Nicole and Sasheer Talk Political Strategy (w/ Anat Shenker-Osorio)

This is a headgun podcast. Nicole! Hola! Hola! We have a guest today! Girl! It's shocking, I know. I know, it's just usually the two of us. I know. It's so crazy to have somebody else here. Yes! I couldn't believe that's what Jess asked us. It's so funny. Clipboard jumped out of your hand. Today we have a not-shanker assorto who conducts original research into perception and persuasion and host words to win by. A podcast about how we've achieved progressive victories around the world. She's led research for new messaging on issues ranging from unions to clean energy and from immigrant rights to repealing abortion bans. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stones, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian and others. We have a not-here! Hello! Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being here. And not-and-I met at an event that was hosted by the ACLU and Harness and Jane Fonda. And that was so cool. And not-spoke. And she was talking about how we can fight authoritarianism in these times. And I just really loved how accessible you made everything sound and how clear you were talking about everything. And yeah, I'm just glad to have you here to talk to us. Thank you. I'm extraordinarily honored that you would A. have me and B. just actually open up this conversation that I think is really critical. Well, it's really hard. Yeah. Because I spend a lot of time being like, "It's just me. I don't know. What do I do?" Yeah, it's very easy to feel very singular because also like everything seems so dire on the news. And you know, I feel like there's been many attempts to break down community systems so we don't feel like as together as we could have or could be. Yeah, I mean, that's actually the ultimate aim of an authoritarian regime is to erode peoples will to resist. Their win is when we give up because as long as we're still resisting and struggling and fighting back, that's costly for them. It takes energy, it takes money, it takes time. And so part of their effort is actually to create that feeling of exhaustion and impossibility. But in reality, nobody knows what's going to come next. Nobody knows what the future holds. And so the future is just literally made of the decisions that we take together. Yeah, so yeah. When did you start organizing and getting into this work? Yeah, well, you know, my like origin story is that my earliest memory of school is that when I was in kindergarten, my parents were done with me pretty early, so they sent me it for. I had exhausted them at that point. We got these notebooks and this is how old I am. My notebook had the Muppet show on it. It had animal in the middle, like playing the drums. And the teacher was called out of the room and she said, okay, everybody just draw in your notebooks while I'm gone. And the minute she left, obviously, people started harassing this one kid and, you know, taking his notebook and messing with him. And she came back to chaos and everybody's yelling and whatever and she took all our notebooks and she was like, now none of you are going to have notebooks. And I said, but some of us didn't do anything. So I was just sitting here drawing in our notebooks and she said, did you help him? Did you stand up for him? Did you say anything? Did you call out? I was like, no, I did what you told me, which was to draw in my notebook. And I guess I was a Democrat. That's what I was doing. That was like my junior Chuck Schumer moment. Oh, sorry, was I not supposed to be honest on this? You can be as fast as you want. The whole fighting fascism with overcooked spaghetti, and it all is not working out with us for us. And she said, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Oh, damn. And so I don't have that for. This is what this teacher is explaining. I mean, that's great though. It's stuck with me. She had had enough. I don't know if that's how far back you meant me to go. But that's my recollection of why and when I decided that I had to do this kind of work. And then I guess the more approximate answer is that among things I studied linguistics in college. And so I knew that there were particular ways that we could make language choices. That it did need to be this sort of willy-nilly thing. But once I started working in politics, what I saw is that the way people would make choices about what to say would just be sort of impressionistic, like finger in the wind. I don't know, that sounded good to me. But I knew that you could make more deliberate choices that would be more persuasive. And so fast forward through a lot of things, a stint in the Peace Corps, a 90-day fiance husband, which I'm proud to say I still have till this day. And I went back to graduate school, which is why we moved to California to Berkeley in particular. And I studied with a pretty famous guy named George Lekoff among doing other things. And I ended up trying to apply these ideas of like how do we actually persuade people in systematic ways. I did that for a long time. I would do these giant research projects. And I would be like, this way of messaging issue X is shitty and doesn't persuade. This way does. And I would present it. And even though people would spend money on it and research is expensive, they would never implement it. And after doing that for a long time, I was like, oh, all of the things that make it really difficult for a public, for a group of voters, to change their minds and do different things, that's just as present in activists. Activists are also people who are used to doing and saying things in a certain way. And so then that is when I started doing much broader campaigns, where I wouldn't just be like, here's my research, good luck. I hope you implement it. But actually designing full scale campaigns that would involve ads and that would involve messaging and that would involve, you know, press strategy and events and trying to like bring new messaging to life. So yeah, that's kind of the arc of it. Yeah. What kind of techniques do you find are working when it comes to like reaching people who need to be reached? Yeah. So I like to joke that I can summarize all of left-wing messaging both in the US and outside of it in three sentences, which is, boy, have I got a problem for you? This is the Titanic, would you like to buy a ticket? And we're the losing team. We lose a lot. We lost recently. So you should join us. Yeah. I mean, a lot of my emails, the subject is like, "Oh, you're not going to believe this." We have another fight to go. Yeah. Oh, boy. If only, if only you open this email, it's all going to explode. And that doesn't make me feel like I want to get involved. It makes me feel like we'll probably lose again. And then also, okay, why is this? I have so many questions that are just like, "Why?" But it feels like when Democrats have power, they don't implement changes. Like the mayor of New York, I keep reading about all these incredible things he's doing. Actually doing that. And we just recently went to New York and I was like, "I think this is the cleanest I've ever seen in the city." Yeah. And I, like, and it kind of like blew me away. I was like, "There's trash cans everywhere." Like it just felt different. And not as grimy, but it still felt like New York and not sanitized in like a weird way. But I'm like, so why? Why do other Democrats, I mean, you don't like know specific-- Oh, no, I do know why. Oh, okay. Why do other Democrats not do good things? Like, is Gavin Newsom our governor? Again, like I don't know. He sure is our governor. So why are you doing good things? Well, he's very busy doing podcasts with right-wing personalities. There's a have a lot of time left to do good things. I mean, I could tell you why. The answer is very simple. The answer is that much of the Democratic establishment and since I'm going to get roasted for this, #NotAllDemocrats, yes, there are good Democrats. You just named one. His name is Bob Donnie. I really like him. Yeah, he's-- I mean, I'm very biased because I basically know like all of the people on his campaign so like, I have obviously very warm feelings about that and about the strategy behind it, which I'm happy to talk about. But for the most part, in the United States, because of money and politics, running for office, being in office is a high-money game. It takes a lot of money. And unfortunately, and sadly, you know, every person in elected office, especially in Congress, they have a set number of hours a week and it's a lot of hours to do something that's called call time. Call time is set aside so they're not reading legislation, they're not introducing legislation, they're not meeting with committee members, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They're calling their donors to keep them happy. Like, that's what call time is. And that is like, wait, what? Oh, you don't know that. I didn't know that. You know. No. Wait, what the fuck? So it's sort of like passing bills. They're calling people to be like, are you happy with the things I've done? - Yeah. - Give me more money. - I have a good friend. And we are gonna get to the part of like, what you can do and how we get out of this, whatever I'm just like. - Okay, but like most of our listeners, I assume are like me who are ill, fucking informed. - You're not ill informed, you just have other things going on. - Yeah, you're one of that. See, I'm just busy. - I just refrained out for you. - Thank you. - Yeah, so sorry, I lost my own train of thought. - I, you know, it's a very challenging situation that like we put people in charge of people. Like at a fundamental level, people being in charge of people is a bad idea, but we haven't really come up with a better idea. And- - I feel like one day AI will be in charge of this. - Yeah, it's true. And it's probably tomorrow. - And that one. - Yeah, I want that. - No, it's gonna be more. - I'm gonna judge with eight fingers being like, here's your sentence. - So yeah, I mean, there is an inordinate amount of attention to money and politics and all of that. I have a friend who calls Congress the complaint department for capitalism. Because essentially we're given this story that, you know, you get to elect your leaders on like every two years or six years or four years depending on which level of we're talking about, you know, you make this choice and you vote. And again, like on the one hand, definitely not all Democrats are leaders or good, but the only people who are any good are Democrats. So you have to like reconcile yourself to both of those truths. So really, you know, you're like, when you're doing your five phone calls, right? Or you're doing the whatever action alert that you've been given by whomever that you're supposed to like push your member of Congress, they're not mostly listening to us. They're mostly listening to, you know, you gotta dance with the one that Brunga. And the one that Brunga is the donor who got you there. And so when we have politicians like Mum Donnie, like AOC, like, you know, Rashida and Michigan, like, and we have other people who have not been brought there on the back of really large super PACs or really significant donors, then they actually can spend their time doing their job. Yeah. And that's, I mean, really about as simple as it gets. Interesting. I really didn't know that these people in Congress were culling people being like, can I more money? I didn't either. Did he can aim her money? That's crazy. Yeah, call time. That's truly wild. I bet it's also like a little, it's unfortunate that like, it just, it just, it made this not, may not be true, but it feels like, a lot of the money is owned by people who don't want to fund the things that we want. Yes, that's a true story. Yeah. That's a true story. It's like, you know, I, I'd like to dream that like, the people can fund the people that we want to govern us, but then there's people who have way more money than the people who can just fund anybody. Yeah. Well, I think it's 'cause O'Goplis keep happening. Like, three corporations like own everything. Yeah. And then they get to make the choices for everybody and they're like, keep them in poverty. I don't, that's, why are O'Goplis allowed to happen? Yeah. And then the company is allowed to keep buying things. Yes. I feel like I should start doing schoolhouse rock. Like, please. Yes. Can I get a beat here? (laughing) So basically, it depends how deeply into the weeds of the nerdum do you want me to get? You know, the United States, which obviously has never functioned in any kind of like truly democratic or just or equal way. Like, let's just get that out there. Has had times where we have had lesser concentrations of wealth where we have had more equality, where we have had movement forward, you know, canonically things like the civil rights movement, obviously women's suffrage, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, you know, act up, clapping back in the sort of outset of HIV/AIDS crisis and the New Deal. And the New Deal, like, you know, feel free to yell at me and call me New Deal Apologist. Obviously didn't attend issues of racial justice and issues of gender, but was like a pretty big leap forward in terms of breaking up monopolies, ending the, you know, so-called gilded age. And a big piece of that was, first of all, just how bad it had gotten, right, with the Great Depression and how absolutely terrible it was. But we had a president at that time, FDR, who literally said to the robberbearance of the age, you know, the people who would be our billionaires today, I welcome their hatred, I welcome their ire. If they're shit-talking me, he probably didn't say shit. Oh, no, he was in a wheel. You know, who knows? He was saying off the record, he wasn't on podcasts. He was saying like, there are sites. There is the side of working people and there is the side of capital. And that was a time, and this is what is so deeply infuriating to me as a person who works in politics. That was an era, and sure was a long time ago, in which the working class didn't just vote democratic, being a Democrat was core to their identity. It was like who they were. And so now, fast forward to today, and we have, you know, these reactionary centrist pundits who are telling Democrats all the time that the way to win is to throw trans people under the bus, or the way to win is to throw immigrants under the bus, and you have to appeal to this moderate middle, which by the way has never proven true. And in reality, we had a time in which the working class was like all in for Democrats, because there's actually a very simple message to give people. It's actually not hard, we're doing it in other countries, and it's this. If you'd like to know who took your money, it's the people with all the money. That's how you can tell. And if they can convince you that it is a newcomer, or a person of color, or a person who's struggling to make ends meet, or a person who has more month and check, or a person who has a different gender, or who is trans, then they can keep robbing you. Basically, authoritarians all over the world have one story, and that story is, you know why your life is fucked? It's because of those people. And those people can be Roma, if you're orbond and hungry, those people can be people seeking asylum, as was the case in Australia. Those people can be inner city crime, or welfare queens, as we had once upon a time in this country, or they can be quote unquote illegals. Yeah. And so the name of the authoritarian game is to convince people that your problem is because of some undeserving group, and that I am going to be your savior. I am going to come and sort of rid you of the scourge of these undeserving people who take away money from hardworking people who are coded as white, and give it away to lazy undeserving people who are coded as black and brown. And so that just breeds status threat, and the cycle goes on and on. And the only way to counter that cycle is to get people to point their finger at the bad guy and not the brown guy. But how do we do that? Put it on a shirt. [LAUGHTER] I really like that. Yeah, this finger's pointing at the bad guy. [LAUGHTER] The brown guy. Brown guy. Yeah, how does one do that? Yeah. So how one does it, and we have done it, let me start with concrete examples. So I have worked in Minnesota for almost 10 years since 2017. And when Minnesota-- before Minnesota popped off at the start of the year, I think, as we all know, right? Sorry, it's very hard, just like how deeply sad and horrific everything is. I was saying to folks since last summer, oh, the epicenter of both the repression and the resistance is going to be Minnesota. And everyone was like, no, it's not. It's going to be California, or it's going to be New York. It's going to be one of these blue places. And I said, no, it's going to be Minnesota, because the coastal places were already dead to them. Mag is like, that's where people go to commit crimes and drink kombucha. Like, there's no hope for them. You know what I mean? We're a wasteland of terrible ideas where we're like-- right, we call it Wokland. There's no hope for us. But Minnesota is the heartland. Minnesota is the Midwest. Minnesota is where this largely white state-- because it is a majority white state, pretty significantly-- has had, at least since the '90s, a pretty significant Somal American population. And that Somal American population made the right wing in that state unleash what I call the turduckin of hatred. So anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant. Because you have this population that you can sort of attack as other from three dimensions. Yeah. And in 2016, Republicans-- came within 10,000 votes of almost winning Minnesota. And that was the closest to Republican had come since the 1980s in that state. So they started with this Somali daycare fraud, Somali daycare fraud. This isn't new. It's happening again. And instead of doing what other people have done, which is like, we just won't talk about race. We'll just be like, yes, we also are going to crack down on them the way that Democrats often do. They actually developed and I'm proud to have been a part of it. This clapback, we call the race class narrative. So this was a thing we studied. We spent a lot of time researching it. And in essence, it's the way that you counter this story. And so it starts by opening with a shared value, creating what's called the big "we." So that can sound like no matter what we look like, where we come from, most of us believe people who work for living auto or earn a living. Or whether we're white, black, or brown, native or newcomer, most of us want to leave things better off for those to come. So you make some statement that everyone's like, yeah, except for like the smallest liver of assholes who just like we'll never agree with you. And they're always are. And then in the second sentence, so that's the value sentence. The second sentence is the villain sentence. The order is values villain vision. The villain sentence is but today, Maga Republicans or but today, this person who is running or but today, a wealthy and powerful few, want to turn us against each other. They hope that if they get us to point our finger in the wrong direction, we won't notice while they pick our pocket with the other hand. You basically narrate the dog whistle. You tell them this is the world's most evil magic trick, which is like, look over there. And then you say, but we know better by coming together, we can make this a place where, you know, whatever it is you're working on or demanding like raise the wage or do 100% clean energy or whatever. So they started implementing that in 2017 in preparation for the 2018 midterm, which they basically swept through a campaign we called greater than fear. And we called it greater than fear because the rural parts of Minnesota are called greater Minnesota. And that's where the concentration of this like anti-black anti-micrant sentiment was. And they just kept building and building and building on that through, of course, the murder of George Floyd in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. And still just like forthrightly, no matter what the right wing was saying, right? When when the Republican leader said that Tim Walls was the governor, owes an apology to suburban moms after the George Floyd protests, suburban moms is another kind of dog whistle. It's supposed to mean, I mean, we know what does suburban moms mean? Light mother. Yeah, white woman, right? Funny thing is that with gentrification actually, the suburbs are increasingly, you know, more mixed. And it's actually the city that's kind of white or white, but anyway, instead of being like, no, it isn't, you know, there isn't high crime. So actually, you know, protests are not riots and being in negation, which does not work. They created an entire I'm a suburban mom campaign where women were like, I'm a suburban mom. I'm absolutely devastated. I think of my own son. These motherfuckers think they're going to, I mean, they didn't say that because they're Minnesota. They didn't say that. They say that now because they have been radicalized. Yeah. Minnesota is. These motherfuckers don't chittle. So anyway, this is a long story, but you actually have to organize in cross racial solidarity. You have to say what you're for and you have to supplant their villain story with the true villain story. Like I said before, you know, if you want to know who took all your money, it's the people with all the money. And you have to actually, as Mamdani is doing, be like, yeah, I'll text the shit out of you. Yeah. Okay, let's say you break and then come back it for more. This episode is brought to you by Alma. A year from today, who do you want to be? What version of yourself would you like to meet? Do you feel less anxious or feel more like yourself? Maybe your relationship is stronger or the grief feels smaller? What if that thing you've been secretly worried about just took up less space in your mind? The right therapists can help you get there. Alma will help you find them. Alma has a directory of 20,000 therapists with different specialties, life experiences, and identities, and 99% of them take insurance. You deserve to feel like that future version of yourself. A year from today isn't that far away. Get started now at helloama.com/bestfriends. Hello, I'm a dot com slash B E S T F R I E N D S support for this podcast is brought to you by Chamberlain University. I have to tell you anytime I go to the hospital or a clinic, my anxiety is absolutely through the roof. It's just an overwhelming scary place to be. I feel like we've all experienced meeting in exceptional nurse who walks into the room and changes your day completely. They are so experienced and they know exactly what to say to take the panic out of the room and make a terrifying day feel completely manageable. And if you're looking for a new career path or you just want to do a job that truly matters, you cannot help but think wow, that is exactly the kind of nurse I want to be. Chamberlain University is where you start. Discover your calling at chamberlain.edu Chamberlain University. Come to something greater certified to operate by chef. We're back. Ready for more. It sounds like story telling is like a really great tool to like get people to understand what's happening around them. Like yeah, I mean, which I feel like story telling is definitely being used on both sides obviously. Yeah. Having a way to tell the story in a way that's like, that'll give people on board as far as like, oh, that's happening to me actually. Or like that's happening close to my home is, it seems hard to give people to be like, I believe this story is opposed to this other story that also sounds enticing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is what it's important to understand. The way the right wing does their narrative is that they live their narrative. So they don't just do what a lot of left folks do, which is like, we're going to do a press release or we're going to like tweet some stuff or blue sky some stuff or whatever some stuff. They actually do things in the world. I call it the Bonnie rate strategy. Let's give them something to talk about. You can't replace a something with nothing. So for example, when the story is LA is a crime burdened hellscape and DC is a crime burdened hellscape and Chicago and Portland before Minneapolis St. Paul became the epicenter. A lot of folks tried to clap back at that with like, actually, we've controlled crime. Actually, we have a commonsense solution to create a series of policies. And you know, that makes you sound like the adults in the Charlie Brown cartoon. Like that message doesn't work because nobody hears it because all they hear is like, "Grib, crime." And now you're actually saying crime in order to say, "We've lowered crime." Actually, the crime rate has reduced, fribidated up. So you have to figure out a way if you're doing one-on-one communication to do storytelling, but you have to figure out a way to break a signal through the noise. So in Portland, the way that folks did that was with giant inflatable frogs. Yeah, I love that. And the inflatable frogs, yes, came about because one extraordinarily courageous human being just would go to Southeast Portland and protest in the front costume. But the organizers, being smart people, went and bought up all the inflatables that they could find in town and then ordered more. And so now, if you go to Southeast Portland and you want, there is a costume lending library. You don't have to think to bring one. And so it's both this extraordinarily powerful symbol, because when you see this image of these thug-masked militia ice dudes and a bunch of inflatables, it's a little hard to maintain this narrative that they're law enforcement, like doing this noble thing. In Minnesota, the inflatable thing, that's not quite the Minnesota character, that wasn't quite the fit for that community. And so instead, what we did was we got footage of not just the harms and the horrors, which were everywhere. And it is important for people to see those depictions because it does change their minds, like that video footage is important. And actually, I should say because we're in LA, the drumbeat of mind change actually started here. And we can see it in metrics of social media. The beginning of the ascendancy of people flipping on ice and whether ice is okay and whether we should abolish ice actually began with the protests and the clap back here. And it was because of this steady stream of content, of people seeing these ice encounters, that then when there were the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretty, they couldn't force their story that these people were domestic terrorists or that this was just one bad apple doing this thing. But rather, we'd already established a drumbeat that this is what it was. We've moved public opinion on ice, but not just on ice, on whether or not immigrants are awesome, to the tune of 20 points plus in nine months. So public opinion is not fixed. And the things that move it are what we do. So back to your question, which I haven't forgotten. Yes, stories are incredibly important, but the most persuasive tool that we have in our arsenal is something we call in psychology social proof, which is just the middle school theory of messaging. It just means that people do the thing they think people like them do. So if you're in a new town and you're trying to figure out where to eat and you see a line of people at this restaurant and you see no people at that restaurant, you go to the line. The line. And if you have children, they're like, the fuck is your problem? Like do we have to wait in line? Because you're like, that's probably better food. Yeah. That is a normal human instinct. And so when they have their red hats and someone who is a political low information, which is the vast majority of US voters, and you land in Fresno or you land in central Pennsylvania or you land in wherever and you're like, I guess this is what a me kind of person thinks. Then that's what happens. Because what the right understands is that if your words don't spread, they don't work. And so in contrast, when you have people doing mutually doing rapid response, or here when the protests begin, when you have people sort of out in solidarity, then other people want to do that. Yeah. Because that's the thing to do. And that more than anything is what persuades people is what they see other people doing. I have a question before it gets to the point of needing to protest. How do you speak to people who maybe don't understand common sense? Because to me, the whole ice of it all is so ice is hunting illegals who are criminals, but police officers who went through training couldn't find those criminals, but ice who has less training can. So like how do you speak to someone who literally is not coming from a place of common sense? Yeah. So first you have to make an assessment whether they are like completely lost to you and they are in the QAnon hole and they are like, you know, Trump is their Jesus. If they're in that situation, you should not be talking to them. Because like you would, you know, like that fake fruit is more likely to convert. Sorry if I'm not supposed to talk about the fruit. Yeah. That's fine. It's real. It's real. I eat those grapes. Okay. And how long has it been real? How long have I been able to take? So first you have to make an assessment. Like is this person truly conflicted or are they like lost to me? Lost to me. A lot of people on the left wait a lot of time just like trying to be right. You know, there's a conor in relationships you can choose to be right or you can choose to be happy. And we like to be right. And I like to win. That's what I mean by happy. So I'm not trying to waste my time. So let's say this person you're talking about is conflicted. Like there's still a prayer to be happy. They're not like, there's somewhere to get in. So what you need to do with them is understand what their motivations and desires are. So let's pretend we know like they're worried about crime. They're worried about safety. Let's like give them the benefit of the doubt that that's what's going on. You say to them, yeah, I totally hear you. I think it's the most normal thing in the world to want to be safe. Like of course, who doesn't want to feel safe where we live. That's essential. And you know, I feel like we actually know what keeps us safe. It's living in communities where people know each other and they look out for their neighbors. We know what keeps us safe. It's having the people who are sworn to serve and protect us act in our interest and respect us as equals. It's when we have enough supports that, you know, a bad day or getting down on your luck doesn't mean destroying your life. But today, what we've got going on is this mass militia running through our towns, assaulting people and abducting them, beating them up. No questions asked. And even as we've seen murdering them, that has absolutely nothing to do with safety and everything to do with terrorizing people because they know if we blame newcomers, we're not noticing while billionaires don't pay their taxes and screw us all. Like you tap into what is the thing this person actually desires. And then the other thing, and this is one of my many soap boxes, but we have to do a better job with our language and not give in to the dominant language of the regime. So what I mean by that, and I call them a regime and not a government or administration. I will never call them the Trump administration. It's deeply normalizing. They are not an administration. I will not say deportations deportation implies due process. There isn't. These are abductions and assaults. But the main thing is we cannot keep talking about this as immigration policy and immigration enforcement. In order to say like immigration enforcement has gone too far. Like Americans are turning against their none of this is immigration enforcement. There's no immigration. People are not immigrating. And so that is not being enforced. So we have to call these things as they are, which is crimes against humanity. We have to call the concentration camps concentration camps because they are. And you know, is that person going to instantly come over to you and be like, good boy Nicole like I'm on your side. Probably not, but they at least you will have created a fissure. You will have created a moment of like, well, shit, what is going on? And then you can say, look, like this is how I see it. Why don't you watch what they're actually doing? Why don't you judge them by what they're doing? It just felt like there's like a little tiny bubbling of people regretting voting for Trump and being like, wait, wait a minute. This is actually not what I voted for. This is a spam. It was crazy because he said exactly what he was going to do. So it is what they voted for. But yeah, having having a little bit of like, well, I don't want people to be murdered. I don't want people being abducted from their homes. And it feels like a little bit like a delicate moment like hurting feral cats being like, I don't want to scare you. I don't want to be like, told you so because that makes them like retreat back to where they were. But like, how do you, how do you kind of like entice those brains a little bit to be like, okay, great initial thought. And what, what else? Like, how else can we get you out of out of that hole? Yeah. So I will answer that question, but I also want to challenge the premise of that question. Okay. So that question lives inside of a theory of change that we all are subjected to in the United States that I call electoralism. Electoralism is the theory where the way that we make change is through voting. Is through changing 50, we need to get a 50% plus one. Like, that's what our aim is because we know that's like what's required. Never mind the electoral college and all the clusterfuck that that is. But like, you know, as a rule of thumb, 50% plus one. And electoralism is also where we think that the way that we make change is by making our five phone calls and like telling Chuck Schumer to find a spine or like, you know, telling Gavin Newsom to like stop talking to like Ben Shapiro and perhaps like tax a fucking billionaire. And we somehow, even though when we watch Democrats, say things like, I'm going to try to persuade my colleagues to do bipartisan, bipartisanship, bipartisan solutions. We do that Lucy with the football and we're like, you're fucking idiot. Like, Republicans are never going to go along. I keep telling people I'm like, why do you think you're going to pressure Democrats into doing a thing? Like, why are you trying that? And I will answer your question about how you deal with that person. But in reality, when we look at successful movements that have fallen, like when a country has fallen into an authoritarian context. And that includes the United States because we have had a thorium, you know, Jim Crow was an authoritarian regime within this country. And, you know, to this day persists to a certain degree, even if it's, you know, like, even if some laws have changed and they are trying to bring them back. So what has actually worked to get people out of authoritarianism? It is sustained nonviolent direct resistance. It is not the opposition party. Like, that's not how people think about the civil rights movement. Think about if the folks who did the Montgomery bus boycott were like, you know, they're not letting us sit where we need to on the bus. So I think what we're going to do is we're going to call a Democrat. Maybe we just, or the people at the outset of HIV AIDS were like, you know, I think we just haven't like done They're five phone calls to Democrats, and that's why they won't give us AZT. What did they do? They went and busted into the New York Stock Exchange, hung a banner from where the bell gets wrong, saying, "Cell Burrows Welcome," which is the corporation that made AZT, and then they did a die-in. Like, the political class moves when the population forces them to move. With exceptions and an occasional leader, who is actually a leader. So that's sort of my challenge to the premise of how do we move this person, or how do we make sure we don't kind of backslide with them. They are moved by what they view the dominant culture doing. When it becomes not okay socially, to do certain things like to oppose marriage equality, then suddenly they don't oppose marriage equality, because that's the dominant thing. The reason why people have shifted on ICE is because they have witnessed yes, the attacks, but they've also witnessed the heroism. They've witnessed people blowing the ice whistle. They've witnessed people doing mutual aid. And so that becomes common sense. But to that person, if you are talking to them, and you see them make this opening, yes, it's true. I've never had the experience of telling someone like, "You're a fucking moron, and what were you doing?" A year ago or two years ago, and why did you vote that way and had them be like, "Yes, please tell me more." I'm very excited to talk to you. So you do have to. And when I say you, I mean the people who can stomach this, because I don't actually think everyone should be subjected to this. Like I really don't. But if that is you, because that is your family, or that is your friend group, and you have the wherewithal to do this, like God bless you, then what you want to do is you want to create what's called the permission architecture for someone to change their mind. And that involves not being judgmental of them. It involves saying, "Yeah, you know, I think what I've heard you say in the past is that you voted this way because you really believed in protecting your family. You really believed that this would get you out of the struggle." And that, you know, I mean, I can tell you, this is what is so infuriating. All of 2024, we're doing research, I'm a researcher. And what we found is that the core difference between the Kamala Harris voter and the Knot Harris, meaning Trump, third party, or stay home, was not how much they loved the proposed agenda. It was us when we asked the question, do you think they will do it? The difference between the Harris voter and the Knot Harris voter was what I came to call the "crujulity" chasm. It was, do you think they'll do it? And the Harris voter, some of whom were like, you know, the K-hive and like, "Yeah!" And some of whom were like, "I can't believe I have to move for this person." Their common thread was, I believe, they'll do it. And the not Harris voter, their common thread was, he didn't do it last time. You always say he's gonna do this thing. He just says things. I don't really think it's gonna happen. The Supreme Court will stop him. Congress will stop him. And what I remember from last time is I got a check. What I remember from last time is that I got a check. So, okay. So now that that "crujulity" chasm is closing, and in fact, if you look at disapproval, the highest shift from approval to disapproval is among the lowest information people. The people who knew the least are the ones who've shifted the most. And so now that they are understanding that they said they do it and they are, what you say to them is like, "Yeah, you know, you made a set of decisions "and luckily now you can make a different set of decisions "based on those same principles." You do wanna protect your family. You do wanna be able to make ends meet. You do wanna be able to have a better future. And that's why you can join us in fighting this regime. Let them keep their purported values. - Yeah. - Let's take a little break. (upbeat music) - Hey, Iraq, he was such a tiny break. - That's a little tiny break. - Okay, I have a question. Maybe you don't know the answer, but maybe it seems like you will or I'll make it up. - No. - And then I'll have to decipher. So Detroit used to be like motor city. - Yeah. - It used to be where like, Ford's headquarters were, GM, like they used to make cars here and assemble them here. And that was like a blue collar city where people could like buy houses and live a very nice life. - Yeah. - And then they started sourcing the production outside of the country and then people suffered. So like, I understand that capitalism is like the people on top make the most money, but like when people work, I guess I don't understand why things like that happen. - Yeah. - And like, but also if people here make more money, they then spend more money. So why not keep the jobs here? 'Cause if you source them out, then people have money over there to spend that's not contributing to our economy. - Yeah. - Yeah. So Detroit used to be America's third largest city. Did you know that? - Yes. - And Detroit's amazing. - Right. - I love Detroit. - I love Detroit. The architecture, it's extraordinary. It's a beautiful place. So yes, there used to be an understanding. And in fact, Henry Ford was like a pretty shitty guy for a lot of reasons. At least new to say I need to pay people at least enough to be able to buy my car. Like he literally said that. Like, you know, like you gotta be able to buy the thing. If I'm gonna sell the thing, because he had grand visions that like everyone was gonna have a car and you know, now they do. So basically with globalization and with trade deals, let's just be honest like NAFTA, people saw that they could have both and like they could drive down labor costs by you know, outsourcing things that you've said. But they could also enable consumption in lots and lots and lots of other places. And basically what's happened to the United States in broad strokes is that we've moved away from making things to service industry. And that rich people have moved away from making things to making things up. Like the way that they make their money is by moving ones and now with AI. Like they're just, it's all ones and zeros and like movement of capital from one place to the other. And they became uninterested in actually maintaining any kind of decent standard of living for people because they could always go out and find new ways of making money. I mean they're just like, the United States economy has become so-called financialized. Like the money is made off of make believe. I mean that's why we had like the 2008 crash. They're selling things that don't exist. - Mm-hmm. - Have I explained it well to you? Do you understand it? - Yes and no. I guess at a fundamental level, if I have a company, yes. I would like, like Henry Ford, like I wanna pay people enough to buy the car which is like not nice but like makes sense to me. - Yeah. - And it feels like nobody's doing that anymore. - We're charging more and paying less. - Yes. - So it's like, where's the money coming from then? You just say, it's just debt. - Yeah, it's coming from debt. It's coming from places overseas but for the most part, like what people are selling and I'm exaggerating to sound everybody but like they're selling speculation. They're selling like trading on commodities. They're selling, it's gambling. Like the whole thing, they're making money off of predictions around what will make money. And so you don't need to have people pay. Like you're not making a product that you're selling to people. - I think that makes sense. I guess I'm just like, "Oh, come everyone, is it nicer?" (laughing) - Yeah, that's the real question. But you know, the reality is most people are nicer. They just don't have power. - Mm-hmm, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. - And also the other thing is that as we've had this like, escalation at a global level of how few hands hold how much wealth. Like the number of complete and total assholes, like it's very few people. Like, you know, we could just go to San Tile Road which is where all the venture capitalists have their offices in Palo Alto. Like they're all there. And like I have, like why is there no occupy San Tile Road? Like why is there no actions on, like it's really so few people, but they have so much power that it can feel like why aren't people nicer. It's like almost no people. I mean, you said it before, like the elephants are about to own like all of media. - Yeah, and I'm just like, how is that fucking legal? How is that like, - It's legal because those laws were undone. Like, as an used to not be legal. - It used to not be legal and that was a huge part of the new deal. It was passing laws around monopolies, passing laws around the consolidation of capital. But over time, what happened was this thing called sort of the neo, called neoliberalism, not just in the US, but around the world where this idea was a rising tide lifts all boats, which sounds nice. It turns out a rising tide is just climate change and you're about to drown. But this is where Democrats stopped being honest and being like, there are sides, there is capital and there is labor and we will be on the side of labor and Republicans will be on the side of capital and that is why you want us because we will defend and support and uphold and enlarge unions, which is the only durable, the only durable counterweight to this is unions, period and you are in a union, like you are unionized workers and very few people in America are unionized workers, like God bless your union, it's a really big deal to be in a union. And without that, you really don't have even, you know, with the like the fame that you have and the following you have and like people love you, even that is not enough power against capitalism, like you still have to be collectivized. And you know, that's what people in unionized industries and there aren't that many of them anymore know. And once the all-garx were able to basically destroy the power of unions, they got to be able to destroy everything else and that's really what happened. Yeah. Is there a way, see if I can try to tie this to friendship? Yeah. Is there a way to kind of regain that collective thought or like lean on your community and feel a little less alone? Because sometimes I can feel like, yeah, overwhelmed looking at the news and feeling like, like, what am I supposed to do? Like, what a lowly me? Especially if like, you know, making my five phone calls goes into the ether and it's like, what else can I do? Like, how can people who are listening feel like I can gather my community that actually makes them change? Yeah. Thank you for asking. First of all, like, yes, we need to be voting. Yes, we need to be agitating these people. Like, the election does absolutely matter. I don't want to leave it thinking that it doesn't. Elections voting is how we decide who we're up against. That's how I think of it. Like, do you want your protest to be up against, you know, do you want Democrats ultimately to be listening or do you want Republicans? Because the latter never will. Like, you're picking the conditions in which you will fight through direct action. And, you know, we wouldn't have civil rights legislation if we didn't have Democrats in power to sign it, but it took the boycotting and the organizing in order to make Democrats do it. So one of the things that most struck me, the day that Renate Good was murdered, I had several conversations with organizers in Minnesota. And they all independently said the same thing to me. They said in like a kind of dumb, struck, horrified way, no one is coming. There is nobody's coming to end this to like, there are soldiers on our streets. You know, these are people like one woman was saying to me that in her first ice encounter, you know, quiet moment, she said to him, sir, what do you think you're doing here? And he's like, I'm here to protect you from, you know, whatever. And she said, sir, this is Minneapolis. Like the biggest thing that's happened on this street is some kids stole another kid's bicycle. And then we have to like, make him say sorry. Like, I don't know where you think you are, but like, there's Minneapolis. So what happened in Minnesota was that people stopped thinking that someone was going to come save them, which is terrifying. But they really got organized. And through organizations like Protect the 612, which was modeled on a Chicago based organization called Protect the RP, which is Rogers Park's neighborhood there, they actually started doing block by block rapid response direct organizing where they created plans. They have, you know, signal channels where people sign up. You know what your assignment is. The estimates are that at one point between 60 and 70% of the population of Minneapolis was doing rapid response or mutual aid. Wow. And so in every community, there either is this or you can create it. And what you can do is go to an organization called States at the core, States at the core, States at the core. And they have trainings where they teach you how to create a rapid response network among the people that you know in your very own town, or they tell you there already is one it's here. And most places, if there already is a rapid response network, it's going to be through some big immigrant rights work. That's usually who is like manning these or governing these things. So they will teach you like how did you, you know, what do you need to report when do you need to report it to whom do you need to report it. What is your shift? When are you showing up for your shift? Like what are you supposed to do? And so that's really what people can be doing in their own communities. It's extraordinarily empowering. You're going to find like-minded people. You're going to not just feel like you're doing something. You are doing something. And you're going to create social proof for other people to be like, oh, this is how my community, you know, when the threats were that they were going to come to Springfield, Ohio to get again the Haitian population there. Springfield, which is a Republican town, Republican mayor, Republican city council, that community was like, you know, oh, no, you don't. OH being Ohio, oh, no, you don't bring hate to our state. Oh, no, you don't try to turn us against each other. When people are visibly doing that, then other people are visibly doing that. So yeah, that's very much what you can be doing. Yeah, I love that. I like that too. Yeah. Isn't it annoying though that we have to do all this? Like why can't the government just be nice and good? Also, is it a while that Mark Zuckerberg has so much money? He created a metaverse because I don't think he is a friend. Yeah. No, really? He created like an alternate reality to make friends because he can't talk in person to people. Like, is that crazy? And he's got all the money. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. This male lonely, like the fact that these dudes, and really it's like 90, X percent dudes, like just never learned how to be rejected. Like literally did not have comprehensive sex ed that was good enough to be like, when someone, especially a girl, is like, I don't want to play with you. Like this is how you buck the fuck up, dude. And because no one bothered to tell them that they like, you know, this is where we are basically. Basically. Yeah. Well, you know, pretty heavy episode. Sorry. No, I'm kidding. I think I don't know. I think for someone like me who is ill informed, who it's funny because it's like, I am ill informed, but like, I have common sense where I'm like, you know, we should have universal healthcare. It shouldn't be tied to your job. That's insane. Yeah. But like some people don't think like that until someone says it out loud. So I feel like people listening to this will hear some things out loud and might help them get active or just make more informed choices or being like, maybe I should read a little bit of everything before I vote. Yeah. So thank you for for doing this episode. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the other thing, you know, there's a very famous Italian Marxist philosopher who was imprisoned by Mussolini. And he, you know, his big famous quotation, it's been translated different ways, but the old world is dying. The new world is yet to be born now as the time of monsters. And the old world is dying. Like the neoliberal order, the kind of destroy everything in order to suck very, very like all the wealth into very few people's hands. People know people know that shit isn't working. And a wild animal is at its most dangerous when it is in the last rows of death. And like they know their number is up. Like they know people aren't having this shit. And so they're going wild. And that's dangerous and it's horrific. And people are being killed. And that's why I call them the magma murder regime. It's very important that we like be explicit about what they are. But it also means that the new world is yet to be born and that it really is on us to step up and be the brave of us to be to make this the land of the free and the home of the brave. We're in a persuasion window. Public opinion is shifting at a rate we have not seen in a very long time. And if we do not avail ourselves of this opportunity, we are missing out. We have the opportunity to make people hunger for a very different world. And it's on us to do that. Yeah. I love that. I like that too. Thank you so much. Thank you for doing this. Is there anything else you want to tell us? Just that it's normal to be scared. We're all scared. And those of us who've like been at the front lines or who work directly with people who are in these concentration camps, it's extraordinarily scary. But bravery is not the absence of fear. It's the determination to act despite fear. And that's what we have to be. These are stumbling. This this great and powerful Oz. This is a dude behind a curtain. This man can't even tie his own fucking shoelaces. This man doesn't have, you know, these people, they are nothing. They are nothing. And their power is merely, yes, it is in the horrible things that they're doing, I'm not gonna lie, but there are so many more of us than there are of them. There are so many more of us. We just have to be really, really loud and be too fabulous for fascism. You have to be too fabulous for fascism. I like that. I like that too. And before we end, I really like that you said, like, not telling people they're wrong if they have a very right leaning way of thinking and they're like, kind of like tossing and turning with coming, like, coming into the light and realizing that, like, we should all help one another. Because I feel like a lot of videos I see are like liberal comedians being like, "I got you, you idiot." And it's like, "Well, if you call someone idiot, they'll never want to change or help out." So I really wanted to amplify that. And I think that's a really nice way to speak to people who have different beliefs to be like, we kind of want the same thing, safety and the economy to be stable and whatnot. Anyway, we've actually gotten questions from our listeners because people ask friendship questions on the show. And we've had people be like, "My childhood friend is marrying a Republican and I'm queer." And I don't understand how they can be, how they can like accept that knowing that my rights are being infringed upon. Or like, or my actual friend is growing up and changing. And it's very sad to see and I don't know, like, I'm cutting them off or I don't know if I should cut them off or how to communicate with this person who like has loved me. But for some reason isn't seeing me in the situation when they are thinking about the world or their beliefs or whatever. And so, and like, we don't always have any answer to those questions because like, that's hard. That is hard when you've grown up with somebody or you've loved someone for so long and you're like, "Whoa, wait a minute. You think differently." Which like, I think when you scale it down to what you're saying before, it's like, "Oh, it's safety that you want." We all want safety. But like, your view of how we get there is just different. And that can be hard. Yeah. I mean, what I do with every client that we ever have is they tell me, "How should I message X?" Like, "How should I message Y?" I ask them two questions. I say, "What do you wish people believed?" And upon believing that, what do you need them to do? And so at an interpersonal level, when people come to me, and you know, I mean, I work in politics, so I do broadcast communications. Like, I'm writing ads, I'm writing speeches for like a million people at a time. You don't have the luxury of like, going into nuance and whatever, which is what you want to do in interpersonal communication. But when someone is like, "My friend is changing or marrying someone or whatever," then you make an assessment with them of, "Okay, what is it that you want from this relationship?" And how are we going to be able to get that for you? And if what you want from this relationship is actually impossible, like, it is beyond the bounds because this person has clearly proven themselves sort of untrustworthy of that. Then, yeah, sometimes you do have to cut off relationships, you know, for lots of reasons. But if they are still kind of approachable, they're like, "I want them to respect me or I want them to like value my partner," who, you know, like, I'm queer and I want them to respect me and my partner. Then, what you have to do is you have to speak to them in terms they understand and say, "You know, I understand that you love your, like, I know you love Doug." Like, he's been there for you and he's supported you and you've had, like, God knows you've had your share of assholes before and like, I can see that you feel safe and protected. Well, I love Nicole. And that relationship that you have with Doug, I guess I should be doing this opposite way, sorry. I'm confusing the entire thing. We'll just play act like this. Yeah. That love and that attachment and that commitment that you have to him, that's what we have. And my fear, I'll just be honest with you, is given some of the things that he said or some of the things that I know he believes, it feels like there might not be a space in a place for my partner and the love that we have. Like, you just talk like a normal person, I guess, is what I'm saying. Yeah. It's really interesting. It really feels like the vast majority of people don't have empathy unless you make it relatable specifically to them. Yeah. That's wild. Well, yes. And we have done a pretty piss poor job of framing things through the lens of empathy. And what I mean by that is, I mean, you know, in an effort to make myself unpopular with all people, like when I'm working with, let's say queer groups, I will be like, do you really feel like you need to keep telling Americans that Americans hate queer people? Like, do you need this messaging for the last three years? It's like state of emergency. All these anti-trans and all these anti-queer and all this, like they're passing legislation left and right. Like public opinion is turning against these people. And I'm like, I feel like the right sort of has the story that people hate queer people covered. And I don't really think you need to keep saying that. And the same thing is true for immigrant rights. Like we keep telling people, people hate immigrants. It's so bad. It's so evil. And that's the opposite of social proof. That is actually giving license. That is telling people that is an okay thing to think and an okay thing to feel. Because again, we love, boy, have I got a problem for you messaging. Instead of doing the opposite, which is honest and saying Americans are turning out in record number. They're coming out in support of our neighbors like never before. Across this country, we see people speaking out for trans folks. When we do testing and we ask people like in a forced choice between trans people should have the freedom to live their own lives and trans people are threat to our communities. We should stop them. The vast majority of people, even people who live in plus 15 Trump places are believe the first thing more than the second thing. But then when we ask them, if you had to guess how other people in your state feel, they guess the other way. Like they are reliably mispredicting, how xenophobic, how anti-trans, how anti-black, other people are. Because the negative is just going to amplify the whole size. That's really interesting. And we also don't attempt empathy based messaging because so much of progressive messaging basically boils down to I need you to feel sorry for those people. Which is what I call the "ipo recito" story. Like this is terrible and this is horrible and it is and that's honest. But if you're trying to get people to feel sorry for those people, whether that's people experiencing homelessness or people who are struggling with addiction or people who are immigrants or people who are subject to police violence, whatever, you are othering. Like you are actually focusing in on what differentiates. When what actually works is to say, you know, across races, places and genders, most of us want our kids to have the freedom to learn and explore who they are and feel comfortable when they're in school. But today these Maga Republicans want to bully kids on the basis of their gender identity or their background or their accent. While they're robbing resources from our schools to pay off their billionaire backers. We know better. We want all our children to have the freedom to learn the truth of our past and to be themselves when they're at school. Like it's not that hard actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you've given us so much great information. Things have been so informative and so helpful and I really appreciate it. How can people find you or find resources that you want them to see? Yeah. So the work that we do at my team, ASO communications, everything is open source. That's really important to us. We do not want to do projects again. We want to do it once and be done. So if you go to our website, ASOcommunications.com, on the Learn tab, there is a messaging guide about everything. How to talk about trans folks, how to talk about climate change, how to talk about raising wages, how to talk about unions, how to talk about whatever. So that's one thing. I have a podcast called Words to Win by its old school. There's no video. Yes. From the golden times. And each episode is about a campaign we want somewhere in the world. So if you would like to feel happy, progressive things do actually win. Minnesota is one of them just send a art in becoming Prime Minister of New Zealand as another, ending closing the prison camps for people seeking asylum in Australia as another legalizing abortion in Argentina, etc. Some of them are even in Spanish, Andy Glish. And so Words to Win by. And then I have a sub-stack of the same name. And I am on Blue Sky under a not a Soros, who is a dinosaur. And that is where I try to practice what I preach and do good messaging. But sometimes do as I say, not as I pose, as I just get so pissed off, that I'm just being snarky and not like on messaging. I mean, snarky's meant to. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for coming. Well, well, up to the race to change the world. Here we go. I'm on a horse. Oh! - Oh! (laughing) Best friend is a production of Headgun Studios. - Our producers, Ali Khan. - Our executive producers, Anja Khan of Skaya. - The show is edited, mixed and engineered by Rochelle Check. - Hi, I am Mandy Moore. - Sterling K. Brown. - And I'm Chris Sullivan. And we host the podcast, "That Was Us Now On Headgun." - Each episode, we're gonna go into a deep dive from our show, "This Is Us." - That's right. - We're gonna go episode by episode. We're also gonna pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors. - Are we gonna cry? - Yes. - A little bit. - Are we gonna laugh? - A lot. - A whole lot. - That's what I'm hoping, man. Listen to "That Was Us On Your Favorite Podcast App" or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify, new episodes every Tuesday.