Host Erik Fleming speaks with messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio and educator Dr. Stacey Schultz about effective political communication, the race-class narrative, combating authoritarianism, and transforming education through innovation and restorative practices.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:06 Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 I want to personally thank you for listening to the podcast.
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00:01:11 --> 00:01:16 The following program is hosted by the NBG Podcast Network.
00:01:20 --> 00:01:55 Music.
00:01:56 --> 00:02:01 Hello, and welcome to another moment where Erik Fleming, I am your host, Erik Fleming.
00:02:01 --> 00:02:10 So today, I have two guests, two young ladies who are seeking to change the
00:02:10 --> 00:02:12 world in their own little niche.
00:02:13 --> 00:02:17 One is trying to change the world through effective communication,
00:02:17 --> 00:02:23 and one is trying to change the world by transforming education.
00:02:25 --> 00:02:33 And, you know, both of these women are very, very cerebral and they're pretty
00:02:33 --> 00:02:38 distinctive personality-wise, but their heart is the same.
00:02:38 --> 00:02:47 And it was really, really cool to have both of them come on and talk about their work.
00:02:47 --> 00:02:55 And I hope that you will develop the same appreciation that I have for them by listening to them.
00:02:57 --> 00:03:01 And yeah, I just think you'll enjoy the conversations.
00:03:02 --> 00:03:09 We're in some perilous times that if you've been listening to the podcast or
00:03:09 --> 00:03:12 just paying attention to what's going on, you already know that.
00:03:12 --> 00:03:17 But I got a couple of thoughts about that I'm going to share it with you later on.
00:03:17 --> 00:03:23 But yeah, I think this is going to be a good podcast for y'all to really listen
00:03:23 --> 00:03:29 to because we got to get into some really, really good discussions.
00:03:31 --> 00:03:36 And it's just always a reminder there are people out here that's doing the work.
00:03:36 --> 00:03:40 So anyway, let's go ahead and kick this off. And as always, we kick it off with
00:03:40 --> 00:03:43 a moment of news with Grace G.
00:03:44 --> 00:03:49 Music.
00:03:50 --> 00:03:55 Thanks, Erik. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met
00:03:55 --> 00:04:00 in Alaska, where a tentative agreement was reached towards Russia ending their war with Ukraine.
00:04:00 --> 00:04:04 The Texas legislature adjourned their first special session,
00:04:04 --> 00:04:09 and Governor Greg Abbott called a second session, as Democratic lawmakers continue
00:04:09 --> 00:04:14 employing tactics to prevent a quorum and a Texas redistricting plan from being adopted.
00:04:15 --> 00:04:20 California Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled plans to ask voters to approve a ballot
00:04:20 --> 00:04:25 measure to redraw the state's congressional map to create more Democratic seats.
00:04:25 --> 00:04:29 President Trump deployed 800 National Guard troops to Washington,
00:04:29 --> 00:04:32 D.C. and took control of the city's police department.
00:04:33 --> 00:04:38 A Georgia man who blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for his depression attacked the
00:04:38 --> 00:04:44 CDC headquarters in Atlanta, firing over 180 shots, breaking 150 windows,
00:04:44 --> 00:04:47 and killing a police officer before he later died.
00:04:48 --> 00:04:53 A U.S. judge has denied a request from the Justice Department to unseal grand
00:04:53 --> 00:04:56 jury records from Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking case.
00:04:56 --> 00:05:01 The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the recent tax and spending law
00:05:01 --> 00:05:07 will result in 10 million more Americans becoming medically uninsured over the next decade.
00:05:07 --> 00:05:12 President Trump has removed Billy Long as the IRS commissioner and replaced
00:05:12 --> 00:05:17 him with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, who will serve in an acting capacity.
00:05:18 --> 00:05:21 Three people were shot and wounded in Times Square, New York,
00:05:21 --> 00:05:24 with a 17-year-old male now in police custody.
00:05:24 --> 00:05:29 A former New York corrections officer was sentenced to 15 years in prison for
00:05:29 --> 00:05:34 his role in the beating death of Robert Brooks, an African-American inmate.
00:05:34 --> 00:05:39 A Ugandan judge denied bail to opposition figure Kiza Besije,
00:05:39 --> 00:05:42 who has been in jail on treason charges for nine months.
00:05:43 --> 00:05:48 And the Trump administration is considering reclassifying marijuana to a less
00:05:48 --> 00:05:50 dangerous drug category.
00:05:50 --> 00:05:54 I am Grace G., and this has been a Moment of News.
00:05:55 --> 00:06:00 Music.
00:06:01 --> 00:06:05 All right. Thank you, Grace, for that Moment of News. And now it is time for
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 my guest, Anat Shenker Osorio.
00:06:09 --> 00:06:16 Host of the Words to Win by Podcast and principal of ASO Communications,
00:06:16 --> 00:06:22 Anat Shenker Osorio examines why certain messages falter where others deliver.
00:06:22 --> 00:06:28 She has led research for new messaging on issues ranging from freedom to join
00:06:28 --> 00:06:33 together in union to clean energy and from immigrants' rights to reforming criminal justice.
00:06:34 --> 00:06:41 Anat's original approach through priming experiments, task-based testing,
00:06:41 --> 00:06:47 and online dial surveys has led to progressive electoral and policy victories across the globe.
00:06:48 --> 00:06:54 Anat delivers her findings packed in snark at venues such as the Congressional
00:06:54 --> 00:06:57 Progressive Caucus, Center for Australian Progress,
00:06:58 --> 00:07:03 Irish Migrant Center, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation,
00:07:03 --> 00:07:04 and Lush International.
00:07:04 --> 00:07:08 Her writing and research is profiled in the New York Times, The Atlantic,
00:07:09 --> 00:07:13 Boston Globe, Salon, The Guardian, and Grist, among others.
00:07:13 --> 00:07:20 She is the author of Don't Buy It, The Trouble with Talking Nonsense About the Economy.
00:07:20 --> 00:07:24 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:07:24 --> 00:07:29 on this podcast, Anat Shenker Osorio.
00:07:29 --> 00:07:39 Music.
00:07:40 --> 00:07:46 All right, Anat Shenker Osorio. How you doing, ma'am? You doing good?
00:07:46 --> 00:07:50 Well, my standard answer these days is there could be less fascism,
00:07:50 --> 00:07:53 but I'm awake. I'm vertical.
00:07:54 --> 00:08:02 Yeah, yeah. Look, I understand. And, you know, I just, I'm thankful because
00:08:02 --> 00:08:08 of my anger with the current president is the reason why I have a podcast. Yes.
00:08:08 --> 00:08:13 So that's the silver lining I have to go with on that.
00:08:15 --> 00:08:20 So what I want to do is I want to get into it. And usually I do a couple of icebreakers.
00:08:21 --> 00:08:26 So the first icebreaker is a quote. The only people that get rich playing by
00:08:26 --> 00:08:31 the rules are the people that make the rules. What's your thoughts on that quote?
00:08:32 --> 00:08:38 Yeah. I mean, I would probably see you that quote and raise you.
00:08:39 --> 00:08:45 That the entire concept of the rule of law is actually just that the rulers
00:08:45 --> 00:08:50 get to decide what the law is in every dimension, not just around economics,
00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 but around who gets to speak and what they get to say,
00:08:53 --> 00:08:57 who gets to move through the world and how, who gets to love who they want to love,
00:08:58 --> 00:09:03 who gets to reside where they desire to reside and pretty much everything else,
00:09:03 --> 00:09:05 every facet of our lives.
00:09:05 --> 00:09:10 And so we change our laws to comport with our values. We do not change our values
00:09:10 --> 00:09:11 to comport with our laws.
00:09:11 --> 00:09:19 And when we hold up rule of law or the law as the ultimate arbiter of what purportedly
00:09:19 --> 00:09:23 is good and right, instead of an actual value like justice—.
00:09:24 --> 00:09:31 Or equality, then we quickly fall prey to the situation that we are in right now, where,
00:09:32 --> 00:09:37 many people on the left and especially sort of more mainstream democratic circles
00:09:37 --> 00:09:39 have been yelling since,
00:09:39 --> 00:09:44 I don't know, at least 2020, no one is above the law, no one is above the law,
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 as if we were running for hall monitor, which is everybody's favorite person.
00:09:47 --> 00:09:48 It's very attractive. it.
00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 It's very compelling. Everyone wants to vote for the hall monitor.
00:09:53 --> 00:09:56 And then it whips around.
00:09:57 --> 00:10:01 And now, of course, we are subjected to an endless litany of right-wing people
00:10:01 --> 00:10:06 justifying everything from, you know, throwing Senator Alex Padilla to the ground,
00:10:07 --> 00:10:11 to grabbing that judge in Milwaukee,
00:10:11 --> 00:10:15 to, you know, whatever happens between now and five minutes from now,
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 saying that they're allowed to do this because no one is above the law
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 because the law is in and of itself is not
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 a value yeah and i and i know that the
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 playing by the rules thing is not your favorite phrase based
00:10:27 --> 00:10:35 on my research and uh and it was like ironically i was i i was watching a cnn
00:10:35 --> 00:10:42 cnbc interview with hakeem jeffries and the clip they showed that was the first
00:10:42 --> 00:10:44 thing he said well you know, we got to play by the rules.
00:10:44 --> 00:10:47 And I was like, Ooh, I better not play this clip for a Nazi.
00:10:48 --> 00:10:51 She's going to cuss the speaker out.
00:10:54 --> 00:10:57 All right. So the next icebreaker is what we call 20 questions.
00:10:57 --> 00:11:01 Okay. So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.
00:11:02 --> 00:11:09 18. Okay. What's one thing we might all agree is important, no matter our differences?
00:11:10 --> 00:11:18 I think almost universally, that most of us believe that we want to move through
00:11:18 --> 00:11:26 our lives and be with our loved ones and be able to put food on the table and be home in time to eat it.
00:11:26 --> 00:11:30 Yeah. Yeah. That should be universal.
00:11:31 --> 00:11:35 I don't know who would be opposed to that.
00:11:35 --> 00:11:41 But, yeah, that seems to be a universal thing. So let's get into it a little bit.
00:11:41 --> 00:11:45 Why did you decide to use your talents for politics?
00:11:46 --> 00:11:47 I guess I'm self-loathing.
00:11:50 --> 00:11:57 Well, I had the experience as a very young child of, I mean,
00:11:57 --> 00:12:02 I can go into the story, basically, my first ever school memory.
00:12:02 --> 00:12:06 My parents sent me to kindergarten young. They'd had enough of me, so I was four.
00:12:06 --> 00:12:12 And we had all been given these notebooks, and each notebook had a very nice cover.
00:12:12 --> 00:12:16 Mine had the Muppet Show on it. That's how old I am.
00:12:17 --> 00:12:22 And the teacher was called into the principal's office and so said to us,
00:12:22 --> 00:12:25 OK, all of you just like draw on the first page of your notebook.
00:12:26 --> 00:12:29 I have to just go because, you know, this was in an era where this would happen.
00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 Your listeners are like, what is she talking about? But you'll back me up.
00:12:32 --> 00:12:34 Teachers did things like this.
00:12:34 --> 00:12:39 And she'd been gone roughly zero seconds when a bunch of the kids started picking
00:12:39 --> 00:12:43 on one boy in particular. and they grabbed his notebook and they ripped the
00:12:43 --> 00:12:46 cover off and they're making fun of him and he was crying.
00:12:46 --> 00:12:49 When the teacher came back, she saw this scene and she said,
00:12:49 --> 00:12:53 okay, I'm taking all of your notebooks. And she took back all of our notebooks.
00:12:54 --> 00:12:59 And I said, but most of us were not doing anything.
00:12:59 --> 00:13:03 Like most of us were not harming this kid. And she said, but did you stand up for him?
00:13:03 --> 00:13:06 Did you try to stop them? Did you say anything? I was like, no,
00:13:07 --> 00:13:09 I was drawing in my notebook like you told me to do.
00:13:10 --> 00:13:13 And she said, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
00:13:16 --> 00:13:22 And that has pretty much been my guiding force, or at least I hope it's my guiding force.
00:13:23 --> 00:13:29 And I think that I decided to get into politics because I was absolutely determined
00:13:29 --> 00:13:34 to try to make the world better, as cheesy and hackneyed as that sounds.
00:13:35 --> 00:13:39 And I think there are many, many different ways that people do that.
00:13:39 --> 00:13:43 I think the arts is an incredible way. I think that cooking for people is an incredible way.
00:13:43 --> 00:13:48 I think that being in medicine isn't, like, I'm not arguing that there's only
00:13:48 --> 00:13:50 one way to do that by any stretch of the imagination.
00:13:50 --> 00:13:55 But I'm a person who thinks a lot about language. I grew up in a multilingual
00:13:55 --> 00:13:58 household. I grew up with a very strong interest in linguistics.
00:13:59 --> 00:14:00 My mother's an interpreter.
00:14:00 --> 00:14:03 She speaks seven languages. and so I
00:14:03 --> 00:14:06 just have always had in a facility with
00:14:06 --> 00:14:10 and an understanding of words and not
00:14:10 --> 00:14:14 just what they mean but how they alter people's perceptions of
00:14:14 --> 00:14:19 what is true what they desire what they want to happen and so I think that it
00:14:19 --> 00:14:26 was sort of that idea of trying to speak more effectively about the world we
00:14:26 --> 00:14:32 want to create and also more effectively about the foes that we face. That kind of got me here.
00:14:33 --> 00:14:37 Yeah. Well, your story is cooler than mine.
00:14:37 --> 00:14:43 I just, when I was three years old, I saw in the World Book Encyclopedia,
00:14:43 --> 00:14:46 the article about presidents of the United States, and I said, oh, I want that job.
00:14:47 --> 00:14:55 And so that was the start of my journey. It wasn't a life lesson kind of thing, but that's cool.
00:14:55 --> 00:14:58 That's cool that a teacher felt...
00:14:59 --> 00:15:02 That a four-year-old could understand that. And I think that's.
00:15:03 --> 00:15:08 Obviously, it's had a pretty positive impact, at least from my perspective anyway.
00:15:09 --> 00:15:14 So talk to the listeners. There's a couple of things that you talk about on
00:15:14 --> 00:15:20 your website, and one of them is the race class narrative.
00:15:21 --> 00:15:25 So talk about that, and how has that been utilized since 2017?
00:15:27 --> 00:15:36 Oh, big topic. So in 2016, when the first Trump scene began,
00:15:37 --> 00:15:40 I was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley,
00:15:40 --> 00:15:44 specifically at the law school named Ian Haney Lopez, who famously wrote the
00:15:44 --> 00:15:50 book Dog Whistle Politics about what I'm going to guess you can guess it's about dog whistling.
00:15:50 --> 00:15:53 And he'd come to me we'd met
00:15:53 --> 00:15:56 through a mutual friend and basically said i've been
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 running around the country trying to tell different operatives
00:15:59 --> 00:16:02 democrats progressives that actually this idea that
00:16:02 --> 00:16:05 we should just talk about race which some
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 people espouse and sort of center racial justice
00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 framing which is obviously incredibly important and then
00:16:11 --> 00:16:15 other people arguing very loudly that talking
00:16:15 --> 00:16:18 about race is a distraction and we just need
00:16:18 --> 00:16:21 to do quote colorblind economic populism because that's
00:16:21 --> 00:16:24 the thing that everyone can get on board with and you know
00:16:24 --> 00:16:27 like everyone knows what it is to have more month than
00:16:27 --> 00:16:32 check doesn't matter how much melanin you got and so that is actually the way
00:16:32 --> 00:16:37 even to racial justice because of the overlay between race and class and basically
00:16:37 --> 00:16:40 his argument was that you have
00:16:40 --> 00:16:45 to do both and he had been trying to make this argument over and over.
00:16:45 --> 00:16:49 And as sort of Democratic operatives or want to do, the rejoinder that he was
00:16:49 --> 00:16:52 receiving most of the time was, yes, but do you have testing that that would work?
00:16:53 --> 00:16:58 Because, of course, in the what I like to call polling ism, there's there's
00:16:58 --> 00:17:04 like a massive illness that has infected Democratic thought processes, big D.
00:17:05 --> 00:17:09 That like we have to pull everything and everything needs to be pulled and we
00:17:09 --> 00:17:13 need to just figure out what people purportedly already want,
00:17:13 --> 00:17:15 which is fixed and immovable.
00:17:15 --> 00:17:18 And we just have to figure out what it is, take the temperature and then repeat
00:17:18 --> 00:17:20 it back to them. I don't know if we're going to come back to that topic,
00:17:21 --> 00:17:25 but basically, I could yell about that for 7 hours and like all of the ways
00:17:25 --> 00:17:27 that it is wrong. But I'm going to answer your question.
00:17:27 --> 00:17:32 So we embarked on this project we brought on board, then president of the think
00:17:32 --> 00:17:37 tank Demos, Heather McGee, who went on to write a book called Some of Us.
00:17:38 --> 00:17:40 It's largely about this phenomenon as well.
00:17:40 --> 00:17:45 And basically what we did, and I'm a researcher too, you know,
00:17:45 --> 00:17:49 for the crap I just threw at polls, it's not that there's no utility,
00:17:49 --> 00:17:51 it's that you only get answers to the questions you ask.
00:17:51 --> 00:17:55 And it's extraordinary what you can make happen when you decide which questions
00:17:55 --> 00:17:56 to ask and which ones not to.
00:17:57 --> 00:18:02 So we first did a bunch of qualitative research where we did focus groups,
00:18:03 --> 00:18:08 but we also did these really interesting dyads where we would have a mom and
00:18:08 --> 00:18:13 a son, or we would have two best friends who had been pals since college or high school, whatever.
00:18:14 --> 00:18:19 And one of them would be more decidedly progressive on both economic and racial
00:18:19 --> 00:18:22 dimensions, and then the other more right wing.
00:18:22 --> 00:18:27 And so we weren't just sort of having conversations with groups,
00:18:27 --> 00:18:31 we were watching people trying to persuade the people in their own orbit.
00:18:32 --> 00:18:36 Because the basis of all of the work that I do, including the race class narrative,
00:18:36 --> 00:18:40 which now actually we've innovated to the race class gender narrative more recently,
00:18:40 --> 00:18:44 is rooted in the idea that if your words don't spread, they don't work.
00:18:45 --> 00:18:50 And if the base, which I like to think of as the choir, is not going to sing
00:18:50 --> 00:18:54 from the songbook, the congregation's not going to hear the joyful noise and
00:18:54 --> 00:18:55 go out and convert new adherents.
00:18:56 --> 00:19:01 And this fundamental idea, which is like the basis of every successful,
00:19:02 --> 00:19:06 not just social movement, But, you know, Christianity,
00:19:07 --> 00:19:12 Islam, like basically anything that has become a phenomenon in human society, period,
00:19:12 --> 00:19:18 ever, seems to be remarkably lost in this notion that we can just sort of like
00:19:18 --> 00:19:22 figure out this milquetoast thing that everyone's going to kind of sort of agree.
00:19:22 --> 00:19:27 So the race class narrative is basically an architecture.
00:19:27 --> 00:19:32 It's a structure of a message. And that structure is values,
00:19:32 --> 00:19:37 villain, vision, which we've simplified in the hopes that everyone can easily
00:19:37 --> 00:19:38 remember it and pull it off.
00:19:39 --> 00:19:44 And what you do is you sort of fill in the bits with what you need to talk about.
00:19:44 --> 00:19:49 And the way that you fill in the bits is that you begin by opening with a shared
00:19:49 --> 00:19:51 value, which I will model in a second. And the way that you fill in the bits
00:19:51 --> 00:19:51 is that you begin by opening with a shared value,
00:19:52 --> 00:19:57 And as opposed to the left-wing standard, which usually a message will begin,
00:19:57 --> 00:19:59 boy, have I got a problem for you.
00:19:59 --> 00:20:01 Or this is the Titanic, would you like to buy a ticket?
00:20:02 --> 00:20:05 Or we're the losing team, we lost recently, so you should join us.
00:20:05 --> 00:20:08 That's how we like to begin messages. That doesn't work.
00:20:09 --> 00:20:12 So instead, we open with a shared value.
00:20:13 --> 00:20:17 A shared value, not a outcome.
00:20:17 --> 00:20:21 So a shared value would be no matter what we look like or where we come from,
00:20:21 --> 00:20:24 most of us believe that people who work for a living ought to earn a living.
00:20:25 --> 00:20:28 A shared outcome would be no matter what we look like or where we come from,
00:20:28 --> 00:20:30 all of us are subject to the same amounts of discrimination.
00:20:31 --> 00:20:34 That second thing is just a lie, and that's not a shared value.
00:20:34 --> 00:20:38 And the reason that I get all in the weeds about this is because people will
00:20:38 --> 00:20:43 sometimes misunderstand and be like, wait, you're saying that we have to say
00:20:43 --> 00:20:44 that everyone has it the same?
00:20:44 --> 00:20:51 I'm like, nope, definitely not. But I'm saying that you name a big we on the
00:20:51 --> 00:20:55 basis, I mean, ironically, of sort of the opening question you asked me,
00:20:55 --> 00:20:57 what is something we hold in common?
00:20:58 --> 00:21:02 Because yes, our experiences are different. And yes, our outcomes are different.
00:21:02 --> 00:21:04 And that is not accidental.
00:21:04 --> 00:21:11 But our aspirations, our dreams, our desires, our hopes, even for most of us,
00:21:11 --> 00:21:15 unfortunately not everybody, the things we believe in. So another example of
00:21:15 --> 00:21:19 a shared value would be, in America, we value our freedoms.
00:21:19 --> 00:21:23 So you open with a shared value. Then the second sentence, not the first,
00:21:23 --> 00:21:24 is where you name the problem.
00:21:24 --> 00:21:29 We call this the villain sentence because we do not name the problem in passive terms.
00:21:30 --> 00:21:33 So we do not say wages are falling as if they got heavier.
00:21:34 --> 00:21:40 Or democracy is eroding as if we, like, left it out too long and too much rain fell on it.
00:21:41 --> 00:21:46 We say, but today, MAGA Republicans, or but today, a wealthy and powerful few,
00:21:47 --> 00:21:49 or but today, this asshole.
00:21:49 --> 00:21:52 It depends on what the message is going to be about, right? Is it going to be
00:21:52 --> 00:21:56 about passing rent control in your city, or is it going to be about the government,
00:21:56 --> 00:21:59 the regime trying to turn our government into a weapon?
00:21:59 --> 00:22:04 So it depends on the topic. But that middle sentence is but today villain is
00:22:04 --> 00:22:06 trying to divide us from each other,
00:22:07 --> 00:22:14 hoping that if they can make us shame and blame black people or new immigrants
00:22:14 --> 00:22:17 or exploit our lack of familiarity with trans folks,
00:22:17 --> 00:22:22 we will turn against each other and they can continue to pick our pockets,
00:22:23 --> 00:22:25 steal our health care and abduct our neighbors.
00:22:25 --> 00:22:28 That's me making the sentence longer than it needs to be, because it depends
00:22:28 --> 00:22:29 what you're going to talk about.
00:22:29 --> 00:22:33 But the middle sentence is where you narrate the dog whistle.
00:22:33 --> 00:22:40 You basically say, hey, look, if you'd like to know where your money went,
00:22:40 --> 00:22:43 it's the people who have all the money.
00:22:43 --> 00:22:45 The people who have all the money, they took your money.
00:22:46 --> 00:22:52 And Jose, who's sitting in front of Home Depot trying to get some day labor, he has no money.
00:22:53 --> 00:22:57 So the people with the money, they took your money. But if they can talk you
00:22:57 --> 00:23:03 into believing that it is newcomers or that it is Black folks,
00:23:04 --> 00:23:08 of course, coded as Milwaukee in my home, you know, my state of origin,
00:23:08 --> 00:23:10 Wisconsin, which of course is a dog whistle.
00:23:11 --> 00:23:14 Everybody from Wisconsin can tell you what Milwaukee means, just like everyone
00:23:14 --> 00:23:16 from Michigan can tell you what Detroit means.
00:23:17 --> 00:23:22 Then they can continue screwing all of us over. So that middle bit is the villain.
00:23:22 --> 00:23:27 It's where you make the connection between the scapegoating on the basis of
00:23:27 --> 00:23:33 race or the attacks on the basis of gender or the attacks on the basis of immigrant status.
00:23:33 --> 00:23:38 And then the third sentence, which is a return to the positive, is...
00:23:39 --> 00:23:43 But we know better. We can reject their hatred and lies and join together to
00:23:43 --> 00:23:47 demand, you know, the wages we all deserve if, again, it was going to be about wages.
00:23:48 --> 00:23:52 And so the race class narrative, that's more or less how it works.
00:23:52 --> 00:23:56 There's resources, everything under the sun, everything we do is open source,
00:23:56 --> 00:23:57 so you can see it on our website.
00:23:58 --> 00:24:01 There are so many places where we've been able to implement this.
00:24:02 --> 00:24:07 The shining star first example where we did a full-blown campaign on using the
00:24:07 --> 00:24:09 race class narrative was in Minnesota.
00:24:09 --> 00:24:15 This was in 2018, when Republicans in the state, having come within around 10
00:24:15 --> 00:24:23 votes of almost winning in 2016, were like, aha, we shall dog whistle more.
00:24:23 --> 00:24:28 And they saw in that endeavor, the Somali American population,
00:24:28 --> 00:24:34 which is large in Minnesota, especially relative to how white that state is.
00:24:34 --> 00:24:40 And so that population is primed for what I think of as the turducken of hatred,
00:24:40 --> 00:24:43 because those folks are black, they're Muslim and they're immigrants.
00:24:43 --> 00:24:49 So basically, like, any way you want to slice the meanness, you got yourself an angle.
00:24:50 --> 00:24:57 And they began pumping out endless stories about suitcases full of cash sent
00:24:57 --> 00:24:59 to Mogadishu, Somali daycare fraud,
00:24:59 --> 00:25:03 that the daycare program, the child care program that the state had,
00:25:03 --> 00:25:08 there was, you know, a lot of folks in the daycare system who were Somali American.
00:25:08 --> 00:25:12 And supposedly they're taking these sweet, sweet bundles of cash because everybody
00:25:12 --> 00:25:16 knows the richest people in our society are child care providers.
00:25:17 --> 00:25:20 That is how you get rich in America is by providing child care.
00:25:20 --> 00:25:24 This is a pro tip for your listeners. If you're trying to figure out a career
00:25:24 --> 00:25:26 path, that's it. That's the money path.
00:25:26 --> 00:25:30 So don't do hedge funds. Don't do VC.
00:25:30 --> 00:25:34 Don't come to Silicon. Don't abduct neighbors and steal, you know,
00:25:34 --> 00:25:39 people's information. And basically, like, no, that's not it.
00:25:39 --> 00:25:46 So that was having potency and resonance, because of course,
00:25:46 --> 00:25:51 that's what the purpose of this dog whistling has always been from time immemorial.
00:25:52 --> 00:25:56 And, you know, Nixon, that was the basis of his Southern strategy.
00:25:56 --> 00:26:03 Basically, like, if you can get poor whites to at least view themselves as better
00:26:03 --> 00:26:09 than African-Americans, then they'll go along with the rich landowning whites
00:26:09 --> 00:26:11 basically fucking them over too.
00:26:11 --> 00:26:13 Sorry, I didn't ask if I could swear. Here I go.
00:26:15 --> 00:26:19 So basically, we ran this campaign that we called Greater Than Fear,
00:26:19 --> 00:26:23 because in Minnesota, They call the rural parts of the state greater Minnesota.
00:26:23 --> 00:26:26 They like to make up weird words for things. They call duck,
00:26:26 --> 00:26:29 duck, goose, duck, duck, gray duck, which is the most controversial thing about Minnesota.
00:26:30 --> 00:26:32 And people need to know because it's wrong.
00:26:33 --> 00:26:35 I digress. So...
00:26:35 --> 00:26:39 We did this campaign. It had a look. It had a logo.
00:26:39 --> 00:26:43 It had radio ads. It had digital ads. It had this beautiful poster,
00:26:43 --> 00:26:47 which was iconic, you know, people pushing the car out of the snow.
00:26:47 --> 00:26:52 And it had dogs against dog whistling, beautiful dog contest.
00:26:52 --> 00:26:57 It had hot dish around the world where people would come together and make lotion
00:26:57 --> 00:27:00 hot dish and Somali hot dish and Mexican hot dish.
00:27:00 --> 00:27:05 Hot dishes for the non-Midwestern listeners. It's basically cancer in a Pyrex.
00:27:05 --> 00:27:09 But people like to eat it. I'm from the Midwest, so I'm allowed to say this.
00:27:10 --> 00:27:17 And it basically, what we did was we just kind of shoved this idea that we are greater than fear.
00:27:18 --> 00:27:23 So what that sounded like was in Minnesota, we know long winters and we know
00:27:23 --> 00:27:24 how to dig our neighbors out of the snow.
00:27:24 --> 00:27:28 So whether it's your first Minnesota winter or your 50th, we've all been there.
00:27:28 --> 00:27:34 And when certain politicians try to make us afraid of each other,
00:27:34 --> 00:27:37 we know that means they've got nothing else to offer.
00:27:37 --> 00:27:40 There's lots of ways to be Minnesotan, and all of them are greater than fear.
00:27:40 --> 00:27:47 That was our main ad copy because it was C3, so we were more judicious in the call-out.
00:27:48 --> 00:27:55 And it worked. It not only was what the outside groups used,
00:27:55 --> 00:27:59 and when I say used, I mean SEIU Minnesota, I mean Take Action Minnesota,
00:27:59 --> 00:28:03 I mean Faith in Minnesota, I mean Unidos, I mean, the Somali Workers Center,
00:28:03 --> 00:28:05 I mean, Education Minnesota, the Teachers Union.
00:28:06 --> 00:28:11 Instead of going door to door and doing a different message for each group,
00:28:11 --> 00:28:14 which makes it impossible to break a signal through the noise,
00:28:14 --> 00:28:18 they all went out canvassing in their greater than fear shirts.
00:28:18 --> 00:28:23 And they had a greater than fear script about driver's licenses for undocumented,
00:28:23 --> 00:28:28 about taxes, about school funding, about child care, about whatever their thing
00:28:28 --> 00:28:31 was. So people were hearing greater than fear, greater than fear,
00:28:31 --> 00:28:33 greater than fear over and over.
00:28:33 --> 00:28:39 And it became so popular that actually then candidate now Governor Tim Walz
00:28:39 --> 00:28:42 adopted it as his messaging, as did the two.
00:28:42 --> 00:28:45 We had two Senate races that year because of Al Franken and,
00:28:45 --> 00:28:47 you know, also in the Minnesota House.
00:28:47 --> 00:28:52 Anyway, one, all the races that we participated in in that year,
00:28:52 --> 00:28:58 then did a version of that in 2020, obviously in the midst and the wake of the
00:28:58 --> 00:29:00 horrific George Floyd murder,
00:29:00 --> 00:29:03 having to deal with all of the sort of.
00:29:04 --> 00:29:06 You can't even go to the Twin Cities.
00:29:06 --> 00:29:09 Governor Walz owes an apology to suburban moms.
00:29:09 --> 00:29:12 We had to clap back to that. We did this full I'm a suburban mom campaign.
00:29:12 --> 00:29:18 Just basically, instead of either accepting the idea that you just don't talk about race.
00:29:19 --> 00:29:25 Which is a fiction. Because basically, it's as if you're handing people headphones
00:29:25 --> 00:29:31 and in one ear is blasting horrific, terrible dog whistles.
00:29:31 --> 00:29:35 And in the other, there's silence. So this idea that we can just not talk about
00:29:35 --> 00:29:39 race or just not talk about immigrants or just not talk about queer people,
00:29:40 --> 00:29:43 we don't get to decide because politics isn't solitaire.
00:29:44 --> 00:29:50 Our voters are hearing all this crap. And if there's nothing in counter to that
00:29:50 --> 00:29:54 crap, then our economic promise can't break through.
00:29:55 --> 00:29:59 And so, you know, Minnesota is one example. We use the race class narrative
00:29:59 --> 00:30:03 in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, again, Michigan in 2020.
00:30:03 --> 00:30:07 We've used it in other countries very successfully.
00:30:07 --> 00:30:11 In Australia, we used elements of it in the Lula Bolsonaro race,
00:30:11 --> 00:30:19 which I worked on in Brazil in 22. Two, we used elements of it just now in the defeat of Le Pen.
00:30:19 --> 00:30:23 I mean, just now, just a little bit ago in France, successfully as pushback
00:30:23 --> 00:30:28 against the AFD in Germany. I could go on and on because I work internationally.
00:30:28 --> 00:30:33 So I wanted to play this little game and I'm going to cut it because of time.
00:30:33 --> 00:30:37 But this is from your Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit.
00:30:38 --> 00:30:44 So what I want you to do is is close your eyes and listen to me read one of
00:30:44 --> 00:30:46 the posts that you put out there.
00:30:46 --> 00:30:53 And you tell me which Democratic progressive comes to mind when you hear this phrase.
00:30:54 --> 00:30:57 And so I'm just going to pick one for the sake of time.
00:30:57 --> 00:31:03 Any elected official who lies to the American people, stokes violence in the
00:31:03 --> 00:31:07 vision and refuses to take responsibility as unfit to represent us.
00:31:07 --> 00:31:13 We must come together to hold the MAGA Republicans who have harmed us to account.
00:31:13 --> 00:31:19 Who is the person that's out there now that you think best articulates that?
00:31:20 --> 00:31:25 That best articulates that. Maybe not in those exact words, but James Tallarico,
00:31:25 --> 00:31:29 the Texas representative, I think.
00:31:29 --> 00:31:34 Not her vernacular, but staying in Texas, Jasmine Crockett, she would express
00:31:34 --> 00:31:36 it differently, but that vibe.
00:31:36 --> 00:31:42 I think Tim Walz would say a version of that in Minnesota.
00:31:42 --> 00:31:45 I think J.B. Pritzker would say a version of that, Illinois.
00:31:46 --> 00:31:51 Yeah. So those names you mentioned, are these people that you've identified
00:31:51 --> 00:31:57 as clear spokesmen for the Democrats or do we really help?
00:31:57 --> 00:32:06 I mean, I think those are some of our best examples of people who are actually
00:32:06 --> 00:32:14 understanding that we are in an epic raging battle against fascism, not inflation,
00:32:14 --> 00:32:21 although inflation is also real, and that unless we are clear about the foe
00:32:21 --> 00:32:26 that we are facing, we have absolutely no hope of defeating them.
00:32:26 --> 00:32:32 So I hold them up as among elected leaders, better examples.
00:32:32 --> 00:32:39 So what happened in your mindset happened message wise in 2024?
00:32:40 --> 00:32:45 Oh, my goodness. Well, there are so many things that happened.
00:32:45 --> 00:32:50 But from my view, and, you know, an election isn't one thing.
00:32:50 --> 00:32:52 The United States isn't one thing.
00:32:52 --> 00:32:55 Life is complicated. There's a lot of people.
00:32:55 --> 00:33:01 So this is by necessity a simplification, because otherwise you can't talk about
00:33:01 --> 00:33:05 things unless you pick a lane, right? I can't drive in all the lanes.
00:33:05 --> 00:33:06 I'm going to pick this one.
00:33:07 --> 00:33:15 In my view, once we changed candidates and we had Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket,
00:33:16 --> 00:33:27 we had a halcyon six-week period in which Harris was running on kind of everything
00:33:27 --> 00:33:30 that I would advise—not everything that I would advise because, you know,
00:33:30 --> 00:33:36 still a center of—I mean, the Democratic Party is a right-wing party in any other country.
00:33:36 --> 00:33:39 Context, like in a European context, the right wing party.
00:33:39 --> 00:33:46 So when I say like the best, I mean the best within sort of not greatness that
00:33:46 --> 00:33:49 is the United States political reality.
00:33:50 --> 00:33:55 And what I mean by that is sort of embodying the edict that if you want people
00:33:55 --> 00:33:57 to come to your party, you've got to throw a better party.
00:33:58 --> 00:34:01 If you want people to come to your cause, you need to be attractive.
00:34:02 --> 00:34:06 And the way that you be attractive is like any other magnet.
00:34:06 --> 00:34:10 You understand that you have to have a polarity, which means that you will draw
00:34:10 --> 00:34:12 people in, but you will also repel people.
00:34:13 --> 00:34:17 And there is actually no way to draw people in without repelling other people,
00:34:17 --> 00:34:22 because the alternative, the pollingism version, is that you're just sort of
00:34:22 --> 00:34:25 blandly inoffensive to the greatest number of people,
00:34:25 --> 00:34:29 which means that you don't have a choir that wants to sing your tune.
00:34:29 --> 00:34:34 You don't have people that are excited to go and convince other people that
00:34:34 --> 00:34:38 they should also be excited to vote in the first place and to vote for you.
00:34:38 --> 00:34:42 And in that six weeks is when there was lots of freedom.
00:34:42 --> 00:34:49 I mean, look at her, revisit her opening ad and look back at the work that we
00:34:49 --> 00:34:53 had done in 2022, a whole collection of us with the Protect Our Freedoms campaign.
00:34:53 --> 00:34:56 I have a podcast episode about it where I go through the messaging.
00:34:56 --> 00:34:58 It was that. In America, we value our freedoms.
00:34:59 --> 00:35:04 Above all our freedom to pick our leaders and have a say over the decisions that impact our lives.
00:35:04 --> 00:35:08 But today, MAGA Republicans trying to take away those freedoms from our freedom
00:35:08 --> 00:35:13 to decide what happens to our body to our freedom to earn a good living and have a good life.
00:35:13 --> 00:35:17 Like, listen to that ad again, the first one. She picked Tim Walz.
00:35:18 --> 00:35:21 Again, I've worked in Minnesota since 2018. It's been a long time.
00:35:21 --> 00:35:28 Tim Walls has been through an extraordinary amount of information and knowledge
00:35:28 --> 00:35:31 and training in the race class narrative, thanks to the folks in Minnesota.
00:35:32 --> 00:35:35 And he's mastered the clapback, right?
00:35:35 --> 00:35:39 He's mastered the kind of unflappable, ooh, I want to feed children,
00:35:40 --> 00:35:43 like how dare I, instead of getting defensive.
00:35:44 --> 00:35:48 Andy Beshear is another example of this. And shout out to Kentuckians for the
00:35:48 --> 00:35:52 Commonwealth who've done great RCN work in that state.
00:35:52 --> 00:35:55 You know, it's Charles Booker from the hood to the holler.
00:35:55 --> 00:35:59 It's basically first create a big we and then make clear that the villains are
00:35:59 --> 00:36:04 the villains because of the harms they are doing to particular communities,
00:36:04 --> 00:36:09 but also because you've got to point your finger at the bad guy,
00:36:09 --> 00:36:12 not the brown guy, right? That's like the essence of RCN.
00:36:14 --> 00:36:21 So that was going on. You know, he's an unserious man who is a very serious threat. Great line.
00:36:22 --> 00:36:27 And voter registration was like through the roof. People were happy. They were excited.
00:36:28 --> 00:36:31 Our focus groups, it was if like, you know, the clouds had parted and people
00:36:31 --> 00:36:35 were suddenly, you know, hopeful and joyful and like, oh, my goodness.
00:36:35 --> 00:36:41 And then the adults came. The adults came into the room and they said, oh, no, no, no.
00:36:42 --> 00:36:46 There has been too much fun at this party. and there has been too much economic
00:36:46 --> 00:36:47 populism in this platform.
00:36:48 --> 00:36:52 And Jacobin did a really good analysis.
00:36:52 --> 00:36:56 They developed what we call in linguistics a corpora, where they took every
00:36:56 --> 00:37:01 word that she publicly uttered over the course of her campaign, speeches, ads, etc.
00:37:01 --> 00:37:05 So this is an objective analysis. This is not like an impressionistic,
00:37:05 --> 00:37:07 I sort of feel this is what happened.
00:37:07 --> 00:37:11 And they traced how her economic discourse altered and how her economic discourse altered.
00:37:12 --> 00:37:16 And in the first six weeks, she was saying concrete things because you also
00:37:16 --> 00:37:19 have to say concrete things. She said, I'm going to raise the minimum wage.
00:37:20 --> 00:37:24 Fuck this shitty wage. She talked about price controls.
00:37:24 --> 00:37:27 There was half a second. You want to talk about if you, you know,
00:37:27 --> 00:37:30 having a polarity. She talked about price controls.
00:37:31 --> 00:37:34 Trump went ballistic, right? They were like, she is a communist.
00:37:34 --> 00:37:35 She's going to control prices.
00:37:36 --> 00:37:41 Imagine if the debate all through the election instead of being about the border,
00:37:41 --> 00:37:47 which is having the argument that MAGA wants to have instead of having the argument
00:37:47 --> 00:37:51 you want to have, which is like debate 101.
00:37:51 --> 00:37:54 Debate 101 is if you want to win the debate, you have to pick the trance.
00:37:55 --> 00:37:58 Had she stuck with, yeah, I'm going to price control. And you know what?
00:37:58 --> 00:38:01 I'm going to stick a capital gains tax. And all you rich assholes,
00:38:02 --> 00:38:07 all of you billionaires that have been profiting off of this pandemic and bankrolling
00:38:07 --> 00:38:12 your own lives while you steal from ours, it's about time that the people who
00:38:12 --> 00:38:15 do well in America do right by America.
00:38:15 --> 00:38:18 And that's what I'm going to do. And I'm not saying everyone would have agreed
00:38:18 --> 00:38:20 with that. They would not have agreed with that.
00:38:21 --> 00:38:24 But most people actually do believe that.
00:38:24 --> 00:38:27 And then that would have been the debate. He would have been attacking her about
00:38:27 --> 00:38:33 price controls instead of attacking on terms she then responded to by basically
00:38:33 --> 00:38:37 being Republican light, which is the problem that center-left parties,
00:38:37 --> 00:38:41 the mistake that center-left parties make all over.
00:38:41 --> 00:38:45 We just watched it happen where law and justice came back into power in Poland
00:38:45 --> 00:38:50 after a heroic, extraordinary victory in 22.
00:38:50 --> 00:38:56 This year, they came back into power because the center-left governing party
00:38:56 --> 00:39:00 tried to do a, you know, law and justice light.
00:39:01 --> 00:39:04 And what happens when you give people
00:39:04 --> 00:39:07 the full fat version and the low calorie
00:39:07 --> 00:39:10 version of the same thing they want the full fat
00:39:10 --> 00:39:13 because what you've done is you've let the other side control
00:39:13 --> 00:39:17 the terms of the debate if you want to score a goal you have to move the ball
00:39:17 --> 00:39:21 not be crying that it's over there on the wrong side of the field i realize
00:39:21 --> 00:39:26 i'm saying many things at once so what happened is that her economic discourse
00:39:26 --> 00:39:30 for one actually changed and again this is not an impression,
00:39:30 --> 00:39:32 this is like a cataloged fact,
00:39:32 --> 00:39:35 away from I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this.
00:39:36 --> 00:39:41 To, I mean, the capital gains. She walked back. Like, she literally walked back
00:39:41 --> 00:39:42 the amount that she was in support of.
00:39:43 --> 00:39:45 The adults came into the room, and by the adults, I mean the funders,
00:39:45 --> 00:39:46 and they said, oh, no, no, no.
00:39:47 --> 00:39:52 And the campaign began to speak in vague platitudes around the,
00:39:52 --> 00:39:56 opportunity economy because, you know, they had this notion that they had to
00:39:56 --> 00:40:01 present an economic argument, but they couldn't actually do so because they
00:40:01 --> 00:40:06 were hemmed in in terms of what kinds of policies they were capable of saying they wanted.
00:40:07 --> 00:40:12 Contrast that with Mamdani, who's like, I'm a free to rent, make the buses free,
00:40:12 --> 00:40:15 and I'm going to open public grocery stores.
00:40:15 --> 00:40:20 That you can take home, that you can remember, that you can imagine what that
00:40:20 --> 00:40:22 will feel like inside of your wallet.
00:40:22 --> 00:40:26 It's not some sort of, like, what is the opportunity economy and is it going
00:40:26 --> 00:40:27 to make me dinner? I don't think so.
00:40:28 --> 00:40:34 So that plus, you know, a healthy helping of the Cheney of it all,
00:40:34 --> 00:40:39 and this kind of, we will appeal to these moderate swing voters,
00:40:39 --> 00:40:43 even though there's like seven of them left and they all had to quit their jobs
00:40:43 --> 00:40:46 so that they could be in focus groups full time because we're so obsessed with
00:40:46 --> 00:40:49 them, like every pollster wants them in their focus groups.
00:40:50 --> 00:40:54 Instead of recognizing that you actually
00:40:54 --> 00:41:00 had to make the debate about two extraordinarily different futures,
00:41:01 --> 00:41:07 one in which you would have your freedoms and the other in which the MAGA Republicans
00:41:07 --> 00:41:10 would control you and decide your future for you.
00:41:10 --> 00:41:13 And, you know, that's my view of what happened. Yeah.
00:41:14 --> 00:41:20 So I'm going to try to narrow it down because like I said, I wrote down a whole
00:41:20 --> 00:41:24 lot of questions for you and I knew that this was going to be enlightening.
00:41:24 --> 00:41:32 So now I got to discipline myself. So in hindsight, was Michelle Obama wrong?
00:41:33 --> 00:41:39 About what? The classic line, when they go low. When they go low. Yeah.
00:41:39 --> 00:41:46 I think that there's a pretty strong misunderstanding of what it means to go high.
00:41:47 --> 00:41:55 Okay. I think that the way that when they go low, we go high was understood
00:41:55 --> 00:41:59 and interpreted was we remain polite.
00:42:00 --> 00:42:06 We observe the norms and the standards of the august offices like the filibuster,
00:42:06 --> 00:42:08 for example, in the Senate.
00:42:08 --> 00:42:10 To me, none of that is going high.
00:42:11 --> 00:42:17 If you're breaking into my house and you're going to set the place on fire and
00:42:17 --> 00:42:20 you're going to drag out my children and you're going to hurt them,
00:42:20 --> 00:42:23 the absolute highest place i
00:42:23 --> 00:42:27 can go is to throw my
00:42:27 --> 00:42:34 body and to kick and to scream and to punch and to fight to stop you and i think
00:42:34 --> 00:42:40 that i mean maybe i'm evading the question i think the way that we go high was
00:42:40 --> 00:42:44 understood and maybe even the way that she meant it and that part i can't know
00:42:44 --> 00:42:45 because I'm not inside her brain.
00:42:45 --> 00:42:54 Yeah, that was wrong. And the reason that it was wrong is because you cannot appease a fascist.
00:42:55 --> 00:42:58 You cannot play nice with a bully.
00:42:58 --> 00:43:06 You cannot norms and standards, especially when those norms and standards are
00:43:06 --> 00:43:10 built out of such fundamentally undemocratic ideas.
00:43:10 --> 00:43:15 And when, you know, we're in focus groups since the beginning of 2021,
00:43:16 --> 00:43:24 we're now like 270 focus groups in with disaffected Democratic and swing voters
00:43:24 --> 00:43:27 every week, every week listening to these people.
00:43:27 --> 00:43:31 It's an explanation for why I have the attitude that I do.
00:43:33 --> 00:43:37 And among the higher information ones, which is rare, but still,
00:43:38 --> 00:43:45 when we were talking to them in 2024, one of the most common things that we would hear is,
00:43:46 --> 00:43:50 You told us in 2020 to turn out to protect our freedoms.
00:43:51 --> 00:43:55 You told us that everything was on the line and that, you know,
00:43:55 --> 00:44:01 and I don't know, but it seems to me that Dobbs fell on Democrats' watch.
00:44:01 --> 00:44:05 I don't know, but it seems to me that all of these anti-voter restrictions that
00:44:05 --> 00:44:10 were passed in southern states happened when Democrats were in charge.
00:44:10 --> 00:44:14 I don't know, but it seems to me, and this is what the higher information ones
00:44:14 --> 00:44:20 would say, that you had a trifecta. And you didn't pass voting rights and you didn't codify Roe.
00:44:20 --> 00:44:25 And so you're telling me now that I need to turn out to protect my freedoms?
00:44:25 --> 00:44:27 How would voting for Democrats achieve that?
00:44:28 --> 00:44:34 Because here's the thing as much as i am messaging lady and studying perception
00:44:34 --> 00:44:39 and persuasion and coming up with you know not just like words but stories and
00:44:39 --> 00:44:44 overarching narratives there is absolutely nothing that you can say anyone can
00:44:44 --> 00:44:47 say that is louder than what you do,
00:44:47 --> 00:44:55 and you cannot tell people that the house is on fire and then refuse to run
00:44:55 --> 00:45:01 in and douse it with water or take the people out of the burning building.
00:45:01 --> 00:45:07 And so going high in practice, whether she meant it or not, and this is the part I don't know,
00:45:08 --> 00:45:15 amounted to there is, you know, an increasing authoritarian threat or like there
00:45:15 --> 00:45:19 is, you know, amounting pressure and there's anti-democratic and democracies
00:45:19 --> 00:45:23 eroding, like I said before, but then you don't actually act,
00:45:23 --> 00:45:28 but then you don't actually use the power of your office.
00:45:28 --> 00:45:33 And one of the exercises that we often would do with voters,
00:45:34 --> 00:45:39 not always, but we would ask them, if you had to liken the Democratic Party
00:45:39 --> 00:45:40 to an animal, what animal would it be?
00:45:41 --> 00:45:46 And pretty much without exception, and this is among Democratic voters,
00:45:46 --> 00:45:52 among swing voters, etc., people would say a slug, a sloth, a turtle, or a tortoise.
00:45:53 --> 00:45:58 More recently, the animals have changed and they've become a deer in headlights.
00:45:59 --> 00:46:02 You know, roll over and play dead, a possum, whatever.
00:46:03 --> 00:46:08 And when we ask that of Republicans, they always name an apex predator,
00:46:08 --> 00:46:11 a lion, a tiger, a shark. And they say it like this, you know,
00:46:11 --> 00:46:14 I don't agree necessarily with what they're doing, but you got to give them
00:46:14 --> 00:46:16 credit. They get what they want done.
00:46:16 --> 00:46:19 They're in the majority. They're in the minority. They get what they want done. I don't know.
00:46:20 --> 00:46:23 How is it possible that the filibuster doesn't impact them?
00:46:23 --> 00:46:27 How is it possible that even in the minority, they can block things?
00:46:27 --> 00:46:34 How is it possible that, you know, President Obama couldn't have Merrick Garland as his judge?
00:46:34 --> 00:46:41 Like, they somehow manage it. And so how are people meant to believe that we
00:46:41 --> 00:46:43 are knock, knock, knocking on fascism's door?
00:46:43 --> 00:46:46 And by the way, we're no longer knocking, like we're living in the house.
00:46:47 --> 00:46:52 And so you say that on Monday, but on Tuesday, you promise to pass bipartisan legislation.
00:46:53 --> 00:46:56 Either MAGA is an authoritarian force and
00:46:56 --> 00:47:00 a threat that must be defeated or it
00:47:00 --> 00:47:03 is a co-equal governing partner and you just have like
00:47:03 --> 00:47:07 differences of opinion about levels of taxation but both things can't be true
00:47:07 --> 00:47:14 yeah yeah I feel you on that so I wanted to get a couple of things that's going
00:47:14 --> 00:47:19 on now and and get your take on it real quick what is the best way to message
00:47:19 --> 00:47:22 I am against gerrymandering,
00:47:22 --> 00:47:25 but I will gerrymander my state to fight for democracy.
00:47:25 --> 00:47:31 Yeah, great question. So the way that you message that is by saying,
00:47:32 --> 00:47:37 look, in America, most of us believe that voters pick our leaders.
00:47:38 --> 00:47:41 Our leaders do not pick which voters to heed and which to silence.
00:47:42 --> 00:47:48 But today, MAGA Republicans again and again are proving that they will grab
00:47:48 --> 00:47:51 and seize power any way that they can.
00:47:52 --> 00:47:57 That's evidenced by them abducting our neighbors, stealing our health care,
00:47:57 --> 00:48:04 and moving in and deciding that they will redraw lines because they know voters don't want them.
00:48:05 --> 00:48:11 This is a power grab, plain and simple, by a regime of the bullies for the billionaires.
00:48:11 --> 00:48:13 And do you know the way that you confront a bully?
00:48:13 --> 00:48:16 By calling his bluff.
00:48:16 --> 00:48:20 By refusing to back down. And so here we are.
00:48:20 --> 00:48:26 We're at a crossroads. We are at the place where we will either allow this power-hungry
00:48:26 --> 00:48:31 regime to keep themselves in power and destroy our lives and our loved ones,
00:48:31 --> 00:48:36 or we will fight back with every available tool that we have,
00:48:36 --> 00:48:42 including ensuring that what the majority of Americans actually want,
00:48:42 --> 00:48:46 which is a country of liberty and justice that is indeed for all,
00:48:46 --> 00:48:49 can actually have our voices heard. That's it.
00:48:49 --> 00:48:52 You say it's a power grab, they're bullies, and you stand up to bullies.
00:48:52 --> 00:48:57 You don't get into the details of like, well, actually, no, we're going to retaliate,
00:48:57 --> 00:49:00 and it's fair because tit for ted, and they did a wrong thing,
00:49:00 --> 00:49:02 and maybe ours is a wrong thing.
00:49:02 --> 00:49:04 And eventually, we also believe in fair maps.
00:49:04 --> 00:49:07 You can't get into those details. You have to reframe the entire endeavor.
00:49:09 --> 00:49:12 All right. So listening to some—this would be a final question—listening to
00:49:12 --> 00:49:15 some of the commentary around the police takeover in D.C.
00:49:16 --> 00:49:21 Yeah. Some folks were warning the Democrats about falling into the trap of not
00:49:21 --> 00:49:26 acknowledging crime, just like how they fell into the trap of not acknowledging inflation.
00:49:26 --> 00:49:31 One, is that a solid premise to start with? And two, what is the best way to
00:49:31 --> 00:49:33 counter the MAGA message about big cities?
00:49:34 --> 00:49:36 Ugh, big city.
00:49:38 --> 00:49:44 It's difficult to overstate the stupidity of engaging the tough on crime.
00:49:45 --> 00:49:50 Argument. It is the, you know, canard about mud wrestling a pig,
00:49:51 --> 00:49:54 like the pig enjoys it and you're not going to win.
00:49:54 --> 00:49:59 If you allow the debate to be, there is so much crime and we need to get tough
00:49:59 --> 00:50:03 on crime and they will also get tough on crime and everyone's going to get tough on crime.
00:50:03 --> 00:50:09 When you tell people that they should make a decision on the basis of who's
00:50:09 --> 00:50:14 going to be a bigger asshole, Democrats are giving it their best to fulfill
00:50:14 --> 00:50:16 that role. But Republicans are always going to take that cake.
00:50:17 --> 00:50:22 And so first on the like bigger question, and then I'll come to the DC of it all.
00:50:22 --> 00:50:27 There's extraordinary folks at Vera Institute for Justice and using initially
00:50:27 --> 00:50:30 the work that we've done with the race class narrative, they've now done like
00:50:30 --> 00:50:36 70 million research, I lost count, on messaging about this topic.
00:50:37 --> 00:50:42 And what we find, what they find, because we've done it ourselves and we've
00:50:42 --> 00:50:49 verified it over and over again, is that you need to attend to people's underlying desire.
00:50:50 --> 00:50:54 When people are talking about crime and they're worried about crime, understandable.
00:50:55 --> 00:51:01 What they want is safety. The basic human desire, very understandable for yourself
00:51:01 --> 00:51:04 and your loved ones, is you want safety. Of course you do.
00:51:04 --> 00:51:06 There is no person on earth that does not want that.
00:51:07 --> 00:51:10 And in fact, back to Minnesota, when we were doing focus groups in the wake
00:51:10 --> 00:51:16 of the Floyd murder, one of the things we heard in Black groups over and over
00:51:16 --> 00:51:19 again was, I want the police to come when I call and to get off my back.
00:51:20 --> 00:51:24 We want the police to come when we call and to get off our backs. That is what we heard.
00:51:25 --> 00:51:31 And so a message that works is, we know what keeps us safe.
00:51:31 --> 00:51:35 It's living in communities where we look out for our neighbors and where we
00:51:35 --> 00:51:39 have the things that we need to make it through our lives and care for our loved
00:51:39 --> 00:51:40 ones. We know what keeps us safe.
00:51:40 --> 00:51:45 It's having the people sworn to serve and protect us, treat us as equals,
00:51:46 --> 00:51:50 do their jobs, and respect our rights.
00:51:50 --> 00:51:56 We know what keeps us safe. And these MAGA Republicans hope that by making us
00:51:56 --> 00:52:03 fear each other and convincing us that safety for some has to come at the expense of justice for others,
00:52:03 --> 00:52:10 We will let them take over and steal the things that all of our communities require,
00:52:10 --> 00:52:15 from great schools to accessible health care to affordable transit.
00:52:15 --> 00:52:18 But we know better. We need to get serious about safety.
00:52:19 --> 00:52:25 And Democrats are ready to do it, implementing proven solutions that have made our cities vibrant.
00:52:26 --> 00:52:29 So what you want to talk about, I mean, the rule of thumb is say what you're
00:52:29 --> 00:52:32 for, say what you're for, say what you're for, what you fight, you feed.
00:52:33 --> 00:52:37 If you get yourself into a crime is up, crime is down, crime is up,
00:52:37 --> 00:52:40 crime is down, as people are doing right now, crime is down 30% in D.C.
00:52:41 --> 00:52:42 Well, here I have news for you.
00:52:42 --> 00:52:45 If you're talking about crime, then you are bringing crime top of mind.
00:52:46 --> 00:52:49 You are making people think about crime in an earnest effort to make people
00:52:49 --> 00:52:54 think that it's gone down. Second of all, if someone told me my cancer was 30%
00:52:54 --> 00:52:57 down, I'd be like, well, the amount of cancer I'd like is zero.
00:52:57 --> 00:53:01 Like, thanks for the news. The amount of crime people would like is zero.
00:53:02 --> 00:53:07 So if you're saying crime is down, you're, first of all, crediting the idea
00:53:07 --> 00:53:13 that it would be justified for the federal government to send, you know,
00:53:13 --> 00:53:19 military and federalized law enforcement into a city, that that's a justification.
00:53:19 --> 00:53:22 Situation what if it were 20 you
00:53:22 --> 00:53:25 know whatever it was when crime was 30 percent higher two years
00:53:25 --> 00:53:28 ago three years ago i don't know was it justified then of course
00:53:28 --> 00:53:32 not so you are sort of implicitly crediting
00:53:32 --> 00:53:35 their story which is a bunch of bullshit that's not the
00:53:35 --> 00:53:41 reason why they're in dc so why are you making believe that it is by answering
00:53:41 --> 00:53:46 back and crime is down if facts were going to persuade people we would not be
00:53:46 --> 00:53:50 in this situation i don't know how anybody can be living in the America of 2025
00:53:50 --> 00:53:53 and think that the facts are going to set us free.
00:53:54 --> 00:54:02 That ship, it didn't just sail. It got burned for parts in one of Elon's 57 homes.
00:54:02 --> 00:54:07 So basically, the way that you contend with it is, again, you say what you're
00:54:07 --> 00:54:12 for and you make clear their motivations. And you say.
00:54:13 --> 00:54:20 Families are joining together to stop this regime of the bullies for the billionaires
00:54:20 --> 00:54:24 from turning our government into a weapon against our people.
00:54:24 --> 00:54:28 They are trying to turn our government into a weapon against our people.
00:54:29 --> 00:54:31 That's what D.C. is.
00:54:31 --> 00:54:34 Yeah. All right. So I got to let you go.
00:54:36 --> 00:54:41 But because me being selfish, we could have this conversation forever until
00:54:41 --> 00:54:47 you tell me to go out and do something. So how do people reach out to you,
00:54:47 --> 00:54:48 connect with your company?
00:54:48 --> 00:54:50 Go ahead and give the whole spiel.
00:54:51 --> 00:54:57 Yeah. Thank you for asking. So first, I would say you're listening to this,
00:54:57 --> 00:54:59 so you're a podcast person.
00:54:59 --> 00:55:03 I have a podcast called Words to Win By. It's a narrative podcast.
00:55:03 --> 00:55:08 So each episode is about a campaign we won somewhere in the world and how.
00:55:08 --> 00:55:11 We make a whole season. We release a whole season. So we've done three seasons.
00:55:11 --> 00:55:15 It's not, you know, and then we will make another season and release it.
00:55:15 --> 00:55:21 It is a feel-good podcast. Almost all the episodes, there are some that break the form.
00:55:21 --> 00:55:25 But, you know, the spoiler alert is that we win. That's what happens in every episode.
00:55:26 --> 00:55:33 And the point of it is to show, not tell that progressive ideas not only can when they do win,
00:55:34 --> 00:55:39 when you actually message them correctly, and when you develop a full surround
00:55:39 --> 00:55:43 sound communications campaign, and you actually are for policies that help people
00:55:43 --> 00:55:46 as opposed to policies that help donors. You gotta do all those things.
00:55:47 --> 00:55:51 So, Words to Win By, if you're into podcasts, listen to it, rate it,
00:55:52 --> 00:55:53 you know, review it, all the things.
00:55:53 --> 00:56:00 I have a Substack, which I use sometimes, and when I do Substack Lives,
00:56:00 --> 00:56:02 you'll get alerts. It's also called Words to Win By.
00:56:03 --> 00:56:07 Sometimes I rant and rave on Blue Sky. And then importantly,
00:56:07 --> 00:56:14 on the asocommunications.com website, when we do projects, we make them open source.
00:56:14 --> 00:56:19 That means that on there, there are messaging guides on how to push back against
00:56:19 --> 00:56:20 anti-trans attacks, how to
00:56:20 --> 00:56:24 talk about immigrants. We have a lot of our resources in Spanish as well.
00:56:24 --> 00:56:27 We do a lot of work in Spanish. you know how to talk about crime
00:56:27 --> 00:56:30 how to talk about climate change how to talk about you fill in
00:56:30 --> 00:56:33 the blankets on there for the most part and there's
00:56:33 --> 00:56:38 also sample ads that we have made and tested so asocommunications.com if you
00:56:38 --> 00:56:44 want resources and yeah those are all the ways well Anat Shenker Osorio like
00:56:44 --> 00:56:51 I said I'm honored and I could do this all day because I like talking to people smarter than me.
00:56:51 --> 00:56:57 And you are obviously very, very in tune with how to articulate messaging.
00:56:58 --> 00:57:05 And I admire your work and I admire not only your professionalism,
00:57:05 --> 00:57:10 but I also admire the way that you make it plain for people.
00:57:10 --> 00:57:16 So I'm glad that you agreed to come on the podcast and share that with us.
00:57:16 --> 00:57:18 Well, I'm honored that you asked. Thank you.
00:57:19 --> 00:57:22 All right. All right, guys. And we're going to go ahead and catch up on the other side.
00:57:22 --> 00:57:41 Music.
00:57:41 --> 00:57:49 All right. And we are back. And so now it's time for my next guest, Dr. Stacey Schultz.
00:57:49 --> 00:57:55 Dr. Stacey Schultz is a mother, seasoned educational leader and professionally
00:57:55 --> 00:57:59 licensed coach with a proven track record of driving student achievement.
00:57:59 --> 00:58:05 As president of Educate LLC, a New York City-based company providing innovation
00:58:05 --> 00:58:09 and transformation coaching to educators,
00:58:09 --> 00:58:14 she leverages her extensive experience as a teacher and director of special
00:58:14 --> 00:58:17 education in a K-12 system.
00:58:17 --> 00:58:21 This experience has equipped her with a deep understanding of the challenges
00:58:21 --> 00:58:27 faced by learners and a strong ability to build high-performing teams.
00:58:27 --> 00:58:33 She holds a doctorate in organizational change and leadership from USC and has
00:58:33 --> 00:58:38 completed her executive certificate program in leadership coaching at Georgetown.
00:58:38 --> 00:58:43 She is dedicated to continuous learning and data-driven decision making.
00:58:43 --> 00:58:49 An informed, creative, and results-oriented leader with more than 20 years of experience,
00:58:50 --> 00:58:54 she is passionate about guiding educators and implementing innovative solutions,
00:58:55 --> 00:59:01 including practical technology-based tools to foster meaningful learning experiences for all.
00:59:02 --> 00:59:08 Stacey co-hosts the podcast Educate US and is co-author of the book Transforming
00:59:08 --> 00:59:12 Collective Power that's due out this year, I believe.
00:59:12 --> 00:59:17 In her spare time, she enjoys being active outdoors, traveling to new places,
00:59:18 --> 00:59:23 getting lost in a book or TV series, and spending time with her husband,
00:59:24 --> 00:59:25 three children, and two dogs.
00:59:26 --> 00:59:29 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:59:29 --> 00:59:33 on this podcast, Dr. Stacey Schultz.
00:59:34 --> 00:59:44 Music.
00:59:44 --> 00:59:48 All right, Dr. Stacey Schultz. How you doing, ma'am? You doing good?
00:59:49 --> 00:59:53 Doing good. How about you, Erik? I'm doing all right. I'm doing okay.
00:59:53 --> 00:59:57 I am honored that you accepted my invitation and decided to come on.
00:59:57 --> 01:00:07 I have a special spot for educators, teachers, historians, and so you've fallen to those categories.
01:00:08 --> 01:00:12 And just wanted to highlight some of the work that you're doing and talk about.
01:00:13 --> 01:00:17 Education in the United States, at least from your perspective of it.
01:00:18 --> 01:00:23 So what we're going to do is we're going to start this off with a couple of icebreakers.
01:00:24 --> 01:00:29 So the first icebreaker I do is offer you a quote, and I want you to respond to the quote.
01:00:30 --> 01:00:33 So the quote is, without risk, there is no growth.
01:00:34 --> 01:00:40 Without growth, we risk staying exactly where we are. What does that quote mean to you?
01:00:41 --> 01:00:45 Well, I love that quote because, as you know, the work I do in education,
01:00:45 --> 01:00:48 we talk a lot about taking risks in our learning.
01:00:49 --> 01:00:54 Because if we don't take risks, and risk means something different to everyone.
01:00:54 --> 01:00:58 But to me, it's about really trying something new, getting outside of your comfort
01:00:58 --> 01:01:04 zone, which really provides you some different level of perspective and experience,
01:01:04 --> 01:01:07 which I think is part of what that growth means in that quote.
01:01:07 --> 01:01:13 It's like if we just stay in our myopic view and keep in our own trail,
01:01:13 --> 01:01:14 then we don't really expand.
01:01:15 --> 01:01:22 And what's important to know, right, is like our bodies are physically growing and changing every day.
01:01:22 --> 01:01:30 And we deserve doing and growing in our mind and in our relationships as well.
01:01:30 --> 01:01:32 And so we need to honor that, I believe.
01:01:33 --> 01:01:37 And so to really, truly honor that, we need to take some risks.
01:01:38 --> 01:01:43 Yeah. OK. All right. Now, speaking about risk, I need you to give me we're going
01:01:43 --> 01:01:45 to do this thing called 20 questions.
01:01:45 --> 01:01:49 So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.
01:01:50 --> 01:01:57 One in 2010. All right. What one fact do you wish people who voted differently
01:01:57 --> 01:02:02 than you in the last election knew? Is it about how you vote,
01:02:02 --> 01:02:05 about the current state of the world, whatever?
01:02:06 --> 01:02:10 Well, so, Erik, I do a lot of voter volunteer work.
01:02:10 --> 01:02:15 And for listener's sake, I do identify with the Democratic Party,
01:02:15 --> 01:02:21 even though, you know, I do agree in some ways the Democratic Party has gotten
01:02:21 --> 01:02:25 away from truly identifying with the people, which was the essence of the party.
01:02:26 --> 01:02:32 But in my voter volunteer, I do a couple things where I support people to find
01:02:32 --> 01:02:36 ways to get out and vote, get all the things they might need,
01:02:36 --> 01:02:38 how to make it maybe easier.
01:02:38 --> 01:02:42 So some people, you know, sometimes I'm talking to people in Georgia and they
01:02:42 --> 01:02:47 might need just a support like they live really far out and they need to organize a car.
01:02:47 --> 01:02:52 So I will work with them to get that free transportation so that they can get
01:02:52 --> 01:02:56 to the voter booth. And or, right, in states where you can vote,
01:02:56 --> 01:03:01 get early voting sent to your house and vote in and know where to go to do early voting.
01:03:02 --> 01:03:11 And I also talk to voters who identify as Republican, but have at some point voted Democratic.
01:03:11 --> 01:03:20 And so a lot of times when I'm on those calls, the things that I hear are,
01:03:20 --> 01:03:23 they're not discerning facts for themselves.
01:03:23 --> 01:03:28 A lot of times they're listening to the people around them, right?
01:03:28 --> 01:03:33 The echo chamber that they might be a part of on social media and all of those
01:03:33 --> 01:03:40 things. So I think one fact I would like them to know is to please fact check yourself.
01:03:41 --> 01:03:47 Go and if someone's telling you something, check it out yourself and build your
01:03:47 --> 01:03:48 own understanding of it.
01:03:49 --> 01:03:55 Because there are so many times I'm in these dialogues and I'm like, well, can we pause?
01:03:55 --> 01:04:00 And I take more of a coaching effect. I'm not slamming anything down someone's throat.
01:04:00 --> 01:04:04 But I take more of a coaching conversation and I'll ask, you know,
01:04:04 --> 01:04:07 can we just pause and I want to play this back to you.
01:04:08 --> 01:04:10 From your standpoint, does that make sense?
01:04:11 --> 01:04:17 Or let's play that scenario out a little more. What might that really look like?
01:04:18 --> 01:04:24 And so that's the fact I would want people to really think about. Okay.
01:04:25 --> 01:04:27 Why did you decide to become an educator?
01:04:30 --> 01:04:34 So I tell this story often, but I didn't want to be an educator at first.
01:04:36 --> 01:04:43 But I always was one. So when I grew up in Philly, and of course,
01:04:43 --> 01:04:46 I say of course, but I think this is true for most Philadelphia people,
01:04:46 --> 01:04:48 your basketball courts,
01:04:48 --> 01:04:53 right, the courts is what we usually call them, are really instrumental in your
01:04:53 --> 01:04:54 social life as you're growing up.
01:04:55 --> 01:04:58 It's where you meet, you play, you have a lot of pickup games,
01:04:58 --> 01:05:01 right, and a lot of people participate in it, and it's a lot of fun.
01:05:02 --> 01:05:05 Our basketball courts when i
01:05:05 --> 01:05:08 started going right on my own had a
01:05:08 --> 01:05:11 lot of glass a lot of like drug needles and a
01:05:11 --> 01:05:13 lot of things that and there was a lot of
01:05:13 --> 01:05:18 kind of violence happening there instead of what we were all really trying to
01:05:18 --> 01:05:24 gather around to to be together and play you know basketball you know run games
01:05:24 --> 01:05:32 and so i wrote the 76ers i wrote to the recreational department i kind of I did this reach out.
01:05:32 --> 01:05:35 I organized a cleanup of all the people that were there. I'm like,
01:05:35 --> 01:05:38 let's clean this up. Let's get this going. The Sixers came out.
01:05:39 --> 01:05:40 They like redid our court.
01:05:40 --> 01:05:42 They painted it, put new hoops up.
01:05:43 --> 01:05:46 And we got new lights. The rec department put new lights in.
01:05:46 --> 01:05:52 And so it really changed like the momentum of what was going on in that space.
01:05:52 --> 01:05:57 And it became more about what we want, what we all really wanted it to be about. Right.
01:05:57 --> 01:06:03 And it provided us a safe space to do that. And then I noticed there was a building
01:06:03 --> 01:06:05 that was on the property.
01:06:05 --> 01:06:08 I was like, well, can we use this building to do some peer educating?
01:06:09 --> 01:06:13 And, you know, and at the time, I think it was 16 or 17. I can't quite remember.
01:06:13 --> 01:06:18 But I was like, can we use this building to do some peer educating?
01:06:19 --> 01:06:22 Because teenage pregnancy was something that we were seeing a lot of.
01:06:22 --> 01:06:26 We were also seeing, as I mentioned, drug use, right? And so can we do that?
01:06:26 --> 01:06:31 And the rec department said, sure. So I was able to host these peer,
01:06:31 --> 01:06:33 because I was certified, right?
01:06:33 --> 01:06:37 And I also brought in other certified people to do some different trainings.
01:06:37 --> 01:06:42 And it really, well, first it was a lot of fun, but it really built a different
01:06:42 --> 01:06:44 kind of community dynamic.
01:06:44 --> 01:06:48 And it's something that was always really important to me, was that,
01:06:48 --> 01:06:50 like collective care, community.
01:06:51 --> 01:06:56 And so when I got out of college, I don't know why I was really adamant about
01:06:56 --> 01:06:59 not being a teacher. And I was like, no, no, no.
01:07:00 --> 01:07:03 But after about a year out of college, I was like, you know, actually...
01:07:05 --> 01:07:09 Being a teacher really allows me to live into values that are really important to me.
01:07:10 --> 01:07:16 And so I did, in fact, become a teacher from there. And one of the things that
01:07:16 --> 01:07:18 stood out to me, I had a baby brother.
01:07:19 --> 01:07:25 Both of my brothers have passed, but my baby brother struggled through school always.
01:07:25 --> 01:07:29 And teachers just didn't know how to help him.
01:07:29 --> 01:07:33 And he was an extremely good football player, so he got passed through.
01:07:33 --> 01:07:37 And he even got a ton of scholarships to college and all of this stuff.
01:07:37 --> 01:07:43 And he was like, no, no, no, college is not for me because the learning was so hard for him.
01:07:43 --> 01:07:48 And it was hard for him, I think, because the educators, the adults in the building
01:07:48 --> 01:07:50 weren't meeting his needs.
01:07:50 --> 01:07:54 And so when I decided to become a teacher, I decided I would become a special
01:07:54 --> 01:07:59 education teacher to really support students who weren't necessarily getting
01:07:59 --> 01:08:04 their needs met and helping to provide a new way of thinking about teaching
01:08:04 --> 01:08:06 and learning into communities.
01:08:07 --> 01:08:10 Wow. Yeah. That's a cool story.
01:08:10 --> 01:08:17 So you were, how were you when you asked the 76ers to help with the basketball club?
01:08:17 --> 01:08:20 I was 14. Wow.
01:08:21 --> 01:08:24 Wow. That's powerful stuff. That's pretty cool.
01:08:25 --> 01:08:31 All right. So I'm going to ask this question and then I'm going to throw in
01:08:31 --> 01:08:34 some descriptives to kind of fill it out.
01:08:34 --> 01:08:37 So it's really three questions in one.
01:08:37 --> 01:08:43 All right. So the question is, how does being blank make you a better educator?
01:08:43 --> 01:08:47 So the first descriptor I'll fill in is a mom.
01:08:50 --> 01:08:54 You know, that is a really good question.
01:08:54 --> 01:08:59 And the reason I'm like pausing and one of my own children, so I have three
01:08:59 --> 01:09:05 children, my middle child receives special education for behavioral issues.
01:09:05 --> 01:09:13 He also, you know, has diagnoses that are related to like depression and ADHD
01:09:13 --> 01:09:15 and OCD and some other things.
01:09:16 --> 01:09:25 And for me, it has clashed a little bit of being a mom and being an educator because,
01:09:25 --> 01:09:29 and I know this isn't exactly your question, but it comes up there's a lot of
01:09:29 --> 01:09:35 tension in it for me because I see a lot of what's happening in the school for him.
01:09:35 --> 01:09:40 And of course, I advocate for him. And I have also empathy for the educators.
01:09:41 --> 01:09:48 However, I struggle a little because I know some of what they're doing is not in the best way.
01:09:50 --> 01:09:53 It's not the best for my son, but also for other kids.
01:09:53 --> 01:09:56 And it's a point that is really frustrating for me.
01:09:56 --> 01:10:00 And I've tried to raise it in different ways over the years.
01:10:00 --> 01:10:05 And one thing I always get is we just don't talk to parents about this stuff. And it's like, okay.
01:10:06 --> 01:10:11 But so it's been a little challenging. But the question really was,
01:10:11 --> 01:10:14 right, how does being a mom make me a better educator?
01:10:14 --> 01:10:18 I think it is that perspective, though, right? So flipping that,
01:10:19 --> 01:10:22 having that perspective of being a parent,
01:10:22 --> 01:10:27 right, and even being on the other side of some assumptions that you hear educators
01:10:27 --> 01:10:34 have about parents, I feel like I have now evidence from my own experience of
01:10:34 --> 01:10:37 how to disrupt some of that thinking better.
01:10:37 --> 01:10:43 You know, I think there are stories that teachers can tell themselves about
01:10:43 --> 01:10:48 a relationship with a parent or why they might not be showing up, you know.
01:10:48 --> 01:10:52 And I remember talking to another educator like, I can't show up at 9 a.m.
01:10:53 --> 01:10:57 Like, I have a job too, right? And then there's always this,
01:10:57 --> 01:11:02 and not that on a personal note, I always saw that for parents because my parents,
01:11:03 --> 01:11:07 you know, worked, my dad had multiple jobs, right? So he wasn't showing up at school either.
01:11:07 --> 01:11:13 And it really did bother me when I saw educators have a preconceived notion
01:11:13 --> 01:11:15 about whether or not education was important to my family.
01:11:16 --> 01:11:18 It's like, no, that's, you're missing the point. Right.
01:11:18 --> 01:11:23 But so I think there's a lot. But now I think I can tell the story from my own
01:11:23 --> 01:11:28 perspective of, hey, here's what we need to be thinking about.
01:11:28 --> 01:11:34 But I think just as a human, I always took almost like a nurturing approach
01:11:34 --> 01:11:38 to being an educator anyway, that and taking it very seriously,
01:11:38 --> 01:11:40 that these are other people's kids.
01:11:41 --> 01:11:46 And, you know, Lisa Delbert wrote that book, right, many years ago about other
01:11:46 --> 01:11:47 people's children, she named it.
01:11:47 --> 01:11:52 And even before I read that book, that always resonated with me of like,
01:11:52 --> 01:11:55 this is a community experience.
01:11:55 --> 01:12:02 And if I am not including parents, if not including family, then I'm not doing this child justice.
01:12:02 --> 01:12:05 So that, I think, in some ways,
01:12:05 --> 01:12:13 it helps me feel clearer on what I'm able to support educators in thinking about,
01:12:13 --> 01:12:15 because I have my own perspective now on it,
01:12:15 --> 01:12:22 but always operating from a place that acknowledged and respected that there's
01:12:22 --> 01:12:26 family involved and they're important in this ecosphere.
01:12:27 --> 01:12:31 Yeah. How does being an athlete make you a better educator?
01:12:32 --> 01:12:39 You know, some of my team who are not athletes are over my athletic metaphors,
01:12:39 --> 01:12:47 but I don't think you need to be a—I think people don't respect the fact that
01:12:47 --> 01:12:50 many people are actually athletes in some shape or form.
01:12:50 --> 01:12:57 Because to me, being an athlete is about being dedicated to something,
01:12:57 --> 01:13:04 to hone and grow in your practice in that and have a relentlessness about that, right?
01:13:04 --> 01:13:06 About I will get better, I will improve.
01:13:08 --> 01:13:13 And learning to give yourself grace, especially as I get older as an athlete.
01:13:13 --> 01:13:18 And there are just days, right, that, you know what, that is achy and it hurts.
01:13:18 --> 01:13:21 And so I'm going to back off a little or I'm going to shorten that up.
01:13:21 --> 01:13:27 And so I think there's so many lessons in being an athlete about what does it
01:13:27 --> 01:13:31 mean to persevere through pain,
01:13:31 --> 01:13:39 through tough moments, to understand that it's not always about getting it right, but about growing,
01:13:39 --> 01:13:42 right, and that there's always an opportunity for that.
01:13:42 --> 01:13:48 I also just think being an athlete teaches you a lot about how to navigate and
01:13:48 --> 01:13:54 work with others, which has always been important in my work as an educator to me and a value of mine.
01:13:55 --> 01:14:01 Yeah. All right. Finally, how does being a restorative justice advocate make you a better educator?
01:14:02 --> 01:14:08 You know, I, gosh, there's so many layers to that question, I feel like,
01:14:08 --> 01:14:13 but at the base of it is just that perspective you bring to it,
01:14:14 --> 01:14:20 is that the situation isn't always as it seems, right?
01:14:20 --> 01:14:24 What you can see is only part of what happens.
01:14:24 --> 01:14:32 So how do you really expand your thinking to understanding what else is there? What else happened?
01:14:33 --> 01:14:40 And generally speaking, right, because I've always done behavioral work in a lot of ways.
01:14:41 --> 01:14:45 Behavior is communicating something, right?
01:14:45 --> 01:14:49 And everybody communicates that differently. And everybody has their own spectrum.
01:14:50 --> 01:14:52 And so really trying to understand.
01:14:53 --> 01:14:59 You know, and helping that other people understand the impact that that has on other people too.
01:15:00 --> 01:15:03 So there's a, how do I understand myself better and what happened here?
01:15:04 --> 01:15:09 And giving someone a platform for exploring that in a meaningful way.
01:15:10 --> 01:15:13 And then also, well, how does that impact others?
01:15:13 --> 01:15:16 And what maybe do I need to learn and think about next time?
01:15:16 --> 01:15:23 Because it really, it further allowed me as an educator to embrace that value
01:15:23 --> 01:15:31 of community and create stronger communities by shifting that thinking for all of us, not just myself,
01:15:31 --> 01:15:33 but asking different questions, right?
01:15:33 --> 01:15:36 And now I'm, by all means, have slipped up.
01:15:36 --> 01:15:38 Sometimes a kid does something, you're like, what did you do that for?
01:15:39 --> 01:15:41 Sometimes it's just like, what is what?
01:15:41 --> 01:15:47 But most of the time, I'm able to pause and have a different conversation,
01:15:47 --> 01:15:52 which allows the student to respond differently.
01:15:52 --> 01:15:57 Because now they're not feeling accused. They're not feeling blame.
01:15:57 --> 01:16:02 And which often leads to shame, which leads to acting out a lot of times.
01:16:02 --> 01:16:05 It was more like, let's figure out what happened here together,
01:16:05 --> 01:16:10 you know, and take a pause for that and make space for it.
01:16:10 --> 01:16:14 Yeah. All right. What is your strongest value?
01:16:15 --> 01:16:22 Daring to lead, being open, humble, and reflective, being innovative, or showing respect?
01:16:22 --> 01:16:25 Ooh, you took from the educate values.
01:16:27 --> 01:16:32 Yes, those are the values that educate lives by. You know, I'm going to go with
01:16:32 --> 01:16:33 open, humble, and reflective.
01:16:35 --> 01:16:40 I think, you know, it's a journey, really, to that.
01:16:40 --> 01:16:43 And I think when you can do that, you can do those other things.
01:16:44 --> 01:16:48 You can be more respectful, almost as I was just talking about with the restorative justice, right?
01:16:49 --> 01:16:53 If you can understand yourself, you can also understand the impact you're having
01:16:53 --> 01:16:56 on others and consider that.
01:16:57 --> 01:17:02 I think what it means to be humble,
01:17:02 --> 01:17:11 right, and learn to make space for other people and understand that there's
01:17:11 --> 01:17:14 so much beauty in what everybody brings to the table.
01:17:14 --> 01:17:19 Like it really pushes your thinking on what's possible, right?
01:17:19 --> 01:17:23 So I love that, that open and humbleness that we're all bringing something so
01:17:23 --> 01:17:27 beautiful here and being open to what we might create.
01:17:27 --> 01:17:30 Like Adrienne Murray Brown talks a lot about an emergent strategy,
01:17:30 --> 01:17:34 right? Like who's here right now is creating something unique.
01:17:35 --> 01:17:39 And to me, that's part of what open and humble is also about.
01:17:39 --> 01:17:46 And then reflective, which I think it's more than reflective to me because I
01:17:46 --> 01:17:47 think there needs to be action.
01:17:47 --> 01:17:52 I think it's great if you acknowledge these things, but then what accountability
01:17:52 --> 01:17:56 and responsibility are you taking to those things you're reflecting on?
01:17:57 --> 01:18:01 Yeah. All right. So you mentioned the name. What is Educate LLC?
01:18:02 --> 01:18:08 And in explaining that, kind of going to defining what the innovation spectrum is.
01:18:09 --> 01:18:15 Yeah. So I'll first tell you, Educate LLC is now actually Educate because we
01:18:15 --> 01:18:20 were acquired by a company called ChangeForce and they do change management,
01:18:20 --> 01:18:23 mostly in higher education and corporate space.
01:18:24 --> 01:18:27 So we're their first like kind of K to 12 arm.
01:18:27 --> 01:18:32 And so we have kept the branding and the work of Educate itself.
01:18:33 --> 01:18:38 And so you asked what we do, right? Yes.
01:18:39 --> 01:18:43 Sorry, I always get caught up in like, I have to explain that because we haven't shown that yet.
01:18:44 --> 01:18:51 And so we at the at the floor, what we do is really build partnerships and relationships
01:18:51 --> 01:18:54 with schools to help them realize their potential.
01:18:54 --> 01:18:58 Right. That create meaningful learning, relevant experience,
01:18:58 --> 01:19:03 relevant learning experiences for all people in our community.
01:19:03 --> 01:19:06 So for us, that's family. Yeah.
01:19:06 --> 01:19:12 That's school leaders, that's staff, all the various staff, that's the teachers
01:19:12 --> 01:19:14 and the students, right?
01:19:14 --> 01:19:18 And so we really work at the point of supporting directly adults.
01:19:19 --> 01:19:24 We have all been educators ourselves. We have all been leaders in some capacity ourselves.
01:19:24 --> 01:19:31 And so we are coming from a very rich and diverse teaching and learning backgrounds
01:19:31 --> 01:19:35 that allow us to bring a lot of efficacy to the work that we're doing.
01:19:36 --> 01:19:40 And we like to call that collective efficacy because we also see ourselves as a whole team.
01:19:41 --> 01:19:45 Like when you get an educate coach to support you in your journey,
01:19:45 --> 01:19:48 you're getting the whole educate bench.
01:19:48 --> 01:19:51 You're not just getting one person.
01:19:51 --> 01:19:53 And so we really emphasize that.
01:19:54 --> 01:20:00 We also, at the inception of Educate, it was about bringing technology into
01:20:00 --> 01:20:02 classrooms meaningfully.
01:20:02 --> 01:20:06 We have expanded beyond that because it's like technology is a vehicle.
01:20:06 --> 01:20:12 So it's definitely a part of our forte, but it's only a part of it.
01:20:12 --> 01:20:17 And with AI, because there's so many implications for teaching and learning
01:20:17 --> 01:20:23 with AI, we have been supporting our schools and really diving deep in what does that mean to them?
01:20:23 --> 01:20:26 What does that look like? Like, how do they think about it? How do they challenge
01:20:26 --> 01:20:30 some things? How do they leverage and work with AI?
01:20:31 --> 01:20:36 And we also created our own AI product called Unlock AI with educators,
01:20:36 --> 01:20:41 because something really unique about us is we are in schools every day. Our team, right?
01:20:41 --> 01:20:47 We're in schools with educators every day. So we're able to truly build this
01:20:47 --> 01:20:54 alongside of educators and consistently we innovate with our educators and to
01:20:54 --> 01:20:55 really meet their needs.
01:20:55 --> 01:21:03 And so it's LLM agnostic, but it's built in these closed chambers, so to speak,
01:21:03 --> 01:21:11 with not only the codification of our research, which is leveraged in the innovation
01:21:11 --> 01:21:16 spectrum and all of the 25 years of our work and experience, but also the schools.
01:21:16 --> 01:21:23 So each school that engages with Unlock can put in their sort of philosophies,
01:21:23 --> 01:21:28 scholarship, et cetera, that they leverage to really influence teaching and
01:21:28 --> 01:21:29 learning in their school.
01:21:30 --> 01:21:35 Yeah. So what does transformation in the classroom look like?
01:21:36 --> 01:21:40 So, to us, you know, we love to meet people where they're at.
01:21:41 --> 01:21:45 So, what we and what we're also saying, though, is that as educators,
01:21:46 --> 01:21:51 our responsibility is to ensure that students are ready for their future,
01:21:51 --> 01:21:55 which means what is the future they want to realize.
01:21:55 --> 01:21:58 And sometimes kids don't know that. So, at the minimum for us,
01:21:58 --> 01:22:03 it's about them being able to recognize economic prosperity that provides them
01:22:03 --> 01:22:07 with a life, right? That they can appreciate.
01:22:07 --> 01:22:10 And most students can acknowledge what that means to them.
01:22:11 --> 01:22:14 So they might not be able to say, hey, this is how I want to get there,
01:22:14 --> 01:22:16 but this is how I want to live, right?
01:22:16 --> 01:22:19 And so we know we can ground in that.
01:22:19 --> 01:22:23 And then working backwards from there of, okay,
01:22:23 --> 01:22:28 so if this is what the future is calling, right, these are the kinds of skills
01:22:28 --> 01:22:33 and capacities that students need, and how that we keep on top of how is that
01:22:33 --> 01:22:37 changing, which is changing rapidly these days, right?
01:22:37 --> 01:22:40 How do we backtrack and support?
01:22:40 --> 01:22:45 Okay, and here's where instruction is now. What does that mean about how this
01:22:45 --> 01:22:52 classroom needs to transform and evolve to meet that need to really ensure students
01:22:52 --> 01:22:55 are able to live into the future they want?
01:22:55 --> 01:23:02 And so that's really what, I know it's not a direct answer, but we're working
01:23:02 --> 01:23:06 with people that are at so many different levels instructionally and classrooms
01:23:06 --> 01:23:09 look so very different across the schools,
01:23:09 --> 01:23:12 across the country, across the world.
01:23:12 --> 01:23:17 So we really acknowledge that and meet people where they're at. Yeah.
01:23:18 --> 01:23:25 All right. So how will the dissolution of the U.S. Department of Education impact your work?
01:23:26 --> 01:23:30 Some of that is still, I think, yet to be seen.
01:23:31 --> 01:23:36 I think immediately like our world. Some of, and I've spoken,
01:23:36 --> 01:23:41 I've gone on different news channels and podcasts, and I've spoken to,
01:23:41 --> 01:23:47 my concern is what the Department of Education, and it's a pretty new department.
01:23:47 --> 01:23:51 I know the rhetoric is, oh, it's been around, it's been around, it's been around.
01:23:51 --> 01:23:56 It has not been around that long, right? So, but what it was,
01:23:56 --> 01:24:03 and what it was trying to achieve is ensuring, right, that there is a standard
01:24:03 --> 01:24:05 of education across this country.
01:24:06 --> 01:24:10 And whether or not I agree with how they were creating that standard or the
01:24:10 --> 01:24:14 policy, because I'll say not everything they were doing do I agree with.
01:24:14 --> 01:24:23 I think there are ways to better create, you know, equity within education across this country.
01:24:23 --> 01:24:27 But the fact that that's what they were striving for, they were striving to
01:24:27 --> 01:24:33 have, this is the benchmark for how our young people of our country,
01:24:33 --> 01:24:35 right, can be tomorrow's leaders.
01:24:35 --> 01:24:40 And that is, I know, aspirational, and there's a lot of messiness,
01:24:40 --> 01:24:46 but that is what worries me most, is by taking that away, there's no benchmark.
01:24:47 --> 01:24:50 Then who's defining that benchmark? A private organization?
01:24:50 --> 01:24:56 But how do we trust that they're doing that in the best interest of everyone
01:24:56 --> 01:24:59 around them and not in their own interests, right?
01:24:59 --> 01:25:04 The other thing that worries me about dissolving the Department of Education
01:25:04 --> 01:25:10 is not having someone investigate the different civil rights violations that
01:25:10 --> 01:25:13 might be happening in different parts of the country,
01:25:13 --> 01:25:15 in different classrooms, in different schools.
01:25:15 --> 01:25:21 Than, you know, if you're, and every state still has one, right?
01:25:21 --> 01:25:25 But there is some national sort of, again, kind of coming back to this national
01:25:25 --> 01:25:30 standard that we might have for what should be happening in our schools.
01:25:30 --> 01:25:36 And so I think that's really important as a country, any country,
01:25:36 --> 01:25:43 right, to have something like that, some kind of body governing that and ensuring that.
01:25:43 --> 01:25:47 And also one other thing that the Department of Education.
01:25:48 --> 01:25:53 Aside from title funding, which I do believe, you know, other groups could potentially
01:25:53 --> 01:25:58 monitor, but again, kind of coming back to without tying it to equity,
01:25:58 --> 01:26:03 how will this money get distributed is a concern.
01:26:03 --> 01:26:11 So these are these are real concerns that will impact schools and a lot of schools
01:26:11 --> 01:26:13 that don't even realize that it's going to impact them.
01:26:13 --> 01:26:20 And in fact, when Trump originally froze the title funding right earlier this summer.
01:26:21 --> 01:26:27 I think states all over were going crazy, right? Because they were like, wait a minute.
01:26:27 --> 01:26:36 And so many states that actually voted for Trump were going to be deeply impacted by that.
01:26:36 --> 01:26:41 Because there's a lot of disparity in all of our states, unfortunately.
01:26:41 --> 01:26:46 But as far as economic disparity, there's a lot within kind of our Midwest part
01:26:46 --> 01:26:52 of the country. And they get a lot of federal funding because they don't have a lot of state funding.
01:26:53 --> 01:26:56 So, you know, that funding was released.
01:26:56 --> 01:27:02 I'll be really curious as to see how does that get allocated in the future.
01:27:02 --> 01:27:06 One thing they talk about is going back to the States, giving the money directly
01:27:06 --> 01:27:09 to them to figure out. I mean, you know, we'll see.
01:27:09 --> 01:27:15 We'll have to watch and see how that gets disseminated as we go forward.
01:27:15 --> 01:27:22 But there's definitely a growing concern, you know, around so many pieces of
01:27:22 --> 01:27:25 this that I do think it's just very important.
01:27:25 --> 01:27:30 And countries that are, you know, outpacing us as far as students being ready
01:27:30 --> 01:27:38 and jobs and et cetera, have very strong national systems.
01:27:38 --> 01:27:44 And we don't have a national system, actually. We have a state-by-state system
01:27:44 --> 01:27:46 that has some national governing, some.
01:27:46 --> 01:27:51 And that's another thing that people don't seem to understand is actually we
01:27:51 --> 01:27:52 don't really even have, like,
01:27:53 --> 01:27:56 that department is getting sort
01:27:56 --> 01:28:00 of unfairly judged, too, because they also don't have the power, right,
01:28:01 --> 01:28:05 that other maybe national agencies do, because it really is,
01:28:06 --> 01:28:09 for the most part, most things are state, you know,
01:28:09 --> 01:28:12 laws for education. Yeah.
01:28:12 --> 01:28:17 All right. Which congressional legislation will have the longest effect,
01:28:18 --> 01:28:23 the Big Beautiful Bill or the Educational Choice for Children Act?
01:28:24 --> 01:28:29 Well, you know, they put it in the Big Beautiful Bill. Yeah. Right? The Act.
01:28:29 --> 01:28:34 So since it's a part of that, I'm going to go with Big Beautiful Bill. Okay.
01:28:34 --> 01:28:41 Because it really, what was really discouraging to me is that that Big Beautiful
01:28:41 --> 01:28:45 Bill had so many parts that were so harmful to people.
01:28:47 --> 01:28:48 And we will...
01:28:50 --> 01:28:53 See those trickling effects, I think, for years and years to come.
01:28:54 --> 01:28:59 Because repassing a bill like that to undo all of those pieces at once,
01:28:59 --> 01:29:02 I think will be hard to do.
01:29:02 --> 01:29:09 They often say, right, like policy people, like if they hadn't put the ECCA
01:29:09 --> 01:29:14 in a big, beautiful bill, it wouldn't have gotten passed, actually.
01:29:14 --> 01:29:19 So it was kind of passed in the shadows because there were really important
01:29:19 --> 01:29:23 issues like health care at the forefront, right?
01:29:23 --> 01:29:29 And other issues that that got a little overshadowed and not as talked about,
01:29:29 --> 01:29:33 which is, you know, unfortunate in a lot of ways, because I do believe health
01:29:33 --> 01:29:36 care and education are so tightly wrapped, right?
01:29:37 --> 01:29:43 Especially when we think about education and the potential of it giving children
01:29:43 --> 01:29:48 the opportunity to have economic prosperity. And we know when people have economic
01:29:48 --> 01:29:50 prosperity, they have less health issues, right?
01:29:50 --> 01:29:55 So we're kind of in this cycle into, you know, we need to talk more and more
01:29:55 --> 01:29:56 about how they intersect.
01:29:56 --> 01:30:02 And I do appreciate there are agencies out there that do that and bring that
01:30:02 --> 01:30:05 whole as like a whole justice issue, right?
01:30:05 --> 01:30:10 There's like many parts to that. And I truly support that, like the Urban League,
01:30:10 --> 01:30:12 right, that does a lot of that work.
01:30:14 --> 01:30:19 So I think it will just have a
01:30:19 --> 01:30:21 lot of what I see as writing
01:30:21 --> 01:30:25 on the wall it's like how are we privatizing more and more of this stuff which
01:30:25 --> 01:30:36 just further creates economic burden on people that is really unjust yeah so
01:30:36 --> 01:30:39 what is the biggest challenge in education right now?
01:30:41 --> 01:30:44 I mean I think it's
01:30:44 --> 01:30:50 the age-old challenge you know the the model is antiquated and has been for
01:30:50 --> 01:30:58 some time and that's not new information and but when you when you really haven't
01:30:58 --> 01:31:02 been able to break out of the box of that,
01:31:03 --> 01:31:08 I think, you know, you're just perpetuating the challenges over and over again, right?
01:31:08 --> 01:31:13 You're not really disrupting any cycle that is not working.
01:31:14 --> 01:31:17 Now, even within that, though, I think there have been, I want to acknowledge,
01:31:18 --> 01:31:23 there are some schools in pockets everywhere that are doing amazing things, right?
01:31:23 --> 01:31:27 Even within the confines of those challenges, right?
01:31:27 --> 01:31:31 They have found and created communities. And I was a part of one,
01:31:31 --> 01:31:34 Eastside Community High School in the Lower East Side in New York City.
01:31:34 --> 01:31:38 It was a consortium school. And it very much was like that. It was like a lot
01:31:38 --> 01:31:41 of innovative cycles, a lot of opportunity for students.
01:31:41 --> 01:31:46 And in fact, like they measured like what are students doing five years after graduation?
01:31:46 --> 01:31:49 Not our measure was not can we get students to graduate?
01:31:49 --> 01:31:54 Our measure was what success are they having five years out of the school?
01:31:55 --> 01:31:59 And I think that creates a different environment, right? If that's the end goal,
01:31:59 --> 01:32:05 or not, I shouldn't say end goal, but if that's how you're really looking at, have we done our jobs?
01:32:05 --> 01:32:10 You really think differently about, well, what does this school experience look
01:32:10 --> 01:32:17 like within these confines? And I think that is that kind of thinking is not happening enough.
01:32:17 --> 01:32:22 And I also think it's challenging thinking, right? It's challenging to think about that.
01:32:22 --> 01:32:28 So how I think it needs personally a heavier hand of disrupting some of these
01:32:28 --> 01:32:34 confines that we have to allow for communities and, you know,
01:32:35 --> 01:32:40 schools to really redefine what is needed for our students.
01:32:41 --> 01:32:45 And some of that is going to have to shift on like, well, how are we holding schools accountable?
01:32:46 --> 01:32:51 Because this also locks us in if we're currently measure school accountability
01:32:51 --> 01:32:54 on whether or not they're passing the standardized test.
01:32:55 --> 01:32:59 And we know a lot of the challenges with these standardized tests.
01:33:00 --> 01:33:05 And yet, we still haven't worked to shift that, right?
01:33:06 --> 01:33:12 And it's a big machine, like similar in healthcare to the insurance machine that's out there.
01:33:13 --> 01:33:18 Education, the testing machine is deep. And there's a lot of money wrapped in that.
01:33:18 --> 01:33:22 There's curriculum wrapped in that. There's a lot to untangle there.
01:33:22 --> 01:33:26 So to really have lawmakers say, you know what? We're going to shift the way
01:33:26 --> 01:33:30 we measure meaningful outcomes for schools.
01:33:30 --> 01:33:38 If we can go there and schools have some flexibility to define how they get
01:33:38 --> 01:33:40 there with their community, right?
01:33:41 --> 01:33:47 I think we get to shift education. We're just so stuck in so many ways.
01:33:47 --> 01:33:51 And again, I want to acknowledge those pockets out there that are not stuck
01:33:51 --> 01:33:54 and really are serving students well.
01:33:54 --> 01:34:02 But I also think, on a personal note, some of the heavy layer of school choice
01:34:02 --> 01:34:06 is actually creating a distraction from that.
01:34:06 --> 01:34:11 And I've gone into some of the, well, first of all, what you also see from our
01:34:11 --> 01:34:15 percentage-wise, people taking advantage of that are often people that were
01:34:15 --> 01:34:17 already sending their kids to private schools.
01:34:18 --> 01:34:23 And on top of that When you go to these schools It's not like There's not Very
01:34:23 --> 01:34:29 different teaching And learning happening Actually And so You know There's a lot of,
01:34:30 --> 01:34:34 I just don't see how the end in a lot of the study and research, right?
01:34:35 --> 01:34:39 They show in places where they've already thought school choice that it hasn't
01:34:39 --> 01:34:42 really changed student outcomes.
01:34:42 --> 01:34:49 So I think it's more of a distraction rather than addressing some of the bigger issues.
01:34:49 --> 01:34:54 It just creates a distraction like, well, natural competition of capitalism
01:34:54 --> 01:34:55 will make it better. I'm like, what?
01:34:56 --> 01:34:59 How? Has that ever made anything better? Yeah.
01:35:00 --> 01:35:03 You know, it's just an interesting thing to me. I'm like, wait, what?
01:35:03 --> 01:35:08 Why do we think that? And because a lot of people that are out there advocating
01:35:08 --> 01:35:13 for that aren't and maybe never have truly experienced what schools are like
01:35:13 --> 01:35:16 around this country and really gone into them.
01:35:16 --> 01:35:20 And no, I don't think for most of them that there's a real knowing,
01:35:20 --> 01:35:21 actually, of what's happening.
01:35:22 --> 01:35:27 Yeah. All right. Well, Dr. Stacey Schultz, we'll have to end it there.
01:35:28 --> 01:35:31 But I do appreciate the work that you're doing.
01:35:31 --> 01:35:37 I know that through Educate that you're going to continue to find solutions
01:35:37 --> 01:35:40 to address some of the concerns we talked about today.
01:35:41 --> 01:35:47 But I just want to commend you for now that I've gotten to talk to you a little
01:35:47 --> 01:35:53 bit, your lifetime of service and commitment and hope that you have much continued success. Seth.
01:35:54 --> 01:35:59 So thank you again for what you do and thank you for coming on the podcast.
01:35:59 --> 01:36:02 Thanks for having me, Erik. It was great to be here. All right.
01:36:03 --> 01:36:05 All right, guys. And we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
01:36:06 --> 01:36:17 Music.
01:36:17 --> 01:36:26 All right, and we are back. So I want to thank Anat Shenker Osorio, and Dr.
01:36:26 --> 01:36:30 Stacey Schultz for coming on the program.
01:36:30 --> 01:36:33 I had not heard Dr. Schultz before.
01:36:34 --> 01:36:40 And before I go anywhere, I apologize to y'all, and I definitely apologize to Dr.
01:36:40 --> 01:36:43 Schultz because normally at the end of the interviews, I give them a moment,
01:36:44 --> 01:36:49 to plug what they're doing, you know, about, you know, their companies or their,
01:36:49 --> 01:36:52 you know, social media, their podcasts, whatever the case.
01:36:53 --> 01:36:56 And we were kind of pressed for time. And so I was very conscious of that.
01:36:56 --> 01:37:01 So I just kind of wrapped up the interview and then realized I didn't give her her moment.
01:37:01 --> 01:37:09 So Dr. Schultz has a podcast called Educate U.S., which of course is a play on Educate Us.
01:37:11 --> 01:37:15 And, you know, so please listen to that If you want to get,
01:37:16 --> 01:37:20 like I said in the interview We kind of scratched the surface of education But
01:37:20 --> 01:37:25 that's what that podcast is all about So if you like what you heard in the interview
01:37:25 --> 01:37:28 Please go to Educate U.S.
01:37:30 --> 01:37:37 And, you know, and get more nuanced and detailed conversations about that And
01:37:37 --> 01:37:41 hopefully we didn't even get into the book, even in the casual conversation.
01:37:41 --> 01:37:43 I know she's been working on this book for a while.
01:37:44 --> 01:37:48 Hopefully it's going to come out this year. It's going to be called Transforming Collective Power.
01:37:49 --> 01:37:54 You can reach her. The best way to get her on social media is on her LinkedIn file.
01:37:55 --> 01:38:00 So, you know, Dr. Stacey Schultz. And so, Stacey, Dr.
01:38:00 --> 01:38:05 Schultz, I apologize for not giving you the moment to plug yourself.
01:38:06 --> 01:38:10 Yeah, because that's that's something I deliberately try to do for all my guests.
01:38:10 --> 01:38:13 So hopefully the plug I gave would be adequate.
01:38:14 --> 01:38:20 And, you know, Anat is, you know, she she's special.
01:38:21 --> 01:38:26 And just like, you know, some of the other guests that you've heard me use that
01:38:26 --> 01:38:30 term before, these are people that I've followed or have heard on different
01:38:30 --> 01:38:35 podcasts or on the news and, you know, just really...
01:38:36 --> 01:38:40 You know, just right to the meat of it just gets right into,
01:38:40 --> 01:38:43 you know, how you how you feel.
01:38:44 --> 01:38:48 I mean, just I threw out a question at her how to message something.
01:38:49 --> 01:38:56 And she just like that, you know, was able to have a a a message that could resonate with people.
01:38:56 --> 01:39:04 And I hope that, you know, fortunately, I record these with notes so I'll be
01:39:04 --> 01:39:07 able to get it verbatim, you know, the messaging.
01:39:07 --> 01:39:13 And I might be able to spend it myself or share it with some folks running for
01:39:13 --> 01:39:17 office that need to address certain issues. Right.
01:39:17 --> 01:39:21 But Anat is she's a she's really an American treasure.
01:39:21 --> 01:39:26 And I hope that that was conveyed in the interview as well.
01:39:26 --> 01:39:29 So, having said all that,
01:39:30 --> 01:39:37 there is a message that's out there that I think we just need to say it out
01:39:37 --> 01:39:41 loud and not stop tap dancing around it.
01:39:42 --> 01:39:48 You know, people like I might not agree with how I'm about to go with it, but it is what it is.
01:39:49 --> 01:39:54 If you watch CNN and, you know, to be honest, you know,
01:39:55 --> 01:40:01 I have to watch the clips. I can't sit through a whole thing because the clips
01:40:01 --> 01:40:03 bother the hell out of me. Right.
01:40:04 --> 01:40:11 It's just gotten to a point now where we're just we're just sticking anybody on.
01:40:11 --> 01:40:17 You know, if we were doing man-in-the-street things, if we were doing live remotes,
01:40:18 --> 01:40:23 you know, even the stuff that Jordan Klepper does on The Daily Show, right?
01:40:23 --> 01:40:27 It's just talking to random people about thoughts and, you know,
01:40:27 --> 01:40:30 people might say something unique.
01:40:30 --> 01:40:38 I won't say crazy, but let's say unique, you know, something a little bit out the norm.
01:40:38 --> 01:40:44 That's okay. You know, but when you have these shows on these networks,
01:40:44 --> 01:40:50 whether it's Fox or MSNBC, CNN, OAN, whatever, right, CBS, NBC.
01:40:51 --> 01:40:58 ABC, whatever, you want people that are knowledgeable about the particular issues
01:40:58 --> 01:41:02 so that you can have an educated conversation.
01:41:03 --> 01:41:09 It might get emotional. It all depends on the person's decorum and professionalism.
01:41:10 --> 01:41:14 But for the most part, you want to have a discussion where you can really flesh
01:41:14 --> 01:41:18 out some ideas and put some thoughts in people's heads, regardless of what agenda
01:41:18 --> 01:41:22 you're kind of subtly pushing out there.
01:41:22 --> 01:41:26 You want to have a great discussion.
01:41:27 --> 01:41:35 But then you put these folks on, and I guess, you know, I'm of the Christian
01:41:35 --> 01:41:40 faith, so part of our theology is that God doesn't really make mistakes.
01:41:40 --> 01:41:46 He puts us in positions to observe and to experience and to navigate through
01:41:46 --> 01:41:54 so that we can give a better testimony of his existence and his works, right?
01:41:54 --> 01:41:57 But sometimes, you know, I just really...
01:41:59 --> 01:42:05 You know, all of us have Gardner Gethsemane moments, especially in this political
01:42:05 --> 01:42:07 discussion is like, why, Lord? Why?
01:42:08 --> 01:42:12 Why me? Why did I have to see that? Why did I have to hear that? Right.
01:42:13 --> 01:42:24 But I guess the nuance, the value of that is it leads me to what I need to say.
01:42:24 --> 01:42:29 And it's like, America, as much as you don't want to admit it,
01:42:29 --> 01:42:32 all of this is about racism, everything.
01:42:34 --> 01:42:42 Even in your subconscious, you thought that a white guy who has failed in business
01:42:42 --> 01:42:47 six times and, you know, bankruptcies, right?
01:42:47 --> 01:42:51 Although, you know, you got to take risks. We talked about that at this,
01:42:52 --> 01:42:57 you know, in this show and previous episodes, we've had people that think we
01:42:57 --> 01:42:58 shouldn't be averse to risk.
01:42:59 --> 01:43:09 But you felt that this guy was better at reducing your price of eggs than the
01:43:09 --> 01:43:13 black woman who was the sitting vice president. Right.
01:43:15 --> 01:43:19 That's as much as you want to deny it. That's pretty racist.
01:43:19 --> 01:43:21 When you look at the qualifications,
01:43:22 --> 01:43:26 pretty racist decision because trust is a part of that.
01:43:26 --> 01:43:31 And I've addressed this before when I ran for the U.S.
01:43:31 --> 01:43:37 Senate and we had these, you know, autopsies about the 2008 election, right?
01:43:38 --> 01:43:42 You know, that was the thing I was trying to convey to people.
01:43:42 --> 01:43:47 It's like, you're not used to seeing a black person in a position where they're
01:43:47 --> 01:43:51 making those kinds of decisions. So you didn't trust that, right?
01:43:51 --> 01:43:52 So you didn't vote for that.
01:43:52 --> 01:43:56 You voted for what you were comfortable with. You voted for what you knew.
01:43:57 --> 01:44:02 And where it's not put the hood on and go burn crosses at night kind of racism, it's still racism.
01:44:03 --> 01:44:07 And it's something that all of us in America have to deal with.
01:44:07 --> 01:44:12 All of us have preconceived notions based on what we've been exposed to, right?
01:44:13 --> 01:44:16 Of people that are different than us. Doesn't matter if they're Asian,
01:44:16 --> 01:44:18 doesn't matter if they're Latino, doesn't matter if they're black,
01:44:18 --> 01:44:20 doesn't matter if they're white. We all have those notions.
01:44:21 --> 01:44:27 Skinner talked about in his essay, What is Man, that we naturally have prejudices, right?
01:44:27 --> 01:44:34 We believe that, you know, if you put an apple and an orange in front of somebody,
01:44:34 --> 01:44:37 people are going to go with what fruit they like.
01:44:38 --> 01:44:40 They're going to either reach for the orange or reach for the apple.
01:44:40 --> 01:44:44 It doesn't mean that the orange doesn't have value or the apple doesn't have value.
01:44:44 --> 01:44:49 It means that that person has a preference about what fruit they want to eat, right?
01:44:50 --> 01:44:57 It's when we start incorporating that prejudice into our institutions and we
01:44:57 --> 01:45:02 start placing value on that prejudice within those institutions,
01:45:02 --> 01:45:05 that's when we get institutional racism.
01:45:05 --> 01:45:08 That's when we get cultural racism, right?
01:45:09 --> 01:45:14 Because white is supposed to be better than black and Asian is supposed to be
01:45:14 --> 01:45:17 better than Latino and whatever, right?
01:45:18 --> 01:45:20 Instead of.
01:45:21 --> 01:45:27 Pitting people against each other based on their ethnicity or their nationality
01:45:27 --> 01:45:29 or the amount of melanin they have in their skin.
01:45:30 --> 01:45:35 Let's pit people based on what do you know? What do you bring to the table?
01:45:35 --> 01:45:41 What kind of person are you as opposed to what I'm uncomfortable with, right?
01:45:43 --> 01:45:48 And so, you know, one of the things we have to acknowledge in the United States
01:45:48 --> 01:45:54 of America is that our history is based on the fact that we institutionalize
01:45:54 --> 01:45:57 racism and people took advantage of that.
01:45:57 --> 01:46:00 And it's very, very uncomfortable to talk about.
01:46:00 --> 01:46:06 It's very, very uncomfortable to rehash. But in order to get better,
01:46:06 --> 01:46:07 you got to learn from your mistakes.
01:46:08 --> 01:46:13 Football players every week sit through hours and hours of film.
01:46:14 --> 01:46:16 Why? They know how to play the
01:46:16 --> 01:46:21 game of football. they know the difference between an A gap and a B gap.
01:46:21 --> 01:46:26 They know the difference between a slot and a go route. They know that naturally.
01:46:27 --> 01:46:33 But it all comes down to execution. And what happens is that the other team
01:46:33 --> 01:46:38 is trying to do things so you can't execute the way that you want to execute, right?
01:46:38 --> 01:46:41 So you watch film to learn from your mistakes.
01:46:41 --> 01:46:46 How did that person beat that block? How did that person intercept that pass, right?
01:46:47 --> 01:46:55 That's what you study. You learn by not only practice, but also visualization.
01:46:55 --> 01:47:01 You want to see where the mistakes are. You want to recall.
01:47:01 --> 01:47:05 You want to have that history so that you don't repeat this same mistake.
01:47:07 --> 01:47:10 If you don't take your film study seriously, if you don't take your practice
01:47:10 --> 01:47:15 seriously, you're not going to win and you're probably not going to be playing much longer.
01:47:16 --> 01:47:22 Right. So if athletes understand the value of history, why not the rest of us?
01:47:23 --> 01:47:29 Why is that a problem? I'm sure those athletes don't want to see a tape in a
01:47:29 --> 01:47:31 game that they got beat 49 to nothing.
01:47:31 --> 01:47:36 I promise you they don't want to see that. But if they can turn around and take
01:47:36 --> 01:47:39 that loss and turn around and beat the next team six to three,
01:47:40 --> 01:47:41 they've learned something from it.
01:47:42 --> 01:47:47 You understand what I'm saying? It's like it's painful to look at America's
01:47:47 --> 01:47:50 history, especially if you're a person of color.
01:47:51 --> 01:47:55 It's painful to think that somebody that was related to me was told that they
01:47:55 --> 01:47:57 couldn't drink out of a certain water fountain.
01:47:57 --> 01:48:01 They had to sit in a certain part of a bus where they couldn't even go to a
01:48:01 --> 01:48:05 particular restaurant. Or if they went to a store, they had to come in the back
01:48:05 --> 01:48:07 instead of the front door.
01:48:07 --> 01:48:12 That's painful to think about. It's painful to think about that somebody related
01:48:12 --> 01:48:18 to me was whipped and flogged for not meeting their share of cotton picking.
01:48:19 --> 01:48:21 Right? That's painful.
01:48:22 --> 01:48:24 It's painful to think that people
01:48:24 --> 01:48:28 were killed for standing up for their basic rights as a human being.
01:48:29 --> 01:48:35 That's painful, but we learn that so that, one, we can draw inspiration from
01:48:35 --> 01:48:42 the courage that these people had to exhibit and the strength to endure all of that,
01:48:42 --> 01:48:46 to give us the hope that we can go forward and can do better.
01:48:47 --> 01:48:51 Because through all the pain, there was also some joy.
01:48:51 --> 01:48:56 There was also some victories. There was also some satisfaction, right?
01:48:56 --> 01:49:01 Because even if you get beat as a team 49 to nothing, there were some good things
01:49:01 --> 01:49:07 that you as an individual did or some things that your teammates did that you also need to repeat.
01:49:07 --> 01:49:13 So if everybody is in concert, you won't get beat 49 to nothing anymore. Right.
01:49:14 --> 01:49:22 And the same with us. We learn how to avoid these situations so we won't be
01:49:22 --> 01:49:24 subjugated like that anymore.
01:49:24 --> 01:49:30 Right. So when we protest, when we say, hey, we got a problem,
01:49:30 --> 01:49:34 when we say, ouch, you need to deal with that.
01:49:34 --> 01:49:41 When your body expresses pain, whether it's your wrist, whether it's your knees,
01:49:41 --> 01:49:45 whether you get a cut, even if you have some kind of trauma,
01:49:46 --> 01:49:47 your body's going to react to that.
01:49:48 --> 01:49:54 And the natural thing is your body's going to try to fix it intuitively.
01:49:55 --> 01:49:59 Right. It's going to try to repair itself. If you get a cold,
01:49:59 --> 01:50:01 that's why you take these medicines.
01:50:01 --> 01:50:05 That's why we're supposed to take vaccines, Mr. Secretary.
01:50:07 --> 01:50:12 So we can help our bodies fight things off. Right.
01:50:12 --> 01:50:19 But we also learn from that. Right. So we we try, you know, not to do things
01:50:19 --> 01:50:24 that put that kind of strain on our body or pain or avoid situations where.
01:50:25 --> 01:50:29 We could get this virus or get this cold, whatever we got to do.
01:50:29 --> 01:50:33 You know, that's why in the wintertime we bundle up. And in summertime,
01:50:33 --> 01:50:35 we try to shed as much clothing we can get away with.
01:50:36 --> 01:50:40 Because your body needs to be comfortable. It needs to operate at a normal temperature
01:50:40 --> 01:50:43 of 98 degrees, 98.6 to be exact.
01:50:45 --> 01:50:51 It's learning. It's evolving, which is a word that conservatives are allergic to. Right.
01:50:52 --> 01:50:57 That's why when they talk about make America great again, that is the ultimate conservative slogan.
01:50:58 --> 01:51:02 Because one, it's a fallacy. We've never been as great as we should have been.
01:51:04 --> 01:51:08 Therefore, we can't go back to something that we've never fully achieved.
01:51:09 --> 01:51:15 Right. And then you have this preconceived notion, well, some of us had it better than others.
01:51:15 --> 01:51:22 So let's go back to that instead of the struggle of competing in an equal playing field.
01:51:23 --> 01:51:30 That's racism. So when a Jillian Michaels laments and says that the Smithsonian
01:51:30 --> 01:51:38 Institution National African-American Natural Museum for African-American History
01:51:38 --> 01:51:43 is an anti-white person institution,
01:51:43 --> 01:51:44 that's racism.
01:51:44 --> 01:51:50 It's a celebration of the history of African people in the United States.
01:51:50 --> 01:51:54 And whether you want to call yourself a Black American or African American or
01:51:54 --> 01:52:00 Afro or whatever, that museum is about us, right?
01:52:00 --> 01:52:02 Whether we immigrated from the
01:52:02 --> 01:52:07 Caribbean or Africa directly or some Latin American country or whatever.
01:52:09 --> 01:52:17 It's a story about us. Now, white folks played a major supporting role in it, in that story.
01:52:19 --> 01:52:24 No question. But it ain't about y'all. It's about us. Get over that.
01:52:25 --> 01:52:29 You're offended by the fact that there's government money being spent to tell
01:52:29 --> 01:52:31 our story. That's a problem.
01:52:32 --> 01:52:37 Our story is as important, if not the most important story in the American history.
01:52:38 --> 01:52:44 The relationships between black folks and white folks, kind of the underlying
01:52:44 --> 01:52:45 foundation of this nation.
01:52:45 --> 01:52:49 It is really the barometer of whether we can be great or not.
01:52:50 --> 01:52:58 And if you're too fragile, if you're too ill-equipped to deal with that,
01:52:58 --> 01:53:01 I don't know what I can do to help you.
01:53:01 --> 01:53:08 I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I, you know, I guess there's some
01:53:08 --> 01:53:14 counseling you can take, you know, but you've got to get over it.
01:53:14 --> 01:53:22 Because the sooner you get over that, the sooner we can get to that greatness that has eluded us.
01:53:23 --> 01:53:25 You can't be great again if you never were great.
01:53:27 --> 01:53:32 You know, Joe Biden's phrase was corny, but it was more accurate.
01:53:32 --> 01:53:35 Build better or build back better.
01:53:37 --> 01:53:40 Mississippi had the best slogan. Onward.
01:53:41 --> 01:53:47 From this point forward, onward. From this moment in time, onward.
01:53:47 --> 01:53:52 When we say don't look back, it means don't get caught up in your mistakes.
01:53:52 --> 01:53:57 You need to know where you came from because that's your point of origin,
01:53:57 --> 01:54:02 but don't get stuck back there, right? Learn from your mistakes.
01:54:03 --> 01:54:09 Learn from your past transgressions. Learn from your inconsistencies and do better.
01:54:10 --> 01:54:17 And why is that a problem for a certain section of the population? That's the question.
01:54:17 --> 01:54:22 Why is it a problem to challenge you to do better?
01:54:22 --> 01:54:26 Why is it a problem for you to accept the fact that there are people that don't
01:54:26 --> 01:54:29 look like you, that don't have the same life experience as you,
01:54:30 --> 01:54:33 that coexists with you? Why is that a problem?
01:54:34 --> 01:54:40 Because there was nothing in any book, whether you can find the Torah,
01:54:41 --> 01:54:45 the Koran, the Holy Bible, there's nothing in there that says that you're not
01:54:45 --> 01:54:46 going to deal with other people.
01:54:47 --> 01:54:52 As a matter of fact, most of those books encourage you, I would say all three,
01:54:53 --> 01:54:57 encourage you to interact with other people.
01:54:57 --> 01:55:02 You are supposed to be the example of the faith that you are a part of.
01:55:02 --> 01:55:08 Even if you don't believe in any organized religion, if you don't believe in
01:55:08 --> 01:55:14 the existence of God, you know as a human being that you have to interact with other human beings.
01:55:14 --> 01:55:22 You did not come to this planet by yourself you needed another human being to get here.
01:55:23 --> 01:55:28 So you have to have a relationship with that human, or at least try, right?
01:55:28 --> 01:55:33 If nobody else, you may come in a situation where there's other humans in the
01:55:33 --> 01:55:39 house with you that came through that same journey. You've got to interact with them.
01:55:39 --> 01:55:43 And those people, even though they have the same last name as you,
01:55:43 --> 01:55:48 even though they live in the same house, you are just as different as can be.
01:55:49 --> 01:55:53 Because everybody has to have their own journey. So if you can learn to coexist
01:55:53 --> 01:55:58 with different people in your house, why is it a problem for you to interact
01:55:58 --> 01:56:01 with different people outside of your house?
01:56:02 --> 01:56:07 That's what we call maturity, right? That's why you go through all these emotions.
01:56:07 --> 01:56:09 When you're a baby, you're learning stuff, you're developing.
01:56:10 --> 01:56:13 When you're a toddler, you're developing. When you're in elementary school, you're developing.
01:56:14 --> 01:56:18 When you're in high school, it's almost like you're going back to being a baby
01:56:18 --> 01:56:20 because now you're about to take the next step to adulthood.
01:56:20 --> 01:56:21 And then when you get to be an
01:56:21 --> 01:56:26 adult, you've got to learn how to make decisions and survive on your own.
01:56:27 --> 01:56:33 It's evolution. It's constantly changing until the day that we cease to exist.
01:56:34 --> 01:56:40 Right. Whenever that day may be, it could be tomorrow. It could be 30 years from now.
01:56:40 --> 01:56:46 Whenever that day comes, that's when you stop evolving in a sense. Right.
01:56:47 --> 01:56:54 Intellectually or physically or whatever. But if you count decomposition,
01:56:55 --> 01:56:57 you're evolving then too.
01:56:58 --> 01:57:04 All I'm saying is, if your politics is based on your level of discomfort,
01:57:04 --> 01:57:14 your politics is based on your fear of the unknown, if your politics is based on your insecurities,
01:57:15 --> 01:57:17 you need to get out of that.
01:57:18 --> 01:57:24 You need to focus your politics on what's best for my house,
01:57:24 --> 01:57:29 my neighborhood, my community, my city, my state, my nation.
01:57:30 --> 01:57:33 That's how that's supposed to work. It's not supposed to be about,
01:57:33 --> 01:57:38 well, I don't want to see people that I don't know, that I can't relate to.
01:57:39 --> 01:57:40 I don't want to see them succeed.
01:57:41 --> 01:57:46 I don't want them to make me feel guilty for what happened in the past.
01:57:47 --> 01:57:52 I think if you feel guilty about something, even if you didn't directly have
01:57:52 --> 01:57:55 anything to do with it, it means that you're human.
01:57:55 --> 01:57:57 It means that you have empathy.
01:57:57 --> 01:58:05 Right. And it should put something in your soul to make sure that that never happens again.
01:58:06 --> 01:58:11 I don't want my great-grandchildren to feel the same guilt that I'm feeling now.
01:58:12 --> 01:58:16 That's how it should trigger in your brain. We have to do better.
01:58:17 --> 01:58:25 You know, we made the evolution from throwing garbage in the street to actually
01:58:25 --> 01:58:28 having a sewer system, right?
01:58:28 --> 01:58:33 We evolved from having outhouses to indoor bathrooms. We evolved.
01:58:34 --> 01:58:38 So we don't want to go back to stuff.
01:58:38 --> 01:58:45 We want to go onward. We want to go forward. We want to progress.
01:58:46 --> 01:58:52 There's no way that anybody can convince me that progress is a bad word and
01:58:52 --> 01:58:54 say, oh, he's a progressive.
01:58:54 --> 01:58:59 I probably need to listen to him. She's a progressive. I probably need to listen to her.
01:59:01 --> 01:59:04 Because where we are right now, that's a conservative thought.
01:59:04 --> 01:59:08 You want to stay with that, and that's not working.
01:59:09 --> 01:59:12 Yeah, maybe it's time to explore some other options.
01:59:13 --> 01:59:20 Let's transform. Let's change things. Let's see if we can do better next time, right?
01:59:20 --> 01:59:27 And you don't have to feel guilty because you didn't make it the first time that you made a mistake.
01:59:28 --> 01:59:31 You know, we're human. So we have guilt. We have regrets.
01:59:32 --> 01:59:37 But we can't dwell on those. We got to shake that off and keep going forward.
01:59:38 --> 01:59:43 And even if we're reminded of something that we did, you have to have the mental
01:59:43 --> 01:59:48 fortitude to realize I'm a better person than when that happened.
01:59:49 --> 01:59:53 We should say that America is a better society now than when it happened.
01:59:53 --> 01:59:59 And our goal is to make it even better, not to go back.
02:00:00 --> 02:00:05 We want to make America great again. We want to make America more racist than
02:00:05 --> 02:00:10 ever because there's been no period where we've been great. We've.
02:00:15 --> 02:00:19 Anytime you have a society where not everybody can participate in it, that's not greatness.
02:00:19 --> 02:00:23 Never has, never will be. I don't care who you date.
02:00:24 --> 02:00:27 I don't care what you want to identify as. I don't care what religion you are.
02:00:27 --> 02:00:32 I don't care how much melanin you got in your skin. It does not matter to me.
02:00:32 --> 02:00:39 What matters to me is, are you going to make it better for all of us to exist?
02:00:39 --> 02:00:45 Whether that's in government, whether that's in sports, entertainment, whatever.
02:00:45 --> 02:00:49 I want the best people doing the work.
02:00:50 --> 02:00:54 Science and technology, all that. I just want the best people doing the work.
02:00:54 --> 02:01:00 Whatever people do to make them feel good about themselves outside of their
02:01:00 --> 02:01:03 chosen profession, I don't care.
02:01:04 --> 02:01:09 I don't care if the best physicist in the world listens to rap music. I don't care.
02:01:09 --> 02:01:12 I don't care if they listen to rock music. I don't care.
02:01:13 --> 02:01:16 I want them to help us unlock more mysteries in the universe.
02:01:18 --> 02:01:24 Which may mean that I get a cell phone that never goes out of service, right?
02:01:24 --> 02:01:28 Or an internet that is always at the top bandwidth.
02:01:29 --> 02:01:34 That's what I want, you know? And it's like people say, well,
02:01:34 --> 02:01:39 you know, slavery wasn't just an American thing and all that. I don't care.
02:01:39 --> 02:01:43 You know what I'm saying? From a historical standpoint, that's great to know.
02:01:44 --> 02:01:49 But since I'm an American, I'm dealing with what happened in American history first.
02:01:50 --> 02:01:55 I'm not worried about slavery in Arabia or slavery in Rome or slavery in Jerusalem.
02:01:56 --> 02:01:59 I'm worried about the slavery that happened here in the United States and what
02:01:59 --> 02:02:03 impact does that have on us now?
02:02:03 --> 02:02:07 Because there has been some residual impact, right?
02:02:09 --> 02:02:15 Please, ladies and gentlemen, get over your insecurities. Get over your fear.
02:02:15 --> 02:02:18 Get over your lack of comfort.
02:02:19 --> 02:02:24 Focus in on what is best for all of us.
02:02:25 --> 02:02:31 If you want to be mad because you lost an athletic event to somebody that identifies
02:02:31 --> 02:02:33 as the same gender as you,
02:02:33 --> 02:02:38 that wasn't born that way, and you both ended up in fifth place,
02:02:38 --> 02:02:41 if that's what you want to do, knock yourself out.
02:02:41 --> 02:02:48 But don't impose your discomfort, your lack of self-esteem on the rest of us.
02:02:48 --> 02:02:53 If you are uncomfortable with the fact that there is a museum that reminds you
02:02:53 --> 02:02:55 that slavery actually happened in the United States,
02:02:55 --> 02:03:00 and it was not a good thing for a certain group of people who still exist in
02:03:00 --> 02:03:06 this country, and it vilifies your group, get over it.
02:03:07 --> 02:03:12 Understand that we just can't have that kind of mentality, the mentality that
02:03:12 --> 02:03:15 allowed that to happen. We can't have that mentality anymore.
02:03:15 --> 02:03:23 And if you feel guilt, use it to do something better rather than complain about it.
02:03:24 --> 02:03:28 Complain about the fact that you actually have empathy. Complain about the fact
02:03:28 --> 02:03:30 that you actually have a human emotion.
02:03:31 --> 02:03:34 Why are you mad that you are guilty? You feel guilty.
02:03:35 --> 02:03:39 You should embrace that and that should give you a challenge to do better.
02:03:40 --> 02:03:44 You could be great if you stop getting mad about being guilty.
02:03:46 --> 02:03:50 All right, so I got to go. Thank y'all for listening. Until next time.
02:03:52 --> 02:04:38 Music.