Unlearning Politics with Cardell Orrin: From Non-Voter to Change Maker, Understanding Systemic Issues, Challenging Power Dynamics, and The Power of Grassroots Leadership in Community Transformation

Hello everybody and welcome once again to the Unlearned Podcast. I'm your host, ruth Abigail, aka RA, and this is the podcast that is dedicated to helping people gain the courage to change their mind so they can experience more freedom. This is our Unlearned Politics series, and I have a brilliant Memphis leader here with me. His name is Cardell Oren. He is the executive director of Stand for Children, amongst a bunch of other things that we're going to talk about. How you doing, cardell?

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, man, I'm glad you came. We have passed each other and kind of indirectly interacted, and all this I just get to sit down and glean from your knowledge Cross our fingers, but I appreciate being here. Yeah man, oh man, so okay. So let's get into it. Because when we were talking our pre-meeting, one of the things that sticks out to me the most about your story is that you started a PAC, a political action committee, and in my ignorance and I'm one of those people I know about anybody else, but I really don't think of PACs being started by people who already have a lot, whether it's a lot of influence, a lot of money, a big position, a company or whatever. But that's not how you started your PAC. No, not really.

Thanks for the lead answer and the money influence none of that. No, no, you started PAC anyway.

How do you do that? How does one do that?

So at the time this is 20 years ago, like 2003, 2004, me and some friends Erick Robertson, some other folks had gotten together to kind of discuss what we wanted to see in the community as young professionals. We'd been involved with different efforts At that time. There was different organization impact. We started a really young professionals chapter here and it was still what do we want to do to try to change our community? So we were having these conversations and different things and politics came up as one of the places where there could be leverage and things happening. Some other folks had been talking about it and nothing had happened. So we kind of came together and said, well, if this is a place where we want to leverage, like how do we do it, what do we do? We didn't have any experience in politics. Besides, you know, those of us who had come up with parents, who had worked in different campaigns or done stuff, and so you know it just kind of went from there. The piece that kind of pushed us over into really being active was that we kind of got connected to some folks who were running for office. So there were a couple of people who were perspective, but the one who ended up actually running Tamika Hart was. You know it was Tamika's first campaign. She ended up, you know, on the school board for a while and that was kind of our guinea pig. So it was kind of like, okay, either we do it or don't. So, you know, tamika was kind of getting into it without, you know, having moved back to Memphis and not really having run a campaign before and you know, just kind of jumping into it because she wanted to serve. We were kind of saying, hey, we want to impact our community in a way where we think younger people should get involved in politics and either running for office or helping to support people to run for office. And you know, we kind of came together and said, okay, well, let's give this a shot and try this out. And we each brought our different kind of perspectives and experiences and relationships to the table. And so that was really I mean whether it's naivety or just like. You know, you got like we got to do something. For me it really was. You know, if I want to live in the community, that I want to see the vision that we have for what we want to see in our community and we're not seeing that. What can we do to change what that looks like. And so either we can complain about it and not do anything or we can try it. And you know if we fail, what happens Like we fail, but you know, we've tried it, we, you know, get lucky, or you know, you know the stars aligned. And you know Tamika, you know, beat a 17 year incumbent when she, when she ran, so that launched us off in a really good way. So from there it was really just trial by fire of learning how to run different kinds of campaigns and get involved. And you know what the structure of a pack could be and you know, really pitching not just the pack, the electoral part of it, but we were always had this broader vision that was, you know, working with candidates, candidate recruitment issues, a lot of that just at the like. You know there wasn't funding, people weren't funding that, or we didn't know the right people or we didn't, we didn't look the right way to get the funding that we should have, like for the impact I think that we actually were able to bring. But you know, and over the years we've seen different parts of that continue to get built out in different ways across the community, and so it's great to see you know. Some of the things that we were thinking about back then, you know, come to fruition in other ways. But yeah, starting a pack was really just hey, let's go do something and see how it works.

You're let's go do something with starter pack. I just want to say, like that's not normal, like you know, let's go do something, let's go start a political action committee. It's like okay, like you know, so, like that that is. I'm just, I'm fascinated about it Because, again, you always hear well, I hear that, and what it feels like such you, you hear about the big ones that use large campaigns, all this, you know the war chest and all this stuff. But I think it's really encouraging to know that you can. You can, just it can be a place to start, like you don't have to have been in politics for decades to do that and have that kind of impact. So for those that really have no idea what this is, can you explain what it is and like what is? Is it like a paperwork thing? You just say I'm going to start a pack, sign a paperwork.

It really is. I mean, you know, for the base level of a pack is, you know, two or more people getting together to say we want to influence and elect, Like we want to work with a candidate or multiple candidates. You know it's actually a multi candidate political action committee. So you know, and the ease of it depends on what level you want to get involved. If you just want to work on local races, it is literally a paper that you file with the election commission where you really only have to have one, maybe two signatures or treasurer and maybe somebody who's a part of the board, but I think it might just be the treasurer filing, and you know you want to have a bank account, like places to hopefully you raise some money, like to have a place, like to put the resources, and you do have to do reporting. You know and follow the rules of political action committee, but on the local level all of that is with the local election commission. If you want to do state level races and local races, you can file with the state. And so you got like, as I moved into when we started, new Path was the name of our pack. New Path was just local, so it was just with the election commission. When we expand, like at stand, we have a state pack, we have a couple of state packs or independent expenditure committee. So that's at the state level. So we file with the state and then you can have a federal pack. That is, you know, you file with the federal government and so there's different levels of it. But at a base level it's a group of people getting together to say, hey, we want to contribute something to a candidate winning or to stop in a candidate from winning or working on an issue or whatever that is. And so you know, and you know, over the years we started other packs for various issues. When we were doing the charter surrender for Memphis city schools, we ran like that was a special election. We set up a specific pack around like that campaign. Yeah, we had a campaign for. Yeah, I think there was a pack.

So you set up a pack, not just to packs can support candidates but also be aligned with issues. Or, like you said, you know you can set up a pack to go against a particular candidate, like like what is it kind of a mixed bag as to what the what the pack universe looks like, as most of them towards a candidate or these other?

It's kind of a mixed bag and you'll see packs like come and go and, like you know, we stopped filing. Our like new pass has gone, gone, went away, so we don't file anymore, we don't have it around. So things will come and go like that. The pack that we started around that was because we were like with the. The charter surrender was because we were working on that specific issue and we wanted to be able to raise funds to impact that election and so you know that was very specific. And in other ways and it can be, you know, officially it can be actual money and resources spent, it can be in kind. So if you're working with a candidate, you might say, well, hey, I'm bringing this expertise to the table and I'm giving time to this and that could be a contribution, okay. Or you can say, well, we're going to do something on behalf of the candidate. And then you get into more complicated things about whether you're coordinating with a campaign. So where you whether you're actually given to a campaign and talking to the campaign and sharing strategy, or independent expenditure campaign. An independent campaign where you can, under a coordinated campaign, you can only spend up to the limit or contribute up to the limit that the state allows to a campaign or to a candidate. If you're running an independent campaign, you can spend as much as you want to. You just can't talk to the campaign, the candidate. You can't coordinate with the candidate, so you're running an independent effort that's either in support or against or whatever, to influence an election.

Can you give examples of, maybe, packs that people may have heard of but didn't necessarily know how? They didn't necessarily know it was a pack or how it acted, but you've heard the name before maybe.

You know, I think I can't. I can't name off the top of my head some that people might know, but a lot of times when we, when we hear about the things we'll hear about, like the dark money, or we'll hear about leadership packs, like where Congress people who are in Congress or president or something, might have a leadership pack, where that's a pack that they use where they're, you know, have money that they're giving to other candidates that they want to support, or you might hear about like during the presidential campaign. You're always hearing about like these different packs that are working, and those packs are usually independent packs and that's where they start talking about dark money, because that's money that gets contributed to a C4, which is a non-profit that can also do partisan work, and so the C4 can collect money which doesn't have to get reported, and then the C4 can contribute to a pack, and so all you see is that the money is gone to a pack. So when you talk about kind of dark money. It's money that's that doesn't get disclosed as to who has given the money. So generally there's meant to be transparency in political disclosures or financial disclosures so that you know who's given. But if an organist, if Stan for children, comes and gives money, people don't know who gave Stan for children money necessarily to contribute. And so that becomes this conversation about whether there's outside money, external influences. You know we ran an independent expenditure campaign last year around the justice races for specifically for DA, juvenile court judge, and so you know there was money that we got from outside of the city, money that we got from internal, but it all kind of mixed in with the pack that we set up as a coalition kind of pack, people from fairness and justice, and so those are that's more kind of the way you hear about it Because generally. I don't know if people heard a specific pack. You'll hear about a lot of like oh, this is the pack that is supporting Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and it's the pack that's supporting Donald Trump, and like the freedom pack. You know they'll have those kinds of names and so you hear about them but you don't really know like the structure or like that they are or not connected to a candidate. Like you know what the different like relationships are.

I, this is I'm. I'm fascinated by this stuff. Like, like you know, I told somebody before my favorite show is the West Wing and this the other time I have these conversations I feel like I'm like behind the scenes, I mean and saw my man, this is just, this is just cool, All right. So this is the other equally fascinating thing about your story, I think, is there was a time that you did not vote. You didn't have one to have anything to do with voting and talk about the shift. So, like you, from the time you were 18, when did you start voting?

I started voting, I just turned 18, I was like what was that? I don't know. I can remember when I first. I think I voted once or twice. I think I might have voted when I first turned 18, maybe a couple times after that and then probably what year was that? 1996? Maybe was the year that I can remember like voting intentionally in a race like here. And then is that right? Yeah, somewhere around there that might've been when I turned 18. So anyway, between that between 96 and 2004, like when I got started involving politics I don't know I could look up on my voting record, but it's probably a handful of times that I actually went out and voted and it was generally like my perspective. When I had arguments with my mom and my sister about voting, it was generally what you generally hear as responses like well, like my vote doesn't count, like what's the point? It's deciding on the greater of two evils or multiple evils, or like what's the point? Like the system isn't gonna change. And even when I went through more revolutionary periods in college, it was more like we should go vote for the worst person because if we want systems to change, like systems don't generally change, like you don't have revolution until things get bad, Until something gets bad yeah. When things get bad, things change, when the what is it they say? This is what the guy said when the pain of not changing becomes greater than the pain of changing is when you actually see things shift. That's crazy, it's true, right, so it really was more of you know what is it about. But that way, and my pushback would always be you know the general people fought and died for your right to vote, and I'd be like people fought and died for all kinds of crazy. You know wrong things and so, like that's not the rationale that moved me to like vote, because it wasn't this, like what's the reason, what's the practical side of it?

So what was the rationale ultimately? Like, what made you say? Was it the same thing that made you say let's start a pack?

Yeah, I mean pretty much it was. Now I see the reason and the way that voting allows a change to happen, and it's not just about my voting, but it is about more of how are we working together to elect people or a person that we feel like will help to create change? And so then it became a part of a broader effort, and my vote then just my vote, other people's votes even more so became more of a practical part of how do we get to change, and the way to get to change was like so to me, I guess it had to be connected to something that I'm doing actively, that actually does something to impact, and now I see the value of voting, all of those pieces. But that was, I think, the turning point. For me was okay. Now I'm working on something that is collective, that we are trying to do something, and the way to get to that the obstacle is that we need votes. My vote is one of those other people's votes, and so the goal has to be I have to vote, and then I gotta figure out, understand the psychology, all the different pieces, the practice, the art, the science of how do we get people to vote, to do to have the change that we want.

Do you remember what issues or what things you saw in that time that were frustrating you enough to want to do something?

I mean, unfortunately, it's the same things that we see today. I think it's all this continual idea that Memphis is on the verge, that it has potential, that it hasn't been actualized. We see a lack of courage in our leadership, where we see that folks aren't making the commitments that they need to, especially for black communities and people to value them and their wealth and economic development and mobility. And fortunately I'm 20 years later and I see a lot of the same things and the same challenges that we continue to have to confront.

So, as somebody who has worked on campaigns and who have supported candidates, some of which won, some which didn't right, but particularly ones that have gotten elected into office and had power to change things but yet you say in 20 years we're seeing a lot of the same stuff, how do you feel about that? Like, how do you reconcile? I've been on the inside doing this kind of stuff and it still ain't changed much.

Yeah, I mean it's challenging. I mean it's hopefully shifted and shaped the work that I spend my time on now in terms of how do we address the deficiencies that I've seen and how change happens or what I believe will get us to doing something different With different results. And so I think I mean there's been a lot of frustration. I've been disappointed by a lot of candidates that I've helped get elected into office and who have not delivered on what I believe they should have in terms of either commitment to what I believed were their values and kind of what direction they would take, or willingness to confront a system that generally, I mean believes or lives in terms of the status quo. And that's also shaped, just kind of my perspective on what are the things that have to shift for change to happen. That's so much of what we have in our community is not clear decisions and what we learn in advocacy right, it's a lot like you know you have to have a decision point Right and you have to have a ask. And so much of what happens in our community has been structured in such a way historically, because it's almost like looking at Memphis. You're like, well, why does this work like this? Why does it like you got to really look at history and like what the culture has been like, that has been curated in some ways to be what it is, so that decisions that are getting made all the time aren't really seen as decisions. They're just seen as the thing that we have to do. So we don't bring those up and that's where the status quo continues to operate, because it's like, well, this is the thing to do and we're not in that moment confronting this is a decision. There is a decision point of funding or not funding transit for people to be able to get to work and healthcare and other things. There's a decision point that can happen about pilots payments and lower taxes, like tax incentives for corporations, and whether we have to give more than all the rest of the state combined and not really see the benefit of economic development. These are actual decisions that could be made that are just kind of pushed down the road or made to seem like they're not really decisions that you can make, or changes, and so you have to try to figure out, I think, one. How do you make that clear? There's another part, I think, about education of the community, education of candidates, like clear asks. So I'm going down the road here, but I think that, getting back to your question, generally there's a frustration there about that, but then also okay, how do I learn from each of these challenges that we've seen? And when we started off in the pack, I think with New Path, the idea was we didn't really focus on issues necessarily. We had a couple like term limits and things that were really like our litmus test, but not really like because we supported Democrats, republicans, like we wanted good leadership, that we thought about issues well and could make good decisions and we tried to like endorse folks around those values. What I learned is that you know there are ways to govern differently over time and it matters what kind of decisions people are gonna make, and so you really do have to focus on issues and I think that some of those things and like thoughts about power and thoughts about like how you work with, or don't, candidates after they get elected to office and what you you know you have to do after the campaign and the kind of capacity and resources that that takes when we were doing the pack, you know for probably like 10 years, like we weren't getting paid for any of that stuff. All our work was volunteer. All the money we raised got plowed into either administrative support for the pack or, to you know, candidate support.

So I just learned something that I don't think I knew. I thought packs had to be connected to a particular party, but like I don't, maybe I don't know where I got that from, but you just say you know you can support whoever you want to support.

Like I said, a pack is put together, to, you know, influence an election, and that can be for a party, it can be for not for a party, it can be for a candidate, it can be for an issue, it can be, you know, for broad level. Like we're going to weave in and out of this and that issue, this and that candidate.

Yeah, yeah, no, I just I don't. I don't think that clicked, but that's yeah, Okay, that's interesting, okay. So, going back to, you said some interesting, there's decision points, but particularly in Memphis and I imagine this is the case for a lot of cities in the country, a lot of places in the country that historically there have been actors to maneuver things in such a way where you kind of work around decisions to keep the status quo, like it's not. It seems as though, even though it is a clear decision point, there's a decision maker who can say, no, we're going to do it this way, but it doesn't happen. And you're saying that one of the reasons that doesn't happen is because it's designed to kind of minimize the decision maker's authority to make that decision. Can you give an example and weave, you know, kind of a historical example of like this is where we are now? Here's kind of the connection point to how we got here.

I mean probably I don't want to get too wonky, so I'm trying to sound so like. Because I mean, there's a lot of examples of things that are illogical about, like our community that you're like. Well, why does that happen? And the answer is connected to, like these other factors and historically, what is happening Generally. I was on a conversation just this week with some folks and we were talking about justice issues and we actually talked about carjackings and other things that happened and they were laying some of this stuff out on a map and some other like crimes and you know a lot of that track to like what we would call like what's called a sea of poverty, like. So in Memphis there's a literal sea right Like the letter C. So if you look at a map and you look at where economically disadvantaged, under resourced areas are, and if you think about it, the sea is North Memphis, south Memphis is like the sea, and then, like downtown midtown and the downtown public corridor, east Memphis is like the line that runs all the way out East, and so you end up with this sea and if you match that up to red lining, if you match that up to, you know, shifts in historical neighborhoods, you would see the overlap of all of these different issues. I'm sure if you matched it up to health disparities. Almost anything to think of you would see this same thing, but it's centered around poverty. There's this historical aspect to it, I mean. Another piece that is interesting is Go back to thinking about when Justin Pearson and the team MCAP were working on Bahia Pipeline. One of the things that they talked about was the company saying we're taking the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance was through Westwood, this one area. But why was that the path of least resistance? Because it was under-resourced, because there weren't investments that were made in a black community, because it was allowed to decline because of a lack of investments. So over time, over history, it had been created as a quote-unquote path of least resistance because people who weren't perceived as having power, who weren't perceived as like there was blight, there was all of these things that are factors, not of what people want, not of what the system has dictated in terms of resources, investments and other things. So now it becomes a de facto place where oh, it just makes sense to run it through there rather than the suburbs because the suburbs. So then you trace a path in the suburbs where, over time, memphis as a majority of Shelby County, but Shelby County grew out like started to expand and we invested in roads and we invested in schools and we invested in all of these things in the suburbs. That then allowed the suburbs to expand and grow in terms of population and density and wealth because of all of these expanded investments that we had made. So then, tying it back to when I talked about, like the Memphis City Schools Charter Surrender, part of the challenge there was that over that time, the folks in the Outer County, in the suburban areas, wanted their own schools, wanted legacy Shelby County schools just to be represented in the Outer County, because in part, 30% of the population, 30% that lives outside of the city, 70% of Shelby County is Memphis, 30% is the Outer County, which made up legacy Shelby County schools now had 40% of the property wealth and 60% of property wealth over 70%. So part of the argument from Tamika Martavis and those of us who supported them in the Outer Surrender was protecting money for the children of Shelby County, because if they were able to wall off this money that we had invested. We, as Memphians and Shelby County residents, had supported the growth of the Outer County in the suburbs, by investing in their roads and schools and all of these things that had now allowed them to build up wealth. And now there was a question of how, the potential that they could wall off that investment and that wealth just for their kids, just for their children in the Outer County, which represents 30% of a minimal amount versus over here. And all of that would have continued a self-fulfilling prophecy that those schools were better, which they weren't necessarily. They had similar schools. We look at socio-demographic levels and all these other issues. It's a whole other discussion, but those are the different ways that the decisions that we make about investments or not in these areas is roots back into what we believe, both and that has been informed historically, but also racially, culturally. All of these different things. Pilots is a similar thing like payment and little taxes. This is where we are forgiving future tax revenue so that somebody will invest in an area or bring jobs or whatever they state as the case. Again, when we're talking about future, this is talking about future money. Another way to look at future money is bonds, is debt that we take out. We could also take out debt and say we're going to take out, take future money and go invest it in communities to build up communities, so that we actually build them up in terms of commercial, business, residential, all of that. If we had a belief that there was value in black people, in black communities, we would then invest our future money in those communities and say, okay, let's build that up, but no, we believe in investing in companies and basically trickle down economics. We invest in companies, then they will create jobs. That then will allow people to go buy a house that then at some point will flip over where the tax rate can even out. Anyway, these are all historical ideals that have developed over time, where Memphis grew out of a space that was the capital, the delta, where black people were accumulating, and where part of what the sale pitch on Memphis has been for centuries has been low-wage, low-cost, that if you come here, that's what we compete on low-wage, low-cost, rather than what are the assets that the black people we have here are assets that they are valued. That there's a different orientation we can look at if we take a different lens. But all of these things connect historically, culturally and, I would say, and in a lot of ways have been curated over time so that we just accept them now and we don't question them. They don't become decision points, they become what has to be. So we have to give this amount of pilots so that businesses continue to come here, rather than saying we can have a good transition, we can have a good healthcare, we can have a great workforce, and that would be reasons that people, that businesses, would want to come here. That's what some other cities, that's the viewpoint they take Sure right.

Anyway, I'm just no no, no, I'm sitting here and I have a couple of thoughts I have you know. First, I want to know where we can take your class on Memphis history, and you do have.

We do the Shelf-Agated Voter Academy really. Yeah, Are trying to put this stuff in.

Yeah, because it's. I do think it's fascinating, it's really interesting, but it's very true as to why we just continue to see the same thing over and over and over, even with different people. And, like you alluded to it earlier, you've been disappointed by candidates who supported in the past that you thought had a certain ideal, didn't really come to fruition when they got elected, and it sounds like the state of kind of the state of mind of Memphis in general, like as a city, is a big reason for that. It's like you have people that, yeah, like campaign on ideals and just and probably really do believe that this is the right thing to do, but then you get into this system and you just go with the flow. Why is that? And especially for black leaders, why do you think black leadership? We have substantial black leadership here over the years, I mean in different areas, and we see it and we tout it. It's a good thing, but we haven't seen, like you, I mean we'll just take 20 years, I mean it's been longer than that but we haven't seen as much shift and change as we would have thought. Why is that? Why is it that we, why is it that even seems like black leadership gets caught up in this.

I think it's. I mean because I don't think that even people who are in it would see it as I'm just going along to get along, because I do think that a lot of people who are in office have the right values and believe that they want to make a difference. I believe that I think that if I had to trace it down to something, I would probably say it's a risk, mitigation issue and challenge. So it's even though and this is where, to some degree, it's diabolical but it's also ingenious and it's illogical that we continue to do things that are the same things that data shows us are not working, to do the things that we say we want to do. And yet there is still this risk that, if I do, even though I know that this is not working, but everybody says this is the way to get things to work If I then shift and say no, we should do this, like you're saying X, we should do Z, because even when research national research, like data suggests that if we do Z we can have a different impact, it's a risk to shift to doing this and then to sticking to it, because what is also there is that the structure has been created so that there are folks who have large microphones that are able to give anecdotal evidence. I mean this idea recently that Mayor Strickland and some others have been pushing around revolving door of the justice system is not supported by data. If you give the opposite of it, which is, don't have a revolving door of data, that's actually follow the Constitution. The idea of this revolving door of data makes you want to say there are people who are committing crimes and we should just keep them in jail until they go to trial and then lock them up for longer periods of time. Our system, our Constitution, says you're innocent. That's a fundamentally different idea. That if somebody is caught doing something, that we should keep them locked up is a presumption of guilt. Our system doesn't say that it's a presumption of innocence. Whether you agree or disagree with what bail is actually meant to serve, or are releasing people with or without, bail is meant to serve is are they a danger to society? Are they a flight risk? Those from our presumption of innocence? Those are the things that laws would say is a reason to detain people. They are a continued risk and that you could have a conversation about. Do we have a good, valid way to assess risk. Then there's the other part, which is are they a flight risk? Generally, no, people are not generally flight risk. Data would tell us that. The data would also say that generally, people are not just getting out and committing more crimes. Even If you take an anecdote and you put it in the newsletter and you send it out every week, that becomes what people see and what they hear. Then if you have a bail reform effort, like we've been a part of and supported in the county side, you have this question that comes about bail reform. Or, if you do, there's been talk about doing a restorative justice effort here, like out of Nashville there's an organization of Rafa that does restorative justice. That would take people outside of normal justice and have more of a restorative process where the victim, the person accused of the crime, come together and try to have more of a restorative process towards what justice looks like. The challenge with that is similar to the bail reform is that one thing happens one person gets robbed with a gun or an unfortunate killing of something, like something happens and that is the one story that then gets told and becomes the whole rationale for saying, well, that doesn't work, even though we've got a whole system of mass incarceration set up that we've now started to double down on again in Tennessee with truth and sentencing and what they want to do about rolling back bail reforms and what would be the follow up to what this idea of the revolving door is give people more time, which has been shown over time does not work. We've got tons of data and evidence that it doesn't work, but people will continue to want to do that and if we do something different, it would only take one thing potentially to say, well, that doesn't work because one person was harmed, even though you got thousands of people being harmed by the system that we've put in place. But again, going back to the question that becomes the challenge of shifting the system and why leadership is a challenge, is that you have to stand in that gap of discomfort and the potential of either failure or setbacks and still be committed to the idea that this is the path that we need to move forward. A lot of people give the example of Maynard Jackson in Atlanta around black wealth development.

I was going to ask you for an example outside of Memphis. I don't want us to call anybody out here. What is an example of that kind of leadership and just refusing to allow the status quo to prevail?

Yeah, I think this is the classic example that people give about Maynard Jackson is that when Maynard Jackson was elected mayor again time period I think the historical part of it is interesting that in 1967, aw Willis was running for mayor and could have been elected mayor of Memphis in 1967, would have been mayor in 68, loeb got elected mayor in 68. Three years later, in 1971, maynard Jackson was elected in Atlanta and then 20 years later, we had our first black mayor in Memphis.

That's just context for where we were.

Then at that time too 50s, 60s also remember Atlanta and Memphis were neck and neck in terms of capitals of the South. That's just interesting historical context to me always. But when Maynard Jackson was elected and they were going to redo the airport, maynard took a stand and said I've heard the story from multiple people, some people who were there when it happened to say we are not going to build this airport unless black businesses are involved and receive benefit, are able to do some of the work and get the wealth benefit from what we're going to invest in this airport. As I've heard, business community people went, came and left three, four, five times. And surely you are not going to agree to renovating the airport, creating a new airport? Okay, we'll do this. Well, no, unless this happens. So they left and came back and they're upset. They're like surely he's going to give in because he's not going to take the risk that the airport doesn't get done. You wouldn't do that as mayor. But he was committed to me and I just saw a post recently MAKA at Gwekwe, at Co-Crew. It posted something on LinkedIn about this story, about Maynard Jackson. There was this back and forth in the comments about oh, it should be different in Memphis, it shouldn't be this or that, which I agree Like. I think this is why this is top of mind for me is because I was thinking on that thread. That's right. But this risk piece that has to be no matter what, because you have to be willing to live in some term of discomfort for a shift in power and status quo to be recognized that, no, we're going to do things differently, because everybody can't be comfortable all the time. And so this gets back to the question To actually move things, you have to to some degree be as willing to lose it all as Maynard Jackson was. Again, like Maynard Jackson was in office, left office couldn't get a job in Atlanta. You got to to some degree be willing to risk it all to have that shift. Everything ain't perfect in Atlanta, clearly, but I think here it's been more of a challenge to have people who will kind of I mean the prime example here of this which people still have debates and battles I talked about it earlier is on the surrender of the charter for Memphis City. Schools, the merger and the secession of the suburbs. That was a time where Martavius is the person who brought it up, tamika's supported in the school the five school members who voted in support of doing that. That was a real risk because being involved in at the time we did not know like in the end. We knew that law means that the school board eventually would represent the full county or whoever ended up in that school system. But in the interim space you knew the legacy Shelby County Schools, what that board looked like and who was in charge. So there was some level of potential chaos, some level of uncertainty about what would happen and what that meant. The guiding star on that was we want all the funds for Shelby County to always benefit and be in support of the majority of the children of Shelby County who live in Memphis and this is the way to do that and there's going to be some uncertainty. We're not sure what's going to happen completely as we go down this road, but that's the and we're going to risk it all and risk like whatever might happen, to do that and that is a challenge. This is a challenge in the justice issues, that's a challenge in economic development. That's a challenge even. I mean the most egregious example is. I go back to transit, like where we know what can solve a problem that we have of having a not great transit system. We know a number the number is relatively low in terms of the city and county budgets and we know what the impact of that could be for people. We have an expectation what the impact could be and we have a question of what it could be in terms of impact and safety and crime and other aspects of things. Those are questions. We know definitely what it will do to help people and we still will not make the decision to definitively invest in that in a time period that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. So risk I think this has been the kind of major theme I think with these examples is those who are willing to risk, those who aren't. I think embedded also the theme of power in everything that you just talked about. It's interesting because I think there's a perceived loss of power if you risk, but I would argue against that. I think that the most powerful people, the people that understand at least power on a different level, are willing to risk it. Anyway, what is it that you have unlearned about power in your journey?

Yeah, that's a good question Because I think a lot of my reflection when I think about the new path and the pack and the things over time. I think it's unlearning that power is bad. So one is that there's some bad part of having power, or that it's something that you shouldn't talk about or try to intentionally do because it's like, well, now I'm trying to have or encourage people to utilize their power like their inherent power. So there's a relationship with power or understanding of power that I think I've had to unlearn and try to relearn. What is the manifestation of and a lot of this being involved in Michael, you learn as part of organizing, you have to have this different relationship with power and the accumulation of it and the utilization of it if you want to change things From an organized perspective. We think of it as people power a lot of times, but there's people power, there's money power, there is influence power, there are multiple ways that we can have power and leverage and I think it's been what's a relationship to it and how do you start to address those imbalances that are in power? And then there's an understanding that I've tried to learn over the year of how power is utilized in our community in implicit and explicit ways, and so, again, this goes back to the decision making choices. All of these things are a manifestation of power that either we recognize or don't, but that are always at play, and some of it's historical, some of it's cultural, some of it is actual positions of power, some of it is money, and there are different levels even within those areas. So you can't cast it all in one way, like knowing some of the folks who are wealthy in the community, that there are different levels of wealth. There's a difference between somebody who's a multimillionaire and somebody who's a billionaire? And there's a difference between somebody who's kind of grassroots in this community versus grassroots in that community versus somebody who's running a nonprofit here. So there's different types of power and if you assume that it's all the same or it's all connected, like, you miss some of the places where it manifests in different ways. And so I would say, like unlearning what we kind of expect about power, like the idea that that's not something that you have to actively and intentionally try to understand, iterate and utilize to be able to accomplish whatever goal you want.

So I think because until I was involved, you know, through Micah and just now, in just different ways, like in these different in things here, locally at least I don't know that I never thought of the idea of having any kind of level of power, never thought of that even being available to me right Now. I understand very much it is and, like you said, it works in different layers and different levels and it's not just one thing, it's not a this person has this person. It's not that black and white. You kind of have to evaluate your place on the power scale In that. In that same vein, I wonder you know, for people who don't have any, there's no reason for them to believe that that's available, and then certainly not that there's any way to use it. I hear a lot from people is like, well, that doesn't have anything to do with me, right? And or what is this thing over here it seems so far away have to do with my waking up and doing my daily stuff, right? How would you answer that? What would you say? And like how do you make issues that seem distant? How do you make them make sense for people and for anyone, including myself, cause sometimes I get in that. I mean it's like I'm gonna wake up, I'm gonna do my thing, I'm gonna go to work, I'm gonna be with my family, I'm gonna do my life. And there's other people are gonna talk about all these things and they're gonna argue and I'm gonna read it in the paper and I'm gonna go to sleep and then wake up and do the same thing. Right? How do you help me connect those two realities? Why does and I'm going further than local, but why does the house fight right now in Washington? Why in the world does that matter?

So I think that that's part of our challenge is that and from political especially, that most of the focus that we have. This is why people go out and vote generally in presidential years. They go vote for president, they go vote for when we have state and federal races and they don't, and then we get what 20 some percent turnout for city elections and I think what we are, where the general kind of like overall excitement and kind of where the media focus is nationally, ends up being on the places that are the furthest removed from people, from individuals, the decisions, like I won't tell you like to tune into a house meeting in terms of that having an impact directly on you, like it has an impact, it's important the ability for a single person to impact that who represents me, like the ability for Congressman Cohen to impact something that is happening in the House of Representatives, depending on what committee it is, what it is like. This is relatively, relatively small and relatively too, if I tune into the city council meeting that was on YouTube, or county commission meeting or a school board meeting, that is relatively close to what has a direct impact on me. And so the conversations that we wanna have like part of what I think we're trying to express in the Shelby County Voter Academy, like with the Shelby County Voter Alliance, is that we should understand these pieces like and let's start local and then we can expand out, because we, and then even in some of those trainings, what we do is because we learn all these things in school like federal, like legislative branch, executive branch, judicial branch, and then how do you translate that from the federal, which we all get president, congress, supreme Court down to the state and then down to the local level, because it manifests at every level and the impact that the city council has on you? I mean, you look out the window, you see it, like while you're driving to work and you hit a pothole, or while you're driving to work, when you could be taking a bus or taking public transit, because we have a public transit system, of necessity, rather than you know, usefulness, right, like and amenity. Like when you go to the library or in what resource at the library, like what your child has access to in terms of school and after school, or, even if you don't have children, what the children in your neighborhood have access to, or the child who you, you know is, you think or worried, is gonna accost you. What do they have access to that stops them from doing that Like. So all of these issues that are really fundamental and this is why I got involved, is why I get excited about politics like fundamental to what we're able to do, what we, you know, can expect for our lives, so our neighbors, for our community, for our family members, is manifested in most especially in like these local races. I think a lot of the, even from a campaign and political standpoint, I always had to like get in my head that you know, when you hear about it, you hear like all these things about, well, this person worked on this state race and they worked on the presidential campaign and you know, when Obama was running, especially all these like oh, they worked on the Obama campaign, all this. I have not worked on any of those kinds of like state, federal, like state. I had like state, you know, state reps, state senators. I worked on those kind of campaigns. But, governor, you know, senator, president, like I haven't done any of those things. I've done 20 years of like local campaigns that I believe are the most impactful, most connected to you know what impacts people's lives on a day-to-day basis, and I think if we got more people to like reflect on. What is the, what are the everyday things that you're doing that are impacted by local government, that hopefully more people become interested and concerned about that because really, if you think about it, it really should be flipped in terms of where people are turning out in terms of the impact on them. We have many more people turning out for city races, county races, than presidential races, because the impact on them is further removed. And then you know, and then there's structures that are set up to like make that a possible. There actually was a charter amendment made to move city council city races to even years and the city council turned that back so that they would continue on in odd years because they would say they wanted the focus of an election to just be on city races rather than mixed up in federal races. But the impact of that is also that less people are gonna turn out because people are used to voting in even number years. So some of these things are, you know, things that people have actually voted to change, to be more engaged, and for their own reasons, elected official people in the office have said, nah, nah, let's not do that, let's like keep things. You know how they are. So the argument I would make to people is that you know, go through your day and tell me what happens in your day and you can point out all the ways that local government, the decisions that are being made, are impacting you, your family, your community and all these other pieces.

I'm going back in my head to. I think a core theme of our conversation was it's been leadership, and it's like it's almost hard to get excited about even going to vote locally when you haven't seen or don't have real confidence that you'll have leadership that's willing to risk it all right In service to killing the status quo, but it's and in your example that you just gave like no, we're gonna keep this this way, we're gonna keep the election cycle on odd years where people forget that there's an election. Nobody's gonna come out. It makes it a lot easier for those who are already in to stay in because they don't have to have a large margin to win, and it's just, it's really interesting. I don't know. I just I wonder where that leadership comes from when it gets here. Is it one of those like once in a generation things? I mean like what you know, and we just kind of keep rolling until somebody decides I'm not, I'm in it for the change, like I'm not really in it for the career, like I'm not trying to be here forever. I'm not trying to make my money in politics. Like I'm here to do something, and I think that's what I see a lack of. Like it's people that come to do something, not come to. This is my next career path. You know what I mean? Or that it?

impacts your career path. I mean because it's very real that decisions that you make I mean I've had decisions I make politically impact me on a personal level, like financial level, that you know are people harming me directly when I was like when I was a consultant business or me in the organization I work for, like because of decisions that we make. And so it's a very real consideration for folks who are running for office and trying to make decisions about whether I mean, to some degree, you want to work in this town.

Or whether you want to continue to get invited to the dinners or you know events or this or that, like.

so it is a real consideration about like, what are you willing to risk and what are the ramifications of that risk? I think, until I mean again, this is like how do you get a critical mass Until you get a critical mass of a community that is, for instance, purposeless, less? petty less focused on, let's focus on curating the continuation of the status quo than they are on. Well, let's be open and have these different considerations, or that there is some expectation or consideration by even elected officials. I tell candidates all the time you know, when you're getting elected officer, when you're asking people to support your campaign or contribute, you're only really beholden to them to the extent that you feel beholden to them. And so if somebody invests, if somebody donates to your campaign hopefully optimally, they are investing in you as a person to make the best decisions that you can with the information that you have. And what I find a lot of times, like you know from the business community, is that there is a recognition that there's this issue and then there's the next issue and then there's the next, and we might not agree on this thing, but then I still need you to like be with me on this thing. So it's kind of you know, and the only thing for elected officials to some degree is the expectation, the idea that that is true, that I can say no on this, and then you know, then it's a whole other conversation on this thing and overall, over the four years or eight years, however long I'm in office. If I align and things get accomplished more than they don't, then people are generally gonna support me, because it's easier to support an incumbent than it is to challenge them. And then it's also a matter of balancing out. So if there's, you know, kind of people in power, power is money kind of thing, people in money. And so even if I use people to get in and I do the right things and I'm an incumbent, generally I'm gonna get money in the next election because now hopefully I've kept up to people and I get some money. If you use some money to get in, then if you've gotten in with money and less of the real kind of base in people power, hopefully you're intentional about saying, okay, I recognize that I need to do something in this time period that impacts people, so that even if I make these money, folks mad, I'm gonna balance that out with the people power and once the people are on board, the likelihood that folks with money are gonna go against you is lower, because it's much tougher to mount a campaign, find opposition, mount a campaign against an incumbent and somebody who actually is making things happen and generally I think, from a community level business like people that I talk to generally. People want folks to make good decisions that are reason, that are rational, that overall move us down the road and if I believe, if folks really believe that in their minds and acted on that, that it would play out for them, that they would actually get support. Especially if we believe that the things that we believe is kind of more progressive reform, that the things that we are doing have been shown not to work, that we shouldn't continue to do them, that we should do other things that actually have a basis and research, data and best practices, that if we do those things and that shifts for people, that that will be good for everybody. Part of the challenge here that we have is there's even for capitalist I would say, that there is more focus on maintaining power and control than there is actual commitment to capitalism, because in that you would want everybody to thrive. You would want because you grow the pie and then you actually make more money. But a lot of times here I think people are more willing to like forego that future development of money and resources and capacity and wealth in our community so that they can maintain more control and know what tomorrow is gonna bring Cause again, like from that perspective it gets risky and you start to mitigate, like if I don't know what happens if we turn the corner. Now there's real black wealth in this community. That's like an unknown.

It's really interesting to me how short-sighted we have been, or the leadership has been, which I don't often pair short-sightedness with good leadership. It's like I mean good leadership kind of you have to have that futuristic vision casting, kind of you know we're in this for the long haul spirit and that is just not. I don't feel like like I mean and I know you're giving examples, but even just in my experience, whether that's political leadership, quite frankly, or organizational leadership, you know school leadership, it is short-sighted, like we're gonna make, we just need to make it to tomorrow. It's like we don't think about next year, we don't think about five years from now. Are we willing to sacrifice tomorrow for the five-year gain? Like I don't hear that language, we don't like I don't. It's just amazing to me, but we don't seem to be calling that out. You know what I mean in the leadership that we, that we have right.

I mean having that and having that perspective again takes kind of like a commitment or risk, like an investment you think about. You know, the shift on the Supreme Court and the shift in yeah, you know, reproductive rights for for women, that that was a 40-year vision. Right like shifting state governments so that there's a majority of state governments that a majority Republican even though the majority of the country is Democrat, right like was a Multiple-year plan that involved state legislators redistricting, like shifting things so that the house became what it is, a, you know, a majority republic. It in all of these are like political decisions that have been forecasted out right over substantial decades of time and commitment of resources, and I think I mean I know you're right that we have not had the visionary leadership here that has been committed to that and willing to take the risk of, okay, this might not work out. And so I would say that a lot of times here, even like it's the other interesting thing, kind of like Things that the little is a little bit, you know, cognitive dissonance is that we're such an entrepreneurial town and Like the big people that we recognize and laud are entrepreneurs, but so much even from like that business class, you know, or community wise is, we are willing to risk just enough so that, like, what we're going for is still within our grasp, yeah, rather than like you know the stretch, that which you would normally have an entrepreneur, that's like. I gotta go all in and I gotta just put it all on table and like because this is the vision, this is the path, and like that's the road that we're going down.

What, as we kind of wrap up? What do you think? What would you want people to Unlearn about politics in Memphis?

Whoo, so much so I you know Unlearning that I mean one, that it's, that it's rocket science. Right, like that. I mean, let's say, even rocket science ain't rocket science.

Yeah it's.

It's that you know, like you said, like coming in, and I think you you see Even more people now who have done it over over the years of Coming in and not having political experience, not having a political Predic, pedigree, quote-unquote kind of and being a part of the process, and so that these are things that you can learn that are not, you know, super difficult like to do. To necessarily do it takes experience, it takes some failure to you know, some back and forth of being able to do it, but people can one, learn what the systems are, can to Impact those systems and three, if they want to serve, can serve in those systems. And you know, you know, create the leadership, be the change they want to be. That those are things, and I mean Memphis is a clear, like you know, any kind of mid-sized city like Memphis probably is like this, but there is a real potential for you to go from seeing people do like to go, from you know, yesterday Was, you know, I don't know anybody, I'm not connected to. You know, the next day I'm gonna just go volunteer and work on a campaign and be you know and do this to the next day. Oh, I helped somebody get elected to, like now, I have like an Influence, impact and like connection to somebody who has, yeah, political, and you know, governance and structural power. Yeah, and so you know that the, the, the, the distance, the degrees of separation between being on the ground and being in the ear of somebody who has the ability to make change is is really a matter of. I mean, a lot of people don't have time capacity, like you know, to do some of those things, but hopefully you know Recognizing that that is a matter of time and like capacity and you know, and a reckoning or will, or understanding, or, hopefully you know we help to inform people about, you know how you know narrow that gap is yeah, that you have to leap in terms of actually being able to engage with an elected official who has a clear ability to impact you and your community man Cardale.

This has been honestly so. If you, if you're not familiar with the Shelby County voter Alliance, look into it and specifically Name the class again the Shelby County voter Academy. Shelby County voter Academy. I I it's one of those things is like I understand why that's not in every curriculum in the school You're still building it out.

Yeah, okay, the goal is for it to be is to be an actual like civic kind of training class where you know, we have a module that's around county government we did last year. We have run around city and budgets and your tax revenue that we did this year and so our goal is to, you know, grow and grow that out, so that again this is about like what I've learned over time so many people would do voter education, so many, and everybody's recreating the wheel, and so it's like, okay, how do we get something that's like Put together, people have access to yep, that then you also are going through something like it's a class like so yeah, that we're not explaining the same thing over and over again, because every time we do a class about one thing you got us explain Okay, here's the structure, here's this, this, this for you to even get into the next level of discussion, right, so if we set out some expectation, people have learned this, people learn this. Now we can talk about tax revenue, right, property taxes, and you know the intricacies of budgets because we know the structure. We don't have to, like, spend, you know, a couple of hours explaining that yeah, and that that's I think.

I think that's so crucial. I know it's crucial. We need to understand it, especially For where we are now, I think in our city, to to what we've been saying the whole time. You got to know enough to know how to how to move in your own power as a citizen, and I love how what you said as far as like, it's not rocket-sized. The degree of separation from you to Decisions being made is just not as far as you think or know somebody who you trust, who knows like that's the part of Organizing, like so much of it is you don't have to know everything right, but be connected to an organizer or organize Organization that you trust.

That says Okay, and you can learn it if you want to. But also like having structures where, if I want to learn, all the interest sees a policy. I just need to know somebody, a trust when I'm in connection with who says this, the, this, the way we go, and we trust, we know enough to know that's the target, that's the ass right. That's.

That's what we're gonna impact man, thank you for being here. Thank you man, this is bit I love I. I just I love this stuff. I just think I think it's so interesting, but more so I think it's important for people, at least at a base level, to unlearn some things about, because we just we come, we, we were too frustrated as people to not do something like, and I think you know it. Part of the reason we don't is because we just believe things about politics that we just don't need to believe. They're just wrong or we it don't service anymore. It's like this is no longer helpful, right.

I would. So the last I would say because this is unlearning is Of being okay, being comfortable in the discomfort.

Yeah.

Like I think that is like one of the primary things that across the board from us, like working together, working on this or that, elected officials like, especially in the south, especially in the genteel south, where you know we don't want to make anybody uncomfortable yeah, that makes us uncomfortable. We make somebody else uncomfortable. We really have to become more comfortable with living in like that moment of discomfort that allows people to change and shift.

Well, you heard it from mr.

Cardwell orn get uncomfortable.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you, I appreciate this.

This was good man. This was good. All right, so I have no ending. This is no surprise to anybody who listens, but Just let's keep on learning so that we can keep moving together towards freedom. Thank you once again for listening to the unlearned 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.