Podcast appearances and mentions of Maurice Mitchell

In towns and cities across the country, from blue cities to red states, from Idaho to Georgia and pretty much everywhere else, folks gathered to show their opposition to the Trump Administration. They were standing up against immigration raids with masked federal agents, to devastating cuts to Medicaid, to the President of the United States, quote-unquote “honoring” the United States Army with a birthday parade. If you marched this weekend with hundreds (or even thousands) of your neighbors, what can you do to keep that energy going? We asked Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party.And in headlines: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a preemptive strike against Iran, Minnesota lawmakers were shot and killed in a suspected political assassination, and the Trump administration proposes an expansion of the travel ban. Show Notes:Check out the Working Families Party – https://workingfamilies.org/Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday 

 We have Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party on to discuss fighting Trump. Then we break down the House budget bill. We also take your calls! 844-899-TVLR ✦ ABOUT ✦The Valley Labor Report is the only union talk radio show in Alabama, elevating struggles for justice and fairness on the job, educating folks about how they can do the same, and bringing relevant news to workers in Alabama and beyond.Our single largest source of revenue *is our listeners* so your support really matters and helps us stay on the air!Make a one time donation or become a monthly donor on our website or patreon:TVLR.FMPatreon.com/thevalleylaborreportVisit our official website for more info on the show, membership, our sponsors, merch, and more: https://www.tvlr.fmFollow TVLR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheValleyLab...Follow TVLR on Twitter: @LaborReportersFollow Jacob on Twitter: @JacobM_ALFollow TVLR Co-Creator David Story on Twitter: @RadiclUnionist✦ CONTACT US ✦Our phone number is 844-899-TVLR (8857), call or text us live on air, or leave us a voicemail and we might play it during the show!✦ OUR ADVERTISERS KEEP US ON THE AIR! ✦Support them if you can.The attorneys at MAPLES, TUCKER, AND JACOB fight for working people. Let them represent you in your workplace injury claim. Mtandj.com; (855) 617-9333The MACHINISTS UNION represents workers in several industries including healthcare, the defense industry, woodworking, and more. iamaw44.org (256) 286-3704 / organize@iamaw44.orgDo you need good union laborers on your construction site, or do you want a union construction job? Reach out to the IRONWORKERS LOCAL 477. Ironworkers477.org  256-383-3334 (Jeb Miles) / local477@bellsouth.netThe NORTH ALABAMA DSA is looking for folks to work for a better North Alabama, fighting for liberty and justice for all. Contact / Join: DSANorthAlabama@gmail.comIBEW LOCAL 136 is a group of over 900 electricians and electrical workers providing our area with the finest workforce in the construction industry. You belong here. ibew136.org Contact: (205) 833-0909IFPTE - We are engineers, scientists, nonprofit employees, technicians, lawyers, and many other professions who have joined together to have a greater voice in our careers. With over 80,000 members spread across the U.S. and Canada, we invite you and your colleagues to consider the benefits of engaging in collective bargaining. IFPTE.org Contact: (202) 239-4880THE HUNTSVILLE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD is a union open to any and all working people. Call or email them today to begin organizing your workplace - wherever it is. On the Web: https://hsviww.org/ Contact: (256) 651-6707 / organize@hsviww.orgENERGY ALABAMA is accelerating Alabama's transition to sustainable energy. We are a nonprofit membership-based organization that has advocated for clean energy in Alabama since 2014. Our work is based on three pillars: education, advocacy, and technical assistance. Energy Alabama on the Web: https://alcse.org/ Contact: (256) 812-1431 / dtait@energyalabama.orgThe Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union represents in a wide range of industries, including but not limited to retail, grocery stores, poultry processing, dairy processing, cereal processing, soda bottlers, bakeries, health care, hotels, manufacturing, public sector workers like crossing guards, sanitation, and highway workers, warehouses, building services,  and distribution. Learn more at RWDSU.infoThe American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union proudly representing 700,000 federal and D.C. government workers nationwide and overseas. Learn more at AFGE.orgAre you looking for a better future, a career that can have you set for life, and to be a part of something that's bigger than yourself?   Consider a skilled trades apprenticeship with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. Learn more at IUPAT.orgUnionly is a union-focused company created specifically to support organized labor. We believe that providing online payments should be simple, safe, and secure.  Visit https://unionly.io/ to learn more.Hometown Action envisions inclusive, revitalized, and sustainable communities built through multiracial working class organizing and leadership development at the local and state level to create opportunities for all people to thrive. Learn more at hometownaction.orgMembers of IBEW have some of the best wages and benefits in North Alabama. Find out more and join their team at ibew558.org ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit the.inkWe just got off a wide-ranging call with messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio (rejoining us after a long break to fix things in European politics and Run for Something president Amanda Litman, who has a new book out called When We're In Charge: The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership, which applies what she's learned in bringing up a younger wave of Democratic leaders to any organization.We talked about the tension within the Democratic Party between the centrists who feel that they've gotten it right all along and only need to tweak messaging to win elections and those who see the need for a real policy change, whether postmortems of the 2024 election have value, how housing is shaping politics and leadership along generational lines, the power of showing up and protesting from the Visibility Brigades hanging signs on freeway overpasses to the activists who showed up to protest Medicaid cuts at the Rayburn Building this week, and the challenges for younger leaders — in Democratic politics and in any private or public organzation — as they try to break with the models of the past and redefine what it is to lead, work, and build in the future. We hope you'll check out the full video above and pick up Amanda Litman's new book for more of her insights — even if you're not a millennial! If you appreciate these kinds of interviews, will you support independent media by becoming a supporting subscriber now?More Live conversations next week!Come back next week for a full slate of Live conversations! On Monday, May 19, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, when we will be talking with the great economist Paul Krugman. Then on Tuesday, May 20, at 12:00 p.m. Eastern, we will speak with Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut. Then for our Book Club meeting (open to supporting Ink subscribers) on Wednesday, May 21, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we'll be joined by Abundance authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. On Thursday, May 22, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we'll talk with author and finance expert Ramit Sethi, then at 4:00 p.m., we'll be speaking with the journalist Jim Acosta. And on Friday, May 23, also at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, we will talk to Working Families Party director Maurice Mitchell. We hope to see you all there!To join and watch, download the Substack app (click on the button below) and turn on notifications — you'll get an alert that we're live, and you can watch from your iOS or Android mobile device. And if you haven't already, subscribe to The Ink to access full videos of past conversations and to join the chat during our live events.If you appreciate the work that goes into The Ink and haven't already done so, we hope you'll become a supporting subscriber.That's how we keep the lights on, pay our writers and editors a fair wage, and build the new media we all deserve. When you subscribe, you help us reach more people.Join us today. Or give a gift or group subscription.

Social Security works Exec. Dir. Alex Lawson: Trump is in the process of cutting Social Security, Medicare, & Medicaid. Working Families Party Nat. Dir. Maurice Mitchell pushes grassroots activation.Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://politicsdoneright.com/newsletterPurchase our Books: As I See It: https://amzn.to/3XpvW5o How To Make AmericaUtopia: https://amzn.to/3VKVFnG It's Worth It: https://amzn.to/3VFByXP Lose Weight And BeFit Now: https://amzn.to/3xiQK3K Tribulations of anAfro-Latino Caribbean man: https://amzn.to/4c09rbE

In this episode, Antoinette goes to a modern art museum and doesn't like the art, while Shanti thinks human existence is the equivalent of surviving a plane crash. After listening to voicemails, we sit and talk with Maurice Mitchell, the National Director of the Working Families Party. Together, we discuss the need for a third political party that truly represents the interests of working people. Mitchell urges listeners to recognize the true enemy: the billionaire class and stresses the need for public courage and grassroots movements to counteract the rapid shift towards authoritarianism. We conclude with a focus on the power of collective action. Join Us...To stay updated with the Working Families Party Text WFP to 30403To learn more about WFP https://workingfamilies.orgFollow WFP instagram https://www.instagram.com/workingfamilies/?igsh=MWpjYnl3dnlyM2wwOA%3D%3D#Follow Maurice Mitchell on instagram https://www.instagram.com/mauricewfp/?hl=enContact Us:Hotline: (215) 948-2780Email: aroundthewaycurls@gmail.comPatreon: www.patreon.com/aroundthewaycurls for exclusive videos & bonus episodesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, we're discussing the Elon engine that's running Trump's America, we'll also talk about what straight men want according to the matchmakers that find them partners, and finally we'll ask: why don't people dress up to go out anymore? And joining us this week to discuss all of that and more is comedian, Katie Hannigan, as well as the National Director of the Working Families Party, Maurice Mitchell!——Thank you to this week's sponsors:Paired - Practice love every day with Paired, the #1 app for couples. Download the app at https://www.paired.com/FAKETHENATION——Rate Fake The Nation 5-stars on Apple Podcasts and leave us a review!Follow Negin Farsad on TwitterEmail Negin fakethenation@headgum.comSupport her Patreon ——Host - Negin Farsad——Producer - Andrew McGuire——Theme Music - Gaby AlterAdvertise on Fake The Nation via gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Guests: Harry Litman, Kristy Greenberg, Brad Lander, Paul Krugman, Maurice Mitchell, Michelle GoldbergShades of the Saturday Night Massacre at the Trump DOJ. Tonight: the Trump administration's brazen quid pro quo with the Mayor of New York—and the Trump appointee that stopped it. Then, the New York official blowing the whistle on DOGE for yoinking $80 million out of the state's bank account.  Want more of Chris? Download and subscribe to his podcast, “Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes podcast” wherever you get your podcasts.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Democratic Party lost in November after moving too far to the left on its social and economic stances. But these are hardly conventional times, so why not let an outsider have a say? Henry sits down with Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, to discuss the […]

On this bonus episode of Vibe Check, Sam speaks to Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party. They talk about why Maurice isn't deterred by the 2024 Presidential election, why the WFP believes in building power from the bottom up, the current economic climate, and much more. We want to hear from you! Email us at vibecheck@stitcher.com, and keep in touch with us on Instagram @vibecheck_pod.  You can now get direct access to the group chat! Find us on Patreon at patreon.com/vibecheck.    Vibe Check listeners can now get a free three month trial to the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/vibecheck. ------------------------------------------------------https://workingfamilies.org/You can find Working Families Party on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workingfamilies/ Merch: www.podswag.com/vibecheck

We discuss why now is the time for a third political party to really take center stage in American democracy.   Maurice's civic action toolkit recommendations are:  Organize! Join an organization. Create conditions where people can govern and decide the direction of their country and their democracy   Maurice Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party. He's 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.     Let's connect! Follow Future Hindsight on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/futurehindsightpod/   Discover new ways to #BetheSpark:  https://www.futurehindsight.com/spark    Follow Mila on X:  https://x.com/milaatmos    Follow Maurice on X:  https://x.com/MauriceWFP    Check out the Working Families Party: https://workingfamilies.org/    Sponsor:  Thank you to Shopify! Sign up for a $1/month trial at shopify.com/hopeful.   Early episodes for Patreon supporters: https://patreon.com/futurehindsight  Credits:  Host: Mila Atmos  Guests: Maurice Mitchell Executive Producer: Mila Atmos Producer: Zack Travis

In this special bonus episode of Momentum, we are sharing one of Facing Race: A National Conference standout plenaries: Navigating the Post-Election Landscape: Insights and Strategies for a Just Democracy.With the 2024 presidential election behind us, the question on everyone's mind was: what's next? This inspiring discussion featured leading voices in political organizing and movement building. Together, they explored opportunities for progress arising from the election results, strategies to tackle the challenges ahead, and ways to foster resilience, safety, and hope as we continue the movement to build a multiracial democracy over the next four years.This conversation was moderated by:Judith Brown Dianis, Executive Director of the Advancement ProjectAnd included the following panelists:Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families PartyKim Desmond, Chief Equity Officer at the International City/County Management Association (ICMA)Kim Anderson, Executive Director of the National Education Association (NEA)Tsione Wolde-Michael, Executive Director of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH)

The left lost hard this election, and it warrants a deep examination of what the ideals of the Democratic party even stands for. Are voters on the left represented by their party anymore, or is it time to consider alternative means to enacting progressive change? This week, Adam speaks with Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, about how activists on the left can build power and effect change. SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» SUBSCRIBE to Why Won't You Date Me: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWontYouDateMePodcast» SUBSCRIBE to The Lamorning After: https://www.youtube.com/@TheLamorningAfter» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Well, we survived the election; now we just have to… keep going. This week, host Sarah Jones pushes through the exhaustion with CNN commentator Ashley Allison and national director of the Working Families Party Maurice Mitchell to break down what really happened. And more importantly  what in the (literal?) hell is next, for all of us, but especially Black folks who understood the assignment while others barely showed up for class.  You can follow Sarah Jones, see pod updates, and respond to AWHY prompts @yesimsarahjones on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Send your responses to our weekly prompts to awhypod@gmail.com . This podcast was produced in collaboration with The Meteor.

In the fraught last week before the 2024 election, the guys search for some nuance with Maurice Mitchell, the National Director of the Working Families Party. A nationally-recognized social movement strategist, visionary leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and community organizer, Maurice breaks down the vision and approach of WFP's strategy to electoral organizing and helps us parse the value and limitations of elections as a component of transformative change. We also learn that he is the cousin of the legendary MF DOOM–just a lil fun fact for y'all! SHOW NOTES Learn more about the WFP - https://workingfamilies.org/ Find your polling place in Chicago - https://chicagoelections.gov/voting/your-voter-information Check out the Injustice Watch Judicial Guide - https://interactives.injusticewatch.org/judicial-election-guide/2024-general/en/ Follow AirGo - instagram.com/airgoradio Find One Million Experiments on tour! - www.respairmedia.com/events Bring us to your community by hitting us up - contact@respairmedia.com CREDITS Hosts & Exec. Producers - Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger Associate Producer - Rocío Santos Engagement Producer - Rivka Yeker Digital Media Producer - Troi Valles

Maurice Mitchell the National Director of the Working Families Party speaks on  the 2024 Election, the Working Families Birthday, and the dangers of Project 2025 with Ebro, Laura, and Rosenberg on HOT 97! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week's episode, Brittany sits down with Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, and Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, who wrote a speech we never got to hear at the DNC. Maurice talks strategy, Ruwa gets us inspired, and they answer that pressing question: What do you say to folks who still want to vote third party? Plus, Brittany brings you this week's UNtrending news.Follow Brittany on Instagram, Threads & Tik Tok @MsPackyettiFollow The Meteor on Instagram @themeteor and X @themeteor. Follow Wonder Media Network on Instagram @wmn.media, X @wmnmedia, and Facebook

Steve Phillips, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Maurice Mitchell, moderated by Lateefah Simon In 2024, the threat of authoritarianism is greater than ever before. Yet our nation also has the potential to become a genuine multiracial democracy. How can we help tip the scale? Steve Phillips is a national political leader, bestselling author, and columnist. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller Brown Is the New White. His latest book, How We Win the Civil War, charts the way forward for those who wish to build a multiracial democracy and rid our nation of white supremacy once and for all. . He will be in conversation with two veteran political organizers, Ash-Lee Henderson, Co-Executive Director of The Highlander Center, which serves as a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the South, with a background in fighting for workers, reproductive justice, LGBTQUIA+ folks, environmental justice, and more, and Maurice Mitchell, a visionary leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and National Director of the Working Families Party. Moderated by Lateefah Simon, this urgent conversation is the reframe that many of us have been hungering for, to move us from anxiety to action. These big-picture thinkers can help us leverage our ostensibly limited voting options into a visionary electoral strategy that can change the game.

Working Families Party Exec. Dir. Maurice Mitchell discusses how to win 2024. Panelist Alencia Johnson called out the MSM for bias against Harris. Kroger's massive profits are at our expense. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://politicsdoneright.com/newsletter Purchase our Books: As I See It: https://amzn.to/3XpvW5o How To Make America Utopia: https://amzn.to/3VKVFnG It's Worth It: https://amzn.to/3VFByXP Lose Weight And Be Fit Now: https://amzn.to/3xiQK3K Tribulations of an Afro-Latino Caribbean man: https://amzn.to/4c09rbE

The Executive Director of the Working Families Party, Maurice Mitchell, visited our set at Netroots Nation 2024 to discuss how to win the 2024 election, creating alliances where necessary.

Working Families Party Executive Director Maurice Mitchell discusses how to win 2024. Fox News former and current host slams Trump for his poor Presidential Debate performance. Republican says we're better off today than under Trump. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://politicsdoneright.com/newsletter Purchase our Books: As I See It: https://amzn.to/3XpvW5o How To Make America Utopia: https://amzn.to/3VKVFnG It's Worth It: https://amzn.to/3VFByXP Lose Weight And Be Fit Now: https://amzn.to/3xiQK3K Tribulations of an Afro-Latino Caribbean man: https://amzn.to/4c09rbE

In a world defined by voters fed up with the binary options of our two-party system, is there a third way that's not…delulu? In this episode, Sarah talks with Maurice Mitchell, the national director of The Working Families Party, about how to build a robust third party without ignoring the very real math problem third party candidates can pose in America's intensely polarized elections. Maurice gets into the community support it takes to reach long term political goals—without letting democracy do a swan dive off the top of the top of the Capitol Building. You can follow Sarah Jones, see pod updates, and respond to AWHY prompts @yesimsarahjones on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This podcast was produced in collaboration with The Meteor.

In this, our final episode of the Practical Radicals Podcast, we hear from over a dozen progressive leaders, including several former students, and reflect with them about what we've learned since the book Practical Radicals came out last November and what we make of the path ahead — as the U.S. and the world face a daunting and overlapping set of crises. We offer thoughts on the seven strategy models, looking at exciting developments in the field as well as areas that could improve. Base-building in community organizing faces major challenges. Sulma Arias has reoriented her organization, People's Action, to spark a “revival of community organizing,” a field whose crisis became more acute and widely acknowledged during the COVID pandemic. The labor movement, by contrast, is experiencing its most exciting resurgence in decades. Stephen Lerner — whose organization, Bargaining for the Common Good, brings together unions and community groups to work on joint strategies — sees tremendous promise in labor's upsurge, pointing especially to the prospect of organizing entire sectors and taking on “the giant corporations that are driving the whole economy.”  Thomas Walker of the Communications Workers of America explains why he thinks building on labor's momentum calls for unions to spend more of their assets on base-building and to support new ways of organizing.  Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party argues that movements need to get serious about governing power, which requires treating progressives elected to office as co-conspirators rather than targets. Lydia Avila describes her work with California Calls, which hopes to build a grassroots leadership development pipeline and combine the best principles of community organizing with electoral politics.  A key strategy in the years ahead will be disruption, which Lisa Fithian, author of Shut it Down, argues is a “transformational process” that can give people a greater sense of agency over their own lives and the world. Lissy Romanow, who used to run the training institute called Momentum, points to hopeful examples where momentum as a strategy is being combined with more long-term base-building work.  We then offer thoughts on the ways movements and organizations need to adapt to get sharper on strategy. Texas activist Asha Dane'el addresses the importance of developing a long-term vision and investing in leadership development that combines “rigor and compassion.” Alex Tom tells us how the Chinese Progressive Association hit upon a hugely successful new approach to fostering organizational alignment and preventing unnecessary internal conflict by writing a “culture operations document,” which is given to all new staff and explains the organization's vision and leadership philosophy as well as key terminology. Doran Schrantz describes the commitment to leadership and other factors that have allowed ISAIAH, a church-based organization, and labor and community partners in Minnesota to transform the state.  We conclude with some thoughts on our current historical conjuncture. Overdogs have never wanted a true democracy, and right now, they see an opening for autocracy. As Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy explains, by objective scholarly measures, “US democracy has been declining faster [in recent years] than almost any other country on the planet.” Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, argues that it's crucial to form not only a “united front,” which brings together different elements of the left, but also a “popular front,” which unites the left with the center and even pro-democracy elements of the right. As the recent victories in France, India, and Brazil illustrate, there is nothing inevitable about the slide to authoritarianism — if we can achieve the unity and will to fight it. Links:  Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice Alicia Garza, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart Lisa Fithian, Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance Transcript for Ep. 13 (coming soon)

JUNE 17th 7pm ET - MEMBER SUPPORTERS ARE INVITED TO A VIRTUAL EVENT WITH LAURA FLANDERS AND GUEST JOSH PAUL, FORMER STATE DEPT OFFICIAL.  Learn what we can do to end the genocide!If you're a member supporter you will have just received an exclusive invitation to a rare insider briefing on US - Israel arms sales from former state department official , Josh Paul. Paul, as you may remember quit the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs after a long career last year over accelerated US  arms sales to Israel in violation of us Human Rights law.  He continues to call for a change in United States Policy and an end to the bloodshed and on June 17th he'll be offering us an expert briefing on the concrete requests we can make of our elected officials. We all want to stop the stop the dying and killing and hostage taking., urgently.  Paul will help tell us how. You can find our award winning interview with Josh Paul from last year.  Listen to the podcast and/or watch the show at our YouTube channel.  And if you're not yet a member, but want to attend the briefing, it's not too late to make a donation at Lauraflanders.org, and we'll send you an invitation to register for the event.  That briefing's coming up June 17th — Don't miss it. Episode Description:  Are you planning to vote in the presidential election? It's quite possibly the most important election in our lifetimes — and yet some Americans may forgo voting this November. Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have serious problems. How do we square the contradictions when casting our vote, and how should we think about elections altogether? As National Director of the Working Families Party (WFP), Maurice “Moe” Mitchell is interacting with voters on the ground and supporting candidates who've come out for a ceasefire in Gaza. The WFP's bottom-up, third party approach is winning. What is he seeing and what is his advice in this critical election year? For starters, he says “supporting a candidate is a chess move. It's not a valentine”. He joins Laura Flanders and returning co-host Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister at Middle Church in New York City, to break it all down. All that, plus a commentary from Laura.“The Working Families Party is a political party that is building power for working class people of all races. We believe in a country for the many, not the few. We believe that in a democracy the people should govern, not corporations and the wealthy. And the way that we do it is we're building a bottom-up, third-party approach.” - Maurice “Moe” Mitchell“Some of us are not listening . . . [Trump] intends to join a fascist campaign . . . If we're thinking of the long game, we have to ask ourselves which of these candidates has the most propensity to help us build a movement for the 20 years that we need to, or for seven generations.” - Rev. Dr. Jacqui LewisGuests:•. Maurice Mitchell: National Director, Working Families Party•. Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis (Co-host): Senior Minister of Public Theology & Transformation, Middle Church, NYC Full Episode Notes are located HERE.  They include related episodes, articles, and more.Music In the Middle:  Joaquin's Sacred Dance remix of “Soul of the People” by Nicola Conte from the Umoja Remixed Album also commemorating Far Out Recordings 30th anniversary. And additional music included- "In and Out" and "Steppin" by Podington Bear Laura Flanders and Friends Crew: Laura Flanders, Sabrina Artel, David Neuman, Nat Needham, Rory O'Conner, Janet Hernandez, Sarah Miller, Jeannie Hopper, Nady Pina, and Jordan Flaherty FOLLOW Laura Flanders and FriendsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraflandersandfriends/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LFAndFriendsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/LauraFlandersAndFriends/Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lauraflandersandfriendsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFLRxVeYcB1H7DbuYZQG-lgLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lauraflandersandfriendsPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/lauraflandersandfriendsACCESSIBILITY - The broadcast edition of this episode is available with closed captioned by clicking here for our YouTube Channel

Sometimes social movements can spread like wildfire. From the sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement to the sea change in support for marriage equality, from the divestment campaign to end apartheid in South Africa to the climate justice movement winning the largest climate bill in history (2022's Inflation Reduction Act) — the strategy model known as Momentum has proven powerful time and time again. Although Momentum has helped movements succeed for centuries, the framework has gained increased attention in recent years as the internet has made it possible to organize action at a larger and larger scale.  In 2014, a new institute called Momentum began training movement leaders in this strategy. And in 2016, Mark and Paul Engler formalized the momentum approach in their valuable book This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the 21st Century.  In this episode, Deepak interviews May Boeve, Executive Director of the climate justice group 350.org. Founded in 2008, by Bill McKibben and a small group of college students, including May, 350.org is now active in 26 countries and works with a volunteer network of 500 organizations. May and organizers at 350.org used the model before the framework had been written down. They believe that the breakthrough social transformation promised by Momentum makes it an essential strategy to confront the existential threat posed by global warming.  May describes how 350.org's momentum-driven campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline in 2011 provided a crucial morale boost after the stinging legislative defeat of climate legislation in the Obama years — and marked, in the words of one observer, “the first time the environmental and climate movement [got] serious about power.” 350.org's subsequent divestment campaign against fossil fuels illustrated the power of “distributed action” and putting pressure on key institutions like foundations, banks, and local governments. It also provided an onramp for ordinary people to get involved and become leaders.  Early in her organizing career, May had been a proponent of “horizontalism,” the philosophy that movements should be leaderless, but she now rejects that notion and explains how momentum-driven movements can combine mass engagement with effective leadership. May and Deepak conclude by considering the promise and peril of online organizing, how to deal with pathologies in movement culture, and 350.org's shift from simply “saying no” to fossil fuels to also “saying yes” to climate change solutions. Links:May mentions Maurice Mitchell's highly influential 2022 essay “Building Resilient Organizations,” a must-read for everyone in progressive politics. And now, there's a workbook, too.

Episode 7: Electoral Strategies with Maurice Mitchell Many progressives are cynical about electoral politics. But our guest today explains why engaging in electoral politics is crucial for building the kind of society we want. Maurice Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party, a savvy, independent political organization that has given progressives greater voice and leverage in cities and states around the country, most notably by taking advantage of fusion voting. Maurice describes his own trajectory, from being a local organizer to a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, who ultimately came to see movements alone as limited without the organizing force that a political party provides.  He offers an insightful analysis of our present conjuncture, shaped by a ruthless right committed to minority rule through the courts, decades of neoliberalism, and an information environment that breeds atomization and loneliness. As neoliberalism's legitimacy crumbles, and the post-neoliberal, authoritarian right speaks to popular concerns, Maurice argues that WFP's strategy of winning elections to achieve governing power and engaging everyday people in the work of governance offers a hopeful path forward.  Maurice concludes by reflecting on the questions that fill him with the same excitement he had as a young organizer: “What are you building? Who are you choosing to be? And who are you choosing to be with?” Links: Maurice's 2022 highly influential essay “Building Resilient Organizations” is a must-read for everyone in progressive politics. And now, there's a workbook, too. We mentioned Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice, a terrific new training institute at CUNY for early- and mid-career organizers where Maurice has been a regular guest instructor.  Maurice's argument about the present conjuncture compliments one made by Shahrzad Shams, Deepak Bhargava, and Harry W. Hanbury in a new report for the Roosevelt Institute: The Cultural Contradictions of Neoliberalism: The Longing for an Alternative Order and the Future of Multiracial Democracy in an Age of Authoritarianism

I went to SXSW to intv three Black activists—Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party, Chris Smalls of Amazon Labor Union, and Phillip Agnew of Black Men Build. Great conversation about the future of America and the sacrifices that activists make and how to keep your ego out of leadership. Toure Show Episode 422 Host & Writer: Touré Executive Producers: Ryan Woodhall and Ashley J. Hobbs Associate Producer: Adell Coleman Booker: Rae Holliday Engineer: Claire McHale Photographers: Podstream Studios The House: DCP Entertainment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As primary season is in full swing across the country, we invite an organizer who is working beyond and within the country's two party system. Working Families Party National Director […] The post Looking to Each Other with Maurice Mitchell appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Deepak and Stephanie welcome listeners and give a preview of some organizers and thinkers who will appear in future episodes: Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party, longtime progressive activist Ilyse Hogue, legendary activist and scholar Frances Fox Piven, and historian Manisha Sinha. You can buy the book and find out more about the show at www.practicalradicals.org

We continue our discussion with Yascha Mounk, one of the leading public intellectuals of our time. The subject is a hugely influential ideology that attempts to put racial, sexual and gender identity at the center of our social, cultural and political life. The "identity synthesis", Mounk argues, denies that members of different groups can truly understand one another and this stifles public discourse.In this podcast episode, we learn why an obsession with identity undermines social justice, fuels culture wars, and boosts hateful hardliners on the right and left— from Donald Trump to protesters who support Hamas and its murderous attacks on Israeli civilians. We also hear how to politely but firmly push back against those who have become ensnared in "The Identity Trap," the name of Yascha Mounk's new book."Categories like race and gender and sexual orientation help to explain what's going on in the world, but they're not the only categories that help to explain it," Mounk tells us. "There's also social class, religion and patriotism as well as individual actions, attributes and aspirations.""The Identity Trap" has been called "the most ambitious and comprehensive account to date of the origins, consequences and limitations" of "wokeness". In our last episode, Yascha Mounk explained how postmodernism, postcolonialism and critical race theory gained currency on many college campuses by 2020. Today, a simplified version of these ideas exerts a strong influence in business, government and media. In this episode, Mounk urges listeners to claim the moral high ground. "Don't apologize about arguing against a worldview that emphasizes identity to the exclusion of other factors". Recognize we have genuine disagreements but argue for convictions that you believe will result in a better world. People are open to persuasion, he says.Mounk mentions two of the most effective critics of the identity ideology were once very drawn to it: Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party and interfaith organizer, Eboo Patel.Recommendation: Richard has just read "The Speech", by Gary Younge, who writes for the Guardian and The Nation. His book is the story behind Martin Luther King Jr.'s powerful "I have a Dream" speech delivered to a vast audience in 1963. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the radio show this week, we cover the recent victories at the ballot box with Moms (Against) Liberty losing the majority of their extremist school board races across the nation, voters ensuring that their children don't have fewer freedoms than they did in Ohio, and democracy rising throughout the country. During this show we hear tips on how to be an effective activist, as well as hear about the many places of hope, and why it's time to double down as we go into 2024.   *Special guests include: Kim Anderson, National Education Association, @NEAToday; Carol Joyner, Family Values @ Work Action, @FamValuesAction; Barbara Arnwine, Transformative Justice Coalition, @barbs73 @BarbaraArnwine, @TJC_DC; and Maurice Mitchell, Working Families Party, @WorkingFamilies

On the radio show this week, we cover the recent victories at the ballot box with Moms (Against) Liberty losing the majority of their extremist school board races across the nation, voters ensuring that their children don't have fewer freedoms than they did in Ohio, and democracy rising throughout the country. During this show we hear tips on how to be an effective activist, as well as hear about the many places of hope, and why it's time to double down as we go into 2024. *Special guests include: Kim Anderson, National Education Association, @NEAToday; Carol Joyner, Family Values @ Work Action, @FamValuesAction; Barbara Arnwine, Transformative Justice Coalition, @barbs73 @BarbaraArnwine, @TJC_DC; and Maurice Mitchell, Working Families Party, @WorkingFamilies

Susan Neiman is a philosopher. She writes about the Enlightenment, moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics. Some of that might sound esoteric, but she sees philosophy as a living force for thinking and action, so her books and articles are as much about contemporary politics as philosophy. She came to Indiana University as a Patten Lecturer in early March, and she'd been invited on the basis of her 2019 book Learning from the Germans. That book looks at how the Germans reckoned with the Holocaust as a model for how Americans might address the legacy of slavery. Since then she's written a new book, Left is Not Woke, where she argues that the left has to return to what she says are its core values: a commitment to universalism over tribalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. We talked about how her childhood and adolescence in the American South shaped her politics and philosophy, how she got into philosophy as a way to think about big questions that matter to people, not just obscure abstract concepts, and why she's such a passionate defender of the Enlightenment. These questions about the relationship between identity and politics are coming up a lot right now. For another perspective on all this, I want to recommend an article by Maurice Mitchell, executive director of the Working Families Party. It's called Building Resilient Organizations, and he, too, is grappling with the ways - as he puts it - "Identity and position are misused to create a doom loop that can lead to unnecessary ruptures of our political vehicles and the shuttering of vital movement spaces." Along with analyzing how we got here, he offers a number of solutions - solutions, I should say, that do not involve ignoring identity.

Working Families Party (WFP) National Director Maurice Mitchell joins us. Andy Schmookler discusses human nurture and human nature in detail. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/politicsdoneright/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/politicsdoneright/support

Maurice Mitchell joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about his history, his philosophy on leadership and how the Working Families Party fits in the progressive ecosystem.

If you could create an ideal world, what would it look like? And how would you convince others to help you build it?For Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, the ideal is a world where differences make us stronger because embracing them means living in a constant state of humility.A nationally recognized social movement strategist and community organizer for racial, social, and economic justice, Maurice Mitchell has spent a lifetime talking with people who don't agree with him.In our conversation today, we touch on following your personal north star in your work, acknowledging our differences when building solidarity, and why humility and curiosity are  key character traits if you want to change the world.Listen to the full episode to hear:How coming from an immigrant family drew Maurice to community involvement and organizingWhy Maurice believes we need more labels for our differences, not lessHow unacknowledged differences can actually break apart coalitionsHow Maurice and the Working Families Party build solidarity across differencesHow cultivating humility creates opportunity for collaborationWhy we need to approach systemic change understanding it's humans - not natural forces - that create and perpetuate systems  The importance of speaking face-to-face in creating social changeHow Maurice approaches getting beyond preaching to the choir and connecting with people who don't already agree with himLearn more about Maurice Mitchell:Working Families PartyInstagram: @MauriceWFPLearn more about Mary Knox Miller:Thought Leader MediaConnect on LinkedInResources:Building Resilient Organizations

Today's guests: - Maurice Mitchell, national director at Working Families Party - Richard Chew, co-host of WCPT's “Family Meeting,” Sundays from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. - Russia/Ukraine expert Joel Ostrow, professor of Political Science at Benedictine University

On the radio show this week we bring you guests recorded LIVE from Netroots Nation in Chicago, including from NAACP, MoveON, Working Families Party, and the National Women's Law Center discussing the road ahead, how you can effectively be involved, and what's happening in our nation right now.    *Special guests include: Jamal R. Watkins, NAACP, @NAACP;  Rahna Epting, MoveOn, @MoveOn; Maurice Mitchell, Working Families Party, @WorkingFamilies; Melissa Boteach, National Women's Law Center, @NWLC

The National Director of the Working Families Party, Maurice Mitchell, destroys the myth that centrism, incrementalism, and neoliberalism are not ideologies in his interview at Netroots Nation 2023 (#NN23). And he points out the dangers of that often cauterized belief system. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/politicsdoneright/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/politicsdoneright/support

On the radio show this week we bring you guests recorded LIVE from Netroots Nation in Chicago, including from NAACP, MoveON, Working Families Party, and the National Women's Law Center discussing the road ahead, how you can effectively be involved, and what's happening in our nation right now. *Special guests include: Jamal R. Watkins, NAACP, @NAACP; Rahna Epting, MoveOn, @MoveOn; Maurice Mitchell, Working Families Party, @WorkingFamilies; Melissa Boteach, National Women's Law Center, @NWLC

Hundreds of movement leaders, activists, organizers, funders, and journalists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2023 at Alight, Align, Arise, an invitation-only conference on reparations.

I'm thrilled to have adrienne maree brown on the podcast, someone who 'grows ideas in public' through her writing, her podcasts and her music. Ideas like Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice. We talk about what it means to be in right relationship with change, how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, sustainable relationships, Pleasure Activism, three thoughts about leadership, what adrienne would do if she was mayor of a large city, and finally some of her favourite practices at the moment. Resources: adrienne's website where you can find links to her writing and podcasts Audre Lorde's essay ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power' Maurice Mitchell's article ‘Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power During a Crisis' The Embodiment institute  Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity  The Chani app Related podcast episodes: Ep. 37 with Miki Kashtan  

Whether you're a canvasser knocking on doors or a member of Congress building coalitions on the House floor, persuasion is a fundamental part of politics. In recent years, deepening polarization has led to a renewed focus on voter turnout, but Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, argues that persuasion needs to be a bigger part of progressive strategy. Fresh off a tour on this topic with Anand Giridharadas, author of The Persuaders, Maurice stopped by How to Save a Country to talk to Felicia and Michael about how progressives can better engage with those outside their politics—or outside politics altogether. Maurice has been organizing for racial, social, and economic justice for decades, and played a pivotal role in organizing the first Movement for Black Lives conference in 2015. Now, he's helping to make the Working Families Party a political home for a progressive and multiracial working-class movement. “We're trying to organize people to counterbalance the influence of organized capital,” he tells Felicia and Michael. Maurice offers insights on how to engage with someone who fundamentally disagrees with you, and compares persuasion strategies between the right and the left. He discusses how progressive organizations can focus on the most important battles, by expanding on his essay that shook the progressive movement last fall: “Building Resilient Organizations.” Finally, he argues that progressives need to adopt a more active role: “It's helpful that we have ideas that work, but we need to persuade others that our ideas are their ideas.” Presented by the Roosevelt Institute, The New Republic, and PRX. Generous funding for this podcast was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Omidyar Network. Views expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of its funders. You can find transcripts and related resources for every episode at howtosaveacountry.org.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comCathy is a libertarian journalist and author. She's currently a staff writer at The Bulwark, a columnist for Newsday, and a frequent contributor to Reason magazine. She has written two books: Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, and Growing Up In Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood. We talk about how her life under totalitarianism informed her views on the war in Ukraine, and the authoritarian illiberalism in the US. She cheered me up a bit.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app — though Spotify sadly doesn't accept the paid feed). For two clips of our convo — whether Russians actually support the war in Ukraine, and the gaslighting from liberals over woke extremism — pop over to our YouTube page.Other topics: how Soviet indoctrination of Cathy started in elementary school; the closet dissidents in her family; the members who were sent to the Gulag; Cathy reading banned books and hearing jokes against the Soviet leader; dissidents like Solzhenitsyn who became strong nationalists and imperialists; today's horrors of the Wagner group and trench warfare; possible end-games over Ukraine; the US partisan flip over Russia; CRT in Florida schools and elsewhere; DeSantis and illiberal government overreach; the pushback from FIRE; Chris Rufo; the wokeism in red states; mandatory DEI statements; and Cathy's optimism toward the woke threat based on her living through the fall of Soviet totalitarianism. Next week is the vegan activist John Oberg who will try to convince me to give up meat. Browse the Dishcast archives for a discussion you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety). As always, send your feedback and guest recommendations to dish@andrewsullivan.com.Here's a listener on last week's convo with philosopher John Gray on the threats to Western liberalism:Really enjoyed your conversation — or should I say, your conversational tango — with John Gray. The urge to explain, teach and to understand propelled both of you forward. How interesting to listen as you figured out when to break into the other's conversational riffs (waiting for the occasional breath). There was not a hint of competition — “hey, it's now my turn!” — the sort of thing you hear in quasi-debates with ideological foes (necessary though they may be). There is much pleasure, downright fun, in exercising good, free, spirited talk.I have been reading John Gray for years, and you can even call me a fan. I love to read him even if he writes the same book or essay, thematically speaking, year after year, updated to suit the events of the day. He insists on telling us in acres of print that we shouldn't be fooled by the illusion of progress. Things haven't gotten much better, morally speaking. We humans concoct one belief after another to make us feel better, or superior. Be it worshipping sky gods or Karl Marx (or Ayn Rand), we fragile creatures are always trying to imagine what we're most definitely not. Gray does a good job of stripping us of our sense of agency. Reading him over the years I often want to fling his books out the window and take to bed.So I've wondered over the years why I still keep reading him and subjecting myself to his scolding critiques of our collective nonsense. Is it masochism? There's plenty of that going around. You both end up by invoking, inadvertently, the Nike swish slogan, “Just do it!” Forget optimism or pessimism. They don't do any good. Just get on with it, Gray tells us. Be buoyed by the spirit of conversation.Another listener touches on Trump:Great conversation as always. I even begrudgingly appreciate the scrambling that I must do to look up people, words, ideas, and events to fully engage in your valuable work.On your point that Trump “was a weapon used to bludgeon the people that were not listening to them” (around the 48 minute mark): after nearly four decades of the working-class's frustrations for being ignored on a bipartisan basis, Fox News, conservative talk radio, and associated media must be mentioned. They collectively acted as both an accelerant and misdirector of the long simmering and justifiable anger. Only then could President Trump become the chosen weapon. Senator Sanders could also have been the weapon — an absolutely more appropriate but likely less effective weapon.Another suggests a future guest:I was struck by what you wrote here: “We'll air a whole host of dissents to my Ukraine column next week, when I'll also be discussing the topic with dedicated war-supporter, Cathy Young, on the Dishcast.” Young doesn't need me to speak on her behalf, but I suspect what she really supports is victory for Ukraine and a just peace, not the kind of occupation that Ukrainians (like Estonians and so many others) remember too well. Supporting people who are fighting for their freedom, their culture, and their lives, is not the same as being a war-supporter.I enjoyed your verbal jousting with Anne Applebaum, so I'm really looking forward to your conversation with Cathy Young. Have you given thought to including a Ukrainian voice, maybe someone like Olesya Khromeychuk? A Ukrainian voice from the in-tray is posted toward the bottom of this post, along with more dissents over my writing on the war. Another plug for the pod:George Packer recently wrote a piece entitled “The Moral Case Against Equity Language,” which was just brilliant. I would love to hear a conversation between you and Packer.Good idea. More recommendations from this listener:Please read the interview with Vincent Lloyd by Conor Friedersdorf and the Compact essay that sparked it. It's very considered and still sensitive to the goals of the social justice movement. I'd be extremely excited to hear Lloyd on the Dishcast. He changed my thinking and I think he would bust you out of your rut of talking about social justice to people who you largely agree with.In a similar vein, Lulu Garcia-Navarro recently had an interview with Maurice Mitchell — the head of the Working Families Party — on how the left is cannibalizing its own power. Again, a very considered approach from the social justice perspective that I found very instructive. Here's what Michelle Goldberg recently wrote about him:Mitchell, who has roots in the Black Lives Matter movement, has a great deal of credibility; he can't be dismissed as a dinosaur threatened by identity politics. But as the head of an organization with a very practical devotion to building electoral power, he has a sharp critique of the way some on the left deploy identity as a trump card. “Identity and position are misused to create a doom loop that can lead to unnecessary ruptures of our political vehicles and the shuttering of vital movement spaces,” he wrote last month in a 6,000-word examination of the fallacies and rhetorical traps plaguing activist culture.I've yet to read Mitchell's essay, but it's on my list. Please consider having him as a guest as well. I've been a fan and subscriber to the Dishcast for a while, and I'm thinking that the social justice debate you're having has gotten stale. I think both these guests would spark new thoughts, new directions, and new challenges.Thanks. Another turns to gender issues:I just watched your appearance on Bill Maher's podcast. I loved it. Your sincerity and sadness about how gayness is getting twisted into some kind of bigotry was very apparent.  There's one thing I think you should have told Bill. It isn't just gays who have a “bigoted genital preference.” Straights also have “bigoted genital preference.” If Bill doesn't want to have sex with a trans woman, he's a bigot. It's a mystery to me why ANYONE would want to have a physical relationship with someone who would find that experience repulsive. But of course, as you said, it's all about control. And shaming — suggesting that there's something wrong with you for not finding their body type attractive.Another Dishhead writes:I saw your tweet about the drag show for babies and toddlers. I just want to share my own experience with you.

On this midweek show, newly-elected Chair of the Washington State Democratic Party Shasti Conrad joins Crystal for a conversation on what the role entails, lessons learned from the previous Chair, and her plans for continuing forward as a strong and effective political party. As leader of an umbrella organization for local party organizations across the state, Shasti acknowledges the futility of a top-down approach and the need to listen and to understand what resonates with Democrats from different areas. Discussion of her plans to broaden the Party's appeal includes creating inclusive spaces, expanding the base, messaging Democratic wins, and showing up and investing in rural areas.  Crystal and Shasti then tackle the question of “who is a Democrat” and the dilemma faced in sharing Party resources with: those who are ideologically aligned but not labeled as D, versus those who self-label as D but are not ideologically aligned. Finally, Shasti shares her dream of strengthening the Party through bench building of candidates and support staff by making campaign work attractive, which includes taking seriously the violence and hostility predominantly targeting Black candidates and staff members, building sustainable pipelines for careers in politics, and encouraging good working conditions through unionization. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Shasti Conrad at @ShastiConrad and the Washington State Democratic Party at @washdems.   Shasti Conrad Shasti Conrad was elected as Chair of the Washington State Democratic Party in January 2023. She is the first woman of color and youngest chair of the Washington State Democrats! She is also the first South Asian woman to lead a state party in the entire country! Previously, Shasti was the Chair of the King County Democrats from 2018-2022, making her the first woman of color chair in the org's history. She is a versatile strategist and thought leader with a broad range of political, policy and operations experience within government at all levels and throughout the private and non-profit sectors. She launched her own consulting firm in 2016 to support government, campaign, and business clients looking to better our world. She was named to the American Association of Political Consultants' 40 under 40 list and Seattle Met's 100 Most Influential List (top 10 in politicos category).   Resources Washington State Democratic Party   “Washington State Democrats Elect Shasti Conrad as Party Chair” from Washington State Democrats   “WA Democrats choose Shasti Conrad as new leader” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times   “Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis” by Maurice Mitchell for Convergence Magazine   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. I'm thrilled to be welcoming back to the program, the now-Chair of the Washington State Democrats - Shasti Conrad - welcome. [00:01:01] Shasti Conrad: Hi Crystal, it's so great to be here. [00:01:03] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you here. So you were just recently elected as the chair of the Washington State Democrats, after a pretty notable tenure as the Chair of the King County Democrats. Starting off for a lot of people who may not be familiar - what does the Chair of the Democratic Party do? [00:01:24] Shasti Conrad: That is a great question and one that I have been getting quite a bit. So the State Party Chair, basically - I see it - job number one is to win elections for Democrats up and down the ballot. That's job number one. Job number two is really studying the vision and strategy for what the Democratic Party looks like, how it works, how it's built here in Washington State. We're here to work with our allies in labor and to build winning coalitions across the state and across the progressive movement. I've often described the party as - we are the steady drumbeat - we are here to make sure that candidates and campaigns have the resources that they need, that they have the volunteers, that they have the - they know the relationships, the community leaders. And then the candidates in the campaigns - they bring the jazz, right? They bring the energy, the nuances that match the different communities that they're representing - and we're here doing all year-round organizing to make sure that we're ready for whoever steps forward to run for office - that we can support them and get them across the finish line. [00:02:36] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. So now you are taking over after Tina Podlodowski stepped down after a pretty successful run, by those metrics, as the Chair of the State Party. What lessons did you learn from Tina, and what are you carrying forward from her? [00:02:53] Shasti Conrad: I think that Tina deserves a ton of credit for the successes that we have had here in Washington state for the last six years. We had the three most successful cycles in terms of delivering Democratic wins across the state. We elected the most diverse State Legislature - each cycle we just kept improving and growing our majorities - this past cycle was probably one of the most successful cycles that we've had, certainly one of the best for Democrats in probably at least 20 years. We now have control of - the Democrats are in office for all of the statewide offices. We finally got a Secretary of State for the first time in, I think, 56 years as a Democrat in Secretary Hobbs. And so much of that credit does go to Tina. I think Tina really built the State Party as an organizing machine - she invested in it. We talked about doing this multi-cycle organizing, all year-round organizing. She helped to move the Party from it being - there were times when I think the Party was a bit of a social club - it was a bit about just who of our friends were gonna run for some of these different offices. And Tina really, especially in the Trump era, really built up the resistance and helped us make sure that we were winning. We can't lose any of that ground. Tina was a great ally for me these last several years while I was Chair of the King County Democrats, and so I learned a great deal from her. And we're not gonna go backwards, that's for sure. I think Tina would be the first one to say this, which is - now that we've built such a solid organizing foundation, in my tenure my hope is that we get to grow and expand it, particularly in bringing in more diverse folks into the Party. And that's inclusive of young people, that's inclusive of people of color, communities of color - and really helping to get more people into these leadership roles. The Washington State Democrats - we're comprised of 88 different local party organizations, so there's a lot of different regionality, diversity - but I think across the Democratic Party, we have our work cut out in trying to make sure that we are fully reflective of the state. And there's some of that work that I think I definitely wanna grow upon what Tina has built. [00:05:17] Crystal Fincher: Now you mentioned those local party organizations - like county party organizations, legislative district organizations, affinity caucuses, that type of thing. I think a lot of people don't realize necessarily that those are not branches, those are not subsidiaries of the State Party - they're actually their own independent organizations, their own bylaws, and can do what they want. They can't in most situations be told what to do by the State Party - it doesn't work like that. So basically it's a big statewide coalition of Democratic organizations. In that kind of structure, how do you galvanize and expand the organizing footprint in the entire state - in more metropolitan areas like King County, in rural areas in Central and Eastern Washington, Southwest Washington - and lots of different areas, different needs, different representation, different issues that they may be dealing with. How do you approach that, or how will you approach that across the state? [00:06:19] Shasti Conrad: Yeah, it's definitely a tall order to try to get all oars in the water rowing in the same direction. I have found that it's - we can be unified in our values, but it's important for us to be localized in our messaging. We're certainly seeing this here in Washington state, but I think this is something that the entire Democratic Party writ large is dealing with, which is that urban and rural divide and really thinking about - the ways in which we talk about things in King County and Seattle doesn't necessarily work in Spokane or in Walla Walla. And I look at Washington state as a microcosm for national Democratic Party politics. In Washington state, we have Pramila Jayapal, who is the Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. We now have Representative Suzan DelBene, who leads the DCCC, which is more moderate arm of trying to make sure that we are helping Democratic Congressional members get re-elected. And then you have our newest member of the Congressional delegation in Marie Perez. And Marie ran in - down in Southwestern Washington - as a very working class, working mom Democrat that was able to work with Republicans and get Republicans to support her. She won by just a couple thousand votes against a complete MAGA Republican. And so that's a big spectrum. And that is what I, as Chair, have to try to make sure that folks along that full spectrum feel that the Democratic party is theirs. And so like you said, each of the different party organizations are their own entities. It's not a top-down approach. We, as the State Party, are somewhat of an umbrella organization, but we're here to work alongside those different party organizations. And so it's a lot of just - it's a lot of listening, it's a lot of really making sure that folks are feeling that their lived experience is valued, that their perspective - that they know their neighbors, that they know what's gonna work with talking to their neighbors and moving them along. And that there's space for that, that it doesn't just come down from on high. One of the things that I've spent the last several years having to do quite often is unpacking when people say - Oh, the Democrats. It's like - Okay, but who are you actually frustrated with? Are you frustrated with the DNC, which sets the national stage and national messaging? Are you frustrated with the Senate Caucus or the House Caucus? Are you frustrated with your local party organization? What are these different pieces, and how do they all work together in this big ecosystem? And how can we help? How can we address your concerns? And a lot of that, I think, comes down to just people-to-people canvassing and organizing in those conversations, as well as really making sure that the messaging is resonant in those particular communities. [00:09:15] Crystal Fincher: So you talked about expanding the organizing apparatus - certainly something that you've talked about. In your tenure as Chair of the King County Democrats, was participating in all elections - not just the even-year elections right now that are legislative statewide, but also in what are currently - hopefully not for much longer - but currently odd-year elections for school boards, city councils, mayors, county council positions. Those elections haven't traditionally seen a lot of participation or engagement from the Democratic Party and local party organizations. What is gonna be your approach to that? [00:09:58] Shasti Conrad: Definitely. I think we saw, particularly in the last several years, the ways in which the Republican Party was doing a better job at building the bench than we were. They were having their folks run, and they were - run for these various seats, like you just said, like school boards and city council seats and whatnot. And they were going unchallenged. Democrats were not running for them because we just weren't paying attention in a lot of ways - we weren't indexing what all of those opportunities were. When I was Chair of King County Democrats, in an odd year, we had over 300 seats that folks could run for. And folks just didn't know that. And as soon as we started to talk about that, and started to actually really recruit, and also demystify the process - people didn't even know - how do you run? What does it take to run? How do I get onto the ballot? And once we started saying - Actually, there's a filing week in May where you go to - for King County Elections, or whatever your local county elections office is - and you can file online. Sometimes they have different fees, but they range in size - and you get your name on the ballot, and then you get to know your neighbors, and you encourage folks to vote for you. And so already this year at the State Party, I have asked our data team to look at opportunities where - what are the races across the state that we could win, that are at a nice edge. And one of the - really excited about this - so one of the things we just found when we were looking at the data this past week is that in the town of Sunnyside, which is in Yakima County, there are three seats that are up that are currently held by people that are leaning Republican. All three of those people won by less than 100 votes when they ran last time - one won by one vote. All three of them are men and they lean Republican. Sunnyside is a city that is 70% Latino. If we do the organizing work, if we get a Spanish language organizer, if we encourage those people to register to vote, we get some great candidates who represent the community - we could get those seats. And we could really make a difference that then, once those folks have some experience - their name's already been on a ballot - then in a couple of years, maybe they decide that they run for the next level of government. Maybe they even run for the State Legislature. And people have gotten to know them, they've been able to build up a resume. And that's the type of investment and engagement that I think is gonna be really important and a real opportunity for us to change up, particularly in these places that when you look at the map, they just look red. But then when you can get underneath that, there might be some opportunities where we can actually make a difference, pick up some of those seats, and start changing who's representing these folks. [00:12:51] Crystal Fincher: And part of that is also recruiting candidates. You talked about recruiting great candidates - that's been an area where there have been some excellent successes and there's still a lot of opportunity, some things haven't quite been mined yet for opportunity. What do you see the Party's role in developing leaders, and what can the Party do to help that happen? [00:13:12] Shasti Conrad: Yeah, I think - for years, we've talked about developing campaign-in-a-box - having some of these templates of - it's just people just don't, they don't know, right? They don't know - how do I find a treasurer? How do I set up a website? How do I - do I need to put a mailer together? How do I call people? How do I do all of these things? And for those of us who've been in this work, we do this year after year, but most people just - they're living their lives, they're not paying attention to the ins and outs of political work. And so I think that's something that we can develop the resources and the tools - there's been, especially in the Trump, post-Trump era - there've been a number of outside organizations that have developed really solid candidate training programs like Emerge, Institute for a Democratic Future, there's Run for Something, She Should Run - there's a bunch of these different organizations that are doing a great job. And I think that that's where we can partner with those folks. We've had our own candidate training program at Rise and Organize in the State Party. I am really passionate about training up the next generation of staffers and campaign managers and doing that type of leadership as well, because I also think that that's partially what we're missing in the ecosystem - is all of that support. So you get someone who's gonna step forward and decide to run, but they need help - they need a Crystal Fincher in their support system. And we need to be developing more of us that can help them do that, so I think that's something that we'll tackle in this next cycle as well, if the State Party is developing that training and organizing training. And then on the candidate recruitment side, it's really, it's just, it's finding those gems of talent. There are such great community leaders who - they're really active in their churches or they're really active - they're a nonprofit leader. They're doing this great work, but they just never thought about running for office. But talking about the impact and talking about - Okay, you're able to do this great work in your community or in your job. Let's take it to the macro level. Let's help you be able to do it for cities, and school boards, and the State Legislature, and things like that. [00:15:20] Crystal Fincher: Another issue that I think people on the ground, who may not pay close attention to party politics but they look around and they look at who Democrats are nationally, looking locally who are Democrats - wondering - there's lots of talk about - Okay, should Democrats be trying to win voters who may be disaffected from the Republican Party, or focus more on turning out people who may not be motivated to vote often for whatever reason. Do you do both? Do you do neither? What is that? And who is the base? Who is the party? Who is a Democrat? How do you approach that? Is this a big tent party that takes anyone? Is this a party that has strict ideological boundaries? What do you think that is and what will your approach be as Chair? [00:16:12] Shasti Conrad: Certainly, and I think that those answers are different in different places throughout the state, throughout the country. We are certainly a big tent. We have to create a space where the Party feels like it's welcoming, feels like it's inclusive, feels like it's a place where folks can make it their own. We need to be clear and aligned in our values - which is that we stand up for human rights, we stand up for people who are vulnerable, we're about choice, we're about freedom. These are the things that we are clear about. But there are some places where - I go back to CD3 because of just, it's the most, it's the biggest example of where that was a real opportunity for growth for us, because Marie Perez really did have to have conversations with folks who had been supporters of the Republican Party, who had voted for Jaime Herrera Beutler. But as the Republican Party has become more and more radicalized - where they are - they're not speaking for folks who maybe are a little bit conservative in their, some of their values, but for the most part are just trying to feed their families, get to work, pay the bills. The Republican Party has abandoned those folks too. And we have to be able to say the Democratic Party will make space for you if you are willing to recognize that there are some of these lines that will not be crossed, which is that we believe that everyone has right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and all of that. And then I also think that we have to expand the base. And that means really making investments with - into communities of color, young people - I think the Party is dealing with a relevancy problem when it comes to young folks, right? Young people have seen across their entire lives the ways in which our biggest challenges keep not being addressed. And at times, on both sides of the aisle, politicians have paid a lot of lip service but nothing changes. You can feel that, you can feel the lack of movement, and then this prioritizing of incrementalism over actually doing big, bold changes - transformative work. And so we have to demonstrate that we actually are going to do the work, that we're going to make the change, that we're going to not just talk the talk. Joe Biden wasn't my first choice as president several years ago, but he has - you have to give him credit for the fact that he has been a very progressive president. We have done big things underneath his leadership the last several years, and we're not doing a good job of talking about that. We're not doing a great job of actually messaging to say - Look at what the childcare tax credit was able to do - it halved childhood poverty, it made a big difference. We are delivering and bringing infrastructure projects back into the state - money is getting moved, things are improving. The economy has been tough, but we're making it through. That's under Democratic leadership. That is without Republicans helping. And . We believe in climate change. The Republicans don't. And these are big issues, particularly I think for young people as they're looking at a future that feels like it might be worse than their parents'. So we've got to do that work. And I think we've got to actually make it action oriented too. And that's a big part of what my job will be and what we will be trying to set with the State Party is that direction and that - those changes to make the Party feel like it is a much more welcoming place and a place where people can do good work and see change happen. [00:19:55] Crystal Fincher: I think that's spot on, really smart to recognize. Younger people actually are - definitely are feeling disaffected, trying to find reasons why they should trust institutions or institutional power after seeing so many examples of it not being helpful. And that you have to have an action-oriented approach that enables people to see the change around them without relying on rhetoric or seeing that rhetoric unfulfilled. With that, how do you play a role in messaging what Democrats are doing on a national and statewide level? How can the party improve that? [00:20:34] Shasti Conrad: One of my frustration points from the last several years is I have felt we spent a lot of time identifying and speaking about our values in reaction to the other side. And you heard me probably just do it just a few minutes ago. And so often we put ourselves against - because that's who they are, we are this. And I think it's important that we start to make the shift where we start to take some of the power back and start to control the narrative by saying - This is what it means to be a Democrat. And this is what Democrats are delivering. This is what Democrats are doing. Like I said, we are the party of choice and freedom and opportunity and optimism. We're more than just the fight, right? And also I think a lot of times we just talk about winning and losing elections, but I wanna take us also to the - how are we making a difference in people's lives? What does it mean to win? Because just winning - sure, we pat ourselves on the back, we get to run up the score and be like - Look, we have this many more than them and good for us. But is it actually making a change? Are people actually feeling like they are better represented, that their lives are improving because we have the majority in the State Legislature here in Washington state? I think that's true, but we have to make sure that we're talking about that. When things are getting passed through the State Legislature, when we're taking up the middle income housing bill, when we're taking up gun safety bills, when we are looking at the wealth tax - these are things that are going to actually make an improvement on people's experience, what their time on this earth is gonna be like. And that, I think, is really important for us to talk about and take it to that next step. And I think folks are tired - they're tired of the - we get these emails where it's like urgent, deadline, biggest fight of our lives. And it's hard because it's true - every election is, feels like it's the most important one - but at some point that just, it's burning folks out. And so we've got to just be able to be honest and level with folks - Hey, I don't know if this is gonna be radically different, but this is the right step that we need to take. It's like I-135 - I was so happily surprised that it did as well as it did. It's a step in the right direction. Is it gonna solve the housing and homelessness crisis in Seattle? No, but it is going to help us move in a direction where we can actually start to look at some solutions. And so I'm grateful that folks decided to step forward and vote and participate and do, especially in an off-cycle, odd year election. And again, it's we just have to be - we have to be able to level with folks. And that, I think, is a change in tone that I hope I can help to bring to the Party here in Washington state. [00:23:22] Crystal Fincher: I think Seattle's Initiative 135 for social housing is a really great and instructive example for how we can organize and what the opportunity is. We saw seniors who were afraid that they weren't gonna be able to age in place. We saw young people who wanted to make sure that there was gonna be a space for them in the community - urbanists, communities of color. The DSA was canvassing in support. We saw local democratic party organizations - from the King County Democrats, 46th District Democrats, and a number of folks and coalitions coming together. Some elected leaders, community leaders, activists - all coalescing around this. And really willed that to victory, as you said, during an off-year - not in those higher turnout elections that have Congresspeople and the president on the ballot. And in February, no less - I'm still excited by that. But it does bring up some interesting questions going back to - Okay, who is a Democrat and who is the Democratic Party there to serve? Because in Washington state, particularly to a degree that a lot of other states don't, there's an interesting dynamic here in that it's not just the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Certainly we have very competitive Democratic and Republican races - we've both been involved in quite a few of those. But also in several areas in King County, especially in Seattle, Washington - Republicans aren't as much of a competitive party to Democrats as the DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, or the People's Party. People who predominantly skew younger and don't necessarily find themselves completely aligned with the Democratic Party - a lot of times due to national issues - but are saying, I am aligned with these values. I am finding more action and I feel that there is more honesty about those values outside of the Democratic Party in something like the DSA or other organizations. And that playing out in interesting ways, whether it's access to the Party database and VoteBuilder, endorsements in local party organizations, and so on and so forth. How will you be going about defining who is a Democrat, in ways that are consequential when it comes to running for office or advancing policy and the utilization of State Party resources? [00:25:52] Shasti Conrad: You have to be able to say that you're a Democrat, right? You have to be willing to identify as a Democrat in order for us to be able to share those resources. It's like any other kind of club or organization - you have to be willing to sit with us at the lunch table and say that you're willing to work with us to be able to do that. But I am clear that, particularly in urban areas in Seattle and King County in particular, that we as a Democratic Party - we have been losing out folks to alternative parties. You mentioned DSA, Working Families Party, the People's Party - we have been losing out. And particularly young people are finding that moving to some of these other parties is where they feel like they identify better, that they feel like they're being seen, that they feel like they're able to get more work done. And I think that's something that we have to address. We talk a lot about recruitment. We talk a lot about trying to get people to come into the Party. But I don't think we've spent enough time really talking about - what is the experience of being in the Party? It's the retention piece of it - it is the experience of when you come into a party organization - who are you being met by? Are our folks being welcoming? It's not a secret that a lot of our Party spaces are - it's mostly run by folks that are older, it's retired folks - because they have the time. And I value that work - so I've learned from so many of our elders, who have been organizing and doing this work since the '60s, right? And they have committed their lives to doing this. And that is something that I value and appreciate and respect. But you look at any kind of organization, company, brand - and if your workforce was all 65 and older, you would say - That's probably not a sustainable brand. We've got to figure something out. And so I think making room to create these intergenerational communities where younger people can see themselves - and not just as tokenized members, but as leaders. I'm the first woman of color in this role. And I'm also the youngest Chair - I'm under 40, and that makes me the youngest Chair in Washington State Party's history. And I think that I'm a marker of showing what - this next generation of leadership - that it's time. It's time for us to move into these roles and into - both in terms of the visibility, but also in just the change in perspective and the ways that we organize. And that's something that I think is - we're gonna have to show that. We do a lot of telling, but we're gonna have to really demonstrate that those changes are gonna happen. And that - particularly those younger folks that are choosing to go to other spaces, that they can see themselves in the work. Really quickly, I'll just say Maurice Mitchell, who's the head of the Working Families Party nationally, wrote a really beautiful article a couple months ago where he talked about what was needed for continuing the work in the progressive movement. And he talked about the need to be able to meet the moment, to build winning coalitions, and to bring joy into the work. And what I say to that is - I agree 100% - we are in alignment there. It's just maybe a little bit of a difference in tactics and in institutions. My sense is that the Democratic Party is what we have and what will be here, and that it needs to be built and transformed from within - to be able to meet the moment, to be able to build winning coalitions. And we've got to infuse it with more joy - to push back against the institutional burnout that is happening everywhere. And my hope is by doing that, folks will see that we, the Democratic Party, can also be a part of where they can do their organizing work. It can be a part of the coalitions that they want to be a part of, and that they'll see themselves as members of the Democratic Party, alongside maybe some of these other organizations. [00:29:49] Crystal Fincher: And following up on that - just because this has come up in so many different situations and circumstances here in Washington state, so you say - Okay, you need to be a member of the Party. Can someone align themselves with more than one party? If they say - Hey, I'm in DSA and I'm a Democrat? Do you feel that that counts as membership in the Democratic Party? Does it have to be exclusively the Democratic Party? I know some local party organizations have different approaches to this. What is the State Party approach? [00:30:21] Shasti Conrad: It is a case-by-case scenario. Again, as we talked about earlier, each of the party organizations have their own rules, their own sets of how they do things. And so I don't think that it's right for us, at the state, to go against what some of those different organizations have said. So it is case by case, but I will always just advocate that I want folks to feel proud to be a Democrat and so it is important - to be able to have access to resources and whatnot - that they are willing to say that and are willing to come and be a part of the work. And we have wonderful volunteers that are part of this Party that are doing great work. And I hope that folks who maybe have been a little bit wary of getting involved in the Party will just come and give it a try, and will see that it's a new day and folks are, I think, a bit more willing to work with people who come from different backgrounds and different perspectives. [00:31:17] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. And it is a very King County-centric issue to be having to negotiate through - Okay, we seem to be aligned on values, but this person says they're in the People's Party and we're Democrats - and working through that. But what has happened in situations where there is a clear lack of alignment, whether it be from people who are self-labeling themselves as Democrats - but who are predominantly supported by Republicans, or just officially endorsed by the Republican Party, have a history supporting and donating to Republicans. And that has been called out by your predecessor, Tina Podlodowski, in a few different situations - revoking access to the Party database, or preventing access to Party resources, and standing behind the refusal to endorse from several organizations. Do you anticipate that continuing? What's your approach to people who seem to be clearly misaligned, but who insist on calling themselves Democrats? [00:32:22] Shasti Conrad: Certainly, this is - probably at times I was somebody who was like - Hey, Tina, what do we do here? And maybe was pushing her in some ways on some of these issues. And now, as I'm in the role, I understand better what the challenges are - 'cause it's nuanced. To be able to set one policy that works for the entire state, it's difficult because the issues here in King County are - this person wants to organize with the Working Families Party, can they also be considered a Democrat? In other parts of the state, it's - No, this person is a full Republican, but we don't have any Democrats that are running. Can we endorse the Republican? And then we even had a case last year in King County where somebody was running as a Democrat who was on a - that was for a white supremacist rally. And those are our data we have to be so careful with. This is people's personal private data that we are responsible for, and so we have to be careful about how that is shared. And so that is something that I take very seriously. And I think that there's a lot more that we could be doing to ensure privacy and security for our candidates, for our elected officials, for our members, for our volunteers, and whatnot. And so these are things that I now think about when making these types of decisions - that it was easier when I wasn't in the catbird seat to be able to say - Hey, why can't we do X, Y, and Z? And it's - Now I'm on the inside, I get it. So these will be things that we'll get and review as they come up, but it is certainly a challenge and I think making sure that our folks are safe is the number one priority. [00:34:06] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. There was - speaking of folks being safe - several notable instances of predominantly Black candidates and staff members of those Black candidates being targeted for violence and hostility during campaigns. Several of those instances made news, several more didn't - but certainly a concern among people who are volunteering and who are turning out in the Party apparatus to help their local and federal candidates. What is the Party's responsibility in keeping candidates safe, especially those candidates who have shown to be targeted at a higher rate than others? And what more can the Party do to address that? [00:34:50] Shasti Conrad: Absolutely, yeah. It's candidates - it's also their staff and their volunteers. We had a number of cases this last year where a Black campaign manager was targeted. We had volunteers who were followed and whatnot. Already, I've talked with members of our Black Caucus to say - Let's be proactive. 'Cause one of the things that I've heard quite a bit was - these things would happen, and then after the fact, there'd be some kind of - Okay, now what? But then action maybe wasn't taken. And we know that the environment that we are in right now is - it's very heightened. And that's particularly, it's even though that white hot light is even harder on people of color - we just know that particularly Black people. So I definitely want to be proactive in making sure that we have thought through safety and security plans as folks are starting to get back out on the campaign trail, that we have talked through what kind of security support we can provide. I think it's something that needs to be tackled by the ecosystem, so that's something that needs to be worked through with the caucuses as well - the House and the Senate - because they also support folks that are running for those seats. And working with the specific folks to make sure that this is something that they actually want. And yeah, I take it very seriously. And I think about it too - I'm a woman of color who - I live in south Snohomish County and I've got white supremacists in my neighborhood. And I know that feeling - both in terms of there's a physical threat, but there's also the psychological, the emotional, the mental, like all of that - of just knowing that these folks that are right here, who want to destroy what we believe in and want to hurt us, right? They see us as the enemy, so I take all of that very, very seriously. And I think that's something I would love to maybe come back - and if you can help me put together a group too - to talk through what that looks like and how we can build solid safety plans for our folks. [00:36:48] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - have been involved in those conversations - happy to be helpful in any way I can. You talked about Marie Gluesenkamp Perez earlier who, in the Third Congressional District, won what was probably the biggest upset in the country last November - in winning her race over Joe Kent for the seat previously held by Jaime Herrera Beutler. What do you take away as lessons from that race, and how will Democrats be showing up in rural areas in your tenure? [00:37:18] Shasti Conrad: I think it was clear - we can't miss these opportunities. We can't take them for granted. We have to do the direct people-to-people organizing. And I think it's particularly true in rural communities, but I find that it's true also in communities of color where - in these places where they have often felt left behind, dismissed by the Democratic Party, we have to build trust - and it takes showing up, not just showing up only in the fall of an even year, but it takes showing up throughout the year, being there. And it's being neighborly. It's like - How are you? What do you need? What's going on in your life? It's asking and actually getting to know folks. Something a lot of people don't know about me, but I actually grew up on a farm. I grew up in a small town in Oregon. I grew up on a farm - we had ducks and chickens and sheep. My task as a small kid was to go get the eggs from the chicken coop every day, and I talked about this a lot as I was campaigning and whatnot. My grandmother really taught me how we would trade the chicken eggs with the neighbor down the street who had a beehive and we would get honey from them. And then you'd have the neighborly conversation of - Hey, how are you? How are the kids? You'd get to know - okay, if you wanted to meet up with so and so, the best time to see them was at church. Or everybody would go to the local Shari's and go after church. Or if you wanted to talk to Bob, you'd see him at the local pub on Wednesday nights - and that's where you would find these folks. And so getting to actually know them, talk to them - that it takes this people-to-people, conversation-by-conversation relationship building to be able to demonstrate that you are a real person who cares and wants to make their lives better. And because they know you, and you're saying - I believe that Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is gonna make the difference - then they'll trust you. And that just takes time. You have to operate at the speed of trust. And that's particularly true, I think, in rural communities - but I am finding that to be the case in the Latino community, in the tribal communities, Black community, Asian API community - this is true just with organizing and with people, but particularly with folks who have felt like they've been sold a bill of goods before by many politicians. So yeah, so I think this type of organizing is what matters. I just heard about - last week, there was a house party for Marie and 140 people showed up - and that's exciting. And in February of an even year - folks are excited - they want to help. They wanna make sure that we return Marie in two years and that she has the support. Marie held the first town hall that that district had had in years because Jaime Herrera Beutler wasn't doing town halls. And she's talking to people who didn't vote for her. And she's talking to people who didn't think that she would represent them. And she's demonstrating - no, I represent this whole district and I'm gonna show up - even if you're gonna tell me you don't like me, I'm here. And that is what we have to do. And it's gonna take several years probably for some of these districts to change, particularly in Central and Eastern Washington. But if we make the investment, we do the organizing work - we have to be ready for when an opportunity presents itself for us to get that and flip those seats. [00:40:38] Crystal Fincher: So I know we're right at the beginning of your tenure - you're just starting out, learning everything, getting your feet underneath you. But what might that look like operationally and in practice? Is that more satellite offices across the state and in rural areas? Is that hiring a different kind of organizer underneath a different kind of model? What can that look like? [00:40:59] Shasti Conrad: Everything costs money, and so I have to go raise the money to go make this happen. But my dream is to develop a organizing pipeline that is particular to rural communities, and maybe even developing an organizing fellowship at some of the rural colleges, community colleges throughout the state - where we can actually develop folks who come from the communities to get the right training, but then get hired into the organizing jobs - onto the Coordinated Campaign where we can actually keep them and support them so that they're not only there for a few months at a time, but actually are building these relationships over several years. And then when we have a Coordinated Campaign and that's over, that we have a place to be able to move those organizers - to go work with the unions and do union organizing when it's not high campaign season and then move them over to us, getting them into internship programs with different agencies and things like that. I benefited from the fact that I was a college student who graduated into Barack Obama running for president back in 2008. And had I not had those opportunities early in my life, early in my career - I would not be here today, I would have picked another job, I wouldn't have stayed in politics. But there were opportunities that presented themselves - and the mentors and people supporting me - and then one job turned into another and suddenly it's been 15+ years and here I am. And I just think that there's so many Shastis out there. There's so many folks, but they just haven't had the opportunity and the support. And like the rest of the country and so many other industries, young people are like - How am I gonna take care of myself? How am I gonna pay the bills? And if politics and working for a local government and whatnot doesn't pay the bills and those opportunities aren't there - they're gonna leave their home communities, and they're gonna take jobs with Amazon, or they're gonna take jobs that are steady paychecks, and we're gonna lose them for a generation. They're gonna - it's hard to get off those trains when you're on them. And so we've got to build those opportunities, and we've got to - one of the things that I'm really excited about potentially doing is I really wanna work with the youth councils on the reservations to really talk about job opportunities in the political sector - and running for office themselves - but also being a campaign manager, being an organizer, finding those opportunities. So that they can see that there's this whole other world of opportunities and jobs that could help them to stay in their own communities, but also take them around the world to work on other campaigns all over the place if they would like to. [00:43:42] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. And thank you for spending all of this time with us, being generous with your time. As we begin to wrap up, I want to draw inward a little bit. We've talked about what the Party will be doing within the community and your approach to that. But I also wanna talk about staff, really - of the State Party, of campaigns, of Democratic electeds serving in office - and this conversation that we've been having, that's been evolving, about unionization, working conditions, supporting workers in that. We have lots of labor partners, as a Party entity, and alignments there. But there has been, frankly, a mixed reception from a lot of people when it comes to the unionization of campaign workers, for campaigns across the board - this is something that has certainly made it to legislative and congressional campaigns. There may be conversations about that in some local campaigns - we have seen a few instances of that. But also within the Party, legislative staffers just had a battle to get some of that kicked off. Do you think that campaign workers should be able to be represented by a union? And what guidance and examples are you providing for local electeds and other progressive organizations? [00:45:02] Shasti Conrad: 100%. I actually believe that the State Party - under Tina's leadership, to give credit where credit's due - was the first State Party to unionize. And that's not without its challenges, right? People have been figuring it out as they go - we've been building the plane as we flew it, and so I think that's been - some of the trying to find the right home for Campaign Workers Union, trying to work through the particular seasonal working issues that come with being on campaigns and whatnot. But I think it's incredibly important. I remember what it was like as a young person where I was in unpaid internships - I was certainly working way more than 40 hours a week at times on campaigns and didn't have much recourse of things were happening, where to go to. And so I think it's a vast improvement of where we were 10 years ago, 20 years ago - certainly the last couple of years. So yeah, I think we will certainly encourage the candidates that come through that they should unionize their staff, depending on the size, on all of that - but I think it's really important. I did the Pathway to Power program last year that's put on by the Washington State Labor Council and learned a lot about labor issues, but learned a lot also about - in the role of candidate or chair or whatnot, how to leave room for your staff and workers to be able to unionize and the ways to show support. But also that means sometimes taking a step back and allowing them to take the lead and not having - you now have to see yourself as a manager, and not putting yourself on both sides of the table and things like that. So there's things that we're still working through to have all of this stuff figure itself out, but I think it's incredibly important. I was excited to see that I believe the - nationally, I believe that the Democratic Congressional staffers unionized and I think here in Washington State, we're gonna continue to see those unionizing efforts happen in all parts of our ecosystem, and I think it's a really exciting thing. As I've been talking to labor union leaders - particularly the last few weeks, like I've just said - some of the best progressive wins of the last several years have been labor wins. And so we have to be good partners, and that includes unionizing efforts of our own staff, our own teams. [00:47:16] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, completely agree. And thank you for spending this time with us today. We'll be following along as things progress and look forward to speaking with you again. Thanks so much, Shasti. [00:47:26] Shasti Conrad: Thank you so much - always a joy to see you and spend time with you. Thanks so much. [00:47:29] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

In Episode 21, Season 2 of A is for Architecture I spoke with Maurice Mitchell and Bo Tang, respectively Professor and Reader of/ in Architecture, within the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University, and together directors of Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources [A R C S R], an ‘an emergent, studio based, teaching and research area within the practice and academic discipline of architecture'. I got to hear about their 2017 book, Loose Fit City: The Contribution of Bottom-Up Architecture to Urban Design and Planning, published by Routledge, which is ‘about the ways in which city residents can learn through making to engage with the dynamic process of creating their own city. It looks at the nature and processes involved in loosely fitting together'. The idea of loose in the sense of [a] loose fit city, Bo suggests in our conversation, may be defined as ‘bringing together different intentions, or allowing them to come together in a way that more than one party is able to contribute to the conversation, to the decision making process, to have a voice across scale, across time to try and come to an understanding of shared matters of concern that may then lead to a civic assembly'. As before, lovely guests, a wonderful, inspiring book and proper, easy conversation. Listen, share, want, get. You can get Loose Fit City off the Routledge website here but also elsewhere online. Bo can be found on the London Met website here, and Maurice here. Bo is here on Twitter, and here on LinkedIn. There's a boss video of Maurice giving an online lecture for the Architecture Foundation on Laurie Baker and Balkrishna Doshi here. Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

Our freedom dreams for the world we need and want to see are dependent on healthy, strong, and resilient movements and organizations. Listen as Aaron and Damien discuss an article called Building Resilient Organizations by Maurice Mitchell in The Forge, which identifies and analyzes some of the difficulties faced by social justice organizations and movements, and what organizers (and all of us) can do to reset and build capacity and resiliency for the work necessary to continue the pursuit of achieving our freedom dreams and collective liberation. Follow us on social media and visit our website! Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Website, Leave us a voice message, Merch store

Ezra is out sick, so today, we're sharing an episode from the New York Times Opinion podcast, “First Person.” Each week, the host Lulu Garcia-Navarro sits down with people living through the headlines for intimate and surprising conversations that help us make sense of our complicated world. This episode features Maurice Mitchell, the head of the Working Families Party.Mitchell has been an organizer for two decades, working in progressive politics and the Movement for Black Lives. In recent years, he's watched progressive organizations torn apart by internal battles in the wake of #MeToo and B.L.M. Now he is speaking out about how he sees purity politics and a misplaced focus on identity derailing the left.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/column/first-person.The episode was produced by Wyatt Orme, with help from Derek Arthur. It was edited by Stephanie Joyce and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Sonia Herrero and Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. The rest of the “First Person” team includes Anabel Bacon, Olivia Natt, Rhiannon Corby, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger. Special thanks to Kristina Samulewski, Shannon Busta, Allison Benedikt, Annie-Rose Strasser and Katie Kingsbury.

Alicia Garza welcomes back the nationally-recognized political strategist, Maurice Mitchell. Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party, a multiracial party that fights for workers over bosses. Garza and Mitchell take a deep dive into his game changing essay, Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis.  Garza's weekly roundup of all the news you can use focuses on Iran's executing of protestors, more mass shootings in California, and the first anniversary WITHOUT Roe v Wade. However, Lady does share some love for Black women appraisers and pay transparency lawsLady Garza is back with an all new Love Notes about coming across complete and utter trash inside the movement. Maurice Mitchell on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Lady Don't Take No on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook & YouTubeAlicia Garza on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook & YouTube * Do you have a question for Lady's Love Notes? Seeking advice on love/romance/relationships? CLICK HERE to send Lady Garza your question, and she may read it on the show! This pod is supported by the Black Futures LabProduction by Phil SurkisTheme music: "Lady Don't Tek No" by LatyrxAlicia Garza founded the Black Futures Lab to make Black communities powerful in politics. She is the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, an international organizing project to end state violence and oppression against Black people. Garza serves as the Strategy & Partnerships Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She is the co-founder of Supermajority, a new home for women's activism. Alicia was recently named to TIME's Annual TIME100 List of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, alongside her BLM co-founders Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (Penguin Random House),  and she warns you -- hashtags don't start movements. People do. 

Maurice Mitchell believes purity politics leave progressive power on the table.

“My argument is because [right wing authoritarianism] is the central struggle of the day, we need the most effective, principled and impactful progressive organizations that are seeking to challenge that,” says Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. Mitchell is also an activist and co-founder of Blackbird, an organization that has provided infrastructure support for the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups around the country. The social movement strategist wrote a 6,000-word article for The Forge called “Building Resilient Organizations,” in which he described and shared potential solutions for overcoming some of the biggest problems within progressive spaces. He joins WITHpod to discuss the piece, roots of the longstanding political and social tensions within movements on the left and strategies for resetting.

Faith Organizers Kelley Fox and Terry Williams close out the year with an episode jam-packed full of resources for all of our justice-minded listeners. With a show notes section filled to the brim with books, audio articles, and even app recommendations, Kelley and Terry want to make sure you have all the best faithfully pro-choice info heading into 2023 and beyond! Links to discussed content: Kelley's Suggestions Emergent Strategy, by adrienne maree brown: www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html Grievers, by adrienne maree brown: www.akpress.org/grievers.html StoryGraph: https://thestorygraph.com/ Libby: www.overdrive.com/apps/libby Conflict Is Not Abuse, by Sarah Schulman: https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/C/Conflict-Is-Not-Abuse The RTJ Playlist: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a25T4KlaQDs&list=PLbfHdh_1xRX4U8IFnGE_6G3SjAzQhcRG6 The Barnard Center for Research on Women: https://bcrw.barnard.edu/ The Art of Losing, by Kevin Young: https://kevinyoungpoetry.com/the-art-of-losing.html Jelly Roll, by Kevin Young: https://kevinyoungpoetry.com/jelly-roll-a-blues.html My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, by Aja Monet: www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1067-my-mother-was-a-freedom-fighter Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, by Kendrick Lamar: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kendrick-lamar-mr-morale-and-the-big-steppers/ Terry's Suggestions Choice Words, edited by Annie Finch: https://anniefinch.com/choicewords/ The Baby Thief, by Barbara Bisantz Raymond: https://babythief.com/ Ramp Hollow, by Steven Stoll: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809095056/ramphollow We Will Not Cancel Us, by adrienne maree brown: www.akpress.org/we-will-not-cancel-us.html Beautiful Trouble Resources: https://beautifultrouble.org/ On Repentance and Repair, by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg: www.amazon.com/Repentance-Repair-Making-Amends-Unapologetic/dp/0807010510 "Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis," by Maurice Mitchell: https://convergencemag.com/articles/building-resilient-organizations-toward-joy-and-durable-power-in-a-time-of-crisis/ Music by Korbin Jones

In one of the highlights of last week's EconCon Presents event in Washington D.C., Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. convened an all-star panel of political experts. Maurice Mitchell, Faiz Shakir, and Anna Greenberg joined Bacon to share lessons learned from the midterm elections, and debate strategies for driving the progressive economic agenda forward in 2023 and beyond. Thanks to our friends at EconCon for sharing audio of this event for Pitchfork Economics listeners. For more information about upcoming EconCon events, follow them on Twitter: @EconConPresents.   Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick's twitter: @NickHanauer

Alicia Garza shares reactions from her all-star roster of friends about the 2022 midterm election. Guests include Tiffany Cross, Melissa Harris-Perry, Laphonza Butler, Angela Rye, Joy Reid, Jemele Hill, Nse Ufot, and Maurice Mitchell. Plus, Garza's own detailed analysis of what went down, and, as always, the weekly roundup of what we like, and what we're not gon take no more of.Lady Don't Take No on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook & YouTubeAlicia Garza on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook & YouTube * Do you have a question for Lady's Love Notes? Seeking advice on love/romance/relationships? CLICK HERE to send Lady Garza your question, and she may read it on the show! This pod is supported by the Black Futures LabProduction by Phil SurkisTheme music: "Lady Don't Tek No" by LatyrxAlicia Garza founded the Black Futures Lab to make Black communities powerful in politics. She is the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, an international organizing project to end state violence and oppression against Black people. Garza serves as the Strategy & Partnerships Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She is the co-founder of Supermajority, a new home for women's activism. Alicia was recently named to TIME's Annual TIME100 List of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, alongside her BLM co-founders Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (Penguin Random House),  and she warns you -- hashtags don't start movements. People do. 

On Tuesday, Democrats miraculously avoided the sort of major rout at the polls normally associated with a new president's first midterms. Most surprisingly, Democrats still have a narrow path to maintain control of the House of Representatives if a few outstanding races swing their way. That path would be even wider if not for a disappointing set of losses in New York. Ryan Grim speaks with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and to Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, about what went wrong in the state.https://join.theintercept.com/donate/now Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Due to the cataclysmic failures of the two-party system here in the United States, is it time to build a real third party — if that is even possible? On the new episode of Lever Live, David discusses the realities and viability of building a third party with Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, and Vermont state Sen. Chris Pearson, a member of the Vermont Progressive Party. David, Maurice, and Chris will explore the pros and cons of third-party movements. Can such efforts only be successful at the local level? Is it possible for third-party politicians to actually affect change? Are Democrats and Republicans willing to play nice with outsiders? Join us to find out the answers to these questions — and to ask your own — on Lever LIVE. If you like the work we're doing and want to support independent journalism, head over to LeverNews.com/subscribe to see our coverage and become a subscriber. If you'd like to leave a tip for The Lever click the following link. We really appreciate your support :) levernews.com/tipjar Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

WFP National Director explains the Party and its relationship to the Democratic Party: Working Families Party (WFP) National Director Maurice Mitchell visited with Politics Done Right (PDR) on Radio Row at Netroots Nation 2019 in Philadelphia recently. He explained what the party was all about and its relationship to the Democratic Party. My response to a projecting listener who said Democrats are separatists from American culture & values: One of our listeners seems to get his talking points from Right-Wing medial like OAN or Fox News. What are American culture, values? Sen Maggie Hassan- Never imagined that todays Republican Party would fail to stand up for Democracy: Schumer & Klobuchar schools seemingly Right-Wing reporters on voter suppression & more: Mitch McConnell does not believe African Americans are Americans: “African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” said Senator Mitch McConnell. You have got to see it to believe it. Why I cannot give up on Right-Wing Americans. We can't else ‘they' win: Please watch the entire clip: Many balk at talking to the other side, the Right-Wing. My question is what is the alternative. The only other option is untenable. Does the inability to pass voter reform prove The Democratic Party as racist as the Republican Party: Many ask why The Democratic Party can skirt the filibuster for some policies but not that affects millions of POCs. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/politicsdoneright/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/politicsdoneright/support

Third parties are famous for siphoning off votes from the major parties and ruining elections. While this phenomenon, known as the spoiler effect, is real, America's two-party system makes for strange bedfellows. It's not obvious what a democratic socialist like AOC has in common with a conservative Democrat like Joe Manchin, other than a "D" after their names.So what can reform-minded progressives do? How can they advocate for systemic change without tilting the field in the Republicans' favor? Maurice Mitchell, a seasoned organizer and National Director of the Working Families Party, joins Amanda this week to discuss the WFP's decades-long effort to build substantive, multiracial political power for the working class. The WFP emerged in 1998 as a direct response to the conservative-corporate takeover of American politics. Maurice details his party's multifaceted approach that has its sights set not only on conservative Republicans, but on establishment Democrats in very blue districts who are out of step with the needs of their communities. In other words, the WFP is providing progressives, the working class, and people who don't identify with either party a path to representation in government through collective organization. Just how effective are they? Ask now-former Governor Andrew Cuomo. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We remember George Floyd on the day of his murder and measure the progress made in keeping Black people safe in their communities. Executive Producer: Adell Coleman Producer: Brittany Temple Distributor: DCP Entertainment For additional content: makeitplain.com

In this thirteenth episode of Black Work Talk, Today's guest is Maurice Mitchell.  Maurice is the National Director of the Working Families Party.  Since its inception, the Working Families Party has done a good job of navigating the complicated waters of combining Left political perspectives with building bases among working class people and maintaining effectiveness in the electoral arena.  Maurice became national director about two years and we had a wide-ranging conversation on a variety of topics including: Policing and the issue of police accountability The need for social movements to claim their victories as we strive for greater victories The need for political education as we build durable progressive movements The importance of bringing a class analysis to an understanding of racial oppression.   For more background on Maurice Mitchell and the Working Families Party, here are links to some articles: https://forgeorganizing.org/article/one-two-punch-how-green-new-deal-fights-ecofascism-and-racialized-capitalism (https://forgeorganizing.org/article/one-two-punch-how-green-new-deal-fights-ecofascism-and-racialized-capitalism) https://workingfamilies.org/2021/03/wfp-on-american-jobs-plan-we-need-to-build-back-a-lot-bigger/ (https://workingfamilies.org/2021/03/wfp-on-american-jobs-plan-we-need-to-build-back-a-lot-bigger/) https://forgeorganizing.org/article/our-movements-beat-trump-now-what (https://forgeorganizing.org/article/our-movements-beat-trump-now-what)  https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/police-accountability-protests/ (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/police-accountability-protests/)  https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/2021/04/12/what-happened-biden-pledge-have-backs-black-america-column/7192178002/ (https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/2021/04/12/what-happened-biden-pledge-have-backs-black-america-column/7192178002/) 

This week, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) talks to us about dark money in politics, the biggest obstacles to passing big, bipartisan climate laws, and what he hopes President Joe Biden can accomplish during this term.  Then, Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, joins the show to talk about centering racial and economic justice in infrastructure plans and how to build back to battle climate change.  Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/ As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website! Further Reading/Watching/Listening: Coronavirus Is a Dress Rehearsal for Climate Change How Biden's $2tn infrastructure plan seeks to achieve racial justice Sen. Whitehouse Gives Presentation On 'Dark Money' Influence On Supreme Court Nomination Kurt Andersen on "Evil Geniuses" and The Unmaking of Environmental and Climate Protection‪s‬

Not since the 1960s has there been so much grassroots activism on the left. One sign of that renaissance has been the emergence of the Working Families Party as an important national player in progressive politics. Going from a small regional third party, mostly focused on one state, today the Working Families Party is striving to build power in 11 States, with a mission focused on creating a strong, multiracial working-class movement. It's more prominent and better funded than ever before. Maurice Mitchell became the National Director of the Working Families Party in 2018. Host David Callahan spoke with Maurice on the nature of grassroots organizing, and how a third party like Working Families can make an impact in our two-party electoral system. Inside Change is produced by David Callahan and Kayan Tara.

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, joins Press the Button for an in-depth discussion on the intersection of the movement for saner nuclear policy and movements for achieving racial justice, protecting the environment and establishing a fairer economy. Early Warning features Liza Arias of Women of Color Advancing Peace & Security and Kaleigh Thomas of Center for a New American Security on the recent SolarWinds hack, which targeted the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and various other US government organizations.

Trump continues to wage a battle to overturn the election. Republican leaders from Michigan’s two legislative chambers are scheduled to meet with Trump today to strategize about how to overturn the election. Guiliani started melting during an off the rails press conference.  Trump has lost 32 out of 33 lawsuits so far. But that’s not stopping him. Lindsay Graham potentially commits felony election crime by attempting to lean on Georgia’s Secretary of State to throw out all the mail ballots from counties with a high rate of signature mismatch.  Erin Brockovich, the environmental activist who most Americans came to know through the Julia Roberts film based on her life, wrote a piece in the Guardian asking the question on most progressives minds: “Joe Biden: Are You Kidding Me?” Brockovich focused on Biden’s decision to choose Michael McCabe to head the EPA. McCabe is a former communications consultant for the chemical giant DuPont.  It wasn’t just the EPA, though. Biden’s pick to head the Office of Public Engagement, Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond, also raised red flags for progressives. Richmond is among the top Democratic recipients of fossil fuel money in the House.  After a year-long scientific mission in the Arctic, scientists warn that if bold, expansive action is not taken to address the climate crisis immediately, we face a very grim future.  Some Democratic Party leaders are being COVID hypocrites. This week Senator Diane Feinstein was filmed in the Capitol without a mask talking to a group of people; Gavin Newsom was caught maskless on video at an indoor birthday party for a lobbyist held at the exclusive Napa Valley restaurant, French Laundry.  Nancy Pelosi was re-elected, despite previous promises that she would step down.  Black Lives Matter activists want to see conservative Democrats’ receipts for their claims that “defund the police” messaging was responsible for down-ballot losses. Still waiting. As the national director of the Working Families Party, Maurice Mitchell told Politico, “This is the tip of the spear. They are using this ‘defund’ fight as a proxy for a broader ideological fight.” Marco Rubio lays out GOP plans for the Biden administration: they plan on blocking all Biden’s cabinet appointments because Democrats mean. The Rockefeller Christmas Tree was set in place last Saturday. The Charlie Brown Christmas tree was set in place last Saturday and to nobody’s surprise, it was as scraggly as 2020. And, they found a baby owl trapped inside. Maybe 2020 will end like the Charlie Brown Christmas special after all.  China just set up the world’s largest trading bloc.  And speaking of the Charlie Brown Christmas special, after loads of public pressure, Apple TV - who bought the exclusive rights to the Charlie Brown specials - gave in and will allow the show to air on PBS alongside Apple TV. It will air on December 13. Oh, by the way, the Grinch Who Stole Christmas will air on NBC on Friday, November 27th. Perfect for closing out the war on Thanksgiving and preparing our assault on the war on Christmas.  A couple of big wins in PA Democratic Party leadership. Two outspoken progressives, just won leadership roles in the PA Senate Democratic leadership fight. Katie Muth will take over the reigns from Lisa Boscola as Senate Dems policy chair. And, Maria Collett replaced outgoing Senator Larry Farnese to take over as caucus secretary. Refinery 29 published a profile on some of Pennsylvania’s women of color organizers who have spent the past four years organizing throughout the commonwealth and how their organizations were able to put together the Count Every Vote rallies. Former Pennsylvania Lt Governor Mikey Stacks made a surprise acting appearance once again.  This time he was moonlighting for a campaign to Save Stonehenge and prevent the construction of a tunnel that may destroy the world heritage site.   Pennsylvania, like many other states, is exploding with COVID cases. Yesterday afternoon, Dr. Rachel Levine, PA’s Health Secretary, laid out the state’s vaccination plans, assuming the continued success on the vaccine front. Levine reminded people that while a vaccine may be available by the end of next month, the supply will be limited. In the meantime, Mask Up Til March would be a good slogan.  Several PASSHE University presidents pack their bags and get out of Dodge in the wake of planned university mergers and layoffs. At a short Board of Governors’ meeting on Wednesday, Chancellor Greenstein praised the “breadth and audacity” of the mergers, mass layoffs, program eliminations, and deep cuts, calling them “ambitious and audacious goals.”  SpaceX officially launches the first crewed mission to the International Space Station from the Kennedy Space Station. Baby Yoda was on board.  Astronomers are proposing a huge telescope on the Moon to further research about the Big Bang. According to The Hill, “ University of Texas astronomer Anna Schauer nicknamed the proposed telescope the ‘Ultimately Large Telescope,’ adding that it would have a liquid mirror over 300 feet in diameter.” Free Will Brewing has got some great releases for your quarantine Turkey Day. And, the 2020 Ralphius bottle variants are announced and will be available on Free Will’s online store at 9 am on Saturday, 11/21 for presale pick up on Black Friday, 11/27.

Alicia Garza is joined this week by nationally recognized social movement strategist, Maurice Mitchell. Mitchell is the National Director of the Working Families Party. Garza asks Mitchell about everything from punk rock to parenting to what’s next in this new era of Black power building. Plus, Garza’s weekly round-up of all the things Lady likes and dislikes.  Maurice Mitchell on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook.Lady Don't Take No on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook.Alicia Garza on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook.This pod is supported by the Black Futures Lab Production by Phil SurkisTheme music: "Lady Don't Tek No" by LatyrxAlicia Garza founded the Black Futures Lab to make Black communities powerful in politics. She is the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, an international organizing project to end state violence and oppression against Black people. Garza serves as the Strategy & Partnerships Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She is the co-founder of Supermajority, a new home for women’s activism. Alicia was recently named to TIME’s Annual TIME100 List of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, alongside her BLM co-founders Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors. Her forthcoming book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (Penguin Random House) will be published on October 20, 2020, and she warns you -- hashtags don’t start movements. People do. 

Maurice Mitchell joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about his history, his philosophy on leadership and how the Working Families Party fits in the progressive ecosystem.

In the final sprint to election day, most organizers are laser-focused on the imperative of defeating the authoritarian threat represented by a second Trump term. Many are also focused on the work needed to drive us forward after election day, whatever the result, to continue to build the movements we need. On this special episode of This is Not a Drill, hosts Adam Gold and Rishi Awatramani talk with some of the most important organizers leading ambitious strategies to not only win in November, but build a majoritarian movement for racial justice and radical economic democracy. Join us as we talk to Thenjiwe McHarris, Maurice Mitchell from the Working Families Party, Cindy Wiesner, a volunteer with the Frontline, and NTanya Lee from LeftRoots.* * Organizations listed for identification purposes only. Views expressed on this show reflect those of the guests individually and not their employers.

In the final sprint to election day, most organizers are laser-focused on the imperative of defeating the authoritarian threat represented by a second Trump term. Many are also focused on the work needed to drive us forward after election day, whatever the result, to continue to build the movements we need.On this special episode of This is Not a Drill, hosts Adam Gold and Rishi Awatramani talk with some of the most important organizers leading ambitious strategies to not only win in November, but build a majoritarian movement for racial justice and radical economic democracy. Join us as we talk to Thenjiwe McHarris, Maurice Mitchell from the Working Families Party, Cindy Wiesner, a volunteer with the Frontline, and NTanya Lee from LeftRoots.** Organizations listed for identification purposes only. Views expressed on this show reflect those of the guests individually and not their employers.

After Donald Trump and Joe Biden square off for the first presidential debate, the Working Family Party's Maurice Mitchell and TRNN's Steve Horn join Jaisal Noor to discuss.

The Movement for Black Lives is realigning political life in the US in 2020. Maurice Mitchell has been a leader in this movement since Ferguson. This conversation moves from his own traumatic experiences of racism that shaped his early life, to his work as an organiser and his reflections on the kinds of political strategy required to win justice. We zero in on the protests that exploded following the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and unpack the lesser known but vital strategies that have underpinned their success.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Movement for Black Lives is realigning political life in the US in 2020. Maurice Mitchell has been a leader in this movement since Ferguson. This conversation moves from his own traumatic experiences of racism that shaped his early life, to his work as an organiser and his reflections on the kinds of political strategy required to win justice. We zero in on the protests that exploded following the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and unpack the lesser known but vital strategies that have underpinned their success. See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

Zach sits down with activist Tema Okun, author of "The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race And Racism To People Who Don't Want To Know," to have a chat geared around white supremacy culture at work. She and Zach take a deep dive into a piece she wrote on the subject, dissecting several of the named characteristics present in the document. Check out the show notes to reference the piece and to find out more about her work!Connect with Tema on Twitter.Read her "White Supremacy Culture" piece by clicking here.Interested in her book, "The Emperor Has No Clothes?" Check it out on Amazon.Donate to the Justice for Breonna Taylor GoFundMe by clicking here.Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here.Help food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.Check out our website.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and, you know, we continue to live in really extraordinary times for some people. Frankly, these times have been this way for a while for many of us, but we have this, like, seemingly [?] to awareness and consciousness, and so I want to respect that. I want to respect where we are. And, you know, we've actually shifted up our interview schedule, and we're having more and more pointed conversations about the reality of white supremacy. So you've probably noticed a few episodes, and we're gonna continue to do that. You know, I shared on Twitter a couple days ago that, like, I think my baseline is just much angrier these days, and I'm at peace with that. And so with that all being said, you know, we have conversations on Living Corporate that center marginalized voices at work. We do that by engaging thought leaders from across the spectrum to really have just authentic discussions. Today we have a phenomenal guest, just like we do every single week, but it makes no less true that we have a great guest today, Dr. Tema Okun. Tema has spent many years working for the social justice community. For over 10 of those years she worked in partnership with the late and beloved Kenneth Jones as part of the Change [?] Training Group and now facilitates long-term anti-racism, anti-oppression work as a member of The DR Works Collaborative. She is a skilled [?] facilitator, bringing both an anti-racist lens and commitment to supporting personal growth and development within the context of institutional and community mission. She holds a BA from Oberland College, a Masters in Adult Education from NC State University, a doctorate at NC Greensboro, and is on the faculty of the educational leadership department at the National Louis University in Chicago. She is active in Middle East peace and justice work with Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions USA. Dr. Okun, how are you?Tema: I'm great, and I want to apologize upfront because some of those biographical facts are no longer true. I left the faculty of NLU several years ago, and I'm now active with the Jewish [Voice?] for Peace. Just to update everybody so that they don't think you or I are lying about [?].Zach: Thank you for correcting me, I appreciate that. So, you know, you've been in this work for quite a while. Like, we talked some months ago actually before my daughter was born, and--Tema: Oh, you have a beautiful daughter.Zach: Thank you very much. Yes, yes, you've seen her. Yeah, she looks great, and she's getting bigger every day. It's just so cool that she's changing all the time. What I'd like to know though is if you've ever seen anti-racist, anti-state-sanctioned violence protests like this in your lifetime in terms of just scale and scope?Tema: You know, you gave me that question ahead of time, and I want to say both yes and no, and I want to say yes because [?] during the Vietnam War protest time period and I lived during the AIDS protest time and the growth of the LGBTQ movement, and I do want to acknowledge that the grief and rage and resistance that we're seeing today is part of a longer legacy of people who have been full of grief and rage and resistance before us so that we don't isolate ourselves and we also take credit for this particular moment, which is unique in the sense of the reach, the brilliance, the clarity about the demands, and I'm very excited about, you know, the defund the police direction that this is taking, and so it's a yes and no answer. I'm so excited to be alive in this moment, and I feel like I was honored to live through those other moments as well.Zach: And, you know, it's interesting because it's easy to kind of forget about the history of protest or the history of, like, anti-racism work, and so then, like, things kind of come in cycles, and so, you know, new voices come up in new generations and it's almost as if these conversations have never been had before, but, like, I'd like to get your perspective on really, like, just these concepts, the concept of whiteness and then also, like, the concept of anti-racism. And I know those are big questions. I'ma give you space, but I'd love just to hear you talk about that.Tema: Well, I think part of what's really unique about this moment is that these concepts are more broadly understood within the resistance movement that we're seeing now than they ever have been in my lifetime, so that part is definitely true. When I started doing this work a gazillion years ago, [?] years ago or so, you know, a lot of people--there was not what I would call... I don't want to use the word sophisticated, so the deep understanding about what whiteness is, how white supremacy operates, how white supremacy is the culture that we're swimming in, how it informs who we are although it doesn't define who we are. There was not that clarity, and I feel like I've been a part of the generation of people who helped think about, develop, and--and I'm not taking credit for it. I mean, I'm part of the wave of people who sort of understood that it was important to ground us in understanding that, understanding the ways that white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, all of these symptoms of oppression have really shaped who we are, and we need to understand how they operate if we're gonna do something different and have a different vision. So what I'll say is I think--and this might be one of the questions you're gonna ask later, but I think that the thing that we need to be careful about is that white supremacy and capitalism and patriarchy are very, very ingenious, and what we've seen happen in every movement that has ever occurred historically in our country is that they get diverted from a justice focus to an access focus and that capitalism and white supremacy know how to lure us just enough to say, "We're gonna let you have power of a certain extent in our institution. We're going to let you have access. We're going to say good things about you. But don't rock the boat too much." Leaders going, "Defund the police? It's too vague. You don't have a plan." You know, when we talk about access to healthcare, people don't demand [?]. It's like, "Yes, we have a vision. We have a vision of communities where the billions of dollars that are spent on militarized police are spent on schools and community centers and making sure people have enough food to eat." That's the vision that we have [?] defund the police, and that's what we're gonna do and not get distracted by--so part of the backlash is gonna be fierce and hateful and violent, but the more dangerous part of the backlash is gonna be accomodation.Zach: It's interesting, to your point around, like, respectability, right, and so how people, like, use the concept of civility, like, as a cudgel, right, to really stymie progression. You know, we had Dr. Robin DiAngelo on Living Corporate a few months ago, and we talked about her work in studying white fragility, and, you know, and--and, not but... not but, but I've listened to perspectives on how white fragility is not necessarily, you know, anti-racist work. Can you share your perspective on that?Tema: Sure. One of the dangers of our movement--and, you know, I love our movement, and I love many things about it. One of the dangers of our movement though is that we can get really [?] about what being in the movement or what activism is, and so my feeling is--so I'm 68 years old. I've been around a long time, and [?] point in my life is that we need it all. We need it all. This is not a competition about, you know, who's doing it right and who's doing it best and where the focus needs to be. So our frame, the way--The DR Works Collaborative has also been closed for about three or four years. All of our materials are on our website, which we can share the address later, but what we--our frame is that typically racism shows up on three levels, on the personal level, the ways that we are with each other and ourselves, on the cultura level, the beliefs and values and standards and norms of the groups of people that we're operating within, including sort of white supremacy culture overall, and then our institutional policies and procedures and practices, and one of our racial equity principles is that you have to work on all three levels. And so what I hear Robin saying, and I think it's really important, is that those of us are white who work pretty consistently on our conditioning, [?] the invitation that we are extended to join whiteness and, in joining whiteness, to both disconnect from people of color, disconnect from other white people and disconnect from ourselves, because that's what the invitation is. An example of white fragility is if you are angry, if you are in full grief about what's happening and my fragility says, "Well, you need to tone it down, because I can only accept your [?] if it comes to me in a certain kind of package," then I'm completely disconnected. I'm disconnected from you, and I'm disconnected from myself because I'm not allowing myself to feel my own grief and rage, right, because I'm so scared of yours I'm certainly not gonna feel my own. So I think what you're speaking to, you know, there's a thing that people say about white people and navelgazing and that we just like to navel gaze, and what I like to--you know, we like to agonize, and Maurice Mitchell talks about how his liberation or the liberation of black people, of people of color, is not tied up with my anxiety as a white person about getting it right. So I think that there's this balance between [?] our personal work, because all of us have invitations extended to us by white supremacy in some form or another. So all of us doing work on our internalized self and then continuing to be in the world and relationships and figuring out what our role in this resistance movement is. So it's not an either or. It's very much to me a both and, because if we don't do our personal work, then the way that we're gonna show up is just gonna replicate all of the [BLEEP] dynamics and clinging to power [?] and not understanding who we're accountable to and posturing and, you know, just things that aren't helpful, and fear of our fear and all of those things. I think it's a both and, right?Zach: I appreciate that, and I agree, right? I think one, white fragility is just so real, and it creates so many barriers and, frankly, causes so much harm in ways that we don't even consider, like, literally every single day, and because white supremacy is such a reality, white fragility impacts behavior of black and brown folks even when white people aren't around. So to make sure that those who are in power are examining and interrogating themselves, like, that's critical. That doesn't mean it's the only thing, but it's important to do.Tema: Yes. I think that living in white skin in a white supremacy culture obviously confers power and privilege, but not to everyone, and not in the same way, right? And so I think that it's really important, for me--'cause I'm speaking for myself--to understand how many white people are caught up in the same crapola of white supremacy and the ways that racism targets people of color, are caught up in that without [?] seeing it clearly. And I'm not saying that racism targets white people, I'm saying white people who are working class and poor or white people who have had no opportunity to understand how whiteness operates are swimming around in ways that are completely not in their self-interest, and, you know, are continually encouraged, for example, to look to middle class wealthy white people as their community when in fact their community are other people in the same economic and social situation that they're in. So, you know, I'd like to make sure we understand how many white people are hoodwinked by this whole thing as well and invited to participate in ways that make no sense [?].Zach: I think that's a really good point. One piece of literature that has really gotten, frankly, over the years consistent attention, but at this time it continues to get attention, is "White Supremacy Culture." It's something that you wrote, and we'll put the link in the show notes for everybody, but we're gonna walk through this research, this document. But before we do that, can you talk to us a little bit about how you arrived at the points that you made within the work that you wrote?Tema: Sure. So I've only written one book, and it's called "The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don't Want to Know," and it basically was a chance for me to sit down and write all the things I and other colleagues have learned about teaching about race and racism to people. So that's what that book is, and White Supremacy Culture was written before the book, and I wrote it in either [?] or [?], so a long time ago. Kenneth and I were doing a lot of work on the West Coast, and I had just come from a People's Institute for Survival and Beyond workshop with Ron Chisholm and Daniel Buford and probably a few other people, and The People's Institute is based in New Orleans and is sort of, in my view, the grand daddy of people doing anti-racist education and training in my lifetime and so were our mentors and, you know, people that were doing the work that we were doing, so I was full of their wisdom when I wrote the piece, and I also had--and I can't remember the meaning, but I had just come from a meeting of predominantly white people where pretty much every dynamic in that sheet of paper, in that article, showed up, and I was frustrated beyond belief, and people say this, and this is my only experience of this phenomena, which is that "it wrote itself." Like, I didn't--I sat down at the computer and it wrote itself. Just sort of "This behavior, this behavior, this behavior, this behavior." It was like I was in a fury, and then I showed it to my mentor [?] Martinez, who was running a challenging white supremacy workshop at the time in the Bay Area, and she said, "You can't just list the terrible behaviors. You have to list antidotes. You have to talk about what to do," and so that was such good advice, and so I added those into it, and I will say--so it was written a long time ago. It was written without a class lens, which it needs, and it [?] things out, and it didn't--so I'm actually, in this moment, my project is creating a website rather than another article, but rather a website based on the article so that it can be more flexible. Lots of people have used it and adapted, and all the ways that people have used it and adapted it I'm gonna add a class lens, tell some stories, give examples. So that's my current project.Zach: Can we talk about, like--because in this document you essentially have these different characteristics. I'd like to walk through the characteristics that you list and then really just have you talk about each of them, because again, there are a lot of people that I respect, and I'm gonna shout-out Dr. Oni Blackstock because she's one of the most recent people who I saw tweeting about this and talking about this, but it's all over YouTube. Like, I don't know if you know this, but I just saw a video where somebody put this document up on a video and then, like, slow-scrolled it and talked about it, but I caught myself reading it and I said, "This is exactly like every work culture I've ever been a part of." So let's do this. Let's do each characteristic, and then you just kind of explain, you know, how these attitudes and behavior, you know, reinforce or drive white supremacy at work. Can we do that?Tema: Sure.Zach: So you start off with perfectionism. That's your first one.Tema: Mm-hmm. I started with that one I think probably because that's the one I'm the most guilty of myself. So, you know, I talk about how white supremacy culture is--the purpose of white supremacy is to disconnect us from each other [?] so that a few people can exert their control, cultural control, in ways that allow them to profit at our expense, and so perfectionism is this [idea?], it's very connected to professionalism, and it's this idea that there is a perfect way to do something, which is completely nonsense, and that there's somebody or some group of people who can determine what that is and encourage you to aspire to it. And then we internalize that, and I don't think I know a single person who actually feels completely comfortable with who they are and how they show up and how they're doing things, because the culture is so [?] I feel like we're continually falling short, and if we're continually falling short, then we have to buy products to make ourselves look better and feel better, and it's just a vicious cycle. And another thing I'll say about this list is that these things aren't just used to perpetuate racism and white supremacy and to target people of color in different ways at different times. They impact everybody, and they're toxic. There's nothing good about them at all at any time unless you're the one trying to control other people, and then you're so disconnected from yourself it's not even--Trump is a very good example of someone who's completely disconnected from anything. So I think that perfectionism is used as a tool of professionalism and as a tool to keep people from positions of power and also to keep people off balance about who they are and their worth and their value.Zach: You know, it's interesting. One of the things you say in here is, "Little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing, appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway."Tema: Mm-hmm, yeah, exactly. And then the way that we internalize that, even when we're fighting hard not to. You know, I was talking to a friend yesterday who was applying for a position at a foundation. It's completely, completely clear to me, and I think to her, that she is not only qualified for the job, she is over-qualified for the job, and my guess is they won't hire her because it's clear to them too, you know? And it's so pernicious, the way that that works, where a lot of white people here who are not called to account for our lack of understanding about how racism and white supremacy works because it's not ever part of our job qualifications. No one is evaluating us based on our ability to understand how that works, and we're about to invite somebody in who does understand, and that makes us really uncomfortable, so maybe [?] somebody who's gonna not make us feel uncomfortable all the time. That's part of how that works.Zach: And so it's interesting. So I was about to move to sense of urgency, but to your point, in the recommended antidotes for racism you have "develop a culture of appreciation where the organization takes time to make sure the people's work and efforts are appreciated. Develop a learning organization where it's expected that everyone will make mistakes and those mistakes offer an opportunity for learning." It's interesting, even in organizations where they'll say things like, "Oh, it's okay to make mistakes," I've noticed that--and this is a common experience for most black folks at work, black and brown people to be clear, we don't have the same grace to make mistakes. It's interesting because--and I've had this conversation already with a colleague, but there was a time at work I put a PowerPoint together, and one I just think PowerPoints overall have to be one of the biggest examples of, like, subjectivity to the max, because what you think is a good PowerPoint or nice design I may genuinely think is abhorrent. I may really not like the design of your PowerPoint, right? Like, I might hate it. But anyway, I did a PowerPoint. Someone didn't like it, and so then that PowerPoint and then me, in their eyes, not doing well on a PowerPoint, was then a justification for me to blocked from [a multitude] of opportunities in very public ways, right? And so it's like, what does it look like to really create objective, safe, equitable spaces for everybody?Tema: Right. And what does it look like for that particular person to admit to themselves that they may not have the corner on how something needs to be done? I mean, I remember--each one of these, there's so much that's also interconnected, and two things come to mind. I remember Kenneth--so Kenneth was my mentor and my colleague for 12 years, and he died way too early in 2004, but as we were working together I remembered saying to him... 'cause my style, we were both about the same age, and my [?] style is sometimes to say or admit I've made a mistake or to show some vulnerability, and I said to Kenneth, "You never do that, you never show any vulnerability." "Tema, I can't afford to do that. People are watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake. So even if I make one, I'm not gonna say that I did because people are ready to pounce all over me for it." You know, and again, just another example of how long it took me to learn that, he had to sort of say that out loud to me [?]. So yeah, I think there's that part of it, and I had another thought, but I'm sure it will come to me as we keep talking. So here's the other story, which was that I seemed to be the details-oriented person, and sometimes I'd get really frustrated because I felt like he wasn't paying attention to, like, air fare or flights or when we had to be somewhere, and so I started to develop a little bit of an attitude about how I was doing so much more than he was, more important [?], and we were having a discussion and he said something to me like, "I talked to So-and-so the other day," and I said, "So-and-so? They were in our training a year ago," and he went, "Yeah, yeah." I said, "You're talking to them now?" "Oh, yeah, yeah," and then he proceeded to tell me that he was fostering relationships with most people in almost all the trainings over time and that that's what he did, and it just was such a lightbulb moment for me. I'm like, "Oh, my God. This man," who was a brilliant trainer, there was no question about that, "is leading and offering things that I've never even dreamt of being able to lead or offer that makes such a difference in this work, while I'm sitting here feeling all superior because I know how to schedule a plane flight." It was just like... so many of us, and so many white people in particular, but so many of us are walking around thinking that we know how things should work when we don't know at all, [?] open to how other ways of doing might actually offer so much more. So yeah.Zach: I appreciate that, and that resonates with me too because I think about, especially if you have, like, these majority white organizations, you know, again, people attract, or they're attracted, to people that are like them, right? And that's not just in appearance, but also in, like, ways of thinking and doing, and so, like, if you're in this space, the majority are really good at tasks or really good at [?] things off a box, if there's someone who can do those things but that's just not their wiring, then that person's automatically seen as a problem or as inferior in some way. In reality it's like, "Okay, I don't need--there's eight of y'all who tick off boxes and who are very, like, transactional. Is it possible for me to be different and at the same time be just as good if not add more value than you do perhaps?" I think, for me transparently, one of the biggest mistakes I think I've made in my career is that I think I've been too transparent and vulnerable about me wanting to learn and grow, 'cause I say "Hey, I'd like to learn this. I don't know this," but I've learned, in the spirit of perfectionism, when you communicate that you don't know something or you're new to something, I've just learned that we don't know, black and marginalized people, just don't have the grace to communicate that they don't know. They don't have the grace to grow. They just don't.Tema: Yeah, and it's infuriating. It's completely infuriating, and it's a complete loss. I think the thing that I would like to get across with my audience, my commitment to working with other white people, is for those of us listening to this to understand the deep violence in that, you know? In working side-by-side with people who feel like they are not allowed to offer their vulnerability or their desire to grow and learn because--my God, it's intense.Zach: So you have a lot of terms here, and you know, we might have to do a part two, but I want to see how many of these we can get through so I'm gonna back up and let you talk more. Sense of urgency.Tema: I think that, again, the point of urgency--so every organization I've ever worked with operates with a huge sense of urgency and everything is so critically important right this minute, and it completely perpetuates racism because--the example I'll give is we were doing work with an organization of mostly lawyers that do very good work on a state-wide level, and they had just sort of unpacked all the ways in which [?] of color on the staff and in the community that they served were not feeling heard, were not included in decision making, their ideas were shut down, sort of what we were just talking about, and then an emergency came up, and I think there might have been an arrest, but something urgent happened within the community, and the white leadership, the white lawyers, felt like they had to respond right this minute and if they didn't the organization would be at stake, and right in front of our eyes all of the dynamics were playing out in front of us, and the two of us who were facilitating the workshop tried to suggest to them, "This is happening right in front of our eyes. We know that this is urgent, and we suggest that you sit down and you take a breath and you understand there are other people in the community who are handling it in this moment and that what you all need to do is really sit and take a breath and see how you can approach this differently," and so they just repeated the--you know, you could see it. The white people were circled around, making all these decisions, and the people of color were [?] them on the outside, trying to listen in and then getting disgusted and walking away, and it was just--when things are urgent, if we're not paying attention and we haven't set up the relationships and we haven't set up the procedures to say when things get literally urgent this is what we're gonna do, when things feel urgent but they aren't this is what we're gonna do. Is this really as urgent as we think it is? Because it's urgent we need to take a breath, we need to take a breath and make sure that we're all in this together rather than walking all over each other in our attempt to prove something, which is to prove that, like, we're the organization that's gonna respond like that, even if the way that we respond, you know, tramples over people. And then I think a lot of us internalize urgency. A lot of white people feel like, "If we don't act right now, if I don't fix this right now, then I'm not gonna be able to prove that I'm a good white person," so then we go in and fix something and we make it worse because we haven't stopped to take a breath to consult with other people, to see if our intuition, our impulse is actually the right one. I've seen that happen over and over and over again.Zach: Let's talk about quantity over quality.Tema: Well, you know, we live in a capitalistic society, and we love to measure things, and we love to believe that value has to do with amounts of things, usually money. And again, so I see some of the [thunder patterns?], all of the thunder patterns that I've seen in my lifetime and work, is thunders trying to get people to prove that they're effective by the numbers of things. "How many people did you impact?" Not the quality of things, not the depth of things, not the sustainability of things but, you know, the number of things, which is such a limited measure of how we're doing, and the research I've done on culture shift shows that it's actually not a numbers game. We don't need a majority of people to shift culture. We need deep relationships, we need generational change, we need clusters of people coming to new beliefs simultaneously, but they don't have to be a majority. So I just think it's good to be able to have a sense of what we think progress is, but often we aim towards--I do a lot of work in schools, and the story I often tell--so I'm sorry if anyone's heard this before--is how our schools often, if not always, have a story that what they're trying to do is prepare students for success, and what they mean by that is "We want students to stay in school, get good grades, graduate, get a job, and go shopping, and if we can measure that we've done that it doesn't matter if our students are leading meaningful lives. We're not measuring that. We're not measuring if students know how to find themselves. We're not measuring if students have gotten in touch with their spiritual side or their artistic side. We're not measuring whether students know how to be in a relationship with themselves and with each other. We're not measuring the things that matter, you know? We just don't know how to measure those things. We're obsessed with graduation rates and, you know, how much money people are making.Zach: You have another one here about worship of the written word.Tema: Mm-hmm. So I'll give an example if you'll give an example, but this is our history, sort of the theft of indigenous land, the theft of land from Mexico, the broken treaties, the enslavement of people, it's all built on worship of the written word and the whole, you know, all of our Southwest and Midwest states that became US property after the Mexican-American War and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, all of that theft of land was made possible because Congress passed all kinds of legislation requiring people to [?], and most people lived in a culture where that's not how people [?] that they owned land. So that's just one example, and just the ways that we hide behind "If it's not written down, then it doesn't exist." "It's only wisdom if it's written down," and then only if it's written down by certain people. What comes to mind for you?Zach: So here's where I found the application interesting. So there's a way that I believe those in power and in the majority will essentially place the burden on the oppressed to have evidence, like, tangible, documented evidence, but then in the instances where that evidence is undeniable, then at best it simply just saves that oppressed person from being harmed, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee justice for that oppressed person.Tema: Yeah, or they'll say it's not written right or the form was not filled out correctly or--Zach: Right, or "We still don't have all the facts," or "What about the other person's side?" And so there's still this--it's such a jig, because you're gonna lose, but the question is "While this may have saved you from getting fired, it's not actually going to absolve your name completely after all. These other people said something." Right?Tema: I think about when Bhagat Singh Thind sued the Supreme Court for citizenship, and he was from India, and he was suing based on how science classified people from India as Caucasoids, and the year before a Japanese person who had done the same thing lost the case because people from Japan were classified as mongoloids, so they were not white, but the Supreme Court said, "Well, it's true science classifies you as Caucasoids, but you're not seen as white by the common white man, therefore you're not white." So it's the written word, but also the word is, as you said, controlled and considered by those in power, and whose written words will be paid attention to and whose won't?Zach: Yeah. I think about Breonna Taylor. We know that she was murdered by the state in her own bed, but then when you go back and you look at the report it's completely blank, right? And so, like, anybody with good sense should be able to understand that Breonna Taylor's bullet-ridden body and that piece of paper are not congruent. So one of those [?] is lying. Breonna's own blood testifies that she is not lying, so why are Breonna Taylor's murderers still free? It's the worship of the written word.Tema: Yeah. Sandra Bland, all of that, yeah.Zach: Yeah, Sandra Bland as well, right? And countless others. Tony McDade. And it's frustrating, but I think about that. I think about how manipulative and--you used the word pernicious, it's a really appropriate word in that, you know, documentation really matters until it doesn't. I always tell marginalized people to document everything, because again, while documentation might not ever hold any accountable, it at the very least can make sure that you don't get fired, or it can delay you getting fired because you have something, hard evidence, that if someone says something, you're like, "Well, what you're saying is clearly not true." Okay, so paternalism was another characteristic that you had in your research.Tema: Yeah. I'm gonna bow here to a man named Paul Kibble, who does a lot of writing on Christian hegemony. It's just the way in which--and so many of these intersect, and I'm adding one called "qualified." I don't know if that's on the list explicitly there, but it's the way in which white people assume that, because we're white, we are qualified to act and make decisions that are outside our lived experience, and I think about--when I taught it, when I wasn't on the faculty in educational leadership, when I taught undergraduate students in education, you know, most of them are young, white women who were coming into teaching because they loved to--and please know I admire teachers beyond belief because they work so hard for so little, and yet they come in, these young white women come in very idealistic and very hopeful, and they have no experience, most of them, working with people of color and very little preparation for doing that, and yet have not internalized that they're not at all qualified to do the job, and the education system hasn't internalized that either, and so just the ways in which we've got almost every [?] institution is operating out of a sense of paternalism. Like, "We know what's better for you without consulting you or asking you about your lived experience." And I think about doing work with the department of social services where it's about a woman who, in order to make it through her week, had to visit 11 different offices in the Department of Social Services to account for herself, you know? And it's the way in which--if we look at Congress. Banks are completely involved in writing policies having to do with banks. Poor people and working people have no say in policies that impact their lives, and the laws that impact their lives are written by people who think that they need to be punished for being working class and poor or who think that they need to be exploited or, you know, who have absolutely no care or concern or lived experience, for the most part, of what it means to be black, brown, working class poor, and paternalism is just this idea that "We know better than you," and it can be very deeply embedded in religious thinking, in Christian thinking, and [?]--it's just sort of the idea that "We know best. We're going to convert you to our ways," and that's white supremacy is all about. The goal here [?] is "Act like us if we can exploit you more that way." Assimilation, and if not assimilation exploitation and violence, you know? It's just all based on this idea that we know better, and one of the things that we know better is that [class?] is more important than people.Zach: I think that's true. I think it comes down to a lot of power and control. So, you know, one of my larger concerns right now, even as corporations and larger organizations are looking at Black Lives Matter and people are taking these statements and stances, and organizations are mobilizing their employee resource groups and different things to have these conversations and do real talk and all this kind of stuff, and how much of this is about really hearing and including their marginalized employees, and how much of this is about, like, really making sure that you're retooling, reshaping your organization to be equitable and inclusive, or how much of this is really about you just trying to put some gates and borders around this to maintain control, right? That's my biggest concern.Tema: So I think there's two parts to this. So I think there can be conscious paternalism and there can be unconscious paternalism, and probably lots of gray [?] in between, and so I for one completely hate the terms diversity and [?] because I don't think that they--it's about window-dressing or table-dressing or whatever term you want to use. It doesn't ask the question, "What are we including people into?" Because if we were to ask that question, we would have to admit that a lot of what we're inviting people into is toxic. So it's not about including people. It's about reshaping everything, and I think that's what I was talking about in terms of what we need to be wary of, that some of the backlash is going to be very direct and hateful. Now, a lot of it is gonna be about accommodation, and forget about justice, let's just accommodate, accommodate, accommodate. And paternalism really plays a role there, and we can see it reflected in older leaders often, people who have been around a long time, who are scared they're gonna lose power by these young people who are coming up full of fervor and demanding justice, and some of us have accommodated for so long in order to just often survive that we've forgotten what the goal is, and some of the paternalism is--I'll speak for myself--is internalized entitlement, the internalized belief that I'm qualified to do things I'm not qualified to do, and it didn't require any intent on my part. And I tell a story on the website, and it might be in the book I can't remember, of essentially pushing my black colleague aside in an environment where I knew absolutely everything. This was a different colleague, a colleague named Kamayu [sp] [?], an incredible organizer, and he was in [?], the room was packed full of African-American people living in the [?], economically poor, culturally incredibly genius and rich, and, you know, I didn't think he was doing a good job, so I walked up to the front and I pushed him aside, and I didn't know anything about [?] in the [?], right? But I had this instinct in my body that he wasn't doing it and I needed to fix it. It was--so there's that, the way I internalized this paternalism and this idea that I know how to do things. We just cause so much harm, and again, it's a complete tribute to Kamayu that we're still friends. He actually didn't say anything to me for years, and finally I started to think about it and I'm like, "Kamayu, what about that day?" And he went, "Oh, I figured you'd figure it out sooner or later." You know? So there were, like, five years in there where Kamayu was not--I was not in a genuine relationship with him because he was waiting for me to figure it out, you know?Zach: To your example, I think about it in ways that, like--so it's interesting, you have these cultures that are very racist, right? Like, you have these organizations that have harmed black people for a while, but it just so happens that there's a certain confluence of events that are forcing organizations that have been historically harmful to black and brown people, now they're having to do things differently. But what's challenging, what's interesting, is that some of the people who just six months ago were very harmful are now self-appointing themselves as leaders to have these conversations, right? And, like, there's a certain--of course that's emotionally inauthentic, but I think there's also a certain level of entitlement and paternalism in that.Tema: Yeah, totally. And again, I think--so this is my job, it's not your job, but as someone who identifies as white, who is white, who lives a white life and thinks a lot about what it means to be in relationships with other white people, part of [my job?] is to encourage myself and other white people to think about, "What are we doing here?" And what is the cost to you of this posturing, and what would it be like for you to actually authentically sit down with yourself and go, "Okay, what am I afraid of? What kind of help do I need? What are the things I really need to change?" And I think all of us need to develop a much better practice of what I would call radical honesty with ourselves about why we want to live in a world where we actually are able to have authentic relationships with other people and ourselves and live in a world where people are well-cared for and people can thrive and we don't have to be so afraid of [?] and all these other things. So yeah.Zach: So I'ma pick one last one. Fear of open conflict.Tema: Yeah, that goes back to perfectionism and some of the other things that we talked about. The story I'll tell is that--well, it's a common story, which is that some racism is happening, and rather than deal with the racism that's happening we will label or target the person who's naming it, and sometimes that happens to white people too because we're so afraid of the truth-telling that's gonna happen of how racism is happening. So it's just this--we're too afraid to talk about things that are real and are gonna have emotion attached to them and might lead us, as white people, to feel like we've done something wrong or that we may even essentially be bad in some kind of way, so let's not talk about it. Let's blame the person who's trying to make us uncomfortable. This is attached to "right to comfort." Let's blame the people who are calling us in and say that there's something wrong with them so we don't have to feel our feelings, we don't have to be uncomfortable, we don't have to look at ourselves. We can stay in what feels like control, and it's such a--again, it does such harm, to other people and also to ourselves. The ability to sort of say, "Bring it on. Okay, tell me more. Tell me more. That was so racist? Okay, tell me more. I want to know. Tell me more." It's such a different energy. It's opening. Or "You're racist." "No, I'm not." "Yes, you are." "No, I'm not." There's nowhere--it's, like, you're building conflict and you're not--it's like, "So tell me. How am I racist? Yeah, I want to know, because I think I probably am. So tell me." There's so much more fruit there, even if you end up not agreeing with what they say it's like there's more fruit, more juice, more ability to--it's like, "We can handle this. We can sit in this discomfort, and in fact, if we don't learn to do that we're not gonna get anywhere."Zach: But see, I think that in the context of, like, a business, like, the fear with that is that if I admit that I'm racist, if I admit that I've harmed you, then that gives you byway to pursue the company, right? And so there's this fear of creating risk or opening your company up, opening yourself up to risk by admitting your faults, you know?Tema: So people just need to figure out a way to deal with that.Zach: [laughs] I love how you just dismiss that.Tema: Oh, come on. I don't--you know, legalese and laws and policies [?] in service of connection and not in service of fear and abuse, right? It's like Trump saying you can only come to the thing if you're not gonna sue me if you get the coronavirus. Like, no. And I would also say, for me, one of the racial equity principles [?], you'll see this list of characteristics, and you'll also see our racial equity principles, and one of the ones I love the most is called Organizing Mind, and what we mean by that is you start with the chorus. People go, "Oh, you're preaching to the chorus," and I go yes, because our chorus is very out of tune, so let's get in tune, and then we can start preaching to people outside the chorus and bring them into the chorus. So it's, like, start with the people who want you want, and figure out what your power is, figure out the risk that you're willing to take, and from there each one reach one teach one, as Sharon Martinez would say. So in a corporate environment it's, like, figuring out what are the roadblocks that we need to get rid of so we can actually do this, or whwere are we willing to have authentic conversations regardless of the risk and can we start doing that? So figure out what's within your power to do and do it. Don't wait for permission. Don't wait for--you know, there are lots of things that we can do and build our power that way without people giving us permission to do it, as we are witnessing across the country and across the globe, right? All these beautiful people, many young people, not waiting for permission. Bringing down statues, [?], and it's a beautiful thing to see right now.Zach: It's brought me joy, frankly, to see. Dr. Okun, this has been a phenomenal conversation. I just want to thank you so much for being a guest. I want to make sure that everybody knows that the document that we were walking through and that I picked a few characteristics out of for our guest to beautifully expand upon is gonna be in the show notes, and we're going to also be promoting it--you'll see it this week on social media and things of that nature, so make sure that you check it out. This has been Living Corporate. You know, we do this every single week. We're having conversations, real talk in a corporate world, that center and amplify marginalized voices at work. We'll make sure to catch you all next time. In the meantime between now and next time, we're all over Beyonce's internet. You just type in Living Corporate, we'll pop up. Catch us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, and man, if you have anything you want to talk to us about, just contact us through the website, living-corporate.com. Please say the dash--living dash corporate dot com. 'Til next time, y'all, this has been Zach, and you've been listening to Dr. Tema Okun, activist, educator, speaker, organizer. Peace.

The pandemic has merged with this incredible moment of uprising. The uprising is opening the opportunity to win real structural change for Black Lives now. There's nowhere to hide from a conversation about racism in America, and our collective agitation is a really good thing. Maurice Mitchell, the National Director of The Working Families Party and a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, shares more about this opportunity for mass education, the multi-racial coalition against white supremacy, the fight against cynicism, and the winning math of adding rather than subtracting.You can find Maurice Mitchell on Twitter @mauricewfpDetails on what you can learn, do and share: peoplesaction.org/nextmoveAbout People's ActionPeople's Action is a national network of 40 state and local grassroots, power-building organizations united in fighting for justice. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

George Floyd's murder re-ignited the movement against police brutality and for black lives. Francesca Fiorentini and comedian Nato Green welcome Maurice Mitchell of Working Families Party and Movement 4 Black Lives into The Bitchuation Room to discuss everything from capitalism and anti-racism to the "Flu Klux Klan" and Riverdance. Plus SpaceX's launch and a Nazi-collaborating alligator dies in Moscow. Thank you for supporting this show with your tips, 5 star ratings and reviews! Watch the show LIVE on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch at /franifio. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

George Floyd's murder re-ignited the movement against police brutality and for black lives. Francesca Fiorentini and comedian Nato Green welcome Maurice Mitchell of Working Families Party and Movement 4 Black Lives into The Bitchuation Room to discuss everything from capitalism and anti-racism to the "Flu Klux Klan" and Riverdance. Plus SpaceX's launch and a Nazi-collaborating alligator dies in Moscow. Thank you for supporting this show with your tips, 5 star ratings and reviews! Watch the show LIVE on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch at /franifio.

We talk about how the Left is missing the mark at this moment with its troubling silence on Trump’s white nationalism, which is the key to and cornerstone of his continued power. By failing to make this their top priority issue—and keep it front and center—the Left, including all current Democratic primary candidates, risks throwing away their best chance at winning this November. We also hear what our special guest, Maurice Mitchell, formerly a key leader in the Black Lives Matter movement and now National Director of the Working Families Party, has to say on this topic, the party’s support of Elizabeth Warren, and much more. [11:21] Maurice Mitchell - https://twitter.com/mauricewfp Working Families Party - https://twitter.com/workingfamilies

While the media focuses on the Sanders/Warren spat, Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party and Jennifer Epps-Addison of the Center for Popular Democracy Action argue progressives must defeat the forces that gave rise to Trump.

National Director for the Working Families Party Maurice Mitchell joins Chris to discuss his support for Elizabeth Warren.

Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party joins us to talk about why he and his party are choosing to endorse Senator Elizabeth Warren for President.

This week, Mika is joined by special guest co-host and friend to the show, Benny Starr, for a special interview with Maurice Mitchell, National Director with the Working Families Party. Together, they discuss the Working Families Party's goals for South Carolina, how to engage communities in preparation for the upcoming Presidential primary and their collective support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Working Families Party: workingfamilies.org Elizabeth Warren: elizabethwarren.com Benny Starr: bennystarrsc.com New to the show? Check out this previous episode: bit.ly/CultureAndTheWhiteGaze I run on love & community support: bit.ly/SupportCAN , $mikagadsden on CashApp Get exclusive content by supporting this podcast via Patreon: patreon.com/ChsActNet Follow the Charleston Activist Network on Social Media: FB: @charlestonactivistnetwork IG: @charlestonactivistnetwork Twitter: @ChsActNet Email Mika: Tamika@charlestonactivistnetwork.com Website: www.charlestonactivistnetwork.com

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, talks about why the organization endorsed Elizabeth Warren. And he explains why his party sees a lot of Americans not being served by the “corporatist” Democratic Party. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many want to beat Trump by doing the purported safe thing, the definition of insanity. Progressives will win if they don't, cower.

Working Families Party (WFP) National Director Maurice Mithcell visited with Politics Done Right (PDR) on Radio Row at Netroots Nation 2019 in Philadelphia recently. He explained what the party was all about and its relationship to the Democratic Party. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/politicsdoneright/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/politicsdoneright/support

Maurice Mitchell is National Director of the Working Families Party. #WPRO He says the party, which focuses on bringing working people and progressives into politics, has made inroads in at least 16 states, and plans to encourage candidates to run for the Rhode Island General Assembly in the 2020 election. https://workingfamilies.org/

Maurice Mitchell is National Director of the Working Families Party. #WPRO He says the party, which focuses on bringing working people and progressives into politics, has made inroads in at least 16 states, and plans to encourage candidates to run for the Rhode Island General Assembly in the 2020 election. https://workingfamilies.org/

Harry Hamlin's journey brought him from the Air Force to night classes at the William H. Bowen School of Law and the Attorney General's office before ultimately leading him to Mitchell Williams, where he's spent over 20 years as a business attorney. Hamlin's time at the firm has been shaped by his close relationship with the late Maurice Mitchell and his heavy involvement with the Take Time to Give program. Hamlin joined host Natalie Ghidotti to talk about his career and how he strives to honor Mr. Mitchell in this episode, which is available on iTunes, Stitcher and our website.

  We made it through to November 7th! Come get through your midterm election adrenaline/terror hangover with us. The world is drowning in spin and hot-takes, so we're holding a different kind of vulnerable, real-talk space to process the results and work to understand what comes next for our movements as we take stock of both our wins and our losses. Let's hear about how fun Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory party was *and* recommit ourselves to the long-game work of building a multiracial populist movement for liberation. We're joined today by Working Families Party National Director Maurice Mitchell, longtime organizer Barbara Dudley, and Alexandra Rojas of Justice Democrats. With the whirlwind of the 2018 US midterm elections, Healing Justice Podcast brought you the SURVIVING ELECTIONS miniseries to help us all survive this political cycle together. Learn more & check out the complete series at www.healingjustice.org/elections --- COME PARTY WITH US! Healing Justice Podcast is turning 1 year old! We’re having a birthday party & hosting our first *live show* on December 11, 2018 in Brooklyn, NY... and you're invited: https://tinyurl.com/hjparty --- This miniseries is sponsored by Groundswell Action Fund, resourcing visionary political organizing led by women of color, low-income women and transgender people across the country. This week, we're joined by Managing Director, Charlene Sinclair. Pitch in to support Groundswell's critical work here: bit.ly/groundswellaction Partner with us: If your foundation or organization is interested in a partnership sponsorship for season 2 of the podcast to celebrate your work and spread your message like Groundswell has so wonderfully done here, reach out to kate.werning@gmail.com ---   MEET OUR GUESTS:   Maurice Mitchell is the National Director for Working Families Party (WFP) and has over two decades of experience in political and community organizing. Before joining WFP he co-founded Blackbird, a movement-building organization that offers communications services and has worked closely with Black Lives Matter Global Network. Barbara Dudley has been a movement activist for 50+ years, but only in the last ten has she engaged in electoral politics, via the Working Families Party. She was a lawyer for GI’s resisting the war in Vietnam, for tenant unions, and for unionizing farmworkers, she went on to serve as Director of the National Lawyers Guild during the Reagan years, then Director of Greenpeace US, and then Director of Strategic Campaigns for the national AFL-CIO during the Clinton years. Alexandra Rojas is the Executive Director at Justice Democrats (JD), an organization founded by former staff of the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign in order to transform the Democratic Party into a party that works for its voters, not just its corporate donors. --- JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Sign up for our email list to receive occasional communication from us with resources for your work and wellbeing. Sign up here: http://www.healingjustice.org Talk with us on social media: Instagram @healingjustice, Healing Justice Podcast on Facebook, & @hjpodcast on Twitter  --- SHOW YOUR SUPPORT Please follow / subscribe, rate, & review in whatever app you are listening, and SHARE this resource with everyone you know who could benefit from it! This podcast is 100% volunteer-run. Help cover our costs by becoming a sponsor at www.patreon.com/healingjustice  You can also give a one time donation here: https://secure.squarespace.com/commerce/donate?donatePageId=5ad90c0e03ce64d6028e01bb --- THANK YOU: Mixing and production by Zach Meyer at the COALROOM & Katie McCutcheonMusic by Danny O’Brien & Zach MeyerProduction support from Parke Ballantine, Jillian White, & Guido GigentiVisuals by Josiah WerningMaurice Mitchell photo by Rafael Shimunov

Bill Lipton, director of the Working Families Party in New York, and Maurice Mitchell, the WFP national director, join The Brian Lehrer Show to talk election results and look ahead to November. Later, City Comptroller Scott Stringer weighs in.  

Social movements and party politics - inherently at odds or natural allies? This week, in his first in-depth TV appearance, Maurice Mitchell, the new National Director of the Working Families Party, joins us in studio. Laura and Maurice discuss his activist background, the WFP's national and international vision, and how the organization is tackling this midterm election year. Music: “I Want to Believe” by UNA from their album "Noise of the Wing". Support theLFShow

This week on The Fightlete Report Podcast@3:15 PFL Light-Heavyweight Brandon Halsey came on the show to talk about his upcoming fight against Vinny Magalhaes at PFL 2018 #5 Thursday August 2nd on NBC Sports. Also his coach Antonio McKee joined us as well to talk about his fight. Halsey def. Smealinho Rama at PFL2 by doctor stoppage. He trains at the Body Shop in Lakewood, CA.@23:26 PFL Lightweight Efrain Escudero came on the show to talk about his upcoming fight against Islam Mamedov at PFL 2018 #5 Thursday August 2nd on NBC Sports. Efrain def Jason High by Guillotine Choke on short Notice at PFL#2. .@38:18 IL Middleweight James Bochnovic talked about his upcoming fight against Brian Green at XFO Outdoor War 14 August 4th in Lake Island, IL. The UFC/Bellator vet is 8-3 and trains at Rothwell MMA in Wisconsin. @1:13:00 WI Lightweight Pro “Native Pyscho” Jordan Griffin was on The Fightlete Report. Jordan fights Maurice Mitchell at DWTCS Week 7 July 31st on UFC Fight Pass. He defeated Shawn West by RNC in 1st R at LFA 41. He’s 16-5 and 3 fight win streak all finishes and trains at Roufusport in Milwaukee, WI.Sean Lennon and Rich Sanchez gave predictions for UFC Fight Night Calgary Saturday recapped UFC Hamburg, Invicta 30, and went over MMA News Headlines for the week.Listen Live Tues @12pm only on Chicagolandsportsradio.com or watch the LiveStream on Facebook- https://m.facebook.com/FightleteReport/

Social movements and party politics - inherently at odds or natural allies? This week, in his first in-depth TV appearance, Maurice Mitchell, the new National Director of the Working Families Party, joins us in studio. Laura and Maurice discuss his activist background, the WFP's national and international vision, and how the organization is tackling this midterm election year. Music: “I Want to Believe” by UNA from their album "Noise of the Wing".  Support theLFShow