick you into thinking they're
(20:36):
more powerful than they are,right? And, you know, like,
Trump's press secretary said,like, Oh, he's playing four
dimensional chess. And some ofthis stuff is, some of this
stuff is planned. Some of theplans make no sense. Um, some of
it is throwing spaghetti on thewall and seeing what sticks. Um,
(20:56):
all of it is designed tooverwhelm you, right? And I
think that that's actuallyreally important. Despair is a
political project of the farright of the owner and
billionaire class. They seekpopular despair. They seek a
sense of isolation, right? Andthis is one of the reasons why
(21:20):
so much of their work is aboutthe individual. So they don't
want us to feel like there's anyreason to actually invest in in
anything collective, invest inorganizations, invest in unions,
right? They want us to imaginethat basically, the best we
(21:40):
could do is put our heads downas individuals, maybe our
families and kind of thug it outright? And so it's really
important for us to understandwhat they're up to, so that we
could overcome that. The way, Ithink, to overcome the overwhelm
is to make choices. Like,there's a lot of information.
(22:01):
There's more information than weknow what to do with. And it's
like, you know, a handful ofbros own, most of the most of
the platforms that wecommunicate with.
Choose something right, choose alane
and focus on that lane. Chooseone or two things that you want
(22:25):
to focus on, find anorganization. It's really
important. This is not a timefor individual activism on its
own. Activism has its place, andit's fine, but it's
insufficient. And also, as anindividual activist, it's easy
for you to be overwhelmed,right? And there's ways that you
could just kind of spin yourselfinto burnout through your
(22:48):
through, you know, onlineactivism, offline activism, just
kind of like for every atrociousthing, it's another rally. We
also have to build, not just aresistance movement, which tends
to lean into the the activistenergy and the spectacles and
(23:10):
all those things. They have athey have their place. You also
have to build the muscle ofbeing an opposition. Opposition
seeks to win, you know. And Idon't simply want to be a
resistance to the power. Yeah, Idon't want to simply sort of
write myself into Steve Bannonor Steve Miller's story, right,
where I'm resistance organizernumber one in a Steve Bannon or
(23:35):
Steve Miller written andproduced sort of, you know,
play, yeah, right, right. I wantus to write our own story, which
means let's be an oppositionmovement that has aspirations
for actually being in power, fortoppling the oligarchs and the
billionaires, for advancing ouragenda, for building, again,
(24:00):
something that is grounded inthe present present, but has an
aspiration for a future that hasyet to be written. So that, to
me, that gives me a lot of hope.
Like, you know, I had some baddays and bad weeks after the
election. I think, like a lot ofpeople, I was telling somebody,
I allow myself to look despairin the eye and to actually sit
(24:23):
in my own sense of loss, and Iallowed myself to feel The
feelings of, you know, personal,like, personally, I question
what I'm doing. Like, what am Idoing? Yeah, as a, you know,
(24:44):
oftentimes I have this, like,you know, forward march type of
attitude. I actually allowmyself to, like, what are we
doing, so that I could arrivehonestly at this place of
clarity and defiance and. Feellike I've gotten there pretty
honestly, and I'm ready, I'mready to go. You know, nothing
is guaranteed, which is why whatwe do in the present really
(25:09):
matters. What they do matters,sure, and what we do matter. And
we're not spectators, or weshouldn't be lulled into being
spectators. We should be weshould choose to be agents. We
should choose to beprotagonists, right? Using the
analog, again, the analogy of aplay, right? Yeah, I don't want
to be a big character. I don'twant us to be big characters.
(25:30):
You know, one of the reasons I'mso excited to be having this
conversation with you is becausewe're working to sort of make
grassroots political advocacyand involvement more accessible
and more approachable forpeople. You know, for example,
I'm working on just a climatepolicy database. It's just a
(25:51):
Google spreadsheet that actuallylays out, here's what's in the
pipeline that needs support anddirecting it, literally linking
it to an action that people cantake. We're writing scripts. You
know, we're linking tocoalitions. We have tools, and
because there's such a lack oflike, accessibility for folks
who want to get that littleextra step of political
(26:13):
involvement. And I know you'renot talking about just political
involvement. There's so manyways to show up, but I would
love to talk about just godeeper into what you're saying
in terms of how folks who arenot directly involved in, you
know, political advocacy andkind of building these systems
(26:34):
in opposition can reallyunderstand and live the fact
that, yes, they have so muchpower. We all have so much more
power than, I think we have beenled to believe that we have. And
like, sort of how folks can bemore active in pushing towards
justice from a politicalstandpoint, you know? And
(26:55):
really, yeah, I mean advice tofolks again, we're sensitive to
the word activism, you know,sometimes people don't, do not
want to use that word, andrightfully so. And there's so
many other ways to live, to livein the play and own the play and
not be written in by somebodyelse. So and I want to touch on
(27:15):
that, because in your piece thatI quoted at the beginning of
this conversation, you go on totalk about the need for us to,
you know, have each other'sbacks because all we have is
each other, which is, it couldnot be more true, the need to
remind ourselves that there isso much hope, as you're saying,
to operate with humility. Andthen you also say, We need a
plan. And you say, quote, wewill need to go on offense at
(27:36):
the state and local level, winpolicies that benefit working
people and pick fights thatfracture Trump's base in advance
of the 2026, midterms, where weflip congressional and state
power away from the Republicans.
End quote, I really want to talkabout that too. So, so, so sort
of weaving into the you know,yeah,
okay, all of that. Well, I'mgoing to respond really
(27:57):
specific, specifically, becauseI want your audience to maybe
hear something that's reallygrounded, right? Cool. Um, last
week, and it's, it's hard totalk about these things and not
sound like you're a conspiracytheorist, but these are the
things that are actuallyhappening right in real time.
(28:18):
This is true, yeah, reality. Soyou know, just to update
everybody, um, Elon Musk, who isthe wealthiest person on the
planet, um, through like,hundreds of millions, maybe 300
million, maybe more of his ownmoney into the election in order
(28:39):
to swing the the electiontowards Donald Trump.
He then,without breaking a sweat,
immediately beelined afterinauguration, into attempting to
with him, and like a handful ofyou know some teenagers and
(29:00):
other folks that I assume arevery loyal to him, to
dismantling agencies that aredoing business and and
regulating his variousbusinesses. Now I'm a fan of
oxen razor, which believes thatit's basically a belief that,
you know, the most obvious thingis the thing that's happening.
(29:22):
You could either believe thatElon Musk is had just decided
that his main thrust in life isno longer to be an entrepreneur,
is to be a crusader forefficient government, and
everything he's doing is basedon his legitimate and altruistic
desire to make government betterand more effective for you and
(29:49):
me, or it could be that he seesan amazing advantage to. Power
himself to free him and hiscompanies and various
corporations from from anyscrutiny and to basically
corporately capture the largestby far, infrastructure for all
(30:16):
types of cruelty or compassionso that he could apply
whatever's in his in his head onall of us. It looks like that's
what he's doing, but maybe he'sdoing that other thing. But
again, ox comes razor. I'm gonnaassume he's doing the thing that
(30:36):
it looks like he's doing, right?
That's what's happening. Thereason why I say that is there's
things we could do about it.
Yeah, number one, there arepeople who are using the
judiciary, and they are filinglawsuits, and many of those
lawsuits are winning, right? Butagain, that's just one piece. I
just wanna remind, remind peoplethat there are hard working
(30:58):
people, who see what we see, whoare fighting the good fight
legally. There's things that youcould do. We organized people to
actually physically go to theTreasury. There was 3500 people
who just in less than a day, hitthe streets. And it was really
inspiring to see that manypeople actually confront him at
(31:19):
his own game. They did that atthe Department of Labor. Those
activities actually prevented, Ithink, of the Department of
Labor, them actually being ableto physically get in. Yes,
right? Yes. And we had 1000s ofpeople begin to call their
representatives, yeah. Andpeople's phones. You know, your
(31:40):
representatives phones both, uh,Congress, both house
representatives, as well asfolks in the Senate. They're
ringing off the hook. We know,yeah, and it's mattering. So we
saw the Democrats. They werelike, well, what are they doing?
And then we've seen them kind ofsteal their spine. Why are they?
Why are they stealing theirspine? Because of you, right?
(32:02):
Because of people like you thatpicked up their phone in mass,
yeah. And so the one thing youcould do is pick up your phone
and communicate directly to yourrepresentatives, right? It's,
it'll take a few minutes. Youcould do it coming to and from
work, coming to or from daycareright before you go to bed. That
(32:22):
is, it's hard to process if youdon't know what's happening on
the other side, how powerfulthat is, but it is truly
powerful, right? So that's onething you could do. The other
thing you could do if youhaven't, is join an
organization. So I inviteeverybody to join the Working
(32:43):
Families Party and and, yeah,check us out. Learn about us. If
you decide that based on who weare and our perspective, the WFP
doesn't work for you, that'sfine. Find another organization.
This is a time, I think, fororganizing. And if in your
search for organizations, youcan't find an organization that
(33:04):
aligns with your values oraligns with your identity or
your perspective, then, myfriend, it's your job to build
an organization that does Yeah,right. And so again, there's
concrete things that you coulddo right now, and we actually
have tools. We make it easy forpeople to call their
representatives, which is why Isay, Join the WFP. Make it very,
(33:24):
very easy. And that's one of thefirst things that you could do
that could really matter. Butonce you do that, that action,
do it with other people. Andit's why I say do it with other
people. It's because, like,again, nothing's guaranteed. I
don't have a crystal ball.
Change is not linear. There'sthere's all types of twists and
(33:48):
turns. I've been organizing fordecades, so I've experienced
losses and wins. Yeah, we're notguaranteed victory, but when we
do these things together, to me,that's the point, because,
because I choose to be incommunity with others, in
political community with others.
After a win, that also means Iget to choose who I celebrate
with, and after a loss, thatmeans I get to choose who I
(34:11):
comfort and who comforts me andto me, that's the point. Yeah,
thatis the point. It really is. I
sometimes talk about the factthat you know, if you like, like
calling your reps, if you arekind of looking for a super
entry level, tangible, hyperspecific thing to do, if you
(34:33):
don't know all your neighbors,get to know your neighbors. Go,
you know, to be best friendswith them. Just, you know, get
their numbers, you know, buildthose lateral resiliency
networks. I think we're really,absolutely in super, super
deficit of just evenunderstanding the importance of
doing that, which is, yeah,which? Well,
(34:54):
that's why, that's, to me, oneof the underlying reasons why we
got here. Yes, we didn't. I. ButNovember didn't happen like, no
the outcome in November, likethe the election swinging to
Trump didn't happen in November.
What we're looking at is a closeto the outcome of a close to
five decade single sided waragainst working people, both
(35:16):
here and all over the world, andpart of that war is convincing
us of the lie that there is nosociety, that there is no reason
to build community, that thereis no reason to build solidarity
with one another, and it'sbecome such a fundamental plank
of the mainstream culture, it'sin the air that we breathe, and
(35:42):
we shouldn't be surprised that.
You know, the Surgeon Generalsaid that we have an epidemic of
loneliness, that people feel soisolated, we shouldn't be
surprised. And to me, thesolution to that is organizing,
you know, is being curious aboutwhat your neighbors up to, and
(36:04):
seeking to build those kinshiprelationships across difference
and insist on doing thingstogether, and which is why I say
even, even joining on. You know,I'm a I'm really into politics,
but joining any type oforganization is better than
(36:25):
trying to just thug this thingout on your own, you know, find
a adult intramural sports team.
Find it just do somethingtogether. Yeah,
do something together, exactly.
We also have released, you know,a zine and several materials. I
remember us doing a webinar weshould do again, on a solidarity
pod. Sort of what you're talkingabout is find a group of folks.
(36:46):
Maybe it's, you know, twopeople, maybe it's nine people,
but not many more, necessarily,who you can every week. Schedule
a time, protect that time.
There's so many ways to do that,and you take action together.
Maybe you call your repstogether. Maybe somebody reads a
poem. Maybe you dance, whateverit is like incorporating some
(37:09):
somatic and creative aspects toit so that it really is
sustainable. Yeah,we have something at WFP called
wolf packs, which is, you know,similar to this idea where we
promote folks rolling together.
And we help people start wolfpacks, you know, so that people
could text bank together andphone bank together and door
(37:30):
knock together and, you know,just kind of be together in
their political advocacy.
Yeah, I was gonna, yeah. I thinkthat that, idea of the next two
to four years, I think thinkingabout finding folks, if you
(37:50):
don't already, and expanding whoyou can can weather with, and
who can be your symbioticmycelial network and uplift each
other and share space with I'mthinking about the next two to
four years, and I'm just like,what exactly are you can we get
a little more granular into,like, the plan side of things,
(38:12):
like, you're talking about themidterms? Oh, yeah. Like, can we
get Yeah, I think it would begood to just touch on that a
little bit. Solet me, let me talk a little bit
about that. Yeah. So theRepublicans won a trifecta. What
that means is they won thepresidency, they won a majority
in the House and they won amajority in the Senate. It's
(38:35):
like the worst case scenario forin terms of their ability to
move the federal government,because they have the executive
as well as the legislativebranch. And you know, they
actually have a majority in theSupreme Court, but that when you
look a little bit deeper intotheir trifecta, they have a
(38:56):
very, very slim majority in theHouse of Representatives. Why is
that important? For two reasons,it's going to be really hard for
them to govern. So this is, youknow, when I say, Look, they're
not magicians. You know, Trumpisn't a king. They their plans
aren't assailable. It'sinassailable. It's important to
(39:18):
look at their their weak points.
They have different factions inthe House of Representatives.
They all, they all don't getalong right. And so it's
actually historically, they'vebeen really hard for this
virgin, this kind of Magaversion of the Republican Party,
to govern together, because whenit comes to the basic ideas of
(39:40):
what they should be passing intolaw, they really diverge. They
can't lose any votes. They can'tlose any votes Now, not all of
them, not all of theRepublicans, won in very, very
red, super, super like Magadistricts, some of them. Won
(40:00):
really close elections, which iswhy, you know, elections matter,
right? Some of them won reallyclose elections. And those
representatives what's moreimportant to them if they want
to keep their job, what's moreimportant than whatever Donald
Trump is telling them is theirability to stay in office, which
means in two years, they have tofigure out how they could make
(40:24):
an argument to the people oftheir district that they should
get a majority of the votesright. That means they need to
make an argument with peopleother than Republicans, right,
which means it's going to behard for every single one of
those members to go along withthe really, really, really far
(40:44):
right? Really, really loonystuff, yeah? And that is a
vulnerability, right? Becausemany of them are going to Yeah,
and starting now, it's our joball over the country, but
especially in those, thoseplaces where those Republicans
are vulnerable to tell a story,a true story about how extreme,
(41:08):
how extreme this version of theRepublican Party is, and why
their representative is a partyto that. And the representative
is going to try to tell a storyabout how they're moderate, how
they are a common sense, youknow, solid, moderate, you know
we, you know we have thatproblem in you know, we're
filming in New York. There werea number of members last last
(41:31):
election in New York that werearguing that we did a pretty
good job of getting them out ofoffice, because we told the
truth about who they are, notall of them, but most of them.
So our job over the next twoyears is to get that done so
that we will be in a position,hopefully in 2026 where the
(41:52):
Republicans no longer have thelegislature and the executive
branch, where their majority inthe House will cease, which
means they can't pass really badbills. That's really important,
and it's just one step, but it'san important step, and it's
something that we could actuallydo the and the thing that that
we should know is thathistorically, the the party in
(42:13):
power during midterms, which isthe the election in between
presidential elections, thatparty in power has a hard time
keeping all of its seats, and soif the Republicans only have a
three seat majority, yeah, youknow, we that the you know, it
actually looks like all right,if we tell a compelling story,
yeah, that is true about howit's us versus the billionaires,
(42:37):
right? And how we need to cometogether, all of us versus the
billionaires and get these thesefolks out of office, we could
imagine, in two years, beingable to knock them out of their
legislative majority so theycan't do harm through Congress.
That is a concrete thing wecould do. But I want to zoom out
a little bit so, because to me,when we talk about the plan, the
(43:01):
thing that I shared isn't like100% rocket science, and the map
of those districts that aremarginal, give or take one or
two is the same. Whoever youare, whatever the strategist is,
what I want to focus on is, ifyou'll indulge, indulge me a
(43:23):
little bit. Yeah. I was knockingon doors in North Philly, and I
encountered a woman, she waslike, in her 20s, black woman in
this like working class to toworking poor black community.
And she spent a good amount oftime with me on her block, and I
(43:47):
really appreciate her, you know,giving as much time as she did.
And we were talking about, youknow, her vote choice, and I was
trying to convince her, like,Yeah, listen, this is a big
election. And, and, you know,she said something that really
stuck with me. She said somesomething like on her block,
(44:13):
on that block alone, more thanone, multiple people were no
longer there because of gunviolence. And it's at the point
where for her and other peoplein her community, like they
don't even cry anymore when theylearn of news of another
neighbor losing their lives. Andshe was just like, I can't tell
(44:36):
you if, maybe I'll vote if I gettime, but I can't tell you that
my vote's gonna matter, or anyof this stuff matters, or, you
know, like, I'll probably votefor that lady if I do it. But
like, I don't know if hergetting that job is gonna matter
or not. When it comes to what meand my my neighbors are dealing
(44:58):
with, I. Yes, and so what Iheard there, it, it haunts me,
yeah, because, you know modernelectioneering, and like, you
know how, how much, how muchturf you cut in one district
versus another, and you know howmany canvassers go here,
(45:21):
whatever, there's slightdifferences based on the
strategies you might talk to or,you know, how much you spend on
digital ads versus fieldyou know, when I say, feel like
door knocking and stuff likethat, but
the real question in terms ofour plan and our duty has to run
(45:44):
right through the provocationsthat she was sharing with me,
yeah? Which is, to me, somethingmuch deeper, something
spiritual, even, yeah, right,which I think we've lost when we
look at the party experiencewhen we look at the Republican
the Democratic Party, this thinexperience that almost amounts
(46:07):
to two different marketingschemes, right? When you think
of the billions of dollars thatwere raised and spent this past
cycle, mainly on digital ads andtelevision ads, and you know,
paid, when I say paid fields,like paid people that you don't
(46:28):
know personally knocking on yourdoor, you know, a few weeks
before Election Day,all those things have its place,
butthey amount to something that
actually feels spirituallyhollow and doesn't in any
satisfying way, deal with theexistential questions that
(46:49):
people like her and herneighbors all throughout the
country are dealing with. And sowhen I talk about the plan, I'm
talking about a lot of things.
So the proximal stuff that weneed to do between now and, you
know, two years from now, inorder to to kick Republicans out
(47:12):
of the House of Representatives.
But I'm also talking about overthe next decade plus, how we
insist on putting people likeher at the center of everything
that we do, and and reclaiming apolitics that is anything but
hollow, that is vibrant andconnected and and real and
(47:35):
present in her lives and in thelives of others like her.
Can you share more about how youand WFP are working to sort of
do that on a daily basis, andhow people can help when they
(48:00):
want to because I know folks, Iwant to get involved with WFP,
and I want to hear more abouthow we can get absolutely
so we do. We really believe inyear round engagement. When I
talk about the thin experiencethat many people have of
political parties, most peopledon't hear from political
(48:23):
parties until a few monthsbefore the election, or maybe a
few weeks before the election,like if you're if you're in the
Get out the vote category, whichtends to be where most black
voters are, as it relates toDemocrats, then you're not
hearing from you're not hearingfrom them. You're not getting
mail from them. They're notknocking on your door. Knocking
on your door until after LaborDay. Yeah, right, which is why
(48:47):
so many black people are like,we feel like, All right, we get
the Republicans absolutely arewhite nationalists. You know how
to tell us? Like, we know betterthan you, right? We know how to
discern who's a racist or not.
That is a racist institution,but the Democrats, you are
taking us for granted becausewe're not hearing from you,
right? So we don't believe in toascribe to the that that type of
(49:13):
politics or you get the everyfour years we'd come around
during election season, right?
Type of thing, right, which wealso think is very
destabilizing, right? Totally.
We seek to build a year aroundpolitics, and we seek to build
(49:34):
politics that look at democracy,and we we try to get people to
go out and vote, but look atdemocracy as much more than
voting. Yeah, right, and sowe're in New York. Just the
other day, we held a mass rallyin defense of loud and proud, in
defense of our immigrantneighbors, because the mayor.
(49:56):
Mayor of New York is acquiescingto the Trump administration
saying, like, yeah, you want togo to you. You want to send your
your agents into schools, andit's go right ahead. Now again,
I don't know as a fact, but Ihave to imagine that it might
(50:16):
have something to do with thefact that our sitting mayor has
some legal problems, yeah, andthat Trump could choose to do
something about or not, right?
But again, I allegedly thatmight be what's going on here.
Yeah. So, so we organized ourmembers and our elected
(50:43):
officials and city council andstate legislature in order to
take on the mayor, and we held arally and and and in the days
before and after, we're on thephones, yeah, right, and in
places like Philly, for example,we have a coalition that is or
(51:08):
that organized in many wayssuccessfully in order to
challenge a really problematicChinatown redevelopment.
Because, you know, cities arehave this abusive relationship
with their sports teams, and,you know, the billionaires that
are attached to them, and theywere seeking to, you know,
(51:29):
gentrify a historic community ina way that was just basically a
handout to these billionaires.
And we pushed back against that,and we saw it for what it was,
yeah, and that was not simply usvoting. That was after the votes
Kendra Brooks and Nicholas ofworker our city council working
with a coalition of labor unionsand grassroots organizations and
(51:52):
activists, day in and day out,making it plain and it looks
like I just came back from inCalifornia. I came back from the
Bay Area, where we have 100elected officials who are WFP
endorsed elected officials onthe local level, all the way to
(52:13):
the legislature, where they weremeeting together and they were
thinking about the governingagenda. So it means a lot of
different things, and it also isus. You know, after the
election, it was me again inPhilly with a bunch of just it
was a sacred space of blackwomen who wanted to come
(52:39):
together as the 92% whounderstood, understood the
assignment where they wanted tobreak bread together, and they
wanted to build together, andthey wanted to bear witness to
the journey that they're ontogether. And you know, I was
the only male body person thatthat they allowed in that space.
But that's also political work.
(53:03):
That is the work of a politicalparty, right? It's a lot of
things, right? It is in manyways, yes, voting, you know,
going to city council passingbills like the moratorium on
evictions that we passed inPhilly with Kendra Brooks and
and eventually NicholasO'Rourke, who also passed this
(53:27):
legislation preventingalgorithms for from artificially
upping people's rents or or chiASE in in New York City Council
passing legislation you know, ifyou're a renter in New York, you
know, preventing them fromadding these, like, totally
(53:48):
onerous fees. So that's notgoing to have, yeah, the broker
fee, even though, if you don'tgo through a broker, he's still
paying the broker fee. So, youknow, it's that, and it's
and it's creating those sacredspaces where we're just being
together. And that is the workof a political party too. So we
try to do all those things. Wetry to govern together, vote and
(54:13):
campaign together, buildcommunity together, organize
together, and weave all thosethings together as like a
coherent party experience.
I think that there's a lot thatyou have said that is gonna
stick with me for a really longtime, definitely the spiritually
(54:34):
hollow nature of the present andfar right wing politics and in
many cases, democratic as wellas you're talking about. And so
this is really beautiful tohear. The
good news is, though that youknow, in in nature and science,
but also in politics, vacuumsmust get filled. Yes, so what
(54:57):
are we going to fill that thathollow space with? Yeah. It's
exciting. That's a creativeproject. Yes, so I'm looking
forward to that. Yes,yes, exactly. It is a creative
project. I also have beenthinking about all the ways that
when you say the story, andframing it in that way is very
powerful to talk about the factthat we are telling a story, and
(55:17):
we have to tell a specific typeof story, a specific type of
way, and owning the story, andhow many people are so not only
needed, but totally essentialfor that story to evolve and
shift and change, and all of thecreativity that we might not be
thinking like, Oh, if I'msomebody who's creatively
inclined, or I'm a creativeprofessional, or I just think in
(55:39):
ways that, you know, tap into acreative energy which is
everywhere and doesn't, doesn'tmean arts necessarily at all,
yeah, but just tapping into thatin in the shifting of the story,
is something that I think abouta lot, which is really powerful.
I also want to talk if, if wemay, I want to pivot a little
(56:00):
bit to yourstory. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Like,
like, I'm just like, how did youget here?
That's sort of my question. And,you know, I have questions here
that I could ask that go throughthese points in your life,
right? Hurricane Sandy, how ithas impacted you beginning to
(56:21):
organize as a teenager growingup, you know, to working class
Caribbean parents in New York,and then your involvement for
with movement for black lives,and all these things that you've
done. But I, I kind of just wantto give you the opportunity to
answer the question, yeah.
I guess today I'll answer inthis, yeah, yeah. Today, because
I feel like every time I answerit, I have a different
(56:43):
understanding of it, right? Youknow? Yeah, it's kind of like
free therapy in some way.
Tell me today, okay, how youfeeling
so, you know, let me justpreface it by a theme that I
brought up earlier, how Ibelieve that despair and
isolation are projects of theright wing and projects of the
(57:07):
owner class. And if you notice,all of their arguments seek to
remove everything from itscontext, right? So like give you
any example, if we're talkingabout a police shooting, right,
they just, they don't want totalk about, no, the context,
(57:31):
right at all. They don't want totalk. They just want to. They
want to talk about that oneindividual and that one pilot,
yes, yes. So it's like they dowith everything, yeah, right. If
you want to talk about a, let'stalk about a extreme weather
event, right? They don't want totalk about the context, no,
(57:53):
right? They just want to talkabout that one event, right?
Because if you talk about thecontext, then you have to talk
about climate change, and youhave to talk about capital and
talk about extractiveindustries, and you have to talk
about our power, and, you know,so and they
get it so fast. They own thatstory so fast. Yes, right. How
do they do that? Yeah, soquickly. I mean, they're,
(58:13):
they're so calculated. Well,they they understand the
assignment. Yeah, theyunderstand that it's gonna land
with folks if it's that hyperspecific thing, yes. And how are
we gonna ground that? And whenwe talk about the story and talk
about climate change and talkabout the fires and everything
that has contributed, how do weget people in that specific way?
This is a question that I'masking myself a lot. But can you
(58:34):
continue? Yeah,so I don't think about myself as
an individual, right? I have acontext, yeah, you know. And
there's a way that people talkabout history as being like the
individual heroic actions,usually of a man, and like the
things that they do, right it?
But the way that I think abouthistory is that every individual
(58:59):
historical figure is actually inthe context of a particular
time, place and condition, andin the context of a community,
and in the context of a wholeset of relationships like MLK
isn't really just MLK and okay,is in the context of all these
other things, right? And itactually when we start talking
(59:19):
about ourselves like that. Yeah,it is like a very like,
intensely ego gratifying, decontextualizing of yourself,
right? Like, there's all theseself made people. It's like,
well, yourself didn't make thatroad you walked on right
yourself didn't invent thelanguage that you speak right
yourself didn't invent theculture that you found yourself
(59:41):
in, right?
You did not fall out of acoconut tree. You didn't fall
out of a coconut tree.
You did it Yeah, like, straightup, yes. And so Eddie, I say all
that to say, you know, my, um,my dad was born in 1939 in rural
Grenada. His his mom, mygrandmother. I. I basically grew
(01:00:02):
up along she was a young personwhen she had him, and grew up
alongside of him. My mom wasborn in the 40s, in the mid 40s
in in rural Trinidad andGrenada. She had like, I think
10. Yeah, 1010, brothers andsisters and my grandmother, my
(01:00:28):
mom's mom, she would hustle andmove the family from one hustle
to another. There was a pointwhere all the kids were
recycling, all the kids were andthe hustle that she she did that
that led to me was leavingTrinidad and Tobago, Tobago to
(01:00:50):
come to the United States andfind work as a domestic worker
in the homes of other people,leaving her her kids and taking
care of the family and kids ofother people, sending remittance
home, which is a common storyfor a lot of a lot of migrants,
a lot of immigrants, and was mygrandmother's story. And she she
(01:01:10):
lived Monday through Friday inpeople's homes, and on the
weekend she didn't have a home.
And it was through thegenerosity of somebody in the
community who noticed that shewas, you know, kind of hanging
out by herself in this park, andasked her some questions. This
woman who's still alive,somebody who, you know, I
actually bumped into a few weeksago, who was curious enough to
(01:01:34):
ask my didn't just treat mygrandmother like she was just
part of the scenery, anddiscovered quickly that my
grandmother really didn't have aplace to stay on the weekends
and and invited her in. It'sthrough her generosity and
through that community that ledto my grandmother getting her
feet under her and hustling andeventually finding an apartment,
(01:01:58):
eventually getting one of myaunts over to this country. So
now they're in the apartment,and then eventually my
grandfather, so three of them inthe apartment, and they're
hustling together to kind ofcobble together everything that
they have and sending remittancehome to the other kids who are
like, you know, the older kidsare parenting the younger kids,
where she was able to buy ahome, and then that led to a set
(01:02:23):
of a whole like chain reactionthat led to my parents
eventually coming to thiscountry, and me being born. And
in the context of now all theseaunties and uncles and all these
cousins who all lived in thisone place, one home, and
(01:02:45):
eventually were able to branchout. And so, you know, I was
born 1979 which is like thebeginning of the new neoliberal
era, right? And I was born inthe context of this community
that really cared for me andloved me. I sat many times at my
grandmother's feet as she mademeatballs and told me stories,
(01:03:07):
and she would look, you know,math gets updated every
generation, so she's like, howwhat is this? You know, she
tried to help me with myhomework and what I learned at
her table and what I learnedthrough my my parents, is that
we are, are a bigger we like weare a bigger we. There is no
(01:03:27):
just me floating around, thatwe're actually all
interconnected. I learned thatthat was applied on me, and so
that is the basis of mypolitics. That's why I've taken
to organizing in the way that Ithink I take to organizing. My
first organizing lessons weren'tlearned in the in some
(01:03:47):
disconnected way. Was kind oflearned through just witnessing
like I saw. My parents bringpeople in, my grandmother bring
people in, and these are humble,working class people, and
whatever they have, they share.
Yeah, right, and so I understandthe power of sharing. You don't
(01:04:09):
share when you have excess, yousimply share. You just simply
share with whatever you have.
And there's something reallypowerful about that interaction.
And so that my understanding offamily is not just the people
you're related to, but thepeople that you choose. And so
my organizing practice followsthat. And then, of course, like
(01:04:33):
my parents, they were in unions,that was really important. So I
saw the power of being part ofunion, you know, 1199 had a
strike when I was younger. Mydad is from Grenada, which, you
know, Grenada has a reallypowerful story of 1979 again,
the year of my birth, the newjewel movement, these
(01:04:54):
revolutionaries were able tospring Grenada. Into this sort
of Renaissance, you know, untilit was tragically cut down. And,
you know, the United Statesinvaded Grenada. So all these
things influenced me. I remembermy dad, you know, after the the
move bombing in Philadelphia,saying, always remember the
(01:05:16):
move. Always remember that. Andthe stories that they told about
their upbringing, but alsobecause they're coming from
countries that are newlyindependent countries, so
they're sharing all thesestories about the African world
in general. So I feel veryconnected to black people all
over and feel very concernedabout the freedom and liberation
(01:05:39):
of black people in the UnitedStates, but just black people
everywhere. And I feel like insome ways, connected to those
stories. So I felt a deepconnection to the South African
liberation movement and the antiapartheid movement. And as a
young person, you know the sameway, for whatever reason, in the
(01:05:59):
same way that some young peopleare, like, I want to be a
fireman, or I want to be afirefighter, or I want to
whatever. I wanted to be afreedom fighter, and I didn't
know that you could, like, havea job or whatever, but that's
kind of what I wanted to do.
And, you know, throughexperiences growing up like
facing institutional racism andknowing it the minute I felt it
(01:06:23):
like feeling the shame of myfirst grade teacher separate me
and you know, because I grew upin a multiracial working class
suburb of New York, Long Beach,I remember like yesterday, you
know, being tracked to remedialmath and remedial reading and
the shame and that goes alongwith being tracked, but then
(01:06:47):
using that, that individualstudy, in order to excel. Like
it was a great environment forme and but I understood just
somewhere deep inside that someinjustice was taking place
because, like, I wasn't testedinto that. It was just kind of
like, and then, you know, whenI'm in remedial I was like,
everybody else is basicallyblack or Latino and and then
(01:07:09):
there's the gifted classes. Butif you go to the gifted classes,
just nothing but white kids,right?
And facing that,facing, you know, growing up in
the 80s. This is like the crackera, right? And getting
constantly pulled over by thepolice, eventually facing, you
know, false or false arrest. Youknow, was, you know, by the time
(01:07:31):
I was 20, I was, I can't tellyou, many times I've been pulled
over by the police, falselyarrested, falsely jailed. It
builds an appetite to want to dosomething about it. And so I
think, you know, again, I am mymother and father son. I am my
grandmother's grandchild. I amvery much a part of that very
(01:07:56):
close family network. And I am adirect or indirect recipient of
the downside of neoliberalismand the downside of these
abstract policies that actuallyvisit violence and trauma and
pain on real people and realcommunities and real families.
(01:08:17):
You know my mother, she workedin Far Rockaway on the front
lines of the drug war becauseshe was a detox nurse. So I
would hear those stories everysingle day. So I am a product of
all those things, and I can'tthink of a better reason to get
(01:08:39):
up every day, but to createconditions where people like my
mom and my dad and mygrandmother or the students of
today won't have to experiencethe same feelings that I had to
work through going through thosechanges. So, yeah, I feel, I
(01:09:01):
feel this intimate sort of senseof palpable anger around
educational apartheid. So whenyou ask me that question, I
don't think I had a choice but,but to do these things, and I
(01:09:22):
don't feel like I have a choice,and I don't think the choice is
just simply mine. I don'treally, yeah, I am an
individual, and, you know, myindividual likes and dislikes
and passions and whatever I deemare my skills matter, but also
who my people are, I think, andhow they've raised me and their
(01:09:49):
values and their story, I think,ultimately, is why I'm talking
to you.
Thank you, MO. Thank you somuch. Thank you.
(01:10:14):
Okay. Thank you so much forlistening, everybody. I hope
that you enjoyed that episode asmuch as I did, and I will say
also, please share theseepisodes with your friends, with
your family, with yourcoworkers. Review them on Apple
and Spotify. If you've benefitedor enjoyed or learned something
(01:10:35):
from this episode, from otherepisodes, you mean a lot to us.
If you did all that and alwaysfeel free to check out our
website and we'll see you nexttime. Thanks, everybody.
(01:10:56):
You.
Hey, everyone, welcome to supersede a series of
conversations between me,Madeleine MacGillivray and
passionate folks from allsectors who have found their
superpowers. This is abouttaking that big existential
question of what can I do andturning it into specific,
grounded actions and takeaways.
We want to inspire you all tosupersede the systemic powers of
oppression and sit in your ownpowers to collectively build
(00:26):
towards a joyful and equitableworld. Well, welcome to
supersede. It's good to be here.
Thank you so much for beinghere. For sure, I am just going
to dive right in. I'm going toread your bio for folks. Maurice
(00:46):
Mitchell is the NationalDirector of the Working Families
Party. Maurice is a nationallyrecognized social movement
strategist, a visionary leaderin the movement for black lives
and a community organizer forracial social and economic
justice. Born and raised in NewYork to Caribbean working class
parents. Maurice beganorganizing as a teenager, and
never stopped as a high schoolstudent, Maurice served as a
(01:08):
student leader for the LongIsland student Coalition for
peace and justice at HowardUniversity after a classmate was
killed by police officers,Maurice led organizing efforts
against police brutality and fordivestment from private prisons.
Maurice went on to work as anorganizer for the Long Island
progressive coalition, downstateorganizing, Director for citizen
(01:28):
action of New York and directorof the New York State civic
engagement table, seeing theneed for an anchor organization
to provide strategic support andguidance to movement for black
lives activists across thecountry. Maurice co founded and
managed Blackbird. Maurice was akey organizer for the movement
for black lives convention inCleveland in 2015 in 2018
(01:49):
Maurice took the helm of theWorking Families Party as
national director. He's applyinghis passion and experience to
make WFP the political home fora multiracial working class
movement. Thank you, Maurice,I can attest that all of those
things are true. I remember allof those things all happen well.
(02:13):
I hope we, I hope we touch uponall of them in this
conversation. I Yeah. I mean,there's so much that I want to
talk about, there's so much thatwe can get to. I think that it
would be wise to right now, talkabout the current political
moment that we're in. I justwant to dive right in. Okay,
let's go. Let's go, dive rightin. We have to, we have to.
(02:36):
So we now, you know, in betweenactually scheduling this
interview and sitting with younow, we have essentially an
unelected billionaireeffectively orchestrating a coup
to erode our political anddigital systems of democracy. So
(02:59):
a few days after the election.
Back in November, you wrote amemo to the Working Families
Party National Committee calledwhat happens next. This was
November 11, and your openingidea sort of was quote, though
it may not feel like it today.
This is the beginning of the endof the Trump and the Maga era.
(03:19):
End quote. So you know now, didyou foresee what's happening
now? And just kind of, can youexpand on this idea from where
you were writing it on November11 to today, February 10, like
in the present moment?
Absolutely, yeah. And when Iwrote that,
(03:42):
what I and we meant, and westill believe, is that Maga is
an old idea, right? In someways, the Maga coalition is a
group of people who seek to goback to 1850 can even say 1750
right in some ways, in terms of,philosophically, what they want
(04:06):
to visit upon all of us, andmaybe some billionaires that
want to go back to 1880 like theguild the gildanate age, right,
seeking to seduce many Americansto believe that they could go
(04:26):
back to their imagined idea ofwhat 1950 was, right? So it's
basically leaving together a setof old ideas and seeking to
shoehorn these past sort ofimaginings of these idealized
ideas based on who you are, thebillionaires, some sliver of
(04:50):
white working class peopleand some white Christian
nationalist rightto today and. I'm saying is that
that does not compute, thatcannot happen, that will not
happen, but they were able toweave it together enough to
against all you know, despiteall those contradictions, to be
(05:13):
able to win this election. Butwe live in the present, and it's
our job not to decide whether ornot we're going back to some age
that no longer exists, but it'sactually our job to develop and
construct and build a futurethat's really exciting to me.
And when I look at the even thedebate inside of the Democratic
(05:35):
Party, in some some ways, it's adebate between people who are
trying to go back to the Clintonera, and some folks are trying
to go back to the Obama era, andthey're in a kind of debate, and
but I'm like, there's this wideopen terrain that is our present
and our future, and I get reallyexcited about that. So when I
say this is the beginning of theend, that's,
(06:00):
in part what I mean, what I alsomean is that
this is Trump's last presidency,and sometimes we equate Trumpism
and maggot with the RepublicanParty. Trump is, in some ways,
is a is a singular force, andmany people voted for Trump and
(06:23):
Trumpism. They didn'tnecessarily vote for Republican
rule. Many people voted forTrump and Trumpism, whatever it
meant for them. They didn'tnecessarily vote for a
billionaire engaging in a smashand grab robbery of our
collective resources. You know,when we talk about government,
(06:43):
government is just like thestuff we do together, in some
ways, like that's whatgovernment is. What democracy
is. When you talk aboutdemocracy, it's like these
systems and these institutions.
It's like how we roll and how weshare, and most people didn't
vote for Elon Musk and others,kind of deciding that they
wanted to, you know, bring downour government, which is the
(07:06):
things that we share together,so that they could pick through
all the valuable parts and throwus the scraps. And so that's
also what I mean, thatthat idea is not popular.
They were able to convinceenough people that they were
(07:27):
buying something else. Yeah, andnow it's our job, when all these
contradictions are so clear, tobe able to tell a popular story
about how we build a futuretogether. The other thing I want
to say is, yeah, yeah, I did. Idid know. I did feel pretty
confident that that these thingswould happen, not because I'm
(07:49):
some sort of a soothsayer oranything like that. I just chose
to, and I choose to take themseriously and literally. So when
the president's son in law saidthat Gaza looks like really
attractive real estate. I choseto take that seriously and
literally. When the authors ofproject 2025, laid out in detail
(08:13):
about what they were going todo, minute one day one, I took
them seriously and literally.
And you know, you could go backour our statements all
throughout this campaign seasonwere essentially us, you know,
sharing as far and wide as wecan the things that they were
would plan on doing. And it'sinteresting, these things were
so horrible that many peoplecould not process the reality of
(08:38):
them, yeah. And so for somepeople, it feels like a shock,
but if you actually listened toand took seriously the things
that they would say on live micslike this, you know, in writing,
you could just download a PDFand read it right. Listen to
Steve Bannon, listen to SteveMiller, listen to Donald Trump.
(08:59):
Listen to Russ Vought, whorecently just got, you know, got
confirmed, and he's now head ofthe OMB. He is the framer and
architect of project 2025 if youremember, we were saying that
there is a direct line betweenTrump and project 2025 and Trump
said, No, there isn't. And even,even though there was so much
(09:27):
evidence of that being the case,and there was this whole debate,
this false debate, as to whetheror not Trump's agenda day one
agenda would be project 2025 butwe now know that, in fact, the
day one agenda is the day oneagenda that they said that they
said they would execute, right?
(09:47):
So I don't give me any creditfor for knowing and believing
these things because they saidit yeah and so yes, I'm not
surprised. And we you. I havebeen preparing for this scenario
doesn't make the scenario anyless horrible. And in your
(10:08):
mind's eye, preparing for ascenario doesn't necessarily
approximate what it feels like,yeah, you know, so definitely,
just as a person, it's horrific.
The headlines are really hard toprocess. And you know, the whole
flood the zone thing that theytalked about, they talked about
(10:29):
that they were like, look, we'regoing to do as many things as
possible, as soon as possible.
And it would overwhelm bothpeople like me, who organize
every day people like you whoare using your platforms in
order to inform your audience,the institutions, right from the
(10:49):
judiciary to all the to media.
And there is something to thattheory that's they're testing
this flood the zone thing out,and it's going to be our job
people who believe in democracy,to attempt to challenge their
thought, their flood the zonetheory, which I'm excited about
so I don't feel overwhelmed. I'min it. Like, as an organizer,
(11:11):
I'm like, game. I'm not gonnalet Steve Miller out organize
us. Like, let's go. Yeah, yeah.
There's like, two sort of waysthat I want to take that, what
you just said, because there wasso much there, yeah, one is
that, I think that, and we weretalking about this a little bit
before recording, actually, whenyou were talking about a very
(11:34):
normal and kind of naturalresponse to All of what's going
on from people is, is to kindof, what was the word that you
used? Yeah,there's a, there's a, there's,
I've noticed as an organizer,there's several kind of
conditioned tendencies, right inthe face of really stark odds,
really stark political odds,like, when you know, a
(11:59):
authoritarian force like DonaldTrump in a right wing populist
movement like Maga teams up withthe richest person on the
planet, a cartoon villainbillionaire, it's just like, Oh
my God. How can I, you know,with a like heavily organized
(12:20):
and meticulous, meticulouslydetailed plan like Project 2025,
you as a just everyday personwho knows this stuff is bad,
could just be so overwhelmedthat you you retreat to
abstentionism, right? And it'sjust like I I do not believe
(12:41):
that any of this matters. Votingdoesn't matter nothing. And so
I'm going to attend to maybe thesmall and beautiful corner of my
life, and sort of, in some ways,distance myself from all of
this, right? And what I want tosay is that I think that that is
a perfectly natural andunderstandable emotional
(13:05):
response to something thatterrible, and I have a lot of
compassion. Yeah, you know, Iknow there's, there's people
like, we engage in a lot ofactivity that's focused on
voting, getting people elected,and there's people in my
position that I think engagepeople who choose not to vote in
(13:25):
ways that don't, I thinkappreciate the natural emotional
place that would bring somebodyto that or also somebody's
experience, right, right?
There's so many experiences thateveryday people have, of
(13:46):
government, of voting, of thetwo party system, of the
Democratic Party, specifically,of liberal politics, you know,
where, like, understandably, whywould anybody come away from
those experiences. Let's justsay your experience of
government is the DMV and thepolice and a shitty education.
(14:10):
That's your experience, or, youknow, all those things, and you
know public assistancebureaucrats that when you engage
with them, you feel lessdignified. That's your
experience of government or andperhaps on top of that, a local
elected official who is notresponsive to you. Why would
(14:33):
somebody who that's your day today experience believe, Oh, I'm
powerful. My vote matters.
Government could do good andpowerful things. Organizing
matters. And so I think it'sreally important to appreciate
that disconnect if you'reinterested in organizing, rather
than, I don't know, shamingpeople for not doing the the
(14:54):
shit that you think they shoulddo, right? Um, and so, yeah.
Yes, there's a, I think, anatural emotional response to
truly ghoulish political actorsout here trying to take our
money and our power. And there'speople's everyday, working
(15:15):
people's lived experience of thesneaky suspicion that things are
not right, that there are a setof people who have more money
and power than they do, thathave rigged the system against
them, that are stealing money,power, dignity from them, that
there's something happening,that believe your eyes and ears.
(15:35):
There are there are those thingsare happening. And what's ironic
is, I think, and this is notjust in the United States, but
one of the things, one of theslights of hand that right wing
populists sort of engage in, isthey tend to be a little bit
more compassionate when it comesto people's feelings of
(15:59):
powerlessness and loss ofdignity and fear. More
compassionate, compassion Yes,enough to be able to prey on
that right and offer acompelling story, right, right?
Whereas what happens is a lot ofthe forces that are pro
democracy forces in the worldlike the because these pro
(16:23):
democracy forces are big Unitedfronts that are are led by,
oftentimes, like these powerfulcenter left or center right
political parties Who are notthe whole problem, but are kind
of part of the problem. Yeah,right. So they tend to miss the
(16:44):
mark often when it comes to thestarting premise of believe your
eyes and ears Yes. And a lot ofright wing populists start off
with Yes, believe your eyes andears, and then they tell a story
that leads to a bunch ofscapegoats, right? It's a very
compelling story. And so, yeah,I do think this is a period of
(17:08):
time where we should be asking alot of questions. Be listening a
lot more. Be in a posture ofhumility. Be curious about about
why so many people do not feellike they have a sense of
connection to their own power.
And what we have to do to reinspire people in a sense of
(17:33):
connection to their own power,which is something very
different than when I'm watchingthe news, what people are
talking about, they're like,let's do this autopsy on the
Democratic Party, you know. Andthe question is, how do people
re establish trust with theDemocrats? How do people
reestablish a connection to theDemocrats? I'm like, that's the
wrong question. How are wereestablishing a connection to
(17:56):
one another? Yeah, and how arewe reestablishing a trust with
one another and a trust in myown sense of power. Yeah, that's
the question we need to answer.
So the you know, I,I don't know if I've fully
answered the question, but wekind of
doesn't matter. Okay, yes, no,and this is the question that
(18:20):
myself and kind of everybody inmy circles are asking ourselves,
I think I when it comes to folksfeeling like they have agency,
folks having any semblance oftrust in the process and the
processes that we work within toshare resources, as you put in
(18:44):
the past couple weeks. I mean,basically the first time I've
ever seen people be like, Oh, weactually, really do have to call
the people that we've electedinto office and tell them how we
feel about this, and tell themthat we don't tolerate X, Y and
Z. And I think that there are,there's like, I can feel the
(19:06):
palpable overwhelm from a lot ofpeople that absent absenteeism,
yeah, absention, abstentionism.
Abstention right?
Yeah, abstentionism. Now we'reall gonna get
absention. Is abstentionism,a better word,
(19:28):
the head in sand, the, you know,the whatever that I can feel it
and and I understand. I alsothink that, as you're saying,
there's a lot of right now this,this freeze response from the
fact that we don't know, likewhere this is gonna go, so to
speak. But as you're saying, weactually do in many ways. So
(19:49):
there's, there's actually a lotof ways to feel more grounded by
kind of doing what feelspainful, and actually reading
project 2520 25 and being. Awareand listening to what these
people are actually saying, asopposed to being like, oh my
gosh, are we devolving intototal you know, yes,
absolutely. And that's kind ofthe trick, right? And this is a
(20:12):
playbook that isn't new. Like,these people are not magicians,
these people are not wizards.
Their ideas are actually prettyboring, right? Many of them are,
are, are in some ways violentlymediocre, right? And one of the
tricks is they first have totrick you into thinking they're
(20:36):
more powerful than they are,right? And, you know, like,
Trump's press secretary said,like, Oh, he's playing four
dimensional chess. And some ofthis stuff is, some of this
stuff is planned. Some of theplans make no sense. Um, some of
it is throwing spaghetti on thewall and seeing what sticks. Um,
(20:56):
all of it is designed tooverwhelm you, right? And I
think that that's actuallyreally important. Despair is a
political project of the farright of the owner and
billionaire class. They seekpopular despair. They seek a
sense of isolation, right? Andthis is one of the reasons why
(21:20):
so much of their work is aboutthe individual. So they don't
want us to feel like there's anyreason to actually invest in in
anything collective, invest inorganizations, invest in unions,
right? They want us to imaginethat basically, the best we
(21:40):
could do is put our heads downas individuals, maybe our
families and kind of thug it outright? And so it's really
important for us to understandwhat they're up to, so that we
could overcome that. The way, Ithink, to overcome the overwhelm
is to make choices. Like,there's a lot of information.
(22:01):
There's more information than weknow what to do with. And it's
like, you know, a handful ofbros own, most of the most of
the platforms that wecommunicate with.
Choose something right, choose alane
and focus on that lane. Chooseone or two things that you want
(22:25):
to focus on, find anorganization. It's really
important. This is not a timefor individual activism on its
own. Activism has its place, andit's fine, but it's
insufficient. And also, as anindividual activist, it's easy
for you to be overwhelmed,right? And there's ways that you
could just kind of spin yourselfinto burnout through your
(22:48):
through, you know, onlineactivism, offline activism, just
kind of like for every atrociousthing, it's another rally. We
also have to build, not just aresistance movement, which tends
to lean into the the activistenergy and the spectacles and
(23:10):
all those things. They have athey have their place. You also
have to build the muscle ofbeing an opposition. Opposition
seeks to win, you know. And Idon't simply want to be a
resistance to the power. Yeah, Idon't want to simply sort of
write myself into Steve Bannonor Steve Miller's story, right,
where I'm resistance organizernumber one in a Steve Bannon or
(23:35):
Steve Miller written andproduced sort of, you know,
play, yeah, right, right. I wantus to write our own story, which
means let's be an oppositionmovement that has aspirations
for actually being in power, fortoppling the oligarchs and the
billionaires, for advancing ouragenda, for building, again,
(24:00):
something that is grounded inthe present present, but has an
aspiration for a future that hasyet to be written. So that, to
me, that gives me a lot of hope.
Like, you know, I had some baddays and bad weeks after the
election. I think, like a lot ofpeople, I was telling somebody,
I allow myself to look despairin the eye and to actually sit
(24:23):
in my own sense of loss, and Iallowed myself to feel The
feelings of, you know, personal,like, personally, I question
what I'm doing. Like, what am Idoing? Yeah, as a, you know,
(24:44):
oftentimes I have this, like,you know, forward march type of
attitude. I actually allowmyself to, like, what are we
doing, so that I could arrivehonestly at this place of
clarity and defiance and. Feellike I've gotten there pretty
honestly, and I'm ready, I'mready to go. You know, nothing
is guaranteed, which is why whatwe do in the present really
(25:09):
matters. What they do matters,sure, and what we do matter. And
we're not spectators, or weshouldn't be lulled into being
spectators. We should be weshould choose to be agents. We
should choose to beprotagonists, right? Using the
analog, again, the analogy of aplay, right? Yeah, I don't want
to be a big character. I don'twant us to be big characters.
(25:30):
You know, one of the reasons I'mso excited to be having this
conversation with you is becausewe're working to sort of make
grassroots political advocacyand involvement more accessible
and more approachable forpeople. You know, for example,
I'm working on just a climatepolicy database. It's just a
(25:51):
Google spreadsheet that actuallylays out, here's what's in the
pipeline that needs support anddirecting it, literally linking
it to an action that people cantake. We're writing scripts. You
know, we're linking tocoalitions. We have tools, and
because there's such a lack oflike, accessibility for folks
who want to get that littleextra step of political
(26:13):
involvement. And I know you'renot talking about just political
involvement. There's so manyways to show up, but I would
love to talk about just godeeper into what you're saying
in terms of how folks who arenot directly involved in, you
know, political advocacy andkind of building these systems
(26:34):
in opposition can reallyunderstand and live the fact
that, yes, they have so muchpower. We all have so much more
power than, I think we have beenled to believe that we have. And
like, sort of how folks can bemore active in pushing towards
justice from a politicalstandpoint, you know? And
(26:55):
really, yeah, I mean advice tofolks again, we're sensitive to
the word activism, you know,sometimes people don't, do not
want to use that word, andrightfully so. And there's so
many other ways to live, to livein the play and own the play and
not be written in by somebodyelse. So and I want to touch on
(27:15):
that, because in your piece thatI quoted at the beginning of
this conversation, you go on totalk about the need for us to,
you know, have each other'sbacks because all we have is
each other, which is, it couldnot be more true, the need to
remind ourselves that there isso much hope, as you're saying,
to operate with humility. Andthen you also say, We need a
plan. And you say, quote, wewill need to go on offense at
(27:36):
the state and local level, winpolicies that benefit working
people and pick fights thatfracture Trump's base in advance
of the 2026, midterms, where weflip congressional and state
power away from the Republicans.
End quote, I really want to talkabout that too. So, so, so sort
of weaving into the you know,yeah,
okay, all of that. Well, I'mgoing to respond really
(27:57):
specific, specifically, becauseI want your audience to maybe
hear something that's reallygrounded, right? Cool. Um, last
week, and it's, it's hard totalk about these things and not
sound like you're a conspiracytheorist, but these are the
things that are actuallyhappening right in real time.
(28:18):
This is true, yeah, reality. Soyou know, just to update
everybody, um, Elon Musk, who isthe wealthiest person on the
planet, um, through like,hundreds of millions, maybe 300
million, maybe more of his ownmoney into the election in order
(28:39):
to swing the the electiontowards Donald Trump.
He then,without breaking a sweat,
immediately beelined afterinauguration, into attempting to
with him, and like a handful ofyou know some teenagers and
(29:00):
other folks that I assume arevery loyal to him, to
dismantling agencies that aredoing business and and
regulating his variousbusinesses. Now I'm a fan of
oxen razor, which believes thatit's basically a belief that,
you know, the most obvious thingis the thing that's happening.
(29:22):
You could either believe thatElon Musk is had just decided
that his main thrust in life isno longer to be an entrepreneur,
is to be a crusader forefficient government, and
everything he's doing is basedon his legitimate and altruistic
desire to make government betterand more effective for you and
(29:49):
me, or it could be that he seesan amazing advantage to. Power
himself to free him and hiscompanies and various
corporations from from anyscrutiny and to basically
corporately capture the largestby far, infrastructure for all
(30:16):
types of cruelty or compassionso that he could apply
whatever's in his in his head onall of us. It looks like that's
what he's doing, but maybe he'sdoing that other thing. But
again, ox comes razor. I'm gonnaassume he's doing the thing that
(30:36):
it looks like he's doing, right?
That's what's happening. Thereason why I say that is there's
things we could do about it.
Yeah, number one, there arepeople who are using the
judiciary, and they are filinglawsuits, and many of those
lawsuits are winning, right? Butagain, that's just one piece. I
just wanna remind, remind peoplethat there are hard working
(30:58):
people, who see what we see, whoare fighting the good fight
legally. There's things that youcould do. We organized people to
actually physically go to theTreasury. There was 3500 people
who just in less than a day, hitthe streets. And it was really
inspiring to see that manypeople actually confront him at
(31:19):
his own game. They did that atthe Department of Labor. Those
activities actually prevented, Ithink, of the Department of
Labor, them actually being ableto physically get in. Yes,
right? Yes. And we had 1000s ofpeople begin to call their
representatives, yeah. Andpeople's phones. You know, your
(31:40):
representatives phones both, uh,Congress, both house
representatives, as well asfolks in the Senate. They're
ringing off the hook. We know,yeah, and it's mattering. So we
saw the Democrats. They werelike, well, what are they doing?
And then we've seen them kind ofsteal their spine. Why are they?
Why are they stealing theirspine? Because of you, right?
(32:02):
Because of people like you thatpicked up their phone in mass,
yeah. And so the one thing youcould do is pick up your phone
and communicate directly to yourrepresentatives, right? It's,
it'll take a few minutes. Youcould do it coming to and from
work, coming to or from daycareright before you go to bed. That
(32:22):
is, it's hard to process if youdon't know what's happening on
the other side, how powerfulthat is, but it is truly
powerful, right? So that's onething you could do. The other
thing you could do if youhaven't, is join an
organization. So I inviteeverybody to join the Working
(32:43):
Families Party and and, yeah,check us out. Learn about us. If
you decide that based on who weare and our perspective, the WFP
doesn't work for you, that'sfine. Find another organization.
This is a time, I think, fororganizing. And if in your
search for organizations, youcan't find an organization that
(33:04):
aligns with your values oraligns with your identity or
your perspective, then, myfriend, it's your job to build
an organization that does Yeah,right. And so again, there's
concrete things that you coulddo right now, and we actually
have tools. We make it easy forpeople to call their
representatives, which is why Isay, Join the WFP. Make it very,
(33:24):
very easy. And that's one of thefirst things that you could do
that could really matter. Butonce you do that, that action,
do it with other people. Andit's why I say do it with other
people. It's because, like,again, nothing's guaranteed. I
don't have a crystal ball.
Change is not linear. There'sthere's all types of twists and
(33:48):
turns. I've been organizing fordecades, so I've experienced
losses and wins. Yeah, we're notguaranteed victory, but when we
do these things together, to me,that's the point, because,
because I choose to be incommunity with others, in
political community with others.
After a win, that also means Iget to choose who I celebrate
with, and after a loss, thatmeans I get to choose who I
(34:11):
comfort and who comforts me andto me, that's the point. Yeah,
thatis the point. It really is. I
sometimes talk about the factthat you know, if you like, like
calling your reps, if you arekind of looking for a super
entry level, tangible, hyperspecific thing to do, if you
(34:33):
don't know all your neighbors,get to know your neighbors. Go,
you know, to be best friendswith them. Just, you know, get
their numbers, you know, buildthose lateral resiliency
networks. I think we're really,absolutely in super, super
deficit of just evenunderstanding the importance of
doing that, which is, yeah,which? Well,
(34:54):
that's why, that's, to me, oneof the underlying reasons why we
got here. Yes, we didn't. I. ButNovember didn't happen like, no
the outcome in November, likethe the election swinging to
Trump didn't happen in November.
What we're looking at is a closeto the outcome of a close to
five decade single sided waragainst working people, both
(35:16):
here and all over the world, andpart of that war is convincing
us of the lie that there is nosociety, that there is no reason
to build community, that thereis no reason to build solidarity
with one another, and it'sbecome such a fundamental plank
of the mainstream culture, it'sin the air that we breathe, and
(35:42):
we shouldn't be surprised that.
You know, the Surgeon Generalsaid that we have an epidemic of
loneliness, that people feel soisolated, we shouldn't be
surprised. And to me, thesolution to that is organizing,
you know, is being curious aboutwhat your neighbors up to, and
(36:04):
seeking to build those kinshiprelationships across difference
and insist on doing thingstogether, and which is why I say
even, even joining on. You know,I'm a I'm really into politics,
but joining any type oforganization is better than
(36:25):
trying to just thug this thingout on your own, you know, find
a adult intramural sports team.
Find it just do somethingtogether. Yeah,
do something together, exactly.
We also have released, you know,a zine and several materials. I
remember us doing a webinar weshould do again, on a solidarity
pod. Sort of what you're talkingabout is find a group of folks.
(36:46):
Maybe it's, you know, twopeople, maybe it's nine people,
but not many more, necessarily,who you can every week. Schedule
a time, protect that time.
There's so many ways to do that,and you take action together.
Maybe you call your repstogether. Maybe somebody reads a
poem. Maybe you dance, whateverit is like incorporating some
(37:09):
somatic and creative aspects toit so that it really is
sustainable. Yeah,we have something at WFP called
wolf packs, which is, you know,similar to this idea where we
promote folks rolling together.
And we help people start wolfpacks, you know, so that people
could text bank together andphone bank together and door
(37:30):
knock together and, you know,just kind of be together in
their political advocacy.
Yeah, I was gonna, yeah. I thinkthat that, idea of the next two
to four years, I think thinkingabout finding folks, if you
(37:50):
don't already, and expanding whoyou can can weather with, and
who can be your symbioticmycelial network and uplift each
other and share space with I'mthinking about the next two to
four years, and I'm just like,what exactly are you can we get
a little more granular into,like, the plan side of things,
(38:12):
like, you're talking about themidterms? Oh, yeah. Like, can we
get Yeah, I think it would begood to just touch on that a
little bit. Solet me, let me talk a little bit
about that. Yeah. So theRepublicans won a trifecta. What
that means is they won thepresidency, they won a majority
in the House and they won amajority in the Senate. It's
(38:35):
like the worst case scenario forin terms of their ability to
move the federal government,because they have the executive
as well as the legislativebranch. And you know, they
actually have a majority in theSupreme Court, but that when you
look a little bit deeper intotheir trifecta, they have a
(38:56):
very, very slim majority in theHouse of Representatives. Why is
that important? For two reasons,it's going to be really hard for
them to govern. So this is, youknow, when I say, Look, they're
not magicians. You know, Trumpisn't a king. They their plans
aren't assailable. It'sinassailable. It's important to
(39:18):
look at their their weak points.
They have different factions inthe House of Representatives.
They all, they all don't getalong right. And so it's
actually historically, they'vebeen really hard for this
virgin, this kind of Magaversion of the Republican Party,
to govern together, because whenit comes to the basic ideas of
(39:40):
what they should be passing intolaw, they really diverge. They
can't lose any votes. They can'tlose any votes Now, not all of
them, not all of theRepublicans, won in very, very
red, super, super like Magadistricts, some of them. Won
(40:00):
really close elections, which iswhy, you know, elections matter,
right? Some of them won reallyclose elections. And those
representatives what's moreimportant to them if they want
to keep their job, what's moreimportant than whatever Donald
Trump is telling them is theirability to stay in office, which
means in two years, they have tofigure out how they could make
(40:24):
an argument to the people oftheir district that they should
get a majority of the votesright. That means they need to
make an argument with peopleother than Republicans, right,
which means it's going to behard for every single one of
those members to go along withthe really, really, really far
(40:44):
right? Really, really loonystuff, yeah? And that is a
vulnerability, right? Becausemany of them are going to Yeah,
and starting now, it's our joball over the country, but
especially in those, thoseplaces where those Republicans
are vulnerable to tell a story,a true story about how extreme,
(41:08):
how extreme this version of theRepublican Party is, and why
their representative is a partyto that. And the representative
is going to try to tell a storyabout how they're moderate, how
they are a common sense, youknow, solid, moderate, you know
we, you know we have thatproblem in you know, we're
filming in New York. There werea number of members last last
(41:31):
election in New York that werearguing that we did a pretty
good job of getting them out ofoffice, because we told the
truth about who they are, notall of them, but most of them.
So our job over the next twoyears is to get that done so
that we will be in a position,hopefully in 2026 where the
(41:52):
Republicans no longer have thelegislature and the executive
branch, where their majority inthe House will cease, which
means they can't pass really badbills. That's really important,
and it's just one step, but it'san important step, and it's
something that we could actuallydo the and the thing that that
we should know is thathistorically, the the party in
(42:13):
power during midterms, which isthe the election in between
presidential elections, thatparty in power has a hard time
keeping all of its seats, and soif the Republicans only have a
three seat majority, yeah, youknow, we that the you know, it
actually looks like all right,if we tell a compelling story,
yeah, that is true about howit's us versus the billionaires,
(42:37):
right? And how we need to cometogether, all of us versus the
billionaires and get these thesefolks out of office, we could
imagine, in two years, beingable to knock them out of their
legislative majority so theycan't do harm through Congress.
That is a concrete thing wecould do. But I want to zoom out
a little bit so, because to me,when we talk about the plan, the
(43:01):
thing that I shared isn't like100% rocket science, and the map
of those districts that aremarginal, give or take one or
two is the same. Whoever youare, whatever the strategist is,
what I want to focus on is, ifyou'll indulge, indulge me a
(43:23):
little bit. Yeah. I was knockingon doors in North Philly, and I
encountered a woman, she waslike, in her 20s, black woman in
this like working class to toworking poor black community.
And she spent a good amount oftime with me on her block, and I
(43:47):
really appreciate her, you know,giving as much time as she did.
And we were talking about, youknow, her vote choice, and I was
trying to convince her, like,Yeah, listen, this is a big
election. And, and, you know,she said something that really
stuck with me. She said somesomething like on her block,
(44:13):
on that block alone, more thanone, multiple people were no
longer there because of gunviolence. And it's at the point
where for her and other peoplein her community, like they
don't even cry anymore when theylearn of news of another
neighbor losing their lives. Andshe was just like, I can't tell
(44:36):
you if, maybe I'll vote if I gettime, but I can't tell you that
my vote's gonna matter, or anyof this stuff matters, or, you
know, like, I'll probably votefor that lady if I do it. But
like, I don't know if hergetting that job is gonna matter
or not. When it comes to what meand my my neighbors are dealing
(44:58):
with, I. Yes, and so what Iheard there, it, it haunts me,
yeah, because, you know modernelectioneering, and like, you
know how, how much, how muchturf you cut in one district
versus another, and you know howmany canvassers go here,
(45:21):
whatever, there's slightdifferences based on the
strategies you might talk to or,you know, how much you spend on
digital ads versus fieldyou know, when I say, feel like
door knocking and stuff likethat, but
the real question in terms ofour plan and our duty has to run
(45:44):
right through the provocationsthat she was sharing with me,
yeah? Which is, to me, somethingmuch deeper, something
spiritual, even, yeah, right,which I think we've lost when we
look at the party experiencewhen we look at the Republican
the Democratic Party, this thinexperience that almost amounts
(46:07):
to two different marketingschemes, right? When you think
of the billions of dollars thatwere raised and spent this past
cycle, mainly on digital ads andtelevision ads, and you know,
paid, when I say paid fields,like paid people that you don't
(46:28):
know personally knocking on yourdoor, you know, a few weeks
before Election Day,all those things have its place,
butthey amount to something that
actually feels spirituallyhollow and doesn't in any
satisfying way, deal with theexistential questions that
(46:49):
people like her and herneighbors all throughout the
country are dealing with. And sowhen I talk about the plan, I'm
talking about a lot of things.
So the proximal stuff that weneed to do between now and, you
know, two years from now, inorder to to kick Republicans out
(47:12):
of the House of Representatives.
But I'm also talking about overthe next decade plus, how we
insist on putting people likeher at the center of everything
that we do, and and reclaiming apolitics that is anything but
hollow, that is vibrant andconnected and and real and
(47:35):
present in her lives and in thelives of others like her.
Can you share more about how youand WFP are working to sort of
do that on a daily basis, andhow people can help when they
(48:00):
want to because I know folks, Iwant to get involved with WFP,
and I want to hear more abouthow we can get absolutely
so we do. We really believe inyear round engagement. When I
talk about the thin experiencethat many people have of
political parties, most peopledon't hear from political
(48:23):
parties until a few monthsbefore the election, or maybe a
few weeks before the election,like if you're if you're in the
Get out the vote category, whichtends to be where most black
voters are, as it relates toDemocrats, then you're not
hearing from you're not hearingfrom them. You're not getting
mail from them. They're notknocking on your door. Knocking
on your door until after LaborDay. Yeah, right, which is why
(48:47):
so many black people are like,we feel like, All right, we get
the Republicans absolutely arewhite nationalists. You know how
to tell us? Like, we know betterthan you, right? We know how to
discern who's a racist or not.
That is a racist institution,but the Democrats, you are
taking us for granted becausewe're not hearing from you,
right? So we don't believe in toascribe to the that that type of
(49:13):
politics or you get the everyfour years we'd come around
during election season, right?
Type of thing, right, which wealso think is very
destabilizing, right? Totally.
We seek to build a year aroundpolitics, and we seek to build
(49:34):
politics that look at democracy,and we we try to get people to
go out and vote, but look atdemocracy as much more than
voting. Yeah, right, and sowe're in New York. Just the
other day, we held a mass rallyin defense of loud and proud, in
defense of our immigrantneighbors, because the mayor.
(49:56):
Mayor of New York is acquiescingto the Trump administration
saying, like, yeah, you want togo to you. You want to send your
your agents into schools, andit's go right ahead. Now again,
I don't know as a fact, but Ihave to imagine that it might
(50:16):
have something to do with thefact that our sitting mayor has
some legal problems, yeah, andthat Trump could choose to do
something about or not, right?
But again, I allegedly thatmight be what's going on here.
Yeah. So, so we organized ourmembers and our elected
(50:43):
officials and city council andstate legislature in order to
take on the mayor, and we held arally and and and in the days
before and after, we're on thephones, yeah, right, and in
places like Philly, for example,we have a coalition that is or
(51:08):
that organized in many wayssuccessfully in order to
challenge a really problematicChinatown redevelopment.
Because, you know, cities arehave this abusive relationship
with their sports teams, and,you know, the billionaires that
are attached to them, and theywere seeking to, you know,
(51:29):
gentrify a historic community ina way that was just basically a
handout to these billionaires.
And we pushed back against that,and we saw it for what it was,
yeah, and that was not simply usvoting. That was after the votes
Kendra Brooks and Nicholas ofworker our city council working
with a coalition of labor unionsand grassroots organizations and
(51:52):
activists, day in and day out,making it plain and it looks
like I just came back from inCalifornia. I came back from the
Bay Area, where we have 100elected officials who are WFP
endorsed elected officials onthe local level, all the way to
(52:13):
the legislature, where they weremeeting together and they were
thinking about the governingagenda. So it means a lot of
different things, and it also isus. You know, after the
election, it was me again inPhilly with a bunch of just it
was a sacred space of blackwomen who wanted to come
(52:39):
together as the 92% whounderstood, understood the
assignment where they wanted tobreak bread together, and they
wanted to build together, andthey wanted to bear witness to
the journey that they're ontogether. And you know, I was
the only male body person thatthat they allowed in that space.
But that's also political work.
(53:03):
That is the work of a politicalparty, right? It's a lot of
things, right? It is in manyways, yes, voting, you know,
going to city council passingbills like the moratorium on
evictions that we passed inPhilly with Kendra Brooks and
and eventually NicholasO'Rourke, who also passed this
(53:27):
legislation preventingalgorithms for from artificially
upping people's rents or or chiASE in in New York City Council
passing legislation you know, ifyou're a renter in New York, you
know, preventing them fromadding these, like, totally
(53:48):
onerous fees. So that's notgoing to have, yeah, the broker
fee, even though, if you don'tgo through a broker, he's still
paying the broker fee. So, youknow, it's that, and it's
and it's creating those sacredspaces where we're just being
together. And that is the workof a political party too. So we
try to do all those things. Wetry to govern together, vote and
(54:13):
campaign together, buildcommunity together, organize
together, and weave all thosethings together as like a
coherent party experience.
I think that there's a lot thatyou have said that is gonna
stick with me for a really longtime, definitely the spiritually
(54:34):
hollow nature of the present andfar right wing politics and in
many cases, democratic as wellas you're talking about. And so
this is really beautiful tohear. The
good news is, though that youknow, in in nature and science,
but also in politics, vacuumsmust get filled. Yes, so what
(54:57):
are we going to fill that thathollow space with? Yeah. It's
exciting. That's a creativeproject. Yes, so I'm looking
forward to that. Yes,yes, exactly. It is a creative
project. I also have beenthinking about all the ways that
when you say the story, andframing it in that way is very
powerful to talk about the factthat we are telling a story, and
(55:17):
we have to tell a specific typeof story, a specific type of
way, and owning the story, andhow many people are so not only
needed, but totally essentialfor that story to evolve and
shift and change, and all of thecreativity that we might not be
thinking like, Oh, if I'msomebody who's creatively
inclined, or I'm a creativeprofessional, or I just think in
(55:39):
ways that, you know, tap into acreative energy which is
everywhere and doesn't, doesn'tmean arts necessarily at all,
yeah, but just tapping into thatin in the shifting of the story,
is something that I think abouta lot, which is really powerful.
I also want to talk if, if wemay, I want to pivot a little
(56:00):
bit to yourstory. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Like,
like, I'm just like, how did youget here?
That's sort of my question. And,you know, I have questions here
that I could ask that go throughthese points in your life,
right? Hurricane Sandy, how ithas impacted you beginning to
(56:21):
organize as a teenager growingup, you know, to working class
Caribbean parents in New York,and then your involvement for
with movement for black lives,and all these things that you've
done. But I, I kind of just wantto give you the opportunity to
answer the question, yeah.
I guess today I'll answer inthis, yeah, yeah. Today, because
I feel like every time I answerit, I have a different
(56:43):
understanding of it, right? Youknow? Yeah, it's kind of like
free therapy in some way.
Tell me today, okay, how youfeeling
so, you know, let me justpreface it by a theme that I
brought up earlier, how Ibelieve that despair and
isolation are projects of theright wing and projects of the
(57:07):
owner class. And if you notice,all of their arguments seek to
remove everything from itscontext, right? So like give you
any example, if we're talkingabout a police shooting, right,
they just, they don't want totalk about, no, the context,
(57:31):
right at all. They don't want totalk. They just want to. They
want to talk about that oneindividual and that one pilot,
yes, yes. So it's like they dowith everything, yeah, right. If
you want to talk about a, let'stalk about a extreme weather
event, right? They don't want totalk about the context, no,
(57:53):
right? They just want to talkabout that one event, right?
Because if you talk about thecontext, then you have to talk
about climate change, and youhave to talk about capital and
talk about extractiveindustries, and you have to talk
about our power, and, you know,so and they
get it so fast. They own thatstory so fast. Yes, right. How
do they do that? Yeah, soquickly. I mean, they're,
(58:13):
they're so calculated. Well,they they understand the
assignment. Yeah, theyunderstand that it's gonna land
with folks if it's that hyperspecific thing, yes. And how are
we gonna ground that? And whenwe talk about the story and talk
about climate change and talkabout the fires and everything
that has contributed, how do weget people in that specific way?
This is a question that I'masking myself a lot. But can you
(58:34):
continue? Yeah,so I don't think about myself as
an individual, right? I have acontext, yeah, you know. And
there's a way that people talkabout history as being like the
individual heroic actions,usually of a man, and like the
things that they do, right it?
But the way that I think abouthistory is that every individual
(58:59):
historical figure is actually inthe context of a particular
time, place and condition, andin the context of a community,
and in the context of a wholeset of relationships like MLK
isn't really just MLK and okay,is in the context of all these
other things, right? And itactually when we start talking
(59:19):
about ourselves like that. Yeah,it is like a very like,
intensely ego gratifying, decontextualizing of yourself,
right? Like, there's all theseself made people. It's like,
well, yourself didn't make thatroad you walked on right
yourself didn't invent thelanguage that you speak right
yourself didn't invent theculture that you found yourself
(59:41):
in, right?
You did not fall out of acoconut tree. You didn't fall
out of a coconut tree.
You did it Yeah, like, straightup, yes. And so Eddie, I say all
that to say, you know, my, um,my dad was born in 1939 in rural
Grenada. His his mom, mygrandmother. I. I basically grew
(01:00:02):
up along she was a young personwhen she had him, and grew up
alongside of him. My mom wasborn in the 40s, in the mid 40s
in in rural Trinidad andGrenada. She had like, I think
10. Yeah, 1010, brothers andsisters and my grandmother, my
(01:00:28):
mom's mom, she would hustle andmove the family from one hustle
to another. There was a pointwhere all the kids were
recycling, all the kids were andthe hustle that she she did that
that led to me was leavingTrinidad and Tobago, Tobago to
(01:00:50):
come to the United States andfind work as a domestic worker
in the homes of other people,leaving her her kids and taking
care of the family and kids ofother people, sending remittance
home, which is a common storyfor a lot of a lot of migrants,
a lot of immigrants, and was mygrandmother's story. And she she
(01:01:10):
lived Monday through Friday inpeople's homes, and on the
weekend she didn't have a home.
And it was through thegenerosity of somebody in the
community who noticed that shewas, you know, kind of hanging
out by herself in this park, andasked her some questions. This
woman who's still alive,somebody who, you know, I
actually bumped into a few weeksago, who was curious enough to
(01:01:34):
ask my didn't just treat mygrandmother like she was just
part of the scenery, anddiscovered quickly that my
grandmother really didn't have aplace to stay on the weekends
and and invited her in. It'sthrough her generosity and
through that community that ledto my grandmother getting her
feet under her and hustling andeventually finding an apartment,
(01:01:58):
eventually getting one of myaunts over to this country. So
now they're in the apartment,and then eventually my
grandfather, so three of them inthe apartment, and they're
hustling together to kind ofcobble together everything that
they have and sending remittancehome to the other kids who are
like, you know, the older kidsare parenting the younger kids,
where she was able to buy ahome, and then that led to a set
(01:02:23):
of a whole like chain reactionthat led to my parents
eventually coming to thiscountry, and me being born. And
in the context of now all theseaunties and uncles and all these
cousins who all lived in thisone place, one home, and
(01:02:45):
eventually were able to branchout. And so, you know, I was
born 1979 which is like thebeginning of the new neoliberal
era, right? And I was born inthe context of this community
that really cared for me andloved me. I sat many times at my
grandmother's feet as she mademeatballs and told me stories,
(01:03:07):
and she would look, you know,math gets updated every
generation, so she's like, howwhat is this? You know, she
tried to help me with myhomework and what I learned at
her table and what I learnedthrough my my parents, is that
we are, are a bigger we like weare a bigger we. There is no
(01:03:27):
just me floating around, thatwe're actually all
interconnected. I learned thatthat was applied on me, and so
that is the basis of mypolitics. That's why I've taken
to organizing in the way that Ithink I take to organizing. My
first organizing lessons weren'tlearned in the in some
(01:03:47):
disconnected way. Was kind oflearned through just witnessing
like I saw. My parents bringpeople in, my grandmother bring
people in, and these are humble,working class people, and
whatever they have, they share.
Yeah, right, and so I understandthe power of sharing. You don't
(01:04:09):
share when you have excess, yousimply share. You just simply
share with whatever you have.
And there's something reallypowerful about that interaction.
And so that my understanding offamily is not just the people
you're related to, but thepeople that you choose. And so
my organizing practice followsthat. And then, of course, like
(01:04:33):
my parents, they were in unions,that was really important. So I
saw the power of being part ofunion, you know, 1199 had a
strike when I was younger. Mydad is from Grenada, which, you
know, Grenada has a reallypowerful story of 1979 again,
the year of my birth, the newjewel movement, these
(01:04:54):
revolutionaries were able tospring Grenada. Into this sort
of Renaissance, you know, untilit was tragically cut down. And,
you know, the United Statesinvaded Grenada. So all these
things influenced me. I remembermy dad, you know, after the the
move bombing in Philadelphia,saying, always remember the
(01:05:16):
move. Always remember that. Andthe stories that they told about
their upbringing, but alsobecause they're coming from
countries that are newlyindependent countries, so
they're sharing all thesestories about the African world
in general. So I feel veryconnected to black people all
over and feel very concernedabout the freedom and liberation
(01:05:39):
of black people in the UnitedStates, but just black people
everywhere. And I feel like insome ways, connected to those
stories. So I felt a deepconnection to the South African
liberation movement and the antiapartheid movement. And as a
young person, you know the sameway, for whatever reason, in the
(01:05:59):
same way that some young peopleare, like, I want to be a
fireman, or I want to be afirefighter, or I want to
whatever. I wanted to be afreedom fighter, and I didn't
know that you could, like, havea job or whatever, but that's
kind of what I wanted to do.
And, you know, throughexperiences growing up like
facing institutional racism andknowing it the minute I felt it
(01:06:23):
like feeling the shame of myfirst grade teacher separate me
and you know, because I grew upin a multiracial working class
suburb of New York, Long Beach,I remember like yesterday, you
know, being tracked to remedialmath and remedial reading and
the shame and that goes alongwith being tracked, but then
(01:06:47):
using that, that individualstudy, in order to excel. Like
it was a great environment forme and but I understood just
somewhere deep inside that someinjustice was taking place
because, like, I wasn't testedinto that. It was just kind of
like, and then, you know, whenI'm in remedial I was like,
everybody else is basicallyblack or Latino and and then
(01:07:09):
there's the gifted classes. Butif you go to the gifted classes,
just nothing but white kids,right?
And facing that,facing, you know, growing up in
the 80s. This is like the crackera, right? And getting
constantly pulled over by thepolice, eventually facing, you
know, false or false arrest. Youknow, was, you know, by the time
(01:07:31):
I was 20, I was, I can't tellyou, many times I've been pulled
over by the police, falselyarrested, falsely jailed. It
builds an appetite to want to dosomething about it. And so I
think, you know, again, I am mymother and father son. I am my
grandmother's grandchild. I amvery much a part of that very
(01:07:56):
close family network. And I am adirect or indirect recipient of
the downside of neoliberalismand the downside of these
abstract policies that actuallyvisit violence and trauma and
pain on real people and realcommunities and real families.
(01:08:17):
You know my mother, she workedin Far Rockaway on the front
lines of the drug war becauseshe was a detox nurse. So I
would hear those stories everysingle day. So I am a product of
all those things, and I can'tthink of a better reason to get
(01:08:39):
up every day, but to createconditions where people like my
mom and my dad and mygrandmother or the students of
today won't have to experiencethe same feelings that I had to
work through going through thosechanges. So, yeah, I feel, I
(01:09:01):
feel this intimate sort of senseof palpable anger around
educational apartheid. So whenyou ask me that question, I
don't think I had a choice but,but to do these things, and I
(01:09:22):
don't feel like I have a choice,and I don't think the choice is
just simply mine. I don'treally, yeah, I am an
individual, and, you know, myindividual likes and dislikes
and passions and whatever I deemare my skills matter, but also
who my people are, I think, andhow they've raised me and their
(01:09:49):
values and their story, I think,ultimately, is why I'm talking
to you.
Thank you, MO. Thank you somuch. Thank you.
(01:10:14):
Okay. Thank you so much forlistening, everybody. I hope
that you enjoyed that episode asmuch as I did, and I will say
also, please share theseepisodes with your friends, with
your family, with yourcoworkers. Review them on Apple
and Spotify. If you've benefitedor enjoyed or learned something
(01:10:35):
from this episode, from otherepisodes, you mean a lot to us.
If you did all that and alwaysfeel free to check out our
website and we'll see you nexttime. Thanks, everybody.
(01:10:56):
You.
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