How to Get Through the Worst, Together -- Kelsey Crowe

LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCASTS | STITCHER | PANDORA | SPOTIFY | NPR ONE | MORE

I think we can all agree, it’s been a rough spring with COVID-19 taking over our lives. You may know someone who’s sick, or who’s lost a loved one or their livelihood, or any number of awful things. But as this all goes down, we don’t always know what to say, or do, for someone who’s hurting, let alone asking for the help we might need ourselves. My guest Kelsey Crowe wrote a book, “There is No Good Card For This. What to Say and Do When Life is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to the People You Love” and founded a whole community called Help Each Other Out, to help us help each other. We spoke in 2017 and I thought we could all use a bit of what she calls “whiskey for the wounded.”

Kelsey+Crowe.jpg

Solo Swimmer Kim Chambers: "Surround yourself with people who believe in you."

LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCASTS | STITCHER | PANDORA | SPOTIFY | NPR ONE | MORE

Kim Chambers is only the sixth person ever to complete the Ocean’s Seven challenge... solo. That's seven open water channel swims. Think summiting Mount Everest in a bathing suit x 7… hours upon hours upon hours of swimming in critter-filled, often quite cold water. Kim is also the first and only woman in the world to solo swim the thirty miles of shark inhabited waters from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate of San Francisco. We spoke about taking risks, jellyfish and body image--as well as how important having a team who believes in you is for "individual" success. Listen to our conversation and check out Kim’s documentary “Kim Swims”.

Screen%2BShot%2B2020-04-14%2Bat%2B6.27.46%2BPM.jpg

How To Plug Into The Green New Deal - Rhiana Gunn-Wright

LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCASTS | STITCHER | PANDORA | SPOTIFY | NPR ONE | MORE

Meet the woman who helped develop The Green New Deal--and hear how you personally can make a difference in the climate crisis. Rhiana Gunn-Wright is the former policy director for New Consensus and Abdul El-Sayed’s 2018 Michigan gubernatorial campaign. She warns that without a shift in our policies and systems, we could become a nation of "fortresses" and "sacrifice zones". We’ll hear where she came from and how can the way she thinks about solving problems, can solve the biggest crisis of our time. A 2013 Rhodes Scholar, Gunn-Wright has also worked as the policy analyst for the Detroit Health Department, was a Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow of Women and Public Policy at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and served on the policy team for former First Lady Michelle Obama. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 2011 with majors in African American studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies.

Listen to Rhiana’s Toolkit for how you can make the Green New Deal resolution a reality.

Read the Green New Deal.

Take action with the Sunrise Movement.

Gunn-Wright_Rhiana_AIF2019.jpg

Meet the Climate Activist Leading the Charge for Children's Health - Heather McTeer Toney

LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCASTS | STITCHER | PANDORA | SPOTIFY | NPR ONE | MORE

Meet Heather McTeer Toney, the National Field Director at Moms Clean Air Force, which fights for climate safety to protect our children's health. In this episode, she shares how her two terms as the first African-American, first female and youngest mayor of Greenville, MS helps her be an even more effective activist, and what one thing motivates people to make big changes.

Listen to Heather’s Toolkit for Climate Action and Clean Energy.

Take Action with Moms Clean Air Force.

Photo of Heather McTeer Toney by Tenola Plaxico

Photo of Heather McTeer Toney by Tenola Plaxico

How Isha Clarke is Organizing for Climate Justice

LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCASTS | STITCHER | PANDORA | SPOTIFY | NPR ONE | MORE

Isha Clarke is an activist with Youth vs Apocalypse. You may know her from a viral video where she asked Senator Dianne Feinstein to move the Green New Deal forward; she helped organize the youth Climate Strike in San Francisco that attracted 30,000 students, during the international "week of action" when Greta Thurnberg sailed to America. She is a high school student working every day to reverse the climate crisis because as she says..." we have this power and responsibility to make this radical change. And I hope that everyone listening will get involved and know that they have the power to do something."

Read the transcript for the interview

Listen to the Toolkit. Read the transcript for the Toolkit with Isha on “How to reverse the climate crisis.”

Get involved. See the direct actions YVA is taking right now.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Lauren Schiller:

Do you remember that video that was going around last February (2019)? It was put out by the Sunrise Movement and shows kids visiting Senator Dianne Feinstein to ask her to move forward with The Green New Deal. That young woman with the curly hair and the tan shirt, her name is Isha Clark. Isha also helped organize the youth climate strike in September in San Francisco, that made a very strategic circuit around the city, stopping at the offices of Nancy Pelosi, Bank of America, Amazon Go, BlackRock, PG&E, ICE, and yes, Diane Feinstein.

Isha Clarke:

For each of the targets that we stopped at, we had the reasons why, but in each of the demands, which also aligned with the targets that we stopped at, we had the one sentence bolded demand, and then we had an explanation of that demand and what it really means, and then we had an action item. So it was like one very specific thing that you could do or you could work towards to make that demand happen.

Lauren Schiller:

They even recorded chants ahead of time so the students would know what to say at each stop.

Protesters:

Speaker Pelosi, we are the youth. Green New Deal, we demand the truth.

Protesters:

Amazon do your share. You need to take your workers fair.

Protesters:

PG&E no more greed. We should own our energy.

Protesters:

Dianne Feinstein, listen to us. We are the people, you work for us.

Lauren Schiller:

What do you think is going to change their mind? Do you have any sense of that?

Isha Clarke:

Well, I think that pressure makes diamonds, and so I think a lot of what makes change is putting pressure on power holders. Because power holders only have power because of the people, and so we really have to always remember that and not feel disempowered.

Lauren Schiller:

Isha's a high school student in Oakland and as part of being a student at her particular school, she gets to have an internship, which means she gets to spend time working with Youth vs Apocalypse, which is a Bay area youth climate justice organization. She's there several afternoons a week working on an issue she's passionate about, which is clearly the climate.

Isha Clarke:

And when I'm explaining what we do, I say that our job is both to redefine what climate justice means and really working on the movement from the inside, trying to make sure that frontline voices are always centered and that we have this very clear agenda of justice, and then also pushing that movement forward and trying to normalize climate justice and reverse the climate crisis.

Lauren Schiller:

This is Inflection Point. I'm Lauren Schiller with stories of how women rise up. We'll be right back with Isha's story.

Lauren Schiller:

Will you tell me a little bit more about yourself outside the organization?

Isha Clarke:

Yeah. That's a question I don't get a lot. So I am a dancer. Really, I would call myself an artist in general. I live a lot of different forms of art. I am very much an overachiever. I don't know, I guess that's kind of a big part of my identity. I'm like always doing the most, I'm always very extra. Everything has to be the best. And I think that carries over to a lot of different areas of my life.

Lauren Schiller:

So you dance with Destiny Arts?

Isha Clarke:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lauren Schiller:

I had a chance to see a performance of there's a couple of years ago and was just totally blown away. I'm sure you were in it-

Isha Clarke:

Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:

A couple of years ago as well.

Isha Clarke:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lauren Schiller:

So I must have seen you on the stage.

Isha Clarke:

Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:

And I'm also curious about, you know, you're a senior in high school. I've got two daughters, one's a junior and one's a freshman. And of course as a parent, I'm always trying to figure out, you know, how do I best set my kid up for success and how involved do I get versus how much do I stand back? So I'm kind of curious what your relationship is with your parents or how much they've been involved, and have you always been an overachiever like from the time you came out of the womb? You know, what's the interaction there?

Isha Clarke:

You know, that's an interesting question, and especially as I've been starting my college applications and like having to write personal statements and like thinking about like who am I, how did I become this person? How did I get to where I am? Like I've been thinking about that a lot and, I don't know. I think part of it, I kind of have always just been wired to be extra and be an overachiever, but I think I also have been super lucky to have a very supportive network. Always. And I never have any memory of anyone telling me that like I wasn't capable of doing something or that I wasn't good enough to do it or anything like that.

Isha Clarke:

And so, I guess my whole life I've been surrounded by really intelligent, really compassionate people who have always told me, "You can do anything you want to do." And so I think it's definitely nature and nurture.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. Do you ever feel like, you know, this whole thing around perfectionism has started coming to light, that we ask so much of our daughters that it can be overwhelming? I mean, does that ever come into play for you?

Isha Clarke:

Yeah, I mean, I'm starting to realize that the only thing that really matters is that you are happy and that you feel comfortable in the body and in the being that you are. And so, that's something that I've just started to realize that like, I feel comfortable in who I am and in what I'm doing. And if I start to not, then I know that I need to change something to make sure that I feel comfortable and that I'm happy. And I think that's the only thing that really matters. But that's really hard to do in a society that's telling you what you should do and who you should be all the time. So it takes a lot of self-reflection and self-awareness constantly to really like be aware of that.

Lauren Schiller:

And where do you find the time or space to have that reflection?

Isha Clarke:

That is a great question. [inaudible 00:07:03].

Lauren Schiller:

You have all the insight.

Isha Clarke:

Yes. You know, I think to be so honest, I need to do a better job of giving myself time to, you know, do self-care and to have time to self-reflect. But something that I started doing was keeping a journal. And it kind of started off as a thing where I only wrote when I was in crisis, and I felt like it didn't keep a very true reflection of my life, like when I would read back on it, you know? So I started trying to write every night. And I hated like the corniness of it, like, "Today I did this and this and this."

Isha Clarke:

So it depends on like, whatever I'm feeling that night is what I'll put in it. So sometimes I'll do like a really corny journal entry and sometimes I'll write a poem, or sometimes I'll make a list. You know, it just depends. And like really being able to just drain my brain, not really think about what I'm writing, and in that, I think, one, it clears my brains so I'm able to have like better thoughts, and that's when I really get to check in with myself. And also just seeing like what gets put on the paper, what was I thinking today, what did I do today. I guess that's just one thing that I do.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. Well, okay, so tell me how you got involved in Youth vs Apocalypse?

Isha Clarke:

I got involved with Youth vs Apocalypse before YVA was actually like a thing. So I was a part of a different organization called Jewish Youth for Community Action, JYCA, and through JYCA, we kind of partner or work with other organizations and we go to their actions that their planning. And so one of these actions was targeting [inaudible 00:08:53], who is a very prominent developer in Oakland and was suing or is suing the city of Oakland to try to build a coal terminal through West Oakland, which is a very disadvantaged community and is disproportionately black and brown and low income.

Isha Clarke:

And so, at that action, I really realized how central environmental racism was or is to climate justice and how, historically, the environmental justice movement didn't reflect the actual people who are on the front lines of the injustice. And so, I was like, wow, this is real. Like this is a fight for lives. This is not a fight for the polar bears and the rain forest. You know, it is, but really, it's about saving our lives and about creating an equitable just world. And so I really felt like that was where I wanted to be and what I wanted to fight for.

Lauren Schiller:

Do you mind if I ask, are you Jewish?

Isha Clarke:

I am. Yes.

Lauren Schiller:

Are both your parents Jewish?

Isha Clarke:

No, my mom is Jewish.

Lauren Schiller:

Okay. And your dad?

Isha Clarke:

My dad-

Lauren Schiller:

Do you want to talk about your dad?

Isha Clarke:

My dad's black. He's not like religious at all.

Lauren Schiller:

Okay. Just curious. Me too, Jewish.

Isha Clarke:

Oh. Nice.

Okay, so you were at this action protesting. It was a protest, really, about this coal terminal?

Isha Clarke:

Yes. So it was a direct action. So we went to his office and it was really funny. So the theme was Christmas in June, and so we were all dressed up as elves. Like we had little elf hats and stuff like that.

Lauren Schiller:

This is the Jewish organization?

Isha Clarke:

No.

Lauren Schiller:

Oh.

Isha Clarke:

No, no, no. It was not.

Lauren Schiller:

Okay.

Isha Clarke:

So it wasn't like an organization, but it was a group of people from, I think, mostly middle schools who organized this action, and JYCA was like bringing some of our members to go help them out with that.

Lauren Schiller:

Okay.

Isha Clarke:

Yeah. Okay. Clarified that. So the theme was Christmas in June. That's ironic. I never thought about it thought before. We went into his office with these elf hats on, and there was like a long scroll, and it was signed by a bunch of kids all over the Bay ara, or all over Oakland, specifically, who were saying that they didn't want coal for Christmas.

Isha Clarke:

And so, we were expecting to just go into his office and probably deliver this scroll to his secretaries, like not thinking that he would come out, but we wound up running into him on his way to the bathroom and that was really interesting. So we wound up actually being able to talk to him and, you know, I don't know how many people know about what happened with Senator Feinstein, but the interaction was very similar, where it was like this super powerful person who had some role in climate change. I challenged what he was saying and he like walked up on me and was like trying to intimidate me. And he was sweating bullets. Like I could tell that he was really nervous.

Isha Clarke:

And, you know, now that I think about it, that was the first time where I like had that feeling of that real direct action where you're like looking into the eyes of the power holder and challenging the nonsense that they're saying. And I was like, whoa. Like this is awesome. This is exactly what I need to be doing. And now, it's been a pattern apparently.

Lauren Schiller:

That's amazing. So can you just paint a little bit more of the picture? So how old were you guys?

Isha Clarke:

I was 13.

Lauren Schiller:

Okay.

Isha Clarke:

I believe I was a freshman in high school.

Lauren Schiller:

Okay. And how many? It was mostly 13-

Isha Clarke:

Yeah, it was mostly middle schoolers. I think there must've been a few high schoolers because I was in high school. But yeah, it was like between the ages of maybe like, what? Probably 10 and 14.

Lauren Schiller:

And how many of you were there?

Isha Clarke:

Ooh. There was probably about 10 to 15 okay.

Lauren Schiller:

So 10 to 15 10 to 14 year olds-

Isha Clarke:

Yes.

Lauren Schiller:

Are marching down the hall with your scroll and you run into this guy-

Isha Clarke:

Yes.

Lauren Schiller:

On his way to the bathroom-

Isha Clarke:

Yes. Yes.

Lauren Schiller:

And you just say, "Excuse me, we need to talk."

Isha Clarke:

Yeah, pretty much.

Lauren Schiller:

So that was a few years ago now.

Isha Clarke:

Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:

And so what led you to be so involved and in a leadership position really with Youth vs Apocalypse at this moment?

Isha Clarke:

You know, I think it kind of just happened. I think because I am an original member of Youth vs Apocalypse, so I've been in it like almost the longest. I think there's a couple other people that were original members with me, but just having been in it the longest, and also, YVA really went through this very quick transition between this local like kind of organization where we were fighting against this coal terminal, and then we quickly transitioned to organizing on national and global levels. And I had been a part of the group in like both areas or whatever, so it just happened.

Lauren Schiller:

Are you thinking in terms of local action or are you thinking on a broader scale? Or kind of how do you think about the best way to approach challenging injustice and challenging the problems that are creating climate change from where you stand? I mean, where do you focus your energy?

Isha Clarke:

I think that you can't separate one from the other, especially now with all the climate strikes going on. I think what we're doing is we're connecting a bunch of local fights and that becomes this global movement. And so like the Bay area climate strike, we had our own list of demands. We were targeting local perpetrators, I guess you can call them, and so were other people all over the planet. And so, we were each kind of fighting our own local battle, but we were standing in solidarity together and so it became this global movement.

Isha Clarke:

And so I think, at least for right now, the most powerful, I don't know if I want to say powerful, but the way that we're going about it is saying, if you take on your local battle and I take on mine, then we're getting both at the same time and we're making global change. And so, that's how YVA's kind of approaching it right now.

Lauren Schiller:

Well I'd love to talk about the climate strike. What was your involvement in pulling all of that together? I mean, there were like over 10,000 mostly students marching in San Francisco in September for the international week of action.

Isha Clarke:

Yeah, I think there was actually like 30,000.

Lauren Schiller:

Nice.

Isha Clarke:

Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:

Okay.

Isha Clarke:

Our estimate-

Lauren Schiller:

Tens of thousands.

Isha Clarke:

Yes, tens of thousands. I helped write the demands and helped with some of the logistical things, but mostly, my job in YVA is media outreach and press. Like I wrote the press release, almost forgot about that, and then I do a lot of interviews and call the media outlets and make sure that they're coming. You know, it never happened if it doesn't get recorded or talked about. So that's mostly what I do, with little other things here and there.

Lauren Schiller:

Okay. So I mean, what are the main barriers to actually changing the course of history?

Isha Clarke:

Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:

What are you seeing that's in our way?

Isha Clarke:

Wow. There's a lot of things. I guess I'll connect it back to the climate strike. So we had seven demands, and our demands were very intersectional and, you know, called out ICE and asked for Medicare for all, and also asked for The Green New Deal. And, you know, we were talking about things that people said were too far away from climate justice, and what we were really trying to convey through those demands were like all of this is connected and that fighting the climate crisis is also fighting all of the systems of oppression that undergird our world that have led us to this crisis. And in doing that, we're taking on the task of completely dismantling everything that we know. And that is really scary, and people say that it's idealistic.

Isha Clarke:

And so, I think that's one of the biggest fights, shifting people from this idea of the task being too big and too hard and that needed change isn't attainable. And also our time restraint. You know, we just had this action at Chevron on September 27th, and we actually got to talk to some Chevron executives. And what we were saying was we don't have this time for this long slow transition to renewable energy. We just don't have that time. And they were saying, you know, well, change is slow, and over the course of history you see that change has been slow.

Isha Clarke:

And that's exactly the problem. You know, we cannot do things the way that they've been done before and that scares people, and it forces us to think in a completely new way than we ever have before. And so I think that's the largest task, is shifting from believing that what we need is idealistic and finding a way to do it is the biggest task.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. So really convincing, not just our own community and the people around us to participate in making those demands, but convincing the, as you call them, the perpetrators-

Isha Clarke:

Yes.

Lauren Schiller:

But really the power holders-

Isha Clarke:

Yes.

Lauren Schiller:

To change the way that they're approaching things?

Isha Clarke:

Definitely. So I would really encourage people to go to our website, youthvsapocalypse.org, and look at those demands from the strike and look at the action items because there are specific things that you can do. And I think that was another one of our goals of this strike, to show people that there are tangible actions that we can all take to do something about this, to target these really powerful corporations and companies.

Lauren Schiller:

We'll be right back with Isha Clark, a high school student and activist with Youth vs Apocalypse. Contribute to our Crowdfunding campaign with a tax deductible donation at inflectionpointradio.org and remember to subscribe or favorite this podcast.

Lauren Schiller:

So you alluded to this a little bit earlier, but in terms of who you are thinking about that is, I mean, we're all going to be affected by climate change in one way or the other, but some people are more insulated than others. And, you know, you started to talk about the coal terminal going through Oakland. I mean, who are the communities that are going to essentially be on the front lines of being effected as our climate gets into more and more trouble?

Isha Clarke:

You know, historically, communities of color, indigenous communities, low income communities have been targeted by environmental injustice. And so, all the oil refineries are put in communities of color. The coal terminals that are being planned to build are built through communities of color and pipelines are built through indigenous water supply and sacred lands. And we see it happening over and over and over again, and it's really, it's so sad to think about that.

Isha Clarke:

And the other thing I would say is actually a story, or not really a story, but something that we always talk about at YVA, especially like when all the wildfires were happening, you know, some people had the money and the time and the resources to be able to go out and buy air filters for their house, and other people just had to close the doors and the windows and hope for the best. And the people who were having to hope for the best are also where the highest rates of asthma were. And so, you know, that also just goes to show the systematic nature of that injustice.

Lauren Schiller:

I mean, do you think... I mean, I guess the real issue is that the people who hold the power are not feeling the pain.

Isha Clarke:

Right.

Lauren Schiller:

But they'll feel the pain when the people speak out, and pressure makes diamonds, like you said. I mean, how far does this have to go before these people who can make decisions that will change the course of our climate feel that pain? You know?

Isha Clarke:

Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:

Are there strategies for that?

Isha Clarke:

You know, I mean, I like to think that I have all the answers, but I really don't, and I guess that time will only tell. But I think that the biggest thing that we can do is to never forget the power that we have as the people. And really, I have to emphasize this point again, that power holders would not have power if it weren't for the people. And so, just every day as a mantra, as an affirmation, remind yourself that you have power and that power is multiplied and multiplied as you link arms with other people and stand in solidarity. And that really, you know, businesses and politicians are all needing us. And so, if we put pressure on them, then they're going to have to change eventually. I don't know when that will be, but the more pressure, hopefully the sooner it will be.

Lauren Schiller:

So I mean, what would you say is the big bold vision for Youth vs Apocalypse?

Isha Clarke:

I mean, to save the world. That's it. Well, let me add to that, to save the world and to make sure that the new world that comes from that is sustainable and is just, and is equitable, and is run by solutions that are created by frontline communities or communities that have previously been on the front lines because there will be no more frontline communities in our new world. I think that's like the dream, the mission.

Lauren Schiller:

Do you have any role models out there that you're looking to, that are accomplishing great things that you aspire?

Isha Clarke:

I would have to say AOC.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah.

Isha Clarke:

I love that woman so much. Oh my God. I just think that she is so bad ass. Like just plain and simple, you know? Well she was one of the people who even came up with The Green New Deal. She is super young and is unapologetically Latina, and just always speaks truth to power whenever it's needed, and often when people don't want it, which is when they really need it the most. And I think she just is so fearless and powerful and intelligent and I just love her.

Lauren Schiller:

So she's an adult, she's in the halls of power. You know, you're in high school, you're on the ground making a difference. What are you seeing in terms of, you know, I'll just put it in quotes, "youth" being taken seriously in this moment? I mean, do you feel like people are paying attention and that it's not just, "Oh, it's just a bunch of kids."

Isha Clarke:

You know, even in the past year, I think that young people who are leading this movement have been getting a lot more attention, and not even just like, "Oh, look at all the kids out protesting," like, "They're really doing something." And you know, the fossil fuel industry actually, they said that the number one threat to their way of doing business, which is poisoning the earth, is young people because we've been doing so much, making so much noise, putting so much pressure on them and other like banks and insurance companies that are supporting them and their projects, that we are making a statement and people are listening. And I think they're trying to, you know, keep us out, but it's inevitable that we're going to really make some change and I really believe that.

Lauren Schiller:

Is there anyone historically that you've looked back at and thought, okay, that that was a group of youth that went out there and made a difference? That you were like, you know, they did this, they made it happen. Any predecessors?

Isha Clarke:

I think that the first group that comes to my mind is the Black Panther Party. I don't think they were like specifically youth, but there was a lot of young people and I know that it was started by college students, or they were college students at the time, and that a lot of the people who are a part of it were like 17, 18, 19. So that's the first group that really comes to my mind. They were revolutionary and I definitely, especially being from Oakland and West Oakland, they're very influential to me and are another like group of people and an organization that I really look up to.

Lauren Schiller:

Well what have you found difficult about this work and how have you overcome any barriers that you've run into? I mean, we've already established that you're ambitious and you like to get a lot of stuff.

Isha Clarke:

Yes. Oh my Gosh.

Lauren Schiller:

I imagine like pretty much very little gets in your way, but what have you found to be difficult?

Isha Clarke:

Well, a couple things. One of them is, doing this work, you kind of live in this space of having to think about this really scary future all the time. And also now like, you know, the PG&E shut down and the hurricanes and all these things that are very like recent that are very tied to climate change and are just kind of giving us a peek into the world that we're facing is really like scary and almost like traumatizing to just live in that space all the time. And at the same time, having to be quote unquote normal and having to think about going to school and studying for your exams and applying to college.

Isha Clarke:

You know, you have to live in both of these worlds all the time, and it's really interesting and it's challenging a lot of the time. Like how can I study for this exam when the fate of the world is also on my shoulders, is something that I'm always, you know, bouncing back and forth between.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's sort of almost like to protect yourself, you have to, I don't know, for me anyway, and I'm not in the middle of it like you are, but I sometimes have to just pretend that that's not happening so that I can get the work done today that I need to get done to, you know, make a living and get food on the table and so on, but in reality, it's just omnipresent, ever moving forward, never stopping.

Isha Clarke:

Right.

Lauren Schiller:

So it's stressful.

Isha Clarke:

I think that's definitely something that I used to do, but what I try to do now instead of pretending that it's not happening is telling myself that there's no other option but for us to make sure that it doesn't happen. And I think that's a little bit more positive, or it's more positive, but it gets the same effect, you know? Just like this has to happen. Like this can't be real. Like we're going to do something. Especially just with all the progress that we've made. The first climate strike that we did, which was March 15th I believe, there was [crosstalk 00:28:22].

Lauren Schiller:

Of 2019?

Isha Clarke:

Yes. There was 3000, or 2000 people there, and we were ecstatic. It was like incredible. We were like, "Oh my God, we just did that." And then September 20th comes and we have like 30 to 40,000 people there, and that just shows how people are really paying attention and are getting inspired and are wanting to get involved. And moments like that just really like make me believe that, that we really can make a change. I really believe it.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah.

Isha Clarke:

And it's good that I believe it because I'd be in a bad situation if I didn't.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. I believe it too. And I don't mean to say that I like spend every day pretending that it's not happening, it's almost like a stress [inaudible 00:00:29:11].

Isha Clarke:

No, I totally understand.

Lauren Schiller:

But I do talk to people who say like, "It's too much for me. I want to just stick my head in the sand," and we can't.

Isha Clarke:

Right.

Lauren Schiller:

We just can't.

Isha Clarke:

Right.

Lauren Schiller:

[inaudible 00:29:22] it'll be all sand.

Isha Clarke:

Right.

Lauren Schiller:

[inaudible 00:29:24] down there too long.

Isha Clarke:

It's like when you sleep in too long and your mom comes in and rips off the blanket off of you-

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah.

Isha Clarke:

Like that's what's happening, right?

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah.

Isha Clarke:

Like we can't wait any longer.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. We've got to jump up out of bed.

Isha Clarke:

Right.

Lauren Schiller:

[crosstalk 00:29:35] the day. So have you thought about what all the work that you're doing now will mean for you after high school? I mean, what kinds of things are you looking at as you're looking at colleges?

Isha Clarke:

Yeah, it's definitely something that I'm starting to think about right now, like in this very moment.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. Right, you're a senior and we're recording this in October and applications are due soon.

Isha Clarke:

Yeah. Yeah. The UC applications are due November, but I don't think I'm going to apply to UC, so I have until like January, really December. But you know, that's a great question because I don't think I can ever be apart from social justice and especially climate justice now because there's not enough time to take like a break. I can't take a break from organizing this. Like it's not going to go away, you know? So trying to figure that out right now, I don't know what that will look like, but I know that I can't be away from it and so I will find a way.

Lauren Schiller:

Can a person major in activism?

Isha Clarke:

I don't know. But you know, I actually think that they are trying to do that at UC Berkeley. I think it's new, but yeah, I don't really know all the details on that so I can't like give you my word on that. But they have like a community organizing class or something like that, and I think the idea is like trying to get classes like that popular so that they can turn it into a major. Because it's true, I think everyday people should have the skills to organize. It definitely doesn't just come, it takes a lot of practice and knowledge and I'm always learning something every day.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. So who has trained you?

Isha Clarke:

I think it started, as early as I can remember, is listening to my grandpa's stories about his activism. He was really awesome. I don't know why I say was, he's still here, he's still fighting every day, but-

Lauren Schiller:

And is this on your mom's side or your dad's side?

Isha Clarke:

My mom's side. He burned his draft papers and like peed in front of the Koch brothers' building and protest and has done all these really incredible things his entire life. And just hearing all of his stories and just seeing him lead by example I think was kind of my earliest introduction into social justice and knowing that I wanted to be like that.

Isha Clarke:

And then, you know, I joined Destiny and everything that we do is centered around social justice and talking about things that are uncomfortable and moving through those things. And my family's like dinnertime conversations are always about something that has to do with social justice. And, you know, at Passover, we're talking about like slavery and modern day slavery and Trump and all these very different things that are always present in my family and in my way of thinking.

Isha Clarke:

And so, I don't think there's like one specific person because I think it's just kind of been my life.

Lauren Schiller:

What's the best advice that you've ever been given about how to make a demand in a way that you're going to get the answer you want or the change that you want to see?

Isha Clarke:

You know, I think I've kind of just had practice talking to my parents. You know, I can't think of any advice that I've been given, but I just did this, I guess it was a panel thing, where I said that truth is respectful. And so I think if you are always analyzing things from this perspective of both truth and compassion, then I think that you can accomplish that by demanding something but still being able to get it. I think you have to assess reality and what needs to be done and be truthful and be compassionate, and I think that you can accomplish that.

Lauren Schiller:

That was Isha Clarke, a high school student and activist with Youth vs Apocalypse, a climate justice group based in Oakland, California. You can find a link to Isha's organization, YVA, on my website at inflectionpointradio.org. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point and this is how women rise up.

Lauren Schiller:

Today's program was produced in part by the generous donation of Tom Jacoby. That's our inflection point for today. All of our episodes are on Apple Podcasts, Radio Public, Stitcher, Pandora, NPR One, all the places. Give us a five star review and subscribe to the podcast.

Lauren Schiller:

Know women leading change we should talk to? Let us know at inflectionpointradio.org. While you're there, support our production with a tax deductible monthly or one time contribution. When women rise up, we all rise up. Just go to inflectionpointradio.org. We're on Facebook and Instagram @InflectionPointRadio. Follow us and join the Inflection Point Society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small daily actions. And follow me on Twitter @LASchiller.

Lauren Schiller:

To find out more about today's guest and to be in the loop with our email newsletter, you know where to go, inflectionpointradio.org. Inflection Point is produced in partnership with KALW, 91.7 FM in San Francisco, and PRX. Our community manager is Alaura Weaver. Our engineer and producer is Eric Wayne. I'm your host, Lauren Schiller.

Speaker 5:

Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. PRX.

TOOLKIT TRANSCRIPT

Lauren Schiller:

I'm Lauren Schiller and here is today's Inflection Point TOOLKIT.

Isha Clarke:

My name is Isha Clarke. I am a senior at MetWest High School, and I am a youth organizer with Youth Vs. Apocalypse. Youth Vs. Apocalypse is a Bay Area youth climate justice organization. When I'm explaining what we do, I say that our job is both to redefine what climate justice means, and really working on the movement from the inside, trying to make sure that frontline voices are always centered, and that we have this very clear agenda of justice. And then also pushing that movement forward, and trying to normalize climate justice and reverse the climate crisis.

Lauren Schiller:

In today's TOOLKIT, we learn three actions we can take right now to reverse the climate crisis and how to put pressure on a power holder. We'll be right back.

Lauren Schiller:

What are three ways that anyone listening to this could get involved in helping reverse the climate crisis?

Isha Clarke:

I would say the first thing is to educate yourself. Read all the articles you can read, get all the dirty, little facts on people, and just get yourself educated so that you really have the knowledge to back up anything that you're doing.

Isha Clarke:

And then I think the second thing is bring that knowledge to others, talk to other people about it, really normalize these conversations about the climate crisis, and what climate justice is, and normalize going to actions and other things like that.

Isha Clarke:

And then I would say lastly, get involved in your local battles. Look for other organizations who are already doing things in your community, or close to your community, and look for local corporations and companies that you can target hopefully with another organization that's already doing that.

Lauren Schiller:

Would that be like a Google search or how would you recommend people search for those organization or people that are already doing something?

Isha Clarke:

Yeah. I mean, you can do a Google search. There's a lot of information out there. I know that right now we're updating our website so we will have a Get Involved/Educate Yourself tab where you can find a lot of different campaigns to get involved with and also resources to educate yourself.

Lauren Schiller:

What are the most effective ways to put pressure on a power holder?

Isha Clarke:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think the first thing that I always say, as an individual, you can always call your representative. Look up who your representative is, and call them over, and over, and over, and over again if you want. That's what their lines are there for. If you get to voicemail, you can leave them a message. They will check their messages. You can leave your name and your ZIP code if you want or not, but that's a good way to put pressure.

Lauren Schiller:

What should we say when we call?

Isha Clarke:

I would probably say something like why you care about climate change and what you want your representative to do. Usually when I call, I will say, "I want you to endorse the Green New Deal, or vote yes on the resolution for the Green New Deal," If there's a vote coming up, things like that. You can also just talk about climate change if you want.

Isha Clarke:

The other thing I would say is find... again, I'm going to say this because I think it's so important, to find other people who are already doing the work because if you add your energy to a movement that's already happening, then it just helps build the momentum. Really work on those local battles with other people who are doing the work.

Isha Clarke:

Lastly, I would say take a look at your own finances. You may have money invested in fossil fuels without realizing it, especially retirement and pension funds. I know for anyone who's a teacher, your pension fund is through CalSTRS, which invest billions of dollars in the fossil fuel industry, and there's a lot of work being done trying to get them to divest. Get involved in everything that you can, get all your money out of fossil fuels.

Lauren Schiller:

What would you like to say to other young people about how they can get involved and how they can use their power?

Isha Clarke:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, first, I just want to say to all the young people listening, hey. Secondly, remember that your voice matters, and that you are important, and that this is our future that we're talking about, and you have every right to stand up and scream for justice. Third, I would say, again, look for organizations who are already doing work, and really get involved with those people. You can call your representatives too. It doesn't matter if you didn't vote for them because you're still their constituent, and you still have... They work for you, remember that.

Lauren Schiller:

Is there any last piece of advice or wisdom that you want to make sure that you have the chance to share?

Isha Clarke:

I just want to emphasize again that we really have this very unique opportunity to make needed change, and to really completely reimagine the world. We could have been born at any time, but we're here now, and we have this power and responsibility to make this radical change. I hope that everyone listening will get involved and know that they have the power to do something. Never feel disempowered.

Lauren Schiller:

That was Isha Clarke's TOOLKIT. Isha is a youth activist with Youth Vs. Apocalypse. You can find a link to YVA on my website at InflectionPointRadio.org. Definitely check out my in depth conversation with Isha in the podcast feed right now. She shares how her work brought out tens of thousands of students in San Francisco for the youth climate strike and much more. I'm Lauren Schiller, this is an Inflection Point TOOLKIT, and this is how women rise up.

Speaker 3:

From PRX.





DeFo_FMw.jpeg

How Actor Amber Tamblyn Created Her Own Role: Feminist Activist

LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCASTS | STITCHER | PANDORA | SPOTIFY | NPR ONE | MORE

In this episode we’ll hear how Amber Tamblyn went from being an actress to being an activist--defining her own role in the feminist movement--and how we can all play a role in leading change.  Amber's  book is called "Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution." It's part memoir, part manifesto, part call to action. We sat down together in San Francisco while she was in town as part of the release of her book in paperback.

Back in 2017, Amber wrote an OpEd for the NYTimes, called "I'm Done With Not Being Believed" in which she tells what happened when a well-known actor almost as old as her dad tried to pick her up when she was 16, and then called her a liar when she outed him on Twitter. This was before the Weinstein revelations, before the #MeToo movement caught fire and before Times Up, which Amber went on to co-found.


TRANSCRIPT. We do our best, please forgive or let us know any errors.

Lauren Schiller:

Do you remember there was an op-ed that came out a few years ago in the New York Times and the headline was, I'm done with not being believed. It was before the Weinstein revelations, before Me Too, before Time's Up. But just after Trump's grab them by the pussy tape. It was written by...

Amber Tamblyn:

My name is Amber Tamblyn, and I am an author, actress, director, producer. I am many things.

Lauren Schiller:

By the time Amber wrote this op-ed, she'd been acting for over 20 years since she was 11. You might know her from General Hospital, Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants, Joan of Arcadia. She also directed the movie Painted Black, and has published a novel and several books of poetry.

Lauren Schiller:

In this op-ed, She tells what happened when a well-known actor, almost as old as her dad tried to pick her up when she was 16 and then called her a liar when she outed him on Twitter.

Amber Tamblyn:

And so I wrote the piece which really looked at that exact idea, which was that I was really, really, really effing done with not being believed, with being told that my story was not going to matter, that it was always going to be, "Let's not believe her first. And let's believe him First," just because that's the narrative. That's the way things go.

Lauren Schiller:

After the piece came out, Amber attended a Hollywood party. She'd been to many times before, filled with bold face names.

Amber Tamblyn:

So many people in our industry, not only incredibly famous, but powerful, really powerful executives, women who run companies who I've never talked to who I would normally never really not have an interaction with, coming up to tell me how much that piece meant and many of them sharing some stories.

Amber Tamblyn:

That was the part that I didn't really realize... I mean, I knew that it had sort of set this fire on everyone reading it on social media and in that world. But that was a really powerful evening in which I sensed that something was coming.

Lauren Schiller:

And then in quick succession, we all learned about Harvey Weinstein, felt the full force of the Me Too movement, and saw the creation of Times Up of which Amber is a founding member.

Amber Tamblyn:

And now we've seen in so many ways, especially with these incredible silence breaker women who have come forward and testified and given their stories about what Weinstein did, but not only that, not only the violence, but the silencing and the stalking and hiring these companies to follow them and plant evidence against them and everything that's happened. You understand how far predominantly men in positions of power will go to keep us quiet and away from that power. So, to me it was it struck such a nerve and it just felt like an opening.

Lauren Schiller:

In the wake of all this, Amber wrote a book called Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution, which is part memoir, part manifesto and part call to action.

Lauren Schiller:

We sat down together in San Francisco while she was in town as part of the release of her book in paperback. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point, the stories of how women rise up.

Lauren Schiller:

Today we'll hear how Amber Tamblyn went from being an actress to being an activist, defining her own role in the feminist movement and how we can all play a role in leading change. We'll be right back.

Lauren Schiller:

I'm back with Amber Tamblyn. I'm curious about how you got into acting in the first place at such a young age. And how that shaped your view of yourself, your sense of yourself.

Amber Tamblyn:

This question has always been a very easy answer for me since I was very young. I had a stump speech that I was able to give. My dad who was in West Side Story, his agent saw me when I was in a play when I was very young and she said, "We've got to get her into acting."

Amber Tamblyn:

And I went on some auditions and I got a role when I was 11 on a soap opera. I had a stump speech version of that answer for a very long time. And I think it wasn't until I hit my own, to use the phrase Era of Ignition and my own sort of existential crisis that propelled me into the person I am today. Did that question become very complicated and require much deeper thought and explanation?

Amber Tamblyn:

Because I don't know when you are a child, if you are choosing to act, you're not making that choice to yourself. Adults around you are making that choice. And it's taken me a long time to think about what I lost in the course of that what you lose as a child who is not only working for a living and taking care of your family for a living, but also playing other people for a living, taking on the personalities of other people, telling your body on a daily basis from one part to the next. Today you're having a heroin overdose. Today you're raped. Today you've been murdered today. You're crying all day today. You're incredibly happy. It takes its toll.

Amber Tamblyn:

So I don't know how much choice really ever came into that part of it for me, but it's certainly been... it's a story. My story is not one I would change for anything in the worlds because it has produced the person that I am today.

Lauren Schiller:

Well, it's interesting all those roles that you just reeled off, none of them were of powerful women or girls taking charge or even, I mean, any of the roles that were sort of starting to see today. I mean, how did that make you feel about yourself? I mean and even did at the time how you felt about yourself? Or is it really only kind of in hindsight that you could reflect on that?

Amber Tamblyn:

I think as a young woman, I had many of the same frustrations that I couldn't pinpoint, or put a reason behind the way that many women do or have in their given fields in their industries. A sense of being emotionally extorted, a sense of having your value, not feel seen or utilized a sense of there is something greater for you. There is something bigger for you, a calling that you don't know how to manifest for yourself though it's there, it exists.

Amber Tamblyn:

That's universal. That is every woman's experience. That is my mom who's a retired school teacher of three decades. That's her experience. And my grandmother who was a piano teacher and vocal coach and it just every woman I know has had that at some degree.

Amber Tamblyn:

So I think it's, right now we're going through this really, really wonderful time in the entertainment business where things are not feeling like they're going as fast as they should be as far as change is concerned. But still at the same time, you are seeing an unprecedented number of women and people of color and voices that have traditionally been left out of artistic, cultural point of view, now becoming very much a part of that landscape both in television and film.

Amber Tamblyn:

Not as much as I would like and that many would like, but a lot more than before. And so there is a real... it's very bittersweet for me. because I went through a time where like the women who came before me, all of them were speaking out was really dangerous and where it didn't matter how good the movie is that you made or directed or poured your guts and life into and the reviews, how fantastic they were. It didn't matter.

Amber Tamblyn:

You were still going to be seen as less than, and therefore your work was going to be seen and valued as less than. But I think we're kind of in a different space now. I feel that. Again, with the caveat, not as much as I would hope, but we're getting there.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I'm learning is that change is just a lot freaking slower that I would like it to be. Sounds like you might like it to be as well, especially when you really start to recognize the problems and put your fingers on the problems. And then its like, "Well, what's taking so long? Why can't we just fix that right now?"

Amber Tamblyn:

Yeah, I mean Rome wasn't burned to the ground and built back up in a day and it takes a minute. It really takes a minute to... we're still in the phase of people trying to get on board. We are still in the backlash phase. You have to remember that we are literally dismantling something that dates back to the Bible, that dates back to Roman Empire to all the ways in which women have ever tried to gain access or use their voice for a platform or find themselves in a position of power and have found themselves shut out. We are trying to dismantle thousands and thousands of years of that and you can't do it overnight.

Amber Tamblyn:

It's just not going to happen and it has to be slow, and it's going to take time. And what I always say to people is the most important thing is that we practice patience and perseverance. Those two things together. Because what we can't do is get frustrated and back off and go, this isn't working, we're still getting attacked, we're still being silenced. These things are still happening and go be upset about that. I mean, you could be upset about it, but we have to keep moving. We have to keep pushing forward.

Lauren Schiller:

Well, in some ways, seeing the news that comes out every day about the latest egregious a front it is frustrating, but it's also a good thing, right? Because we weren't necessarily hearing about these things before on the front page of the newspaper.

Amber Tamblyn:

I'll give you a great example of that. That's actually really smart that you brought that up because for instance, even if you look at the Academy Award nominations this year in 2020 and with full transparency, I am one of the Academy voters. I was one of the many women and people that they brought in and this huge attempt to try to balance out their membership and make it more representative and diverse.

Amber Tamblyn:

And even still, you see no women directors nominated, you see women's sort of shut out and especially people of color shutout in major categories. But I think it's fascinating and says a lot about where we're at that the conversation about who was shut out was almost more loud and profound and took center stage over who would... who was actually nominated for the Oscars this year. And that's really not something that we have seen before.

Amber Tamblyn:

We've seen outrage here and there about certain things, but the fact that this took center stage, this became the conversation, says a lot and it's really important. That type of a pressure is very important.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. One has a vision of, at least when I was growing up like child actors and actresses flameout in their teens and twenties whether they succumb to drug use or alcohol or other forms of self-harm or other people's harming them. And you somehow were able to avoid that fate and in fact grapple with and then get on top of your situation.

Lauren Schiller:

And I'm curious you go into it in your book, Era of Ignition, but I'm curious to just hear how that self-awareness came to be and how you climbed out of it.

Amber Tamblyn:

Well, firstly I would say that it just didn't happen to me publicly. So I think one of the most difficult things to see with young actors and especially actresses, is when this happens to them publicly in their dealing with the combination of their privilege and their sense of having no identity, yet having to be responsible for an identity that that was given to them by a public when they are coming to terms with the realization that they have only been an object for a living at a time in which you are most delicately trying to create your central nervous system and your sense of self and your ID.

Amber Tamblyn:

And so that I think like my two books before this one was a book called Dark Sparkler, which looked at the lives and deaths of child star actresses. And that was a really intense and difficult exorcism for me, looking at all of those young actresses who had died. Again, either at the hands of stalkers or fathers or the things that they did to themselves. But it was an examination, not just of my culture but also I think the sense of my own need to die at a certain level.

Amber Tamblyn:

And not literally, but to have a... I have a real metaphorical death. I was craving an ending to this type of person that I had been for so long, which was not an ending of acting, which I've always loved. It's a great work. But an ending to the not having any control and to not being able to be the bigger version of yourself you had imagined. The person who controls her own content, who writes her own words, who interprets her own art.

Amber Tamblyn:

Those things were not available to me. As they are not for many women and in many different industries. And I think I had to go through my own version of that existential crisis to come out on the other side, which again is something I think all women go through, whether you're in your late 20s or early 30s. It is that Saturn Return, which I talk a lot about in the book.

Amber Tamblyn:

This idea, I call it in the book an Invisible Alphabet, where you are at A or B or C and you see that bright, glowing Z in the distance, but you have no idea how to manifest the alphabet in between. You just have no skill for it.

Amber Tamblyn:

And our culture doesn't give us a skill set for that. It really doesn't, if anything, it tries to keep women distanced from their own potential. So for me, I think it was about feeling like if I didn't come out on the other side, figuring out how to manifest that alphabet that bridge then I wasn't going to survive.

Amber Tamblyn:

So, this was an act of survival for me. And again, this is not me talking about a literal death. This is talking about, I don't know what I would have... where I would have ended up, who I would have been, what kind of career I would have had, if any had I not pushed through and done what I had to do, which didn't feel like a choice. It felt like an act of survival.

Lauren Schiller:

But you had the presence of mind to be able to step back and say, "This is just not working for me." And I'm trying to dig into that. I mean, I love the concept of the Saturn Return and I want to talk about that more because I feel like that happens... It just keeps happening. I mean, I'm older than you and I feel like I'm having that question right now.

Amber Tamblyn:

It's supposed to happen, by the way.

Lauren Schiller:

What is my Z, right? Like I've done all this. I've gotten... maybe let's just say I'm at... what's the middle of the alphabet? L.

Amber Tamblyn:

Like around your T. An S or a T.

Lauren Schiller:

So, just to try and understand how when you have that clarity or that recognition that you do need to start reaching for a different direction.

Amber Tamblyn:

I write again in the book about how much I believe that women have been taught from a very young age, from when we were girls to confuse instinct for anxiety. I think that's very real. And the pit in your stomach, the thing that makes you sick every day that makes you question and then we are just so used to putting that away, is the thing we should be listening to the most.

Amber Tamblyn:

I think there's a great Henry Miller quote that says, "All growth is a leap in the dark." And I believe that to be true at any age. And yes, it's true that a Saturn Return, this reconnecting with your new self and pivoting to whatever that new trajectory of your life is supposed to be happens on a cycle. And it's going to happen to me again and I'm going to be in my forties probably going, "What am I doing? What have I done? What is this life I have built?"

Amber Tamblyn:

And that's the journey. I mean that is the finding the joy in that darkness and the excavation of that darkness, not shying away from it is where I have learned to find power. I think that is what some people would call, "The leaning in." There is many different ways of looking at it, but I really think it's important for us, especially as women to find safety and comfort and growth from leaning into those dark, painful questions.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. Leaning in started again kind of a bad rap, but it really is the right term because of-

Amber Tamblyn:

I don't know. Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:

... moving back from you really need to push into it.

Amber Tamblyn:

I don't know much about that or the author who wrote it. I know that it was controversial because I think it was also... it comes with that same cliché of like women can have it all, that's not really what the question is. The question is, are women allowed to be? Period.

Amber Tamblyn:

Are we allowed to be? And does that mean... and if we are allowed to be, are we supposed to be this version of ourselves? Are we supposed to sound like this version of ourselves? Are we supposed to act like this version of ourselves? Who is controlling the narrative of how women are allowed to show up in their own lives and be powerful?

Amber Tamblyn:

And that is the age old question that seems to at every level continue to be a huge underlying problem. I mean, we're even seeing it now in the 2020 elections still, this idea of who is electable, who isn't, who is trustworthy and who isn't. I mean the afterword in this book that I wrote in Era of Ignition, I wrote it maybe six months ago and when I read it the other night at the book release party for this.

Amber Tamblyn:

I did this wonderful in conversation with a journalist, Jodi Kantor. And as I was reading it, I had to pause and like address to the audience and say, "This is scary how relevant this is right now." And it will always be relevant and tell we are having those deeper, more difficult conversations about why this continues to happen, about why we can't even agree on a definition of what misogyny or sexism is before addressing how to fix it.

Amber Tamblyn:

We are putting... we are just continually putting Band-Aids over things instead of dealing with the wound.

Lauren Schiller:

Well, before we get too far away from this, could you explain this... Your concept of the Saturn Return? I mean folks can read the book but let's give them a little taste of what, what do you meant.

Amber Tamblyn:

Well, the argument that I make in the book and the title I should, I guess I should talk a little bit. The title really to me is talking about this condensed time of palpable rage and frustration that we are all feeling that has propelled us into uncontrollable action.

Amber Tamblyn:

This sense of we're not going to wait for permission anymore. We are going to do, which is very much what Me Too and Time's Up have done over the last several years. But the book really looks at my own trajectory and my experience going from being a child actress who felt very much out of control over her own trajectory in life, and felt like she had been pigeonholed into this one area in which she could only go into other people's rooms, step into the threshold of other people's art and interpret their work without ever having her voice be a part of that interpretation.

Amber Tamblyn:

And the book chronicles my experience, learning how to forget about that room and that door and just build my own damn house, and my own space and my own room in which to exist and be, which is dangerous and scary and doesn't always work. That's sort of the micro look of the book while looking at the macro, which is the world we're living in is sort of having its own Era of Ignition as well.

Amber Tamblyn:

It is also having this Saturn's return, this idea that every 20 to 30 years, we are coming back to a space of beginning for ourselves, which very much is without going into like a deep thing about astrology. And about the way planets are aligned. We can maybe agree, maybe not. It might be philosophical, it might be spiritual, but agree that each of us are uniquely born in the moment we are born, the universe and planets are aligned in a certain way.

Amber Tamblyn:

I am not so narcissistic and egotistical to say, "I know what those planets, what that any of that means." But I believe that each of us have a unique story to tell. And therefore some of that might have something to do with this idea that we... our subconscious and our conscious mind and our spiritual living come into this state of crisis at certain points in our life at very pivotal points in our life.

Amber Tamblyn:

And I think that the country is in one of those existential crises right now. And so my argument is to always... and in this book is to not be afraid of it, is to lean into the darkness as we talked about. And to go for what is most uncomfortable because that is how things are going to change.

Amber Tamblyn:

All these conversations that terrify you about race and white feminism and are men being canceled too quickly, anything that you can feel you are having a tough time with as a woman, as a man, as a non-binary person, no matter where you come from, it is good that this conversation is happening.

Amber Tamblyn:

It is good that these things are coming up and bubbling up to the surface so that we can address them and address them with fear. That's okay, but to not shy away and pull away from this change, which we have all demanded and now it's here.

Amber Tamblyn:

So we have to push forward and go through that. So the book looks a little bit both at how to move through the world in this change that we're in, in this momentum, in the chaos of it. How to resensitize ourselves to these very tough conversations in which we've wanted to just be numb and give a bland answer, an easy answer, but how to truly engage with people around us and in our communities and therefore truly engage with ourselves in our own lives and re stimulating who we are, and who we are allowed to become, what our trajectory means.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. Well, you... I mean you did that so boldly and this is when I really first became aware of you in this Op-ed that you wrote in 2017. But this was before the Weinstein thing, right?

Amber Tamblyn:

It was about two months before the Weinstein article came out, which is one of the reasons, and I chronicle this deeply in the book about how Jodi Kantor had reached out to me because so many women had after reading that Op-ed, and that's when I really understood that this was part of the zeitgeist, the rage zeitgeists and that it was bubbling and it was right under the surface. And all Trump did is like put the village idiots pin in it and it popped. And that's what happened. Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:

Yeah. Share with what the gist of the op-ed was. And I do encourage everyone who's listening to this to go back and read it. because it was, for me, going back and reading it again so prescient. I mean, clearly a lot of events were leading up to that moment, but I hadn't really seen or heard anyone just put a stake in the ground like you did at that time.

Lauren Schiller:

And then it felt like everything was cascading out of that in society, but then apparently also personally for you.

Amber Tamblyn:

So the short of that, op-ed came from a small Twitter exchange that happened online whereby I said something about James Woods picking up on me. The actor James was picking up on me once when I was 16. And of course, it became this huge firestorm. James Wood denied it, put out this thing in like the Hollywood Reporter or something. He was calling me a liar.

Amber Tamblyn:

And that was sort of the moment in which all of the James Woods's is before him. All of the men who have ever called women liars. For instance, most recently I would even look at Bernie Sanders essentially saying that Elizabeth Warren lied about this interaction they had. It is part of a narrative that women have always had to face. It is part of this idea that our stories cannot be trusted and therefore we cannot be trusted with power.

Amber Tamblyn:

It really is this logic that has been created by a patriarchal narrative and system that we live in. and it goes around and around and around and it chases it's disgusting tail. And so in that moment that was the survival thing that kicked in. That was the sense of I wasn't going to be quiet. I didn't know what the repercussions would be. And I reached out to my friend Roxanne Gay, the writer and I said, "Will you connect me with your editor at the New York times? I think I have an op-ed for them." And she did and that was it.

Lauren Schiller:

Again, even though it feels like this is so ingrained in our brains. at this point, I really, I had to go back and look at the chronology of things just to get the order of it right. So, your Op-ed comes out sometime in September.

Lauren Schiller:

The Weinstein story breaks sometime in October, a couple of weeks after that, Alyssa Milano tweets the Me Too hashtag, picking up on Toronto Burke's movement that was started in 2006. And then you got involved with a group of women and launched Time's Up in January of 2018. I mean that is really, I mean we talked about change being slow, but that's pretty rapid fire development.

Amber Tamblyn:

That is what I, the term I've coined called angronized, which when women get angry and organized and we were very angronized. That was mega propulsion of energy and being just fed up really, really fed up.

Amber Tamblyn:

And what the experience... and again, I will only speak for my own my personal journey with that was that women were getting in rooms together who had never really been encouraged to be alone in rooms together and talk in the entertainment business. You had very famous women like Reese Witherspoon, and that's not me speaking out of terms.

Amber Tamblyn:

Like she's been very much in front of this movement and, and a really wonderful proponent of change and you have America Ferrera and Natalie Portman and you had these women, then in the room with women like me who's not a huge movie star, but known in her own way, in a separate way. And then you had women who were also there, who were agents, who were assistants to agents, who were producers.

Amber Tamblyn:

You had women just from across the landscape and just... and nobody knew what to do. There was no roadmap for this which is what always makes me laugh when I hear people say, ‘Well, the punishment doesn't fit the crime." And my argument is always, well, who invented the punishment for the crime?

Amber Tamblyn:

And we don't know that yet. We are actually in the center of figuring out what fits what now according to this new world we live in. And you don't get to dictate it. And I don't get to dictate it. And this is a much larger than any one individual and certainly much larger than the feelings of men who have predominantly been the ones who are terrified of all that has happened, and been very scared and frustrated and angry about it. And, and have not had a sense of how they can help or how they can stop it.

Amber Tamblyn:

And to them I'm always like, ‘Well, welcome to feeling out of control," because that is how women have always felt. And here's where we are and things are changing whether you like it or not.

Amber Tamblyn:

No one is asking you anymore. So, my advice is always just get on board, get on board because this is the way it's going. And in that moment, it was this incredible experience. And it was messy. It was painful, it was a lot of crying. It was a lot of sharing of stories and revelations about people you had worked with, men you had worked with women you had worked with who were awful, who had taken care of predators, who had silenced women who had blacklisted actresses.

Amber Tamblyn:

I mean it was all just coming out. It was coming out everywhere and it was really a very difficult time, but it was making us feel alive. And from that place is where Time's Up was born was this idea of we need to declare something. But that declaration needs to be matched with an action.

Amber Tamblyn:

It cannot just be, "Hey everyone, we're angry. Here's a letter." It had to be paired with something which is where the time's up. Legal defense fund came from.

Lauren Schiller:

This is all taking place. This is actually women physically present in a room together.

Amber Tamblyn:

Yeah. There were meetings happening all over LA and in New York too. Just everywhere. Anyone that had a sizable house that could fit 30 to 70 women at any given time and there was no... nobody knew what the hell they were doing, and people's feelings got hurt. It was not great for a lot of the times.

Amber Tamblyn:

White women were just dominating the rooms. Famous white women were trying to lead everything and make everything about them, and women of color were not having their voices heard in those rooms.

Amber Tamblyn:

And this was... this is all important to say though, because it helped us work on this conversation, which has needed to happen amongst women. This is the micro, micro, right? This is the meta, meta, that it's not only just about systems of power around us and men who are in... who are dominating those systems of power, but it is about the, what I call The Susan Collins Effect. So it is about the women who are adjacent and aligned with upholding that white privilege and that power, who are also themselves equally as responsible. And part of the problem.

Amber Tamblyn:

Well we can sort of put down our defenses and examine that, we're still going to be a part of that problem. And so, we had to have a lot of really tough conversations. They're still happening. This is a huge, huge community building exercise that has been led with a lot of passion and pain. And people want answers and they want justice. And sometimes those things don't come swiftly or swiftly enough. But I think we are seeing as I've said, at least things are changing. At least they are moving. And that to me is something

Lauren Schiller:

I'm Lauren Schiller and I'm talking with Amber Tamblyn, whose book Era of Ignition is out in paperback now subscribe to the Inflection Point Podcast and make a contribution toward our production at inflectionpointradio.org.

Lauren Schiller:

We're back with Amber Tamblyn, actress, director, women's rights advocate and co-founder of Time's Up. So what are you seeing that's changing that you're feeling good about?

Amber Tamblyn:

I think one of the most wonderful things I see is and again, I'll maybe I'll just speak for my industry because I think that's an important place to come from of what I know. There's a lot more engagement and conversation and public discourse and dialogue about women as directors, women running things, women being able to be the ones to green light, to decide the point of view, the narrative that's going to be told in a film or a TV show. My friend America Ferrera just executive produced a show called Gentrified which is coming out on Netflix.

Amber Tamblyn:

And you've got women like Janet Mock, trans women of color who just had an overall deal at Netflix, the first woman of color ever to have that there. And you're seeing sort of these unprecedented moves as far as whose voices are being able to be in the room, who is getting to be able to create content.

Amber Tamblyn:

You've got the Lena Waithe. You've got these incredibly powerful queer non-binary trans women, women of all kinds who are making huge strides in the business. And while it's still not enough, while you still look at for instance, I think the Annenberg Institute just came out with a huge... they come out with their annual Annenberg Institute study, which looks at gender inequality in the workplace and in our business and specific in the entertainment business.

Amber Tamblyn:

And you still look and there's still just low numbers. It's still something around like 4% for women directors and it's still really low. So there's still just a lot of work to be done. But I do see that changing in the business. I do see a greater need for women in writers' rooms, women behind the camera, women running the camera, women producing entertainment, all of those things. It's happening.

Lauren Schiller:

One of the many things that I loved about reading your book is that I felt like, I don't know if it was at the end of each chapter but definitely interspersed throughout each story, was what I the reader can take away from this and what I could go do to make a difference.

Lauren Schiller:

And some of the things that I pulled out from it are this idea of opening the door for others and offering access that others don't have. And the plus one-

Amber Tamblyn:

Isn't that great?

Lauren Schiller:

So could you elaborate on... I feel like those are all kind of mixed together, but you can parse them if you want. But could you elaborate on this?

Amber Tamblyn:

So plus one is something that came out of Time's Up which was an idea that we have in our business again, but it's been carried over into Time's Up healthcare and all kinds of different industries, where the idea is anybody at any level whether you're the most known powerful person or whether you feel you have nothing to offer does have something to offer.

Amber Tamblyn:

And sometimes that is often just access. For instance, I just talked about these Hollywood parties right? How much I hate going to them. Most people hate going to them. They really do. Except for this one Jeffrey Katzenberg party. But to think that I could squander the invitations that I get to an elite Hollywood party where you might be able to rub elbows with some of the most important showrunners, executives, people who are creating content is a privilege for me to have.

Amber Tamblyn:

And that is an access that I have always had. But I have never thought that that would be possibly interesting or important to anybody else. To a young budding writer, a young woman who came out of college you would love to be staffed on a show. The idea that I would squander that. And I think it took a long time for me to realize like that is one thing I have to offer.

Amber Tamblyn:

There are so many things I have to offer. For instance my novel that came out before this book called Any Man, a thing that I'd never considered before was book tours. I go on these huge 30 city book tours for a book. I get to read in front of these big amazing audiences. And I've never once considered taking, inviting someone to open for me or to read with me in that capacity.

Amber Tamblyn:

And so I did that on that book tour. And in every city, I put out a basically like an open call and said, "If you are a woman identifying, a woman of color. If you identify as a woman in any capacity. I want you to read with me. I want you to be able..." And I would give different women 10 minutes something like that to read with me during those shows in every single city.

Amber Tamblyn:

And it was awesome. It was great. I got to meet new writers, young women whose voices. My jaw was on the floor thinking, "You've never been published? I can't wait for the world to know your work". So it was also a gave to me as well getting to lift up people who would normally not have a platform like that.

Amber Tamblyn:

And I've asked that of other friends of mine who have done the same thing for me, who have been the Amy Poehler's of the world, the Roxanne Gays of the world women who are constantly giving, the America Ferreras of the world who constantly giving to other women around them, even if they're exhausted of doing one more favor, of one more help, of one more. Whatever that is are always there saying, "I get it because I always wanted someone to pull me forward and I'm going to pull you forward."

Amber Tamblyn:

And each of us has something to offer in that way. So, in the book I talk a lot about asking ourselves what we have to offer especially men. What do men have to offer? Even if it's something small, like we always will have something that we can offer. And we think that that doesn't mean anything but it actually does. Because one of the things we say with the plus one model is, you can't be what you can't see.

Amber Tamblyn:

And if you don't... if you have never been in the room where it happens, if you've never been in a pitch room pitching something or trying to get something sold, you don't know. And so the fear manifests itself into creating a closed off space for you where you don't want to go out and put yourself on a limb.

Amber Tamblyn:

And oftentimes if you are brought into that room, even just to be able to see how it goes, how a meeting goes, you might be surprised how much you could affect someone's life.

Amber Tamblyn:

So that's like one of the many things that I talk about in thereof of thinking about what each of us individually has, and not taking for granted the access that we have at any level. Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:

And that's I mean and it's another form in the business world of mentorship and advocacy and bringing others up along with you. something else that you address in the book is the concept of white feminism that white women, myself included. I will put myself in this very bucket have cringed at the notion of that there is even such a thing that we stand for all women.

Lauren Schiller:

And you actually break that notion up quite well. Can you speak to that and why you felt like it was something it was important to address?

Amber Tamblyn:

To me this is a very important thing to address because I think all of us need to own that term. And even though it is a negative of a pejorative term, it's something that we feel like we don't want to be. But the fact of the matter is we are. Every white woman I know at some form has used her privilege to not help somebody, to make things worse for someone, to protect themselves and their own feelings over those of someone who couldn't have that protection.

Amber Tamblyn:

So, I talk a lot about that examination. And again, for each of us if we are ever called in, that's a great by the way a great term that black feminist women use which is instead of calling somebody out, you call them in. I love that so much.

Amber Tamblyn:

And so if you are ever called in confronted about something that happened for us not to immediately become defensive, in the way that... in the same way that white women would really love for men not to be defensive when we speak our truth.

Amber Tamblyn:

And when we call in somebody and say this happened it was hurtful. Instead of becoming defensive to maybe take a moment, take a beat and think about what happened and absorb what the person is saying and asking of you.

Amber Tamblyn:

So, that chapter is really difficult because I talk about my own experiences in white feminism, and my own experiences as putting myself front and center in an activist world, and an organizing world and the privilege to be able to do that. And to consider though that maybe always our voices not necessarily the one that should be in the front and center of certain conversations, especially when we're talking about racism and things like that. And we should be amplifying and supporting women around us who have real experience with that.

Amber Tamblyn:

I think everything stems back in this book to the idea of letting ourselves be uncomfortable, of letting this chaotic moment in our culture in this time that we live in happen, let it happen. And it's okay to be afraid of it. It is okay to be terrified, to feel all the feelings you're going to feel of that discomfort, of that anger, of that frustration. But to never shy away from it and certainly to not to disengage from the conversation. That to me is the most dangerous thing.

Lauren Schiller:

Well, there was talk this year the Women's March recently happened. And there's always something bubbling up in the news about how badly it's managed or who's in charge and what's the point. And yet thousands and thousands of women still came out. Have you had any thoughts on the role of the March?

Amber Tamblyn:

I think that this is something that the world wants for women which is for us to tear each other apart and to fail. They want these movements to fail. We have to always remember that at the end of the day, the world we live in doesn't want this to succeed.

Amber Tamblyn:

It doesn't want the Women's March to succeed. It doesn't want Elizabeth Warren to succeed. It doesn't want any organization that is run predominantly by women. It doesn't want a fair fight to succeed. Stacey Abrams organization, you look at that and there are real palpable present ways in which our culture and the society around us tries to disband women and pull them apart and make them hate each other.

Amber Tamblyn:

That's what's happened in the entertainment industry for generations as well. This idea of you are always in competition with your sisters. It is not about who is the best for their work, who is going to get chosen that there is enough work for all of us. because that's never the case. There isn't. So it becomes this scarcity mentality of seeing other women as your severe competition in some way. And that can be said for organizing too.

Amber Tamblyn:

I think it's really important that the Women's March exists. I think it's really important what they did. Sarah Sophie Flicker, Paolo Mendoza, Melanie Stamp as well, Yadda Trabioso. They all went and did this last [Lastisus 00:41:42] dance in front of the White House. And there is nothing more powerful to me than angry women with these bandages over their eyes yelling these lyrics, and pointing at The White House and saying, "The rapist is you. The rapist was you. And it's not my fault. It's not where I was not how I dressed."

Amber Tamblyn:

And when you have this giant choir of women screaming that that's really cathartic, but it's also very moving and important and being able to March, being able to show dissent and to be able to show up and resist against these forms of government and this form of oppression and language is a Rite of passage for especially for Americans.

Amber Tamblyn:

And so to me it's important that the Women's March still exists in that capacity. I don't know what's going on for their future. I don't know much about the inside politics of that but I do believe it's important for women to continue to show up. Even when it's most difficult, even when we are ripping at each other's throats and angry and frustrated and feeling erased. I think we have to keep showing up for each other.

Lauren Schiller:

Well, so here we are. We had six female candidates running for the current election. We're down to two as of this recording.

Amber Tamblyn:

And the New York Times couldn't pick one. So they think both.

Lauren Schiller:

I'm kind of I'm like always the silver lining person. My take on that was yeah, that was kind of weird. But also, hey two for one. I mean they both got Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren both got some words behind them and in for the record.

Amber Tamblyn:

I mean I record I think it's fine. I think it's fine but I still just question that idea of one is not enough. One is not enough. One can't be trustworthy enough. One can't be perfect enough to do this work. So, I think that's a little frustrating, but it's also... we're just we're in a different world and whether or not Elizabeth Warren wins the nomination, that's my hope anyway. I'm a big supporter of hers.

Amber Tamblyn:

But if it doesn't happen, we are going to continue to have these conversations about sexism, about this idea of perversing women's narratives and leaning into age old deeply sexist propaganda.

Lauren Schiller:

Your book opens with you talking with your newlywed husband, newly wedded husband about the fact that you are pregnant and that you want to terminate the pregnancy. And as we sit here, the president of our country is speaking at the anti-choice rally that happens every year like a week after the Women's March. And you conclude your book talking about choice and Women's Choice and choices of women.

Amber Tamblyn:

I think we have to just forever push against the idea that that choice belongs to anyone other than the body in which that choice is being inhabited. Abortion is normal. Animals do it. Humans do it. We are a species that has a conscious mind. We have the ability to understand things in a way that other animals do not. And abortion is normal. Abortion is normal, abortion is normal, Abortion is normal, Abortion is normal.

Lauren Schiller:

More broadly speaking around this idea of women's choice, I mean what is your... what would you say your vision is for women? Where would you like the imagined future in your lifetime?

Amber Tamblyn:

So, I think the best way to answer that question is to sort of paraphrase Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which when she was asked how will she know when there's enough women on the Supreme Court, she said, "When there are nine."

Amber Tamblyn:

And I think that that's just something for people to think about. And I think everyone will come away with a different feeling about that answer. Some people will think that means Ruth Bader Ginsburg wants men to be erased. Some women will understand that, that means we just want a seat at the table, a full seat at the table for a little while until things are balanced out.

Amber Tamblyn:

We want to know what that feels like to not be questioned. For that not to be a strange thing that only one voice, only one color of skin has been the only voice that has literally created this country. And so, I want people to think about that.

Lauren Schiller:

I love that. What's the best call to action that someone else has shared with you that you'd like to share?

Amber Tamblyn:

The best call to action. Oh, there's so many different things but I think that came from America Ferrera, who to me is just such an extraordinary human being and created this organization called Harness, and really has worked in these organizational spheres for a long time now and is a really brilliant mind. She's a great actress and a great producer and all those things, but she's a brilliant mind.

Amber Tamblyn:

I cannot wait to work for her presidential campaign someday. I'll do whatever. I'll wash your laundry. Just tell me what you want. I'll rub your feet. It doesn't matter. I'll do it. But I think there was in the frustration, a lot of the frustration that came out at the end of 2017 during that time when Time's Up was being formed and all of that and there was many women were feeling very much like they weren't being seen or weren't being appreciated for the work they were doing.

Amber Tamblyn:

I myself had some feelings around that. And I remember that America said, "If you are waiting for other women to give you a pat on the back and give you a reward for trying to change the world, you're going to be waiting a very long time," which is a simple thing to say but this idea of don't wait to be congratulated. You don't need to do that. You don't need permission to be angry about something and to go out and find out a way to do it.

Amber Tamblyn:

That tells me, go find three or four girlfriends that are your friends that you might have something in common that you feel like needs to change whether it's in your workplace, whether it's within your social community like whatever that is and start talking about it, and start talking about what each of you has to offer and to remember to not let your ego get in the way of that work, of needing to be front and center of everything.

Amber Tamblyn:

Sometimes deferment is the most powerful thing we can give, is to be able to step back and learn from someone else. I would say this again, it's always usually predominantly like America women of color. You can learn a lot from women of color, which just means step back and listen. Do more listening than you do the talking. But to remember that to not let your ego get in the way of it.

Lauren Schiller:

That was Amber Tamblyn, actor, director, poet and advocate for women's rights. Her latest book is Era of Ignition. I'll put a link to it and Ambers original op-ed on my website at inflectionpointradio.org. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point, and this is how women rise up.

Lauren Schiller:

That's our inflection point for today. All of our episodes are on Apple podcasts, Radio Public, Stitcher, Pandora, NPR One, all the places. Give us a five star review and subscribe to the podcast. Know women leading change we should talk to. Let us know at inflectionpointradio.org.

Lauren Schiller:

While you're there, support our production with a tax deductible monthly or one time contribution. When women rise up, we all rise up. Just go to inflectionpointradio.org. We're on Facebook and Instagram at inflectionpointradio. Follow us and join the Inflection Point society. Our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small daily actions. And follow me on Twitter LASchiller.

Lauren Schiller:

To find out more about today's guest and to be in the loop with our email newsletter, you know where to go, inflectionpointradio.org.

Lauren Schiller:

Inflection Point is produced in partnership with KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and PRX. Our community manager is Laura Weaver. Our engineer and producer is Eric Wayne. I'm your host Lauren Schiller.

Speaker 3:

Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Speaker 4:

From PRX.

 

Amber_Lauren

How Seane Corn Brings the Principles of Yoga into Activism

LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCASTS | STITCHER | PANDORA | SPOTIFY | NPR ONE | MORE

Seane Corn helps people who are committed to social change understand that to dismantle the systems that create oppression, you've got to dismantle the systems that exist within yourself. This world-renowned yoga instructor, activist and author of "Revolution of the Soul" shares how to dismantle those systems and learn where we can each be most of service for a better world.

IHGbz03Q.jpg

Transcript:

Seane Corn:

My name is Seane Corn and I am a yoga teacher and I'm the cofounder of Off the Mat, Into the World as well as the author of Revolution of the Soul. In my community, I've been a part of the yoga wellness for communities for many, many years. And over the last 12 years, I've been committed to training leaders to bridge the gap between yoga, transformational work, social justice, and conscious action.

Lauren Schiller:

We're all kind of freaking out right now in trying to figure out what kind of action we can each take to just make it all better. So when I read Seane's book, Revolution of the Soul, it made me feel a little more centered and, like I could go make some change. Rather than the alternative, running through the streets with my hair on fire.

Seane Corn:

And I've been committed myself to raising awareness, raising funds, and to doing whatever I can to, not bring the principles of yoga into activism, but to help people who are committed to social change understand that to dismantle the systems that create oppression, you've got to dismantle the systems that exist within yourself that actually perpetuate and are complicit to that very same separation that you suggest you want changed. And so I wrote this book, really has a toolkit, if you will, to help people approach social change in a way that is more accountable and responsible and to normalize the messy and uncomfortable conversations that are often required when we want to go out and make a better planet. There's a way to do that that doesn't create more harm.

Lauren Schiller:

So today, Seane Corn tells us how to bring the principles of yoga into activism. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point, with stories of how women rise up. We'll be right back.

Lauren Schiller:

I'm back with Seane Corn. Well, it's interesting to think of the connection back to yoga, because I think the general feeling around yoga is like, oh, well that's a practice for myself. That's going to make me feel better. That's why I'm going to start my day so that I feel more centered. But I wouldn't necessarily, until I read this book, connect that back to what does that mean for then to how I go and approach the world or the kind of difference I can make in the world, to be more specific.

Seane Corn:

I think that that's probably the issue with contemporary yoga today. When we think of yoga, we think of those poses, the asana, which is only one part of the pathway. Yoga itself is a philosophy. The very definition of yoga is to come together and make whole, and to recognize that everything is interdependent, is connected. And so if you believe in that philosophy, you have to turn towards where there is separation. Where there are power differentials. Who's getting access to freedom, peace, food, resources, and who's not? And, if in the practice of yoga, one of the main belief systems is that our liberation is bound, that I can't be free unless we're all free. So if I believe that, then my actions have to actually manifest that. And I have to be willing actually to look at the ways in which I'm participating in that separation. And so yoga, that's why it really needs to be within the mainstream. The understanding of yoga needs to be broadened out past the body. That's just the byproduct of the practice. You feel better. Because the truth is, when you do yoga asana, you release the tension. When you release the tension, you're less reactive. When you're less reactive, you are more empathetic, more caring, and more responsible in the choices that you make. When you're tense, you're shut down. And in that tension is when we can create conflict. And so we practice yoga asana, yes to feel better, but to also teach us how to self-regulate so that we can be more in present time when there's issues in the world without contributing to it any further. So the yoga practice itself is much more complex than those physical poses, but the physical poses are a tool that we can use in order to stay resourced and grounded.

Lauren Schiller:

How can we participate in making change in the world?

Seane Corn:

Well, it depends on who that “we” is. I can only speak to, I'm going to speak to the we that I understand. Which is white, privileged, able-bodied, with access to resources. That's who I am. That's more often than not, the community in which I'm communicating to. So I can't just give a formula to a blanket we, because there are some people within that “we” that are trying to feed their kids. They're trying to survive. Their lives are at stake. They live on the margins. They, perhaps it would be dangerous for them to do some of the things that I might suggest. It might be dangerous to them, to their family, to their own survival or sustainability. So I can't speak to that broader we.

But I can speak to people like myself within the communities of yoga and spirituality who talk about, let's go out and change the world. Let's be of service to really unpack what that means. And that's really complex and messy. For years I wanted to help, until I realized that my helping was just one more form of saviorism. That my helping without really understanding colonization, without understanding white supremacy, without understanding power dynamics, that I was just contributing to systems that have already created so many problems. And yet at the same time though, I'm like, "But I want to help. I want to do good." I had to dismantle, within myself, the image that I have of myself as a good person. To that as a whole person with faults and graces.

So, to anyone who's listening, do your work. Really like, do your work. Go inside. Let yourself get informed about what's happening in the world, your own particular cultures. Input into some of the challenges that exist and what needs to change within your own attitude and behaviors that might be contributing to it. So much that I talk about is understanding the mind-body connection. And this goes on throughout the whole of the book. And this is really important for anyone who's listening. We are informed by our trauma. We are informed by our history, by our traditions, by our ancestors, by our culture. So we hold in our bodies, belief systems that live deep within our tissues.

So like if I'm out in the world and there's conflict and chaos, and I get afraid, the rational part of my brain is going to shut down. The reactive part of my brain gets alerted. In that moment, I'm no longer in the present time. My nervous system will revert back to the fears of my high school, the fears of my family, the fears of my history. So, I have to recognize that that's just a reality. I can't not be racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic. I can't not be ageist or ableist, or carry certain biases and discriminatory and stereotypical attitudes, because I'm not enlightened first of all. And because that information is so embodied, that if I'm afraid or tired, odds are that's going to get excavated and cause harm. It might be subtle, and yet impactful. I'm not alone in this. Anyone who looks like me. Anyone who has that same kind of background, we all embody this.

So my suggestion, we need to normalize these conversations. We need to own it. And instead of getting defensive when we make mistakes, recognize that we can't change what we won't see. And if we're really committed to social change, the best gift of allyship that we can give to the world is owning our contribution to its pain and its suffering. That's the first step in. And so, do your yoga practice. Go to therapy. Read books. Get white fragility. Get Skill in Action by Michelle Cassandra Johnson. There are so many resources to look at right now that would be so helpful. And don't be afraid to make mistakes. But recognize that intention doesn't always equal impact, and that we have to take responsibility for the impact that we cause that does continue to hurt others. And instead of freezing in shame or guilt because we messed up, just acknowledge it, own it, move into it and commit, like from your soul, to wanting to be a part of this change. But it means being a part of the transformational change from within.

Lauren Schiller:

My guest is Seane Corn, author of Revolution of the Soul. Coming up, Seane tells us how to figure out where we can be most effective in our activism.

Lauren Schiller:

And we're back with Seane Corn. One of the things that is in your book that's explicitly called out as the stop, look and listen approach. Is that how you would summarize what you were just talking about? Or is that a different, something else that we should be thinking about?

Seane Corn:

Stop, look and listen, I don't personally break it down in that way. But in theory, yes, I would say it's in the pause. Like when you're doing a yoga pose, you're taught to get into a pose. You breath. You pause and bear witness to what's coming up. Your mind's all over the place. Normally, "I'm too old, I'm too heavy, I'm too skinny, I'm too weak." There's all these voices that are trying to sabotage the experience or the other part of the spectrum like, "Look at me, I'm amazing." And so we witness the ego in action. We don't react to it, but we bear witness because what we experience in that pause, is what we experience everywhere. The mat is just a mirror to how we approach life. And so I would say, you go into the pause. Breathe. Pay attention. And make a new choice.

Lauren Schiller:

You reference your old therapist Mona a lot throughout the book. And one of the things that you write that she used to say is that, "Your pain is your purpose." Can you speak to that?

Seane Corn:

Sure. And again, this can't be a generalized statement. More often than not, this can be true, but depending on how someone carries their trauma and how far along they are in managing, dealing or understanding their trauma, this might be relevant for someone else could be actually re-traumatizing. My experience is, the very place that brought you to your knees, the very place that got you to the mat or to therapy or into the program where you sought help, support, understanding, is the very place in which you will be most skilled to be able to be of service.

Seane Corn:Alcoholics, drug addicts, people who have dealt with domestic violence, people who've lost a child. God forbid. There's a level of experience of wisdom that is only gained through walking that very individualized, very isolated path where you go up against your own deep shadows of fear, of grief, of rage, anger, disappointment, and have to fight within yourself to make meaning, even in the incomprehensible. When everything is so bleak, and yet you find the resource within yourself to find grace. Not in spite of the experience, but because of it.

Who better than a soul who has walked that path to stand in the presence of someone else who embodies a similar depth of pain or shame, and be able to hold space with empathy. Which is a shared experience, rather than sympathy or pity, which is hierarchal and it creates, again, more separation. It's an imbalance of power. Those are the people in my experience who have been the most effective in their activism. The most skilled at finding sustainability and care. And who are able to, in a way that's incredibly nonjudgmental, bring others into the fold, who often feel the most rejected or lost.

And so Mona, who I do reference in the book, says, "Your pain is your purpose." And it's something that I do believe and I try to support people in empowering the stories that they have within themselves, that at one time brought them the most shame, to reframe them and to find the grace, to find the God, the find the love, and then to be in service to that for others. That's what that means.

Lauren Schiller:

It feels like right now there's so much coming at us. And you know, again, I say the “us” now, the complete new thinking about what “us” means. But there is a lot going on in the world right now that feels like it's trying to push women backwards. Trying to push the progress that we've made for equality backwards. And it feels like the impulses to just ... time is of the essence. With all of your wisdom in mind, how do we try and make the change that we want to see right now without losing too much time?

Seane Corn:

What I can say is that, for the time is now for all of us to wake up and do what needs to be done in order to create a world that is fair and free and just an equal and safe and peace-filled and loving for all beings everywhere, we all have work to do. And we can no longer rely on our national, or even global leadership, to continue to make choices on our behalf. That we actually have to step into levels of leadership and to hold our administration accountable for the choices that they are making. And we can only do that if we are proactive. If we are engaged. If we are educated. If we're willing to see the bigger picture and not allow ourselves to get overwhelmed or fatigued by the rhetoric that is continually coming at us. I believe the fatigue that exists in the world today is strategic. And it's politically strategic. Through the media is strategic, to keep us disempowered, to keep us tired, to keep us feeling inadequate. To keep us feeling as if we somehow aren't able to make these shifts, because it's too far gone.

Right now our culture is in trauma. And that trauma is being excavated through the words that are being used in the world today, especially in our nation. And although that is scary and that is terrifying, it's also really positive. Because like I said earlier, you can't change it until you can see it. That trauma's always been there. But for many of us, especially again, white women of privilege, there's a lot of that trauma I haven't had to see because it doesn't affect me directly. Now that it is in my face, in our face, we cannot, should not turn away from it. Because again, like I said, otherwise we are the problem. And so we have to recognize that we have to build our stamina. We have to find community. We have to find tools of sustainability. And it really depends on where someone's at.

Obviously if someone's right now raising a bunch of small kids, it's probably not a really good idea to perhaps get on the frontline and risk getting arrested. That might not be sustainable for them. So you have to know, like right now in your life, what can you do in order to be of service? Do you have money? Can you support someone who can be on the front frontline? Can you pay for the lawyers that might be necessary to be able to change the policies that exist? Can you run for local office? There are so many ways in which we can be in service.

But I do still feel the most important thing that we can do is accountability. Is to really look inward and see what we are doing each and every day that's creating these divisions. Take a good hard look at that, and then get really practical about what our skills are, what our talents are and what we're being called up to at this time. But what we can't do is allow the fatigue to overwhelm us. Otherwise they've won. It's purposeful. And yet at the same time, self-care is critically important, especially for people who are on the frontline, who are listening to this, who do live on the margins. Their self-care is probably paramount to the work that they're going to do in the world, because they're already in such trauma. But that means someone like myself needs to double down, so that someone else doesn't have to.

So there are so many things that we can do, but apathy is not one of them. And not caring is only representative of the lack of care that we have for ourselves. So, the more we can love our journey, the more we can appreciate the gift that it is to be a part of this world, and to recognize that we get to do this work. We get to have access to tools for healing and transformation and change. So how dare we not go deep, get raw, get real, be authentic. Tear away all the veils of illusions that cover us and keep us separate from each other, and go in and create change from the inside out when we can. And we should. And we must, because lives depend upon it.

So, my advice is just breathe. Pause. Check in with your feelings. Do the inner work. And then act as if lives depend on it, because they do. Act as if your own liberation depends on it, because it does.

Lauren Schiller:

Is there anything else that you would want to say before I let you go?

Seane Corn:

There's something very important to recognize, that there's no separation between the mind and the body and that our bodies remember everything. It remembers the grief of our grandmothers. It remembers the loss of our mothers. It remembers the heartbreak of every woman who has come before us. And we carry that inside our own bodies and it's very much influencing our perspective and the way in which we experience the world and how the world sees us. And that it's time to honor what our bodies have been holding onto, but also to be willing to break the cycles for our daughters and for our sons going forward, that we need to learn from this trauma and transform our fear into faith. Shift our judgment into compassion and our resistance and to surrender. And open our hearts to the love that we as women are, have always been, and will continue to be. And that what we have that guides us as women is our intuition.

God is not something, our spirituality is not something you seek. It's something you awaken to. It's already within you. And I define spirituality as truth and love. That's it. It's who we are. But trauma, fear, socialization, all of that block that light. Our work is to reframe our narratives and develop our self-confidence. Because the thing that blocks our intuition is low self-esteem. Build the self-esteem, and you will trust your inner guidance. You might not always like where it takes you, but you will know that's exactly where you're supposed to be. And you will breathe and surrender to it, knowing that that is the gift of being, and the challenge of being, and that if you can tolerate the discomfort, what's on the other side of it is liberation.

Lauren Schiller:

That was Seane Corn, author of Revolution of the Soul. We'll put a link to Seane's book on our website at inflectionpointradio.org. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point and this is how women rise up.

How A'shanti Gholar is Getting More Women of Color into Office

LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCASTS | STITCHER | PANDORA | SPOTIFY | NPR ONE | MORE

A’shanti Gholar is the founder of the Brown Girl's Guide to Politics and the President of Emerge America--a national organization devoted to getting more democratic women into office. You'll hear how A’shanti went from watching CSPAN as a kid, with her mom, to working for President Barack Obama, the DNC and the NAACP before joining Emerge America as national political director. (She became their president in January, 2020 shortly after we produced this episode!)

TAKE ACTION:

Fair Fight

All On The Line

READ

White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo, Michael Eric Dyson

Toolkit: Read A’shanti’s Toolkit to get more women of color in elected office... and how to break through all the “isms.”

PUV7Xvow.jpg

TRANSCRIPT: We do our best, please let us know any errors!

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada and I have a very interesting story about how I came to politics. I was just watching TV one day with my mom and she left the room and I changed the channel and I discovered C-SPAN. And I saw all of these people arguing and fighting about making the country better and that's when I actually developed my love for politics. But even at that young age of watching C-SPAN, I didn't see a lot of people that looked like me, a lot of women, a lot of women of power.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'm Lauren Schiller and that is A'Shanti Gholar. She's the founder of the Brown Girls Guide to Politics and the national political director for Emerge, a national organization devoted to getting more democratic women into office.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I really got my serious interest in politics when I was in high school. I had that amazing government teacher that you hear about, she was super well connected and she had the candidates come in for a statewide Senate race. One of the candidates I actually loved, enjoyed everything that he said, his stances on the issues. The other candidate, I had an issue with the fact that he voted against raising the minimum wage. And for me it was a very important issue because I have lots of friends that work part time jobs either to make extra money to support being a teenager or to bring extra money home. And I thought they should make more money and that people in general should make more money.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I asked the candidate why he voted against raising the minimum wage. He said he didn't. I said, "Yes you did. I can look up your votes." And he argued with me just saying that he didn't raise the minimum wage. And after the class he called my government teacher and he said to her, "She was right. I didn't vote to raise it, I just didn't like the fact that she called me out." And it absolutely infuriated me and I thought, "Well, is it because I'm a girl? Is it because I can't vote? And I'm young." But even though I was young and I couldn't vote, and I was a girl, I was a young girl who couldn't vote but could volunteer.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 So every moment that I had to spare, I volunteer for his opponent and his opponent ended up winning that race by less than 500 votes. So even at that young age in high school, I saw the power that people had in politics to really get involved and make a change. And when I got in college, that's when I started getting heavily involved with college Democrats, young Democrats, and really just being a volunteer has led me to the profession that I have today which back then being a young girl watching C-SPAN, I didn't even know it was possible. So I'm one of those people who actually gets to wake up every day and do the things that they love.

Lauren Schiller:                  Amazing. And that goes to show you, don't bald face lie to a room full of high school students who are going to one day rise up and fight against you.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Right. I think so many times when politicians go to speak to young people, they just think they can BS their way through or that we're not paying attention. But we are very much aware because we're not voters but the things that you do still do impact us because it's impacting our parents, it's impacting other key people that we care about and those things really stay with people. I've talked to so many young people who'll just be like, "Yeah, so-and-so came to talk to my class one time and I knew like, "Man, if I could vote, I definitely wasn't voting for them and now that I can vote I still don't vote for them." So it's also going to impact you down the road when you want to run for higher office or if you're running for reelection.

Lauren Schiller:                  Today we're going to hear how A'Shanti went from watching C-SPAN to working for president Barack Obama, when she was in the Department of Labor. She also worked for the DNC and the NAACP before joining Emerge and she'll tell us what it will take to get more women of color elected to office. This is Inflection Point, with stories of how women rise up. We'll be right back.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'm back with A'Shanti Gholar who got inspired to get into politics by watching C-SPAN. So just out of curiosity, have you been on C-SPAN? Could someone have have spotted you at some point on C-SPAN?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 This is really funny. I spoke at the Truman National Security Project about two years ago now telling our story itself, and I talked about this C-SPAN story and C-SPAN was recording it. So I am actually on C-SPAN talking about my love of C-SPAN as a young girl.

Lauren Schiller:                  I love it. Wow, that's an amazing hall of years, in a good way.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 It was really good to see that Tweet. I'm like, "Okay, but this is kind of cool."

Lauren Schiller:                  I mean, what's so great about that is that it's just a testament to young with a vision, imagining yourself as some... Wondering where the people are who look like you and then sparking your imagination that maybe you could be making that change and start to change the face of C-SPAN for starters but a lot of other things.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah. And I tell people all the time, it is has taken a while to get used to being in this role because even doing the work that I do at emerge, we say all the time, other women will be like, "Will you run for office, will you run for office, will you run for office." And for me it was always, "Oh so-and-so is doing this, so-and-so will do that. And you have to take your own advice and actually get out there, get comfortable and be the one to do what you really love and step up in this space and make change.

Lauren Schiller:                  I also, I'm always curious, I mean when you stood up to that politician in that classroom, was that just, you felt comfortable doing that? Was that something that you always felt comfortable doing or did someone have to kind of, I don't know, push you in that direction?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I definitely didn't feel comfortable. I was just angry. But that's what we see with women, when we get really angry, no matter what age we are, we push back. And when my government teacher actually told me he had called, I was just, "Oh Lord, I'm in so much trouble now because I was arguing with this man. We'll see what happens." But she actually said she was really proud of me for standing up and pushing back and she told the whole class the next day how he had called and apologized and I never knew what political party she was involved in. But when I ran for secretary of the Nevada State Democratic Party, she was there at the convention and she said, "I saw your name and that you were running and I had to show up and support you and I still tell my students about what you did to this day."

Lauren Schiller:                  Here for those kinds of teachers. Wow.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Just love her.

Lauren Schiller:                  So let's talk about the state of things right now. What are the statistics around women of color in office right now? I mean we talk a lot about, we need to balance the equation. We need to get to 50/50 in government between men and women, but specifically thinking about representation of women of color in office. Where do you think stand?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Well we want to start with the big picture. There's 520,000 elected offices in this country. Women most certainly don't occupy 50% of those offices we're somewhere between 20% to 25% and when you get to women of color, it's extremely low. In Congress, there are only 127 women serving, 47 of them are women of color. When you look at statewide executive offices, there are 91 women serving, only 17 of those are women of color. When you look at state legislators, 2,133 are women and only 543 of those are women of color. And when you look at women of color mayors, it's really less than 20 who are mayors of large cities. So we still have a very long way to go. And for me when we talk about parity, parity really would be 51% for women since we are 51% of the population, but even when we reached that parity, that doesn't mean we're going to have parity in every single state.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 That doesn't mean we're going to have parity in all of the elected offices. That doesn't mean women of color, LGBTQ women, women with disabilities are going to have parity. One of the things I always say is this work really has no end date. There's so much that we have to do. And even now when we talk about all the historic gains that women have made, it still won't be until 2085 that we get that parity. And that means that we still have to be at... Women have to be winning at the same rate as they are now. So there's still so much more work to be done.

Lauren Schiller:                  And when you say the year 2080 and parity, do you mean just simply 50/50 women and men?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:                  Okay. And so again, not accounting for all the various iterations of women and men out there, right? Or looking across the gender spectrum or women of color, et cetera. So given that that's the case, I mean if you were to provide a perspective on where things stand right now in terms of our representation. If we're not at parity, how are you feeling about who we do have an office, taking into account the needs specifically for people of color? And I realize when I asked that question that it's like a really wide group of people, so I'm not even actually sure how to ask that question.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 When I think of the women that we have currently in elected office, I am just so proud of the representation that we have. At Emerge we have our trailblazers list and I tell people, "I love this list, but I also hate this list because it's the first woman, first woman of color, first LGBTQ woman." And it's fabulous because these are women who are breaking barriers at the same time why do I still have that list in 2019 because again, there's so much work to be done and I think of Congresswoman Lucy McBath, everything that she has done, given the fact that she lost her son to gun violence, she turned that into empowering herself to be a champion for all families who had been victims of gun violence. And now she's sitting in Congress fighting for them.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I think that Congresswoman Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids who are the first two indigenous women and they didn't get elected until 2018. Think of London Breed the mayor of San Francisco, the first black woman in that office. I think of Leslie Heron and Danica Roem, LGBTQ women who are breaking barriers. I feel an intense sense of pride when I think of these women and everything that they do and how in particular they are inspiring other women. Congresswoman Xochitl Torres Small in New Mexico, she's one of our Emerge alums. She flipped her seat and I was very fortunate enough to be at a dinner with her and she talked about how this woman came running up to her in the airport and just said to her, "I watched your race, it inspire me so much. Now I want to for office because I saw you do it." And that woman probably won't take the Emerge program but she was inspired by seeing these women.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And at the end of the day, that is what we need and that is what makes me get out of bed and do this work every day knowing that these women, the work that they are doing in their elected office is literally inspiring other women to step up and do the same.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, I love that virtuous circle. I mean, it's so important and so critical. So I mean in terms of having greater representation, I mean the issues that just keep bubbling up and I be like, I can't even believe, it's hard to believe... I'd like to believe that any of these issues could just be solved. But like you said, it's an ongoing process. But thinking about what's been happening in the news lately around police brutality, the unfairness in our criminal justice system, like racial disparities that are tied to all of those issues. Does it take getting more people of color, women of color into office to change the systems that perpetuate this?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 100%. You hit on a big issue for black women in particular, which is criminal justice reform. And when you look at prosecutors, 90% of prosecutors are white men. So when we talk about changing the criminal justice system that means that we have to change the face of criminal justice reform. And that means we need more women and women of color in these roles. And I'm a part of a group called the 2020 bipartisan justice coalition, which is made up of black Republicans, black Democrats who are dedicated to seeing the criminal justice system change. And we just had an event where we honored all of these great black women prosecutors who were literally doing amazing things and one of them was our Emerge alum, DA Rachel Rollins out of Massachusetts.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And the things that she is just doing in a short period of time to make this community actually feel that they can trust the person who is in this role. A lot of people don't know the power that district attorneys have. This is literally the person who can decide if a kid who has an ounce of marijuana gets off with a warning or it's going to go to jail for several years, they literally have that big of a impact on people's lives and we need people in those roles who look like us, who can relate to us and who really know our stories instead of the awful myths and stereotypes that exist about black and brown people. It's the same thing about having women at the table in general.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Nevada is the first female majority state legislature. And if you look at the bills that they pass, it runs the gamut. But everything is so women friendly because you had women who are making the decisions as Senate majority leader Nicole Cannizzaro is an Emerge alum. And even when we talk about women's issues, we still need to realize these are family issues, these are community issues, these are everyone issues. And we need women from different backgrounds, socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, to be helping draft those laws because when we're not helping draft them, then they have a very negative impact on us when they're implemented.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. And back to the DA, I mean that's a campaign the HCLU actually has had a campaign running for a while about get to know your DA that you as the voter have power in terms of who holds that position, how often does that person... This is just a fundamental question, but how often does that particular position come up for a vote? Isn't it different by area?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah, it is very different by area. But it can be every two to four years. And the reflective democracy campaign did a lot of work on this too, and they have some great statistics on who DA's are. But even when we're talking about DA's, it still has to be law enforcement in general. Sheriffs are elected, judges are elected. We need to be focusing on the entire gamut if we want to see the full change in the criminal justice system.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. And especially with what's happening with the federal level on the judges that are being placed.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Exactly.

Lauren Schiller:                  That do not get voted in. We need some counterpoints there.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:                  Just to put it lightly. (silent) I'm curious about the relationship between movements and politics. And in particular... I was reading about something that happened that you were involved in related to black lives matter and the democratic platform and just thinking... There was a DNC resolution that you championed endorsing black lives matter and then they responded that they don't endorse the DNC and actions speak louder than words. And it was a whole kerfuffle if again, understatement. I mean maybe you can talk about that a little bit more. I mean you were involved in that, but I just found it really interesting that in an attempt to support it kind of backfired and I feel like everything needs to work together so we can move forward. So I'm curious if you could kind of talk about that and specifically and more philosophically, if you will.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I have no regrets about that resolution. That resolution passed unanimously by the DNC and we had wanted to show our support for the movement and there's always going to be that tension between the movements and the institutions. Even if you look back to the civil rights movement, there was also that tension that existed and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that a lot of people in the black lives matter movement felt that the political party system was failing them. That a lot of their elected officials were failing them and they didn't want the resolution or they felt that it wasn't enough.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 But the DNC as a body that is how we support our work. And I continue to work with those people in the black lives matter movement who were interested in working with the DNC in figuring out how we could work together. And for me, those are the things that happen. I didn't take it too harshly or too personally, but at the end of the day it did spark conversations and that is what we need to happen. And I know other black women who I work with in this space, in the political space, they had conversations after the resolution paths, there are still conversations that happen and it's two different worlds that you're really trying to get to know each other. And even when we're around the table coming together, that tension exists. And I think it's just part of how it all works.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. What is at the heart of that tension?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I mean, I think when you think about it, black lives matter came out of police killings of young people and there were elected officials who were not holding people accountable, particularly police officers. In that case we're talking about people who are in the law enforcement system. So there's not going to be that sort of trust. You also have a lot of people who had never engaged in the political system at all with their political party. So there wasn't going to be that level of trust at all. These are all things that you have to build. I tell people all the time with the work that I do, being a political director and my background in community engagement, you have to show up, you just can't expect people to show up for you.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And for the black lives matter movement, they hadn't seen people in the democratic party showing up. And that is absolutely fair and in a lot of instances it is absolutely correct. So that's where a lot of the mistrust came from. And those are just things, relationships that you have to build over time.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, I mean in part I wonder, and not just specific to the black lives matter movement, but all movements and activist groups, like is it their job to just kind of never be satisfied? The goal is never quite achieved. There's always more that can be done and politicians by contrast are constrained by a number of things that movement makers and activists are not necessarily constrained, bureaucracy being one of them, who's going to give them money being another. Anyway, the dynamics seems really interesting particularly because these leaders of these activists movements and our voters kind of how you as someone who's in a position in an elected office navigate those waters. It's fascinating.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 So for me when this comes up and people are like, "Oh, so-and-so is just never going to be satisfied." And even when they say these things to me, I tell them the only candidate who's going to 100% agree with you on any issue is you, literally, so you need to be running for office. If you want the perfect candidate in your eyes then you are the perfect candidate, you need to be stepping up and running and challenging people and making the change.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 But at the same time, there does need to be that level of accountability that we do need to hold our elected officials accountable because so many people are just getting reelected and reelected because no one ever runs against them. No one ever shows up to the city council meeting and the country evolves and people evolve and issues evolve. So I think that's why there's always going to be the conversations of wanting more and doing more, but I think that's healthy for democracy.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. Well, I was reading an article about AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and how she had to kind of tamp and down her fire in order to get things done. Now, this is one article and one newspaper that everyone's mad at right now, the New York Times, but that she came in hot and she still is arguably, but that she's had to kind of take a more tempered approach recognizing that there are other factors that she has to navigate. So anyway, but we're all like excited about what she's been doing yet we want our politicians to get things done. So do you have any thoughts on that dynamic?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 This is something that comes up 24:17all the time and we hear women talk about it where they say, "Okay, I'm literally moving from being an activist to being an elected official and oh my gosh, this is so different." And it really is when you are in that other person's shoes and you have the activists thinking on your door not wanting all of the change. And I think it's a new role and it's growth and I still think that you can accomplish things because I tell people all the time, the best elected officials that I see are those who started off as activists, those who really had an issue, something important in their community that they wanted to change and then they ran for office themselves and they learned the system, but they also learned how to make the system work for the things that they wanted to do.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I totally see that happening with the Congresswoman, I think a lot of people are saying, "Oh, she's tampered herself down. She's calmed down." "No, she's figured out where the bathrooms are. She's figured out how things work in committee and now she's making all of it work for her." And that's what you should do when you're a Congresswoman.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, and that is how you get things done ultimately, right, is you got to figure out who are the players and where's the bathroom.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I tell people all the time, if the Congresswoman, the other Congresswoman were just so horrible and terrible and rebels as everyone likes to say that they are then Speaker Pelosi wouldn't have put them on the committees that they are on because they are on some serious pretty impressive committees because she knew at the end of the day those are bad ass women that were going to get things done and that's why she puts them there.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, I actually, I heard... While we're on the topic of Nancy Pelosi who there are so many things to talk about related to her right now, but I heard her give a talk where she talked about what she looks for in a candidate, which is, I'm going to paraphrase, but that they've got vision, they have a plan to get it done, they have the ability to connect with the people who can help them get it done. And just kind of identifying what those three things are in there may have even been a fourth. And it just seemed, it was like, "Oh yeah, that seems pretty fundamental like what do you want to do? How are you going to get it done? And who are you going to get to help you?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Absolutely. One of the first things that I ask women all the time is, why are you running? You have to have your why especially as women, we know why we are running and going to say something about the men's right now that they normally don't like when I say, but women, we definitely want to know why we're running, this is what we want to get done, this is how we're going to do it. And for men, they'll wake up and they'll be, "Wow County commission sounds great. I'm just going to go ahead and do that." So as women we put all of this pressure on ourselves, but it is that thinking that makes us really great candidates.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And we put out amazing platforms and our platforms really do reflect the community because we're going around learning. We're not expecting that we know everything about every single issue. We go to the experts and speaker Pelosi is absolutely correct, those are the great things to look for in a candidate, particularly the vision, what are you going to do and how are you going to get it done?

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. And the whole... It is always a challenge to talk about what men do it this way and women do it that way, but there are patterns and that your point that you just made, which is that the way that women tend to approach things might be the better way, just leaping in without necessarily having the expertise that you might need, seems like foolhardy, but yet they're sort of first to the gate and they're first to raise their hands so that they're getting the positions. But I feel like this approach of thinking about what you can bring and why you want to do it and taking a minute, it seems like if I were to evaluate, which is better, that feels like the better way to say it.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 As women we like to be prepared, that's in our DNA.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yep. Is that really an... I'm going to ask a scientist about that.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I can say for the alums in the Emerge network, it is definitely in their DNA.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'll be right back with A'Shanti Gholar. Join our supporters and make a tax deductible donation towards our production at inflectionpointradio.org. Just click the support button. I'm back with A'Shanti Gholar. So back to my question, my sort of like two by four question about women of color. I mean can you talk about what... You've got the Brown Girl's Guide to politics, your podcast and your website. When you say brown girls, what and who do you mean?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 When I say brown girls, I mean women of color and women of color is not synonymous with black women. A lot of people when they hear women of color, they automatically think black women. But when I'm talking about black women, I say black women. So when talking about women of color, I'm talking about black women, I'm talking about Latinas, I'm talking about indigenous women, Asian women, women who identify with being black or brown. And I did the brown girls guide the way that it is focusing on all women of color is because despite the fact that even being women of color, we do have our differences. I know in politics we still face the same types of sexism, discrimination, racism. I get in a room with so many women and we just started sharing stories and a lot of them are the same from being the only brown girl in the room to doing more work, but being paid less to being the most credentialed, but having the lower role in the company.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 These are all things that women of color deal with, not only in politics but just in daily life. And for the BGG, I wanted it to be an outlet for us to openly talk about these things because I wanted us to give advice not only to women who are also in politics who are dealing with this, but aren't fortunate enough to have the circle that myself and other women have. But also for the young women who are coming up in politics like I was one day and wasn't able to see myself. I want them to be able to see all of us and know that there are women who are working in this space what are working to make it better for them. And that is something that I know my friends and I really concentrate on is after we leave an organization, a role, a company, we always ask ourselves, have I made this better for the young women of color who are coming after me? And we always want for that answer to be yes.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 So for me, overall, the BGG is a love letter to all of these women just to know that even though you may not be feeling that you're seen and heard, that there are other women that do see you, hear you and value you.

Lauren Schiller:                  So What barriers are you seeing? I mean you just mentioned a whole bunch of barriers that women of color run into in politics and in the workplace and in life. What specifically might women of color face when running for office?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 The first thing is we talked about a little bit, women of color we are just such strong advocates, we're out there in our community, in public leadership. That needs to be translated into black women candidates and encouraging them to run for office. There's just so many stories out there. I'll give an example where a woman, she was a principal, she was considering running for school board and people told her she wasn't qualified over a white man who had no educational experience, who wanted to run for school board. Those are some of the things that women of color face. We need to make sure that we're also not thinking that people of color can only represent people of color. This is such an antiquated idea that we are only limited to representing people that look like us and we have to get out of that mindset because so many of the women of color who were elected to Congress, they do not represent districts where the people look exactly like them.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 So we are capable of doing a lot more for entire communities. We don't only have to represent our specific communities and we also have to look at things such as gatekeepers and at the end of the day, gatekeepers, those are those people who want to keep other people in power because it protects their power. That absolutely prohibits so many women of color from entering politics and that leads to financial constraints or raising money. It's already harder for women to raise money, it's harder for women of color because they are just not seen as quote unquote viable, which is a word I really dislike because when you're saying viable, what you're really saying is straight white man.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And so that prohibits women from being able to raise a lot of resources initially. And then back to what we think about when we talk about viability, we just got to get over what we think a traditional candidate looks like. Because at the end of the day for women of color, we wake up every day and we're playing in a system that was not built for us, that never imagined our participation, politics was made for white land owning men, which we are definitely not. So even though we're almost in 2020, we still have to realize that our elected officials need to look like the people in this country.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yes. So the other thing that you told me when we were preparing for this conversation was that women of color can also run up against the other people of color saying, "Well hey, we got to cover it because we already got a black guy in that position."

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Absolutely. I hear from so many women of color who say, "Yeah, I was told not to run because there's already a man of color running." So this is what I say with women of color. We have to face the sexism and the racism that exists. And when people are doing that, no matter who they are, saying that we already have a person of color in the race, be it a man, be it a woman, we don't need anyone else. What you're saying is that you really think people of color are a monolith and we're all the same. And that is absolutely not true and that is people's implicit bias showing. That they think, "Oh, there's one, we're good. It's covered, we don't need any more." Just like we want to see multiple women running for positions. We also want to see multiple women of color running for that same position.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 These are the things that only make us better. And frankly that's what it should look like. We never say anything when there's multiple white men running for office, but the minute there's multiple people of color, hands up, we got a problem. We can't be doing that. We just need the one person to be the sole representative of the community and that's not how it works at all. So that does create additional barriers, not only for women of color, but just people of color in general, that when they are recruited to run or if they do decide to run on their own, they do get tokenized in this system.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. I mean, can you imagine what things would look like if that was what white people heard? "Oh, you don't need to run, there's already a white person running for that office."

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Exactly.

Lauren Schiller:                  It's like bizarre.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 It goes back to what I said earlier is we don't say anything when white people want to represent a district that is majority people of color. But when a person of color wants to represent a district that is majority white people, there's a problem.

Lauren Schiller:                  What do you tell individuals like me that we can do to break down those barriers when we see them happening?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 You got to call it out, and I'm just going to be very honest right now is when it comes to the racism, the sexism, the homophobia, all of these things that exist, we as those people experiencing it, we cannot be the ones constantly calling it out. We need white people to be the ones calling it out and saying, "Hey, this is not right. I see what is happening. Do you see what is happening?" Because for us, the minute we normally say something, we get attacked and we're just being too sensitive and people get upset, "How can you call me that?" But when it's coming from people that look like them, it's totally different.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I see this happen all the time, people will stop, sit back, listen and say, "I actually didn't think about that. Thank you for enlightening me." That's what needs to happen. You all need to be the ones to speak out because it's not on us as the oppressed to constantly speak up and fix these problems.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, and also like let's lay our money down.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Absolutely.

Lauren Schiller:                  I mean fundraising is another thing that you mentioned as being a challenge.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 It is. It is. And donate and that goes to when we just want to talk about donations, people always think that it has to be thousands of dollars because that's kind of how our political system is made right now where people think that you have to have millions of dollars to run for office. There are so many offices where people only need $10,000, $50,000, $100,000. That money is easily raised. So put an investment in those women, $5 $10 $15, those low dollar donors, they actually add up and that small amount of money can help fund canvassers, it can get people lit, it can do social media ads, it can even add up to being able to provide stipends for interns, which is something I'm really passionate about because I think that's an important way to get more young people of color involved in politics.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Don't think that any amount is too small and even if you're not able to do as much as you want financially, talk about the candidates on your social media account, when you're at an event, when you meet people who happen to be in their district, get their name out there, is these little small things that actually end up adding up over the long run and can help women of color.

Lauren Schiller:                  Okay, so now we're about a year out from the next presidential election. We've got this big field, I mean we're recording in October of 2019 of democratic candidates for the president. We're presidential primary season. So what do black community leaders look for in a candidate? What should we be looking for as the priorities as we come up on this race and making big decisions?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yes. So I like to say we are already in 2020. I mean myself, just the number of emails I got from the presidential candidates today, I'm just thinking, "Oh my gosh, what is it going to look like in January? This is going to be insane." But we know that when it comes to women of color voters, in particular black women, they are the cream of the crop and when it comes to the democratic party, we are the base of the base of the democratic party and the black women's round table. In Essence magazine, they actually just did a survey of what the top life or death issues for black women are and as we talked about earlier, criminal justice and policing reform remains the number one.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And like you said, we're recording this in October, so we were just coming off of another shooting of a black woman who was playing video games with her nephew at her home and she's now dead. The second issue is the Affordable Care Act. Keeping healthcare basically affordable and if anyone is watching the debates, we know that the candidates have plenty to say about that. Then next you have the rise in hate crimes and racism and then you have equal rights and equal pay and then gun violence and gun safety.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 So those are the top issues that black women in particular are looking for out of these presidential candidates. How they are going to address them, but when it comes to issues overall, and I like to just say this, we do care about the same issues as everyone else, we just have a different perspective of how we're looking at them and we want the candidates to have enough sense to realize they can write this great plan on a college affordability, but you're also going to recognize that black women hold the most student loan debt in this country? When we want to talk about violence against women and girls, are they going to address how indigenous women, the rate at which they are dying and how VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act really protected them and other women and is still hasn't been authorized.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 When we talk about entrepreneurship and opportunity, are you going to talk about how to make capital more accessible for women of color to open small businesses. So we care about the issues that all Americans care about. We just need for it to be addressed with that lens of intersectionality and I think that's a reason why you see certain candidates who started very much at the bottom with calling, rising to the top because they have realized that they have to have that in their policy platforms. And that's why they're getting so much attention from women of color.

Lauren Schiller:                  And did you, I mean I didn't hear reproductive justice on that list.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 It is. And so the full list, the other things, I mentioned some of them to quality public education, to reproductive choices, quality, affordable childcare, environmental justice and climate change.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yes. So they're on the list, they're just sort of more towards the bottom of the list.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:                  Is that the survey's results?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah. So I gave the top one but literally everything I just talked about was on the list.

Lauren Schiller:                  So what... I mean are you hearing more about the items at the top of the list from one candidate over another?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I think we are and I do think Senator Warren is speaking to these issues very well. And I noticed back in March, lots of women of color, especially black women, were starting to talk about her a lot more and it's the fact that she just kept releasing all of these plans, all of these plans. And in April we had the sheet of people presidential forum, which is founded by Amy Alison and I'm fortunate enough to be on the steering committee. We held it in... She's in Texas and she won the forum. The way she spoke to that room, she definitely resonated and connected with those women in a way that none of the other candidates were able to. It was quite impressive to see.

Lauren Schiller:                  I mean the last thing that I'm thinking about on the topic of Elizabeth Warren is that I read a piece about her that it wasn't looking like she was getting the support of black community leaders and this is about a month ago.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lauren Schiller:                  What is your response to that in light of the facts?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 It's really interesting though because if you look really at the support that she is getting from black community leaders, especially these black women, it's really impressive people. I mean she just rolled out the endorsement from Roxane Gay, which is amazing.

Lauren Schiller:                  Nice.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Exactly. So in so many women, black women look up to her and then also who is meeting with her. And I think that is something a lot of people don't pay attention to. Just the fact who will even walk into the room with some of these candidates. And she has been really great at doing these black women round tables. And when I look, it's really the women in the community who are leading, who definitely have the ears of a lot of people who want to show up and they're not there to endorse her but just to hear what she has to say and question her on her plans is really fabulous.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I know Senator Booker, he's been doing a lot of those events as well. So the endorsements are important, but we still have to say... Who's even willing to show up to talk to some of these candidates because not everyone is.

Lauren Schiller:                  Okay. One quick thing before we continue. We recorded this in October of 2019 when Kamala Harris, the one woman of color in the presidential primary was still in the race. Senator Harris has since suspended her campaign, but I still thought it was important to share what A'Shanti and I talked about. Also right around this point in our conversation we had a little problem with our connection so I hope you'll just bear with us on that.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 We're all excited to se a black woman on that stage. A woman of color on that stage absolutely representing, and I always equate this moment to, this is probably how black women felt when they saw Shirley Chisholm run, to be able to see Senator Harris run and she is also fabulous on all of these issues and there is always additional barriers and standards that are put on women of color and that really sucks because it distracts from her campaign and for her to be able to roll out all of these great policies. I remember when she rolled out her policy for teachers, it made me smile because it reminded me of my government teacher and I was like, "Yes, she was a great woman." I wanted her to make more money. She should make more money and here Senator Harris rolling out a great plan that speaks to teachers.

Lauren Schiller:                  So what is the best advice that you've ever been given about how to get more women of color into office?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 The best advice is to definitely ask them to consider it because so many women, especially women of color, they really haven't thought about running for office. I like to say all the time, we are just so great at getting other people elected, but I want for us to see our name on the ballot to be able to go into the voting booth and vote for ourselves. And one of the things that we do at Emerge is we are really intentional about making sure that we're talking to women of color about running for office. That includes everything from the organizations that we partner with, such as Higher Heights for America, which focuses on getting black women more civically and politically engaged too.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 We did a training at the NAACP in Michigan and saying, "Hey, where are Emerge. We want you to think about running for office." So making sure that we're working with the groups, we're going to where the groups are to talk to women of color, not expecting them to come to us. And then also being intentional about it in our training programs, making sure that we're out in the community, talking to women of color, making sure that they know that we want for them to run for office. And then also any trainings that we can do to specifically speak to women of color.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Our Arizona affiliate did a training just for Latino women that was conducted in Spanish, so also being creative about the opportunities to really make the training more welcoming and encouraging for women of color as well.

Lauren Schiller:                  That was A'Shanti Gholar, national political director for Emerge and the founder of the Brown Girls Guide to Politics blog and podcast. You can find a link to her podcast and her blog on my website. A'Shanti also shared her toolkit for getting more women of color in office, which you can find on my website at inflectionpointradio.org. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point and this is how women rise up.

Lauren Schiller:                  Today's episode was made possible by the generous support of the Harnisch Foundation and Eve Rodsky. That's our Inflection Point for today. All of our episodes are on Apple podcast, Radio Public, Stitcher, Pandora, NPR One, all the places. Give us a five star review and subscribe to the podcast. Know a woman leading change we should talk to, let us know at inflectionpointradio.org. While you're there, support our production with a tax deductible monthly or one time contribution. When women rise up, we all rise up.

Lauren Schiller:                  Just go to inflectionpointradio.org. We're on Facebook and Instagram @inflectionpointradio. Follow us and join the Inflection Point society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small daily actions and follow me on Twitter @laschiller. To find out more about today's guest and to be in the loop with our email newsletter, you know where to go, inflectionpointradio.org. Inflection Point is produced in partnership with KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and PRX. Our community manager is Alaura Weaver. Our engineer and producer is Eric Lane. I'm your host Lauren Schiller. Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

 
1.png
 

TOOLKIT

In this Inflection Point Toolkit A’shanti Gholar, tells us how to get more women of color in elected office... and how to break through all the “isms.”

Lauren Schiller: What is the first thing that people need to do to get more women of color elected?

A’shanti Gholar: The first thing is if you see a great woman of color that you know should run for office. If you know a great woman of color that should run for office, ask her to run for office. That is the most important thing. The second thing would be to support her when she does run for office. That means donating canvassing, phone making, being there for emotional support, helping spread the word. And then when you do see a woman of color who is experiencing any type of racism, sexism, call it out. Let people know that it is not okay because that's part of how we start to change the conversations in the country.        

LS: And what advice do you have for women who are running for office for how to handle it when they run into racism, sexism or other isms if especially if there's not someone standing by is going to call it out for them.

AG: The fact is they unfortunately, because as I say, it shouldn't be upon women, people of color to have to do this all the time, but we do have to call it out. We have to let people know when there is a discrepancy and how they're being talked about as a candidate versus the other people who are being talked about as a candidate and let people know. Also the things that they are saying about me are not true. It is based on stereotypes is based on myths. It is based on implicit bias and counter it with what is the truth about them as a candidate and stand up for themselves. Never let it slide.

LS: And, and just to tag onto that, if you know too, it should not be on them to have to call this out on top of doing the work of running for office. So if you have a potential ally who just isn't aware that they can be of help in alleviating these problems, is there a way to start that conversation with somebody who can be there for you?

AG: Absolutely. And it all starts with first being able to be honest with that person and also knowing that these are uncomfortable conversations, but if we want to make things better, we have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and you just have to do it because when it goes unsaid, that doesn't allow for anything to change and most certainly doesn't help the candidate. And it doesn't help the people in the community that if they're going to have this type of person representing them, that would just really go low to the standards of racism, sexism, homophobia. We have to be very honest, we are seeing play out every single day, the impact of that rhetoric at the national level and we especially need to be able to cut it down at the state and local level to make sure that those types of individuals are not getting elected to office.

We are seeing every day the impact that that type of language has play out at the national level. And we need to be doing everything that we can to make sure that that type of rhetoric is not represented at the local level. And that has to start with us.

LS: And so for, for people, let's just say, so for white people who are able to stand up for the women and other people of color in their lives we need to be open to hearing examples of what's going on if we are experiencing blind spots because it's not our everyday reality. Right. I mean, and, and to be able to then act on it when we witness it. I mean, I feel like sometimes we just need to be woken up.

AG: And there's something that my friends and I say all the time, there's allies. Who are those people who say, well, I support people of color. I support women, I support the LGBT community. That's a great, but at the end of the day, we really don't want allies. We want accomplices. We want people who are going to be down in the dirt, in the trenches fighting with us. So if you really, really want to be that person, you need to learn how to step out of your comfort zone and to learn how to be an accomplice and realize that may strain some of your relationships in means you may have to take a very hard look at things that you have said or done in the past, but if you want to truly be that person, that's what you have to do. And I really, really recommend the book White Fragility, which is a fabulous book. I mean, I've read it as a person of color, so have some of my other friends. I think it should be really required reading about how you go from being an ally to being an accomplice.

LS: Thank you. And it's really excellent to have the language to apply to the action. I really appreciate that. What are other tools that can level the playing field for women of color running for office?

AG: Some of the other tools just include making sure that we are looking for women of color when it comes to positions. If you have the opportunity, if you're in the room or if you're hearing people discuss how, Oh, so-and-so is a running anymore or this seat is going to become open and they start talking about candidates, be that person to throw out, Hey, how we thought about so-and-so, who's doing great work? Oh well you know, this person has actually done a great job running these campaigns. Maybe they need to be the one running for office. The first thing is to start the conversation that we actually need to be including women of color when we are thinking about candidates to run for office, but that also needs to extend to appointments, to boards and commissions, which I think so many people forget about. They are constantly looking for people to serve in these roles and I think it's a great opportunity to get more women of color involved in those types of positions, which is a great stepping stone for running for office. Then the other thing is just to make sure too, going back to fundraising, anything that you can give that definitely helps out, but also if there are women of color running, just talk about them, tweet about them, Facebook about them. Just letting people know that there are women of color running is definitely a way to start leveling the playing field.

      

LS:  What can voters do to ensure their voting rights are upheld?


AG: One of the things that we have to realize is we are going into another presidential election cycle where we don't have a full protection of the Voting Rights Act. And that impacts everybody. When we look at the states that Donald Trump won, he didn't win those states by that many boats. If you look at it in some states it was 10,000 votes. That's literally a few votes every precinct. And those were also States where people in charge, elected officials actively worked to suppress the vote. And when we talk about loader suppression, the people who are impacted the most mainly include young people, especially college students, senior citizens, and people of color. That means closing down voter registration sites, especially around early voting, college voting sites, closing down DMVs. So people can't get the proper ID changing what type of ID that you need to vote. These are all things that have a negative impact.


But even if we want to look at something that happened recently in Iowa, they did a huge purge of voters. And one of the people that got purge was actually the head of a local league of women voters who has actively voted in the past three election cycles. So even though we know who is disproportionately impacted by voting's voter suppression at this point, it's really all of us that are under attack. It can be anyone. So one of the first things that we need to do is actually check and make sure that we are still registered to vote. Is that that that is unfortunately a real thing. We need to check and make sure have the laws change in our state around what documentation that you need to vote to make sure that you have it all together and then making sure that your polling location hasn't changed so that you have that plan on election day.


One of the things that I'm really excited about is there are two organizations that have really started up over the past few months view years to tackle this, but to really make sure that people can get involved in helping protect their voting rights. So one of the newer organizations is fair by 2020 which was started by Stacey Abrams in Georgia, who I personally am a huge fan of, and she started this to staff on and train voter protection teams in States across the country. And they're going to be targeting 20 States and it's really going to be focusing on voter protection infrastructure very early before we even see who the Republican and democratic nominees are. And what they are looking for is volunteers, people in this state, people who want to actually be employed to help work on these efforts. And I think it's going to be really fabulous to see all the amazing things that they're doing.


Another organization is the national democratic redistricting committee, and they have their effort called All On The Line, which is a grassroots advocacy effort where they're going state by state to build networks of activists who will fight for an accurate census in 2020 because we also need to talk about how the senses will play into your redistricting and January and gerrymandering and gerrymandering is a another form of voter suppression. So those are two groups that I think are doing great work. So if people are really interested in getting involved in broader voter protection efforts, I would recommend those two groups.   


LS: Thank you for that. And could you just give a brief definition of gerrymandering? 


Yes. So redistricting, every 10 years we draw the maps. So that determines who your elected officials are from Congress and state house. And in the majority of States, whoever is in control, they get to draw those maps. So if you realize that for this part of the decade, you're on this district and then the next part of the decade, you're in this district that happened because of redistricting. And we have seen that Republicans really work to limit the representation of young people and people of color when it comes to redistricting. By creating these districts where people of color, young people aren't just huddled together or they will split them to make it extremely difficult. An example of that is in North Carolina, for one of the HBCUs there, North Carolina a. And, T, they actually literally cut the district in half. So half of the school is in one congressional district, and then the other half of the school is in another country, Garrison, all districts. And they did that to dilute the voting power of those students. So that's also gerrymandering. So redistricting is, when we're drawing the lines, drying the maps in gerrymandering is how we make it extremely difficult for people to get fair and accurate, accurate representation, which is a way to suppress the vote.

 

Definitely check out my in-depth conversation with A’shanti in the podcast feed right now. She shares how she went from watching politics unfold on CSPAN to influencing policy working for President Obama, the DNC, and the NAACP.