#134, OTOH, Kwami Abdul-Bey, community activist, Part 1, July 9 2025

April and guest co-host John have a conversation with community activist Kwami Abdul-Bey, who has been a friend of Braver Angels in Arkansas for some time, co-founded or led local organizations, and serves as the Elections Coordinator & Organizer for the Arkansas Public Policy Panel. In this first part of our interview with Kwami, we explore his current involvement with several organizations locally. He provides his perspective on direct democracy and his concerns about recent laws that he believes raise barriers to Arkansas’s citizen initiatives process. A key response to him includes the importance of developing greater civic education. Kwami shares his worries about current challenges with democracy, which he sees as not now working as he was taught, something that especially troubles him as he seeks to answer questions his kids are raising about what is going on now, based on what they hear. Among his attempts to enhance community response to those challenges, he has helped create the Washitaw Foothills Youth Media Arts & Literacy Collective. Other aspects of our discussion include his views of dealing with both the “grass tops” and the “grass roots” in his community advocacy. Kwami also talks about his recent experience of running for public office as a Democrat, despite his history of being an independent. Despite much negative reaction to his association with the Democratic party, he tells us a story of one voter who sought him out and apologized to him recently for having been disrespectful to him because he ran as Democrat, after the winner the man voted for proved to not be who he thought. Kwami urges citizen involvement, stating “let’s stop being spectators, because democracy is not a spectator sport.”