Unlearning Politics Pt. 2 with Reverend Ayanna Watkins: Navigating Multiple Candidates, Debunking the Voting Myth, The Rhythm of Organizing, and The Power of Community Advocacy

Hello everybody and welcome once again to the Unlearned Podcast.

I am your host, Ruth Abigail aka RA, and you have entered into the podcast, that is helping people gain the courage to change their mind so that they can experience more freedom, and we are currently in a series called Unlearning Politics, and I have with me my very good friend, miss.

Ayanna Watkins. Reverend Ayanna Watkins, queen Ayanna Watkins, whatever you would, whatever dignified, you know you would like, however, you like to refer to her, you know. Ayanna Watkins, everybody who is currently the.

Executive Director of MICA Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action Hope, of which I am a part, and I happen to serve on the board with her. Welcome to the podcast, ma'am. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm excited so we have a lot of really interesting conversations. Yes, we do, we do. They keep me alive. Yeah, ma'am, I mean you got to with somebody.

There are things that we really love about this world and things that are really annoying, really annoying. I'm really annoying you right now about politics.

Oh my God. I mean, do we do chronological order, alphabetical order, like how do we get into this, however it comes? No, I am annoyed that there is no runoff for the mayoral race. I'm annoyed, are you? I'm in favor of democracy. I would like everyone to have all the choices they need to have, but if someone who's trying to help people engage with the election and learn about the candidates, it is annoying to have close to 80 people on this ballot. It's insane. It's really insane. It's a lot. I really think that's probably been the thing I've heard most about is why are there so many people on this ballot?

Like, and how are you supposed to?

I mean, how are you really supposed to even engage well with that many people? How do you help people engage well with that? So we've tried to. This is the mic answer, right? So, we have tried to put as many candidates as we could in front of the people in a single meeting. So we had a meeting, our public meeting, and held it as a candidate forum, so as many humans in front of the candidates as possible and ask them questions about the issues that we've been working on for the past several years. So the people who've been listening to us, who've been walking with Micah, who've been part of the work, they know what they care about, they know what they're walking into the ballot box thinking about, because we all chose those issues together. We're all thinking about transit. We're all thinking about the criminal justice system or the criminal legal system. We're all thinking about education, public schools, and so we put those questions that we are all thinking about in front of the candidates so that people could hear and see for themselves where folks stood. We know we can't cover the wide gamut of possible issues that exist in the universe.

It's not our job.

We have a lane and so we tried to help people stand in that lane. And I also hope that people who have been following our work over the years have also seen how these very same political actors have behaved, what they have stood for when it wasn't an election season, what they did with us or in opposition to us when it wasn't an election season, or whether they heard of them at all. So I think I'm hoping that folks who have been engaged with us have had not just this election cycle to get involved or engaged, but have been able to see and hear some of these names so that when these 17 names came down the ballot cell, I'm more familiar. They're not meeting everybody for the first time this summer. So election season is one thing, the elected officer dealing with an elected officer is a different thing, right? So what… you know, I think one of the things I've appreciated about Micah and being a part of it is as someone who, I mean, I voted. You know, I voted when I was 18 and I voted every election I could vote for since then, but it wasn't until I really got to Memphis that I paid attention right to especially local elections and and, and so being part of Micah has helped me with that, to understand what that means.

But even more so, how to be politically involved after an election season because I think that election season is a year For most people. It's not even that long. It's not even that long Well three months right, we're really paying attention, but then these people are in office for the next four years, and so to me, it's worth helping people understand what are the things that I, that I am missing after the election season what do I need to be paying attention to?

It's one thing for people to get elected, I'm a for to put a run.

It's another thing to actually get elected. How do you help people? How do you? What are some things you think people really have to unlearn about after the election?

They can't see me on the podcast smiling, because there is a lot of good answers to that question, but the one that stands out to me right now, at the front of my mind, is that elected officials work for you and me. They work for us and and I Was one of those people who, like you said, I turned 18, I voted for Bill Clinton, and now you know exactly how I am right and. But you know I voted, but I did not follow what was going on among my own elected representatives. Yeah, between elections yeah. And that's the power that we have and we are laying down. It belongs to us In organizing. We think about in terms of public and private life, and that the way we I'm gonna say this in the negative down term, I say positive the way People have most often been oppressed in this country and beyond is by taking away their ability to have a public life, and if you really good it, you'll take away the idea that we even have a right to a public life. Mm-hmm, I Thought having being a public person, having a public life, was a privilege that belonged to celebrities. Mm-hmm, right, I didn't know that was something a regular person could have. Right, right, right, that was a gift that Organizing gave me to say no no, no, you have a private life, but it is not the only realm in which you can Exist in the world. You, too, can have a public life. You can develop relationships that are meant to further your ambitions, that are meant to build up your community, that are meant to Change the world for the next generation. Whatever your sphere is, you can build that life for yourself, and Engaging with the folks you elected to office is part of developing that public life. It's part of getting to know Public officials and dealing with them in the public arena, not saying, oh, I'm so privileged, I got to have this meeting with this right. Right, we think about it as though we met a celebrity or a monarch in a monarchy. Right, like we met the king. Right now, we have lived right. No, this is this is a democracy right and so I'm gonna go meet with the person I put in their job and so many of us are employees and we're not employers anyway. So we have nowhere to put this in our minds Because we don't have any employees. But but you actually do.

If you are a citizen of voting citizen in a democracy, you have employees and they are your elected officials so there's there's a lot of tension around that, though, because you you know To say that I have a public life to say that I have the right to disagree With people that are in office, people with power, all of that.

Me, who you know have a regular job.

Do a regular thing, have regular kids, and you know I'm just doing life every day.

What, what, what right like yeah, I have the right to put them in office, but do I have the real right to question them when they're there? What, what? How do you, how do you help people Undo that tension in their minds? Like I'm not Qualified enough to do that, you know I'm not I don't have enough money to do that.

You know you got have money to move stuff right.

I mean, who am I? I think that gets a lot of people. I Was switched the language up because and that's one of the things that I've Learned just walking this journey doing justice work. Oh, this isn't about. Do I have the right to speak to them? I have a responsibility, ability to speak to them to let them know how their decisions are impacting me and Whether or not they're on the right track. That doesn't mean I don't trust them to do their job. That doesn't mean I am responsible for reading a 350 page bill when they're no, you get up there and you read the bill and then you know, get up there and tell me, tell me what it is. Hold the town hall right. Right, tell me what's going on, right. Ask me for my opinion now. But I also have a responsibility, yeah, to be an informed citizen, yeah, and to know what's going on, what decisions my elected representatives are making and if, at a basic let on a basic level, it is impacting my life in a positive way that I can do so, being a, being, a part of my god. Have the, I've had the, I have exercised that particular responsibility quite a bit and I gotta be honest, this is just me. I Probably count, on one hand, the amount of elected officials I feel like really care about what I have to say. So when do you put that? What do you do with that? That's the world as it is. Yeah, right, I'm. I've been around a lot of organizers recently, like conferences and things like I. Have a lot of organizers speaking in the front of my brain. So, for all the folks from whom this is unfamiliar, forgive me in advance, please, but one of the other things that we talk about a lot is there is such thing as the world as it is Right now and the world as it should be right, and we must not get those things confused. Yes, but we also are not off the hook for either one. We have to deal with the world as it is, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to work for the world as it should be right, and so I think part of the reason our legislators have can Leave you with that impression after a meeting right, you have not been heard, nobody's listening to you and they don't care what you think, because for so long, so many of us didn't think we had the right to Be in the room, and when folks stop holding you accountable, you stop being accountable to them, you stop caring what they think and you focus on the people you are Accountable to that, or who have made themselves clear that you are accountable to them, who end up being because we didn't just did we not just talk about money who end up being the folks who pay for your campaign, that's it. Who end up being those folks who hold levers that you need turned, instead of being accountable, on general principle, to the folks who put you in office.

That's it right and that's that's uh, I think you know it's almost a catch-up me to the more you learn about politics unless you want to be a part of it.

You know I'm saying like it's, like this is foolish, I don't, I don't want to, and then, but you're at the same time like it needs to change. So how do you, how can you change something you're not a part of? But yet I don't want to be part of this mess you know, it's just.

It's just weird dichotomy that I don't. Sometimes I feel it um, I Know a lot of other people do.

I was sharing with another guest, my brother Made a comment. He does this to bother me. He made a comment on something I posted Saying you know, I had to unlearn that my vote matters, you know, and we go back and forth all the time whenever it gets to be around elections. Oh, here you go talk about me. You know, vote, vote, vote, blah, blah, blah. Why would I vote? It does my vote doesn't matter what it really doesn't matter. He believes that and I think a lot of people, particularly a lot of black people that are in our age range, believe that right.

Why do people believe that how?

do you unlearn that? Because sometimes it does feel that way, like this isn't a world that I'm welcomed in I. Want to spend my energy doing in a different way to lost cause. You know what? What do I? What do I do with that? Again, not just in election season, but afterwards like shoot, do I even have the right to say anything if I don't vote? Do I have the right to?

to hold my elected official responsible, an accountable. Do I have a responsibility if I don't vote?

I'm asking a lot of different random questions, but they're all coming in my head. It's like I mean people. I think people really have to wrestle with that stuff, you know.

We live in a very frustrated Society. We see very little change.

So what do we do with that? You come and hang out with Micah. Come on, ruth Abigale. No, let me take this because this is really serious and I'm serious with my answer, but I can back it up. So I do think that it's easy to fall, and easy and understandable. It is understandable to fall into a space where you feel like my vote doesn't matter and mathematically I think that's an easy argument to make because it's one vote right in a slew of votes. But that's like saying the one drop in the ocean doesn't matter. Of course it doesn't by itself, but if 2,000 drops move on their ends together, if the temperature in that ocean goes up by a degree or down by a degree, these are little things that make the difference. But we can talk about it in terms of actual numbers. We're talking about. We looked at this last year and forgive me all you people who know the real numbers, but I'm going to put these imaginary numbers in front of you. It roughly took 150,000 people to elect a district attorney. That's county-wide. It's 600,000 people in Memphis. We haven't gone to the county of that. So we are there actually, because there are so few people voting. Your vote actually matters a lot more, and that was at the county level. We are now at the city level where the number of people voting are in the thousands, like when this race is over 25% of the people who are eligible actually vote. It'll be like, wow, well, we did all right. Wow, wait, really 25%. 25% is a win. That's about right for a local election in Memphis. If we're talking about averages, it ain't right in terms of morality. Correct that's another argument, but that's how many people it takes. Now I want you to break that down even further. We have 17,000-year-old candidates, 25% of the people vote, and then you get a 17th of a. It only takes right. So now you divide everybody by 17. Jeez, it takes very. It's going to take very few people to elect the mayor in this city. It's going to take even fewer to elect each city council person. Right Again, we're talking now in the hundreds. So once you really start looking, I understand him at. I understand your brother and those who think like him, because he is not alone, right? I understand that argument in the broad mathematical sense. If you stay up here in the theory again, the people on the podcast cannot see what I'm doing with my hands. No, but, I don't know, but just imagine me talking with my hands to say, if we stay up here in the broad mathematical realm, fine, that is a reasonable argument, but when you bring it down to the actual ground and our actual voting numbers, no, we're talking hundreds of people, sometimes tens of people, who make differences in entire races, and this is not broadly across the United States, I'm just talking about here in Memphis, yeah, yeah. So it's actually wrong, even mathematically. It's wrong. It's incorrect, inaccurate to say that your vote doesn't matter If you and everybody on your block voted the same. We did this. We did this. Looking at churches, there are some congregations in this town who by themselves, could turn a precinct around Congregations. That's insane, right, yeah? So I think one of the things we have to unlearn and this is the thing that continues to replay for me, for politics what we have to unlearn is that we are powerless. It's not true. It's not true spiritually, it's not true mathematically. I don't care how you want to spin it or how you want to call God, it's just not true.

Well, so how do I?

Okay, let's say that I buy that. Okay. What does power look like for me? What does it look like to be powerful? Let's talk about Memphis. Okay, we're just going to stay here. We're not going to go to some metaphorical theoretical place.

Yeah, let's talk about here. Yeah, we'll talk about right here in Memphis.

Yeah, and we'll talk about Micah. Okay, that we have had a transit equity team for now going on five years, working on elected officials to get more money in transit, in public transportation, so you can actually walk out of your house, get on a bus, go where you, get where you going within a day. Yeah, I can't wait on the quarter for the rest of your life. So this has been happening with a small team. I don't know that this transit team has ever been larger than 20 people. Okay, on this good days, on this average days, we're talking about five to 10 people, right, okay, but that team, that team of five to 10 people, has moved the narrative, along with other like-minded folks in their own organizations doing their own work. Yeah, right, memphis Bus Riders, union Citizens, better Service, like they've been out here and their persistent work over four years has moved us from conversations where we were having a conversation with the county mayor where his words to us were I don't know that anybody cares about transit, to fast forward to the next election where no candidate is willing to get up there without saying public transit is central to success in our city. That's shifting the narrative. Yes, then we moved from shifting the narrative to moving some money. So we get from 1.5 million, putting an extra 1.5 million in the transit pot, as it were, coming from the county, which was a historic budget move. The county had not put money in public transit before. They left that to the city, so we got. That was brand new money, new money. Now we're celebrating 1.5 million just a few minutes later. A few years later rather, we're celebrating a recurring influx of money from the city and the county on a dedicated budget line for expired pilots that we're predicting will turn into 32 million in a few more years. That's what five to 10 people for five years did. That's it. That's what I have. It's just evidence. It's just most of the change that we see didn't happen because millions of people move. That's right. It happened because 10 people moved. It happened because five people met for five years. This is true in the civil rights movement. It's true pick your movement. These are how these things are happening Now. Eventually millions of people come along, but at the beginning of the day, at the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott, you have five to 10 women waiting for somebody to be brave enough not to get up out of the white section so that they can move the plan that they've been sitting on for a while, for months and almost years. This is, I understand, because I feel that apathy, that feeling like this, isn't working often. Often it's hard because you're a person fighting against systems. It's a real fight. There's very much a David and Goliath story. Some of those Goliath wins, or it looks like Goliath is winning. Your job is to show back up to the fight, because the fight matters. When the day is done I speak for myself. When the day is done and my own daughters are looking back on history and they're looking at these highs and lows that we've been through I want them to be able to say but my mama was there and she was fighting for what was right. Sometimes she won and sometimes she lost, but my mama was always there. She was not going to let this stand.

So you said we're fighting against systems. What do you say to people who say it's not a system problem, it's a people problem?

I don't have words for the mama. Look, I just gave you. There are folks who believe exactly that, because I've heard exactly that In meetings. I've heard people say casually I've heard it in very important meetings, air quotes included and I would say to that systems are made of people. We are created by people and run by people and maintained and sustained by people. So fine, if you want to have a semantic argument with me, knock yourself out. But you know, a thing is working as a system when a person doesn't even have to push any buttons to make it go, the system is self-maintained. Is the status quo? No-transcript. I'm gonna try and think of a quick example. I mean, the criminal legal system offers all kinds of examples. Yes, it does. That's a great place to. That's good, that's the land. Let's land there Right. And so if we think about children who commit crimes, let's say a child is accused of committing a crime and it's a serious crime, that child, because they are not yet 17, not yet 18, could go to juvenile detention and be tried in juvenile court. That child could go to adult court and be tried as an adult. When 98 children in Shelby County in a given year 80, 90 plus percent of them are black are being moved into adult court and four children are moved in Davidson County in that same year to adult court, that's a system that's funneling children. I don't know that any one individual made 98 separate decisions to. You see where I'm going and when the Davidson County officials who make those decisions came and talked to us in a town hall a couple of years back, that's exactly what they told us. We made active decisions to keep the system from automatically dropping people there. We had all manner of stop gaps to say wait, let's make sure that we're making the best decision here. Now. I'm a sociologist by training. I'm a sociologist and I'm a social worker by training. So I am trained in systems, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I am taught to think of the world in systems and I am taught to identify systems where they exist. So we can have arguments all day Me and the psychologist can have arguments all day about the fact. You know, the importance of the individual, the importance of the system or the society, and we can go back and forth. But those two things are intertwined and when we see people falling victim to things that once we pull it apart and look at their individual situation, circumstances to go wait, this shouldn't have happened and yet it does, and yet it did, then you know larger systems are in place that think that black people belong in jail, for example, and so they are routed there Right, right or it's. You know it's happening in specific places at a very, very high rates.

That's not normal, Like that can't be. There has to be something else working other than the people are just doing stuff that they're not supposed to be doing, or just making it this way.

I don't know how you get to a Memphis where the vast majority of those that are experiencing poverty are black, without it being a systemic issue. I don't see that Somebody smarter than me can make the argument that that's fine.

I don't see it, and so it's like okay that. What again you know?

politically. Where does that?

how do?

we understand that politically and what do we do about that? Is there something to be done about?

it. Where there are systemic ills that we consistently complain about, we're frustrated by, most people will say it's wrong, but yet we live in it and we maintain it, knowingly or unknowingly at some level.

We all live in this and maintain this.

So where's the disconnect?

There's the apathy that you talked about. I think is important, but also this is where I think even well-meaning individuals can get discouraged when you try and act alone to make change. This is the Hunger Games and the odds are not in your favor. So if you're individual going up against a systemic wrong, you are outnumbered, outmatched, and this is where I think organizing makes the real difference. Can you organize like-minded souls to come together and work on a single issue or work from a particular perspective? Maybe you work from the fact that you're moms or clergy or students, or maybe you work on an issue like climate change or public transit, or the criminal legal system or bill reform, something like that. Either way, you are organizing yourself and creating a sort of alternate system, and together you can come together, combine best practices, like minds, best ideas, and begin to imagine alternative ways of doing things and alternative ways of being. Once you can start to imagine that, now you have something with which to approach the existing system. Yeah right, and now you can have a real conversation. This is where we get back to developing a public life. Yep, it is one thing to be an individual actor, constantly putting yourself up against the powers that be, whether that be city council or the state house. There is something to that, and I don't think that's entirely ineffective. But I think organizing offers you something that's a little bit more bang for your buck. We're coming together and we're organizing people for change, and we're organizing like-minded people with intersecting interests right, with inter we may all come at this from different places, but our interest at the core of it is the same and then trying to find solutions that we can agree on and then putting those solutions out into the public arena to be reckoned with For those that are not familiar with the concept of organizing, can you explain what that is and then you kind of give examples of where? maybe people would say, oh okay, that's organizing. Maybe I didn't realize that that's what that was. Organizing has a definition that I probably should have brought with me. So, but less freestyle, yeah and say that organizing is a collection of people moving together to get something done, and they have organized not just themselves but their resources collectively so that they can move powerfully in society, in the public arena. So organizing is the mechanisms of doing that. It's the how right that kind of thing happens. It's a difference between one of my children coming to me and saying I really want to go to this band camp in North Carolina. I look sideways like no, you don't need to be going off. The difference between two of my children coming to me and saying we want to enrich our cultural lives and expand our horizons and we have the opportunity to do that in North Carolina, where your best friend lives and could look out for right. Like now they have combined forces, come up with a solution, created an alternative narrative and presented it and put it in the public arena. And now I have to reckon with it. Organizing is happening all the time at most of our homes. We call it getting ganged up on, but what it is is organizing. But it also happens on blocks. It happens when my neighbors decide people are using our streets to get around Union Avenue and so and it's becoming people are going quickly down the street, driving too fast, they're hitting our cats, they're scaring our children. We got to do something about this. And so they put their little heads together and they go on the internet and they find out. What do I have to get a speed bump on my street? Oh, I have to talk to this office at the city council. Okay, let me do that. They write a letter and they make their petition and then, a couple of months later, they have a speed bump. That's organizing. Now they may never get back together again, but for that period of time my block was an organized you know, was a community organization, as it were, organizing in the classic sense, though intense for long-term change, and so it intends for long-term collective action. And it organizes folks in such a way that the ideals of the group can carry forward even if the people have to change. It organizes itself in a way so that it is always bringing more people into the fold, and it organizes itself in such a way in that it continues to gather and combine resources so that the organization can move powerfully alongside other actors who are already doing the same, but in different ways from their ends. Lobbying is organizing Right. The NRA is organizing. It's like mom's demand action that mothers against driving are organizing, and so I think organizing is happening all the time around us. Any parent-teacher organization is organizing. Some stuff has gotten so ingrained we forgot that it's a thing. Any neighborhood block club is organizing, and so, yeah, I can go on forever, but it's happening all the time around us. It may happen in different degrees of sustainability, but it's happening all the time. Anytime a group of people is moving collectively for a common goal, then they are acting in the spirit of organizing, and once they actually start to build some structure that might even outlast the humans that are currently involved. Now you're really talking about organizing.

So where does when you tell people you're in community organizing?

what's the common reaction there?

Is it a yay, good for you, or is it a? What is that or is it a? You're in what you do that, and also aren't you a?

reverend. Can you do that? I don't normally get that, which is interesting. People don't normally put those things in opposition, like my religious affiliation and community organization. That's not a normal thing. And I came into organizing in the age of Barack Obama, so you had to do as much explaining as the group that came right before me. And that's a real thing, because I had to learn about community organizing without the benefit of Barack Obama. In other words, to say that the president of the United States claims community organizing is one of his past jobs as a part of his history that got him to where he is, and so it thrust the idea of it into the public arena with a lot of force. That wasn't there before, so I had to learn it in that earlier phase and I learned it from folks in Chicago and Oakland, which is where a lot of that was happening, a lot of organizing was happening. It's not coincidentally. A lot of work in the Black Panther Party in the Civil Rights Movement took hold organizing his old school there, so that's where I learned about it and I learned about it probably in its most concrete form in school, which is random, but in social work school. I was in graduate school for social work and a professor said you're learning about direct service, you're learning how to do therapy in these classes. My job is to teach you about advocacy, because at some point you're going to figure out that you're just going to keep getting all these problems over here in the direct service room and at some point you're going to ask yourself why are people hungry? Why are children being abused? Why aren't women making enough to feed their families? So she basically put it like a challenge when you get ready to come over here and start solving the problems that you're bandating right now. Now I have a slightly more generous interpretation of the thing. I think it takes all kinds for us to make it through today. Somebody has to feed people today because you're hungry today.

That's it.

It's like my children, like you're hungry already. I just fed you five hours ago. Like people just keep being hungry. That somebody's got to feed us when we are hungry and someone else has to find out why they're keeping hungry people. Why in this country full of food do we have hungry people? Why in this country full of land do we have people without houses? And so they taught me then to start thinking. At some point you're going to start seeing the patterns, and if you are pricked inside, it may mean that your direction needs to go more over into advocacy. Now, advocacy is not the same as community organizing, but I kind of think of them as rectangles and squares. So advocacy can be done by anybody. Community organizing organizes the folks, those of us who are affected, to change our own lives. Advocacy can be done by anyone who cares, and you can be an advocate all by yourself, or you can be an advocate in an organization. Can I be a community organizer all by yourself? Do you feel OK, that's interesting the distinction between advocacy and community organizing? Do you think that?

there are truly more advocates in the world or truly more community organizers in the world based on your definition.

If I go with the strict definition, I think there's fewer community organizing. There's less community organizing going on than there is advocacy, but I don't think that their value is tied to the frequency of them in the world. I think you need all of that. The reason I ask that is because I feel like we have more. This is what I see, and it's a limited view, but I see more people fighting for things that they don't experience than see all the time, people who are experiencing things being in a position to fight alongside. I don't see it as prevalent, and it's just I wonder if that has an effect on the movement of issues, because the passion behind the fight is different when you're experiencing it. But maybe I'm wrong about that. You're not wrong, but it's a perception that's not easy to capture. What you're trying to measure isn't easy to capture Because people who, when we're impacted by an issue, sometimes or a lot of times, part of the impact is that you and your people and your experience are made to be invisible, hidden. We don't talk about as much here, but when I lived in Chicago we used to talk a lot about folks. You know Chicago's constantly trying to hide its homeless people. You can be homeless, but not on this bench right here. We get just a magnificent mile. There's no homelessness on the magnificent mile. So there is a way in which, when we're impacted, we get pushed out. That's why we call it the margin. We get pushed out to the margins. We're not on the dominant, we're not part of the dominant scene, we're not part of the dominant culture. We're not on television, we are not on the news. So are there less? I don't know, because, even unless it's a hundred thousand of us fighting at the same time, we are not made to be seen. The society is set up in such a way that we are meant to not be seen.

What I find interesting, we're kind of going. This is because we're just here and this is interesting to me.

What I find interesting is the celebration of advocacy there is a there is a people are celebrated for being advocates in a way that I I don't know that we have as a society, this the the same level of respect for those who would be considered a community organizer.

And, to your point, the invisibility of it, but I think also the perception of the importance of one who would be an advocate.

Right there there are a lot of times, people in a different you. Can you know who advocates are you? You're seeing, they're seeing, they have different you know, the status is a little different. I find that to be interesting. What's the name, what's somebody's name that you're thinking of? Oh gosh, I don't know. Somebody on.

TV. You know what I mean. You know somebody who's always in the on a microphone telling you about the things that we need to change, but they aren't necessary now that they haven't, but they aren't necessarily currently experiencing the things that they are advocating for. They're in a different, different position to have the energy and resources to.

To spend time talking about an issue because they don't have to experience it, versus the experience those who do experience different issues that we talk about all the time, the, I mean what kind?

of energy do you need? Right? What kind of resources do you need? I mean, who, who? Who has time honestly to think about changing the criminal legal system when I have five kids that are in it?

What do I? How do I even get to that place?

And so the idea of I'm powerful enough to change something.

Well, I'm barely powerful enough to keep my kids on alive. You know I'm saying like what, where do I? What do I do with that? How do you? And then, for those that are great advocates how do advocates lift help to lift voices of people who are trying to be made invisible? I realize that we're going a little bit different direction. I intended, but I yeah, no, because the people being made invisible was only part of it. Well, you're just naming is the other part right? And that it's really hard to be impacted by issue and also work to change that issue. Just like on the budget of time and energy, like you're talking about. Like right, like I can't fight the quality of the education system, I got to get the kids to school and then home from school, heaven forbid, I got more than one kid and more than one school, right, right. So it's, it's a lot. An organizer was just talking to, taught it to me this way that any good base, in other words, the people you're organizing, is made up of at least three kinds of people directly impacted, indirectly impacted and do gooders, and that if you have a nice, healthy base, you have all three. That's good For the exactly the reasons you just named right, because the folks are the most deeply impacted probably need to be focused on making it from sun up to sundown, that's it. That said, when they do have the energy, when we do have the energy, we can be the most powerful with the least amount of activity, because our presence is the power it's our story. I'm not telling a story, I'm telling my story, right, yeah, and it carries more weight than you know, ashley, over here telling my story for me, that's right.

Right.

We're telling a story about me, that's right, that's right. Or even talking about me in aggregate, right, right, so, so there's an economy of power and capacity there that I think could be fleshed out. But I thought that that organizer, her name was Yolanda, and I think Yolanda, she just she gave it to me on SuperPlatte. It was just so beautiful I was like, yeah, that's it, that's it right there that a healthy base has all three. Because you need the do-gooders, right, are the ones who are not impacted at all? They just mean, well, god bless them and but on their own they're just do-gooders. Yes, so they have to be in relationship, in community and in this work, with people who are indirectly impacted and directly impacted, right? So if the directly impacted person is the young person who's been incarcerated, then their custodial parent is the indirectly impacted person, or their sister is the indirectly impacted person, and then the do-gooder is the teacher that they once had in the third grade. You, just right, you need all of those folks to hold it down, because that's what community does when you can't, somebody else steps up and can, and they hold it with the power and the capacity they have, and when they don't have the power and capacity to move it any further, because it's not really their story. Then somebody else steps back in and says no, this is my story, I carry it to the end zone. Whatever the case may be, I think a lot about celebrities as being advocates because, they already have microphones, they already have stages and platforms and pullpits and one could say it's their responsibility to use those, that power, that privilege, wisely and generously and in service of justice. So I think there's a place for that. Absolutely Right, like I keep saying God bless, but God bless Kim Kardashian, right, she can walk up into them she's in 45s office and be like let Alice go and then Alice can go home. That's a place for that.

And.

Alice is thankful, right, is she not Right? And she said as much and so, but that can only do so much.

What about?

all the folks who are wrongly accused and still in there it's not enough Kim Kardashian's for that.

No.

And that wouldn't change the system anyway? No, wouldn't, and I love the mix of the base. I think that's exactly. You know, I think this is exactly it.

You got to have everything and, like you said, it has to be a relationship. There has to be a relationship with all parties. It doesn't work without that.

Right, I mean, and that takes time.

I mean because you're talking about three very different stories coming together to go in a direction, to gain power, to change a thing, and so that I think that is, I think that's really why. So, all right, before we end the conversation, because I have so many, things in my head and I cannot start on a different track because you will be home late and be mad at me. So can you give just from, from your perspective, one primary thing that you want people to unlearn about politics?

The main thing I would want people to unlearn about politics is that you don't belong there and instead trade that for the truth, that you are powerful, that this is your realm as a citizen, as a resident, as a human in the United States of America, and it's your responsibility, especially if you are eligible to vote. But I want to. I think the most important part of that is the power and recognizing. We have the power, and power is just. This is courtesy of Gamaliel. Power is the ability to act, the Gamaliel network being the nationwide umbrella under which Micah sits. It's the power to act, and if my child is in a school that is not treating her well and she needs something different, then I have to have power to get her situation to change, either to change the school or to move her out of it. Right, we need power to do the things we need to do, and being afraid of power is going to only keep us locked into a world where we have no choice but to be its victim. Politics, even just a word, is just about power and the city, the polis, the place we live. Can we move and set up this society in such a way in which it benefits us all in which I can move and thrive and live. We have to unlearn that that's not our realm, it's our whole life. It's our whole life and when we say that's not for us, we just hand over power that was ours to someone else to make decisions about our lives, our communities and our society. We gotta learn that.

All right. So we gotta do a plug for Micah. So by the time you all hear this, we will have been past the election.

So Micah's focus is on accountability. So if you want to be a part of holding, whoever is elected accountable, then what do they need to? do. Okay, they should head over to the Micah website, wwwmicahorg, and they'll be able to find a Get Involved tab and click there and you'll be able to join the newsletter and start getting emails. Those emails will tell you when our meetings are, and if you just want to hop right to the meetings, you can visit the calendar page and see when our monthly meetings are. We have two monthly meetings. We have a delegates meeting that's open to the public on second Tuesdays at 7 pm, and an issues night that focuses on one or more of the issues that we're currently working on every fourth Monday at 6 pm. So those are the easiest ways to find us and the easiest ways to get involved. But you can also follow us on Facebook or Instagram. We are there, and if you so happen to be a high school student or a middle school student, you may find your home in the Micah Youth Council. You're welcome to join the wider Micah, but you may want to be with other folks who are experiencing the world the way you are right now, and so the Micah Youth Council also has an active presence on Instagram and you can find them there, or you can email them directly at youth wwwyoutth at micahmephisorg. And let me just say honestly this whole I wouldn't be doing this series if it weren't for Micah, because this is how I have entered into this space and you know, I think about everything that I do differently as a result of being in it.

So if you want to, if you, like me, really do care about people here and you're especially if you're in the I'm going to say this especially if you're in the charitable world or if you're in the nonprofit space.

And you know me, we talked about it and you're probably tired of hearing it, hearing about it from me, but get involved in this and, because it's going to help to, I think, broaden your work. And I would say that it's helped broaden mine. So, whether you're a volunteer, you work in a professionally, I would encourage you to show up to a meeting, follow it on Instagram, do something. It'll help expand your mind as to what's going on. Thank you for being on the Unleart podcast, ma'am. This was fun, yeah.

Thanks for having me. This was great. Y'all know I don't know how to end these things. If you've been listening for any amount of time and I don't know that.

I'm going to come up with one, because I kind of like not having an ending. I don't know. But except to say keep unlearning so that you can keep living more free Peace.

Thank you once again for listening to the Unleart podcast. We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode. Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think. We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom. See you then.