This week, Farai Chideya talks with Nse Ufot of the New Georgia Project about the power of organizing the vote. Air Force Sergeant Tamika Hamilton on what inspired her to run in California, and Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement connects racial inequity and the climate crisis. Saru Jayaraman of One Fair Wage explains the pandemic's effect on service workers. Alejandra Gomez of Living United for Change in Arizona reflects on organizing efforts in the election. Plus, how Dr. Camilla Pang explains the average human’s behavior.
EPISODE RUNDOWN
2:27 Chief officer of The New Georgia Project Nsé Ufot explains how The New Georgia Project used platforms like Twitch to reach a younger audience.
8:16 Ufot gives details on the group’s goal to knock on one million doors ahead of the Georgia Senate race.
15:45 Air Force Sergeant Tamika Hamilton describes what inspired her to run as the Republican candidate for California’s 3rd Congressional District.
19:52 Hamilton talks about her plans to run in 2022.
22:51 Varshini Prakash, co-founder and executive director of the Sunrise Movement, explains why climate policies might have a chance in 2021.
25:14 Prakash explains that to deal with the climate crisis, the country must also deal with inequality.
28:23 Prakash talks about the prospect of Deb Haaland as Interior Secretary in the Biden Administration.
32:22 Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage, an organization fighting for a more equitable wage structure for workers in the service industry.
34:20 Jayaraman says workers who live off tips are facing major challenges with the pandemic.
38:32 Alejandra Gomez of LUCHA shares what inspired her to get involved in organizing.
40:16 Gomez the role of organizing and activism in the political changes in her state of Arizona.
44:19 Dr Camilla Pang talks about how she uses science to better understand human behavior.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening and sharing Our Body Politic. As you know, we’re new and creating the show with lots of input from listeners like you. So I want to ask you a small favor: after you listen today, please head over to Apple Podcasts on your phone, tablet, laptop--or anywhere you listen--and leave us a review. We read those because your ideas matter to us. Thanks so much.
This is Our Body Politic. I'm the creator and host Farai Chideya. This week, our production team and I are bringing you a special holiday episode chock-full of riveting interviews we recorded before the holidays. I hope everyone's taking a break right now of some sort if you're able. And for those of you who are essential workers or just hustling to pay those bills, we see you and we thank you.
I invited political leaders, activists and thinkers to share with us what they were focusing on as they wrapped up 2020 and to lay out the road ahead. First, I talked to one of the leaders hitting the ground in Georgia. 2020 has been full of surprises and one of the more interesting ones is that the state of Georgia has become a political hotspot. Reliably read since the 90s the state went to Joe Biden this November, and two Senate races that could determine the balance of power in Congress, we're close enough that they're headed for a run off in January.
The New Georgia Project is a nonpartisan civic engagement organization, and one of the engines behind flipping the state. They've registered half a million Georgia voters since 2014 and their goal is to register every eligible and unregistered citizen of color there by the end of the decade. I spoke with the new Georgia project CEO Nsé Ufot about Georgia's breakout year and the work that still lies ahead. Hi Nsé, welcome to the show.
Nsé Ufot:
Thank you for having me.
Chideya:
Okay, I am really just amazed by everything that you've been able to do in Georgia. Just explain a couple of the different things that you've been doing throughout this election cycle as part of your work.
Ufot:
I definitely say that we are a tech startup inside of a voting rights and civil rights organization because we build apps, we build video games, we work really hard to leverage culture and data and technology to expose voter suppression and to increase voter turnout.
Chideya:
And you even did something called Twitch The Vote, tell us about that.
Ufot:
So Twitch is this platform, it's like YouTube for gamers, BV eSports players, professional video game players, or casual players. But it's a gaming community.
Chideya:
Or people in Congress like representatives, Omar and Ocasio-Cortez.
Ufot:
That is also true. Half of the squad is well known in these Twitch streets. So yeah. And the idea was that there are people there. The gen z years and the millennials that we want to build with, that we want to change the culture of voting with they're there. And what better way if you're talking about changing the culture of an institution to like, lean hard into various subcultures. And so we did Twitch The Vote awesome. Gave away a bunch of sneakers on national voter registration day, brought in some dope eSports players, registered 9000 people to vote in one day.
Ufot:
So then we ran it back on Election Day, and brought in Dr. Mae Jamison, the first Black woman to travel space brought in. Miss Tina Knowles Lawson Beyonce mom, and we had half a million unique viewers. So not quite as many as AOC. But a very respectable number that I'm super proud of.
Chideya:
I would say that's more than one or two. Yeah.
Ufot:
Agree. It's more than the group chat.
Chideya:
Exactly. So something else that really stood out to me was how you handled polling places moving. Can you tell us, just give us a little bit of a tick-tock, not as in the platform tick-tock, but a timeline tick-tock of what happened with polling places and how you responded?
Ufot:
Yeah. So it is part of the work that we do, is the nature of battleground state politics that elections are determined by one who shows up and two whose votes get counted. Georgia has made so much news embarrassingly so, about the hurdles that Georgia voters and particularly Black voters have to clear just to exercise the fundamental right to vote. We go back to Randolph county in 2018. Randolph County, a county in the rural Black belt. During the primaries, they had overwhelming participation, historic levels of participation they overwhelmingly showed up for Stacey Abrams in the primary.
And the county decided to try to close 80% of their polling locations afterwards. We mobilized, made an international news story and we were able to save those polling locations. Fast forward to a few weeks ago during the 2020 General, many voters woke up in metro Atlanta to learn that over 100 polling locations had been changed within three or four days before the November general election. And it's particularly disturbing, because part of our research and part of our get out to vote efforts throughout the entire year, has been focused on getting people to make a vote plan, right? Make sure you're not purged, find your polling location, figure out what your outfit is going to be, what you're going to wear. Are you going to go vote before you drop the kids off, are you going to go vote after you get off of work? Are you going to vote early, etc. So to have people wake up on Election Day, and their polling location be completely changed is disorienting and it's very much a tactic of voter suppression.
Chideya:
Just tell us how you felt when you learned that the state of Georgia had been called for Biden, Harris. There was so much intensity and so it was a cliffhanger.
Ufot:
I was a little emotional and I'll be honest, not because I am the president of the Joseph Biden fan club but because as a voter registration organization come across people all the time who say, my vote doesn't matter, this system is rigged. I voted in 2018, we saw governor's race be stolen, and no one held accountable. Seeing in real time, Black voters and young voters flipped a state is more powerful than again, anything that we could have said, any smart messaging that we could have put out on social media. It cut through all the fog, and all the noise and all the disappointment that Georgia voters have had to overcome over the past couple of years.
So I was super pumped. I was on my way, I was in the back of a lift on my way to freedom park in Atlanta, where hundreds of people came out. It was food and drink and dance and celebration and acknowledgement of the tough road ahead, on our way to the January 5th senate run offs.
Chideya:
What's happening with the Georgia Senate race, and what are you specifically doing?
Ufot:
So me and say I am working to keep the trains running. We have a goal of knocking on a million doors by the end of 2020 and we are well on our way of doing that. Actually might be ahead of schedule like we may hit our million by December 30th. I'm making millions of phone calls and text messages. We're averaging about 1500 volunteer shifts a day. Yeah, and it's a lot. It's a whole lot, which is why I've come to wearing fancy PJ's to the office, it's still PJ's. But they're acceptable to wear in public.
Chideya:
I'm going to put on my political analyst field reporter hat. I have spent a lot of time over the past 25 years, interviewing white supremacist everything from meeting clans people face-to-face to talking to the area nation, talking to white nationalists who went to Charlottesville. And so what I am concerned about based on talking to people who do deep continuing investigative reporting is that we are essentially in the eye of a hurricane, where people are mobilizing their forces to ramp up attacks when the President leaves office. And I don't know I mean, are you concerned about what lies ahead?
Ufot:
Yes, I am. I very much I am because not only that, I also don't feel like we enjoy the full protection of the federal government. We don't enjoy the full protection of law enforcement. There was a time when we would observe very blatant acts of voter suppression. And take pictures, take videos, send it to the DOJ and be reasonably assured that there is someone on the other end of that call who is going to investigate and do something about it. There are definitely times where we get death threats and send it to the FBI and other agencies and can be reasonably assured that someone was going to do something about it.
I don't exactly feel that way now. One, I think two I'm also concerned because, we had tons of deescalation trainings with these deescalation volunteers are voter protection and election protection volunteers, were trained in sort of trying to keep themselves safe, keep voters safe, etc. But that was also when there was voting in 49 other states and DC and Puerto Rico and Guam. When I think about the over $200 million that's already been spent. When I think about the attempted interventions by Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell and the president, it truly does feel like the entire political establishment is focused on Georgia. And that's good and bad actors.
Chideya:
When you look ahead to what you want to do and what you want your organization to do, and the kind of country that you want to build, what do you want to see manifest from here on out?
Ufot:
I would love to see an America where the gap between the sort of rhetoric about America and his great greatness and the reality of America and his greatness are closed. I would like to see an America where your race or your gender or your geography is not in any way, or hurdle that you need to clear in order to have access to the best that our democracy offers, the best that our school systems offer. The best that our cities and our states offer. That those things are not hurdles, those things should not in any way, get in the way of how you experience the beauty and the wonder and the greatness that is all that America has to offer.
Chideya:
Nsé thank you so much.
Ufot:
Thank you.
Chideya:
That was Nsé Ufot CEO of the new Georgia project. Coming up later this hour.
Tamika Hamilton:
What I quickly learned was that you can't run from bad policy and you can't run from bad policy makers. The anti-immigrant sentiment that we lived in California began to surface through Arpaio and his raids.
Chideya:
You're listening to Our Body Politic.
I'm Farai Chideya you're listening to Our Body Politic. Two years ago, the country elected 127 women, 48 of them women of color to the House and Senate. This year, a record number of women were elected to serve in Congress. Some 141 of them including at least 51 women of color. Of course, considering women are slightly more than half of the US population, parity is still a work in progress. Running for office takes tremendous courage, including the courage to take your shot and not win. Air Force Sergeant Tamika Hamilton ran and lost the election for California's third Congressional District, which includes parts of Sacramento. She was among a few republican candidates who ran and what have generally been pretty reliably blue districts. I asked her what inspired her to go for it. Welcome to Tamika.
Hamilton:
Thank you for having me, I really appreciate it.
Chideya:
I'm just really interested in your role as being someone who ran for office as a Republican and who's a Black woman. I have relatives who are republicans who've had sort of a complicated relationship with the party. I think all of us have had a complicated relationship with politics. But let me start with your family life first. What was it like growing up in Calvert County, Maryland?
Hamilton:
To be honest we didn't talk about politics. There was no discussion of Republican versus democrat or at the dinner table. It was just that working hard and family sticking together. But we did live really quiet coNsérvative lifestyles. And so for me, it wasn't a reckoning of influence of anyone that put me in this position, it was just simply how it was raised.
Chideya:
Well, tell me how you took those values with you into the military and tell us about your life in service.
Hamilton:
So I have been in the Air Force for the past 17 years, 14 of them have been active duty, and the going on for years, have been a reserve status. And seeing my grandfather's and hearing their stories and the pictures and it just seemed like a right fit for me and it was. Being a woman in the military, people they have their opinions about it but for me, I just never felt those things. Oh, because I'm a woman I can't do this or this. If I wanted to do something, if I wanted to achieve something then I just did it.
Chideya:
So how did your service in the military inform your choice to run for office?
Hamilton:
Well, the military had nothing to do with it, it was my children. I just felt a need, a strong need, a pull in my heart, thinking about the division in our nation. And I'm thinking, Oh, my gosh, what's going to happen to my babies? And so one day, I walked into my first Republican Central Committee office, and I told them, I wanted to run, and they thought I was crazy. And that's how it all started. I had no money, no backing, nothing. And that was two years ago.
Chideya:
So what was the first thing or what were maybe a couple of the first things you did, to show them that you were serious, and that you were here to really compete?
Hamilton:
I didn't leave. That was the main thing, I didn't leave. I heard so many voices telling me that I wasn't going to make it because I didn't have any money, that people weren't going to vote for unknown name candidate. And I was challenged in the primary by someone that had influence with almost half a million followers, they raise all this money and we won by triple the vote.
Chideya:
Wow. Yeah. So tell me, what did you say to your potential constituents, your fellows in your district, when you went out on the trail? And what did they say to you about what they saw in you that they appreciated, and they wanted to see elected?
Hamilton:
The feedback that I've received is that I have a way of bringing people together and I did everything that I could to touch every single one of them with acknowledgement. And so people felt that energy, and really believe that I came for them, but I didn't come for an agenda.
Chideya:
Yeah. So I want to know how you feel about President Trump's leadership? He is the leader of the Republican Party and some Republicans love his leadership, some Republicans don't. How do you feel about him and view his leadership?
Hamilton:
It's funny, because I feel like people want me to either defend him or they want me to applaud him. And I think that for his policies, he's done a good job. And personally, I'm not bothered by when people say like, Oh, he's so rude. This or, this or that. I don't care about those things. You know what I mean? That doesn't mean that everything he says I agree with, because I don't. There's some things I like, and there's some things I'm like, okay. But overall, I think that he's tried to do the best he can, according to the circumstances.
Chideya:
And the President also has made a point of not promoting the use of masks from what I understand and feel free to correct me. You also have not been someone who promoted the use of mask to prevent COVID-19. Am I accurate about that and if so, why?
Hamilton:
So I am not opposed to people using masks, I don't think that people should be forced to use masks. But I also don't think that people should be really ridiculing anyone for wanting to wear one or not wanting to wear one. But COVID is real and people are dying. And I don't think that at the end of the day, someone should be forced to wear one. That's just my view of it.
Chideya:
Let me just go back to the political party, that you ran to represent in Congress. There were many fewer women of color running as Republicans, for Congress than Democrats. But it sounds like you may be running again in 2022. Do you feel like it's important that the republican party has Black women and all women of color as part of elected officials?
Hamilton:
I'm not running because of that at all, I'm running for the people and that's how I look at it. This is just where my ideology aligns and I'm not going to change because of how the media wants to describe republicans at the end of the day. I want people to live a good life and I want people to be treated fairly. And I want Black people to be treated fairly. Right now I feel like republicans can be more demonized than some as far the media is concerned. I can't even be thinking about that either because it's like, they do what they want to do anyway, I just got to keep going.
And now we see so many people trying to figure out how do we get this far? How do we get this way? Or how do we have so much division? You have to be a part of the game and that's what I intend to do. And I intend to sound the alarm of hypocrisy all the way around. All these narratives were already created before I got here and people want to quickly write me off because of stuff that they have seen in the media regarding republicans and it's sad because not everybody is that way.
Chideya:
Well, Tamika Hamilton, thank you so much for talking to us. I appreciate it.
Hamilton:
Oh, of course.
Chideya:
That's Air Force Sergeant Tamika Hamilton of California.
We love to hear from you, our listeners and invite you to participate in our collective visioning by calling our platform speak. This week we're asking you, how are you coping with the pandemic? As for me, I have to confess, ice cream is a thing. Ice cream has been getting me through this pandemic. It got me through all of the political debates, and it's still my road dog for the pandemic. Maybe not the most healthy thing, but I am coping with ice cream. Hopefully, your answer is a little healthier than mine. So you can call 929-353-7006. That's 929-353-7006 to leave us a voicemail about any serious or not so serious ways that you are coping with the pandemic. Or go to ourbodypolitic.show. Yes, dot show and scroll down to find a Google forum to respond in writing.
Chideya:
Coming up.
Varshini Prakash:
I don't know a single person that is at a values level. I really, really care about carbon in the atmosphere. But people care deeply about their communities.
Chideya:
You're listening to Our Body Politic.
In February of 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced her first piece of legislation, the Green New Deal. My next guest played a huge role in building political support for it. Varshini Prakash is co-founder and executive director of the sunrise movement. A youth led organization focused on electing candidates who support this comprehensive approach to the climate crisis. Prakash's book is Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can. I recently spoke with Varshini, about how she views the Green New Deal, what it means for racial equality and who she'd like to see lead this plan with the Biden Harris administration. Welcome, Varshini.
Prakash:
Thanks for having me.
Farai Chideya:
So in your intro to this compilation, you say, “young people have got to rise up. That's it, that's the message.” Why?
Prakash:
Well, our generation has grown up as the climate generation. One of the earliest memories that I have is watching Hurricane Katrina kill 3000 people on the Gulf Coast, namely Black folks, elderly, poor people. And I saw the devastation from Hurricane Sandy. Any kid that has been born after the year 2000 has never known a year that wasn't one of the hottest years on record. And we're growing up with this anxiety, with this fear about what the future will hold and what will unfold in our lives.
And we've also simultaneously seen our political leaders failing to take the kind of dramatic action that we need to preserve, literally our way of life. Human civilization as we know it. So that's why we've got to rise up and we're seeing young people do that all over the country, all over the world. It's taken some different forms because of the pandemic, but people are organizing and we've got to turn it up a notch or 10. It's time for this generation to really take the reins and understand that change is not going to happen unless we do it ourselves.
Chideya:
The Green New Deal has become something like a curse word for some people, particularly on the political right. It's come up in debates. It's been typified as both a problem and a solution by different people. But what is it?
Prakash:
It is a solution that combines addressing climate change, addressing economic inequality, and addressing racial inequality with the understanding that we can never fully stop climate change unless we deal with the egregious levels of inequality that exists in this country. We have the climate crisis, in part because it has been okay to pollute certain communities. It has been okay for certain communities to bear the brunt of climate disaster. We have got to move fast over the next five to 10 years to decarbonize our economy. It's not a single bill, it's not a single piece of legislation. It's going to be an ambitious program over the next decade or longer addressing virtually every sector of our economy, from agriculture, to transportation, to housing to land management. It's a program to create potentially millions and millions of jobs. It's really a process of redefining what a just an equitable economy of the 21st century can look like.
Chideya:
How do you think it would affect racial justice? I mean, there's the questions of disparate climate impact on communities of color, which is something we talked a bit about with Somini Sengupta of The New York Times on this show. And then there's the question of what jobs pay what and to whom? And how would this deal with both of those?
Prakash:
There is no such thing as a race neutral policy. So to me, addressing racial injustice has to be a part of every single policy and program that is associated with the Green New Deal. So to me, that looks like you know we're not just talking about carbon abatement or getting rid of carbon in the atmosphere. We're addressing how communities in Lowndes County, Alabama, who have had hookworm in their water and have sewage coming out of their lawns are also being supported to have 21st century amenities and live lives of dignity.
And so I think that is one part of it. Another part is, we could utilize the job creation programs that are within the Green New Deal. Typically, a lot of care is not taken in the renewable energy industry to specifically direct those investments towards communities of color and disadvantaged communities and tribal nations. And so a part of the Green New Deal is ensuring that we are communicating with the hundreds of tribal nations around the country to figure out what are the needs on reservations right now and in tribal nations right now? What are the ways in which we can specifically support economic development for disadvantaged communities across America and direct those jobs, investment, etc. to those communities?
Chideya:
You at the sunrise movement, have co-signed a letter urging that the Biden-Harris administration pick representative Deb Holland, who we had on this show, as Interior Secretary. And at least at the time that we're talking that's still pending. Why her, what would it mean for the climate movement?
Prakash:
It would mean everything. Deb Holland is such a rockstar. She has already made history and would make history again, as one of the first indigenous people to serve in a presidential administration. The Dakota Access Pipeline was something that went through a white community before they decided they didn't want that level of pollution, and it was rerouted through tribal lands. And so you're seeing pipelines, you're seeing the spread of diseases and the pollution of water in native lands and the systematic disinvestment. But also oftentimes just proactive destruction of tribal communities that has been happening in an effort of ongoing genocide for the last hundreds of years. And so to have a person who understands that historic harm, so deeply being in charge of our public lands, and our domestic policies like Deb Holland, it would be tremendous.
Chideya:
I have a friend who has a PhD in mathematics, who once gave me this analogy for the climate crisis, which I won't be able to repeat accurately. But it was comparing how many HIroshimas per second of energy, were released into the environment by the climate crisis. And it was more than one. The fact that there's more than one Hiroshima per second is clearly a problem. And climate devastation doesn't seem theoretical, but the climate crisis and what is a 1% increase, or 2% increase in the temperature does, we won't be able to explain all of that. But what do you think is the way for us to connect to making sure that our ecosystem and we ourselves have some reasonable future?
Prakash:
The mainstream environmental organizations and movements for the last few decades have communicated about this issue in terms of ice caps and carbon dioxide and parts per million. And a lot of these ideas that are abstract. I don't know a single person that is at a values level. I really, really care about carbon in the atmosphere. But people care deeply about their communities. And people care whether they live in a food desert, or they have access to fresh grown produce that is healthy and not killing their bodies or their children. If you can make this conversation from carbon and ice caps and move it towards providing a world where all people have dignity, and can live safe lives free from harm, that is a fully different conversation. And I think people get a lot more excited about that conversation than if you're talking about something that's so far off and so abstract that it doesn't appeal to people's immediate needs and immediate interests.
Chideya:
Varshini it was really great to talk to you, thank you so much.
Prakash:
Thank you for having me.
Chideya:
Varshini Prakash is co-founder and executive director of the Sunrise Movement. Coming up next.
Saru Jayaraman:
They were able to say we don't have to pay you, you just go work for tips. And that became law in 1938 as part of the new deal when everybody got the right to the minimum wage for the first time except for three groups of Black workers. Farm workers, domestic workers and tipped restaurant workers. Who were mostly Black women and were told, you get a $0 wage from your boss as long as tips bring you to the full minimum wage.
Chideya:
I'm Farai Chideya, back with you shortly.
COVID has revealed many harsh realities, especially around economic inequality. And the service industry was unveiled as one of the biggest culprits. Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage. Its mission is at least a full fair minimum wage for every person who works in the US. Welcome to Our Body Politic Saru.
Jayaraman:
Thanks for having me.
Chideya:
So you've spoken about how the roots of tipping, the whole tradition of tipping in restaurants and the wage structure that waitstaff deal with has links to slavery. I had no idea. Tell me more.
Jayaraman:
Yeah. So tipping actually originated in feudal Europe. It was something that aristocrats, nobles gave to serfs and vassals but always on top of a wage. It came to the states in the 1850s, when rich Americans were traveling to Europe and it was actually first resoundingly rejected. American said, this is a vestige of slavery, of feudalism, excuse me. We reject it, where democracy, six states pass prohibitions on tipping. But what changed everything was emancipation. At emancipation, the restaurant lobby wanted the ability to hire Black workers, in particular Black women and not pay them anything.
And so they found tips as a convenient way to do that. They were able to say, we don't have to pay you, you just go work for tips. And that became law in 1938 as part of the New Deal, when everybody got the right to the minimum wage for the first time, except for three groups of Black workers. Farm workers, domestic workers, and tipped restaurant workers. Who were mostly Black women and were told you get a $0 wage from your boss, as long as tips bring you to the full minimum wage.
Chideya:
We've talked a lot here on the show about what some people are calling the female recession and how heavily service workers are impacted. So it sounds like, right now, service workers are really being impacted by the economy. A lot of the women that you talked about, sort of who are mainly holding these jobs. But also the entire structure of their work is kind of at the whim of whoever comes in.
Jayaraman:
Well, what was injustice prior to the pandemic became an issue of life and death during the pandemic. Because during the pandemic, six to 9 million of these workers lost their jobs and 60%, six zero couldn't get unemployment insurance. Because most states told them that their wages of two or $3 were too low to meet the minimum threshold in their state to qualify. And then they were called back to work for indoor dining or outdoor dining. And they were called back for a sub minimum wage when tips are down 50 to 75%, because sales are down.
And even worse, we surveyed over 2000 workers who have gone back to work for indoor outdoor dining. And we found that 90% say, we cannot enforce social distancing and mask rules on the very same customers from who we have to get tips to survive. It's an impossibility. We heard from 1000s of women, that they're experiencing what we're calling “mask-uline” harassment, it's been so common, we've made a new term for it.
Basically, it's women being asked to remove their masks. Take off your mask, so I can see how cute you are to determine how much I want to tip you. And I think what's important for everybody to understand is these women are essential workers. We're expecting them to be public health marshals, essential workers in the most dangerous place.
Chideya:
I'm sure that there's a lot of small business owners who are like I am barely hanging on, this is not the time to restructure. I mean, is it ... When you talk to, for example, a solo restaurant owner or a small local chain restaurant owner, What kinds of things do you hear both pro and con, changing the wage structure?
Jayaraman:
First of all I want to say as much as restaurant owners are struggling right now, restaurant workers are struggling 20,000 times worse. I just think it's so important to remember that there's a much larger population of workers who are not losing their businesses, they're losing their homes and their ability to feed their kids. But coming back to your question about small businesses. What's been so heartwarming is that over the last nine months of the pandemic or 10 months, we've had a lot of employers come to us and say, we've realized this is the time. We are having to rethink every aspect of our business. We're doing outdoor dining, we're doing takeout and delivery, we're doing staggered meal times. People are talking about ghost kitchens, everything is changing in our industry. And these employers are saying in the midst of all of this change, this is the time to do a reset on the way that we pay and treat people.
Chideya:
Well, Saru, thanks for talking to Our Body Politic. I appreciate it.
Jayaraman:
Thank you.
Chideya:
Saru Jayaraman is president of One Fair Wage, co-founder and president of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
One of the biggest stories of the 2020 election was that Arizona voters chose the Biden-Harris ticket. It was only the second time since 1952, that the state has gone for the Democratic candidate for president. And race relations in Arizona have long been complicated. Then in 2010, state legislators passed SB 1070, which among other things required law enforcement to determine immigration status. Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, did traffic stops that the Justice Department ruled were racial profiling. He refused to end them and was convicted of contempt of court. Later Arpaio was pardoned by President Trump. It's Against this background of state politics that we find Alejandra Gómez. She's co-executive director of LUCHA, Living United for Change in Arizona. And she joins me now. Hi, Alejandra.
Alejandra Gomez:
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
Chideya:
So how did you become an organizer? What shaped you from your childhood, your family to do this work?
Gomez:
Really, I became acutely aware of the political injustice that existed through my father. My father was undocumented. We lived in California during proposition 187, which was a ballot initiative that was anti-immigrant. My father basically came home one day and was like, bringing all of the family into the living room. And I just remember sitting there and him saying, if we stay, I risk being deported. If we move, we can maybe go under the radar and actually build a new life. And so we left California, we left everything that we knew, our family that we had there. And we came to Arizona, and for a time it was safe.
But what I quickly learned was that you can't run from bad policy and you can't run from bad policy makers. And years later, the anti immigrant sentiment that we lived in California, began to surface through Arpaio and his raids. And so for me, that was the moment where I said, I was a child and I was not able to go to the marches, I was not able to fight back. But now I not only knew that I wasn't the only person that had experienced this through mixed status family home. But that there were others and they were my friends, and that I was going to stay and fight alongside of them.
Chideya:
Paint a picture of what LUCHA does, and I know that's a lot but just give us a seNsé of like, how you been in the trenches?
Gomez:
LUCHA was birthed out of the ashes of SB 1070. You began to now see organizations come to be. And so LUCHA was one of them that actually formed to begin doing voter registration in our communities because the party's structures had not gone to our communities to do voter registration drive. They had not once knocked on the doors of Black indigenous or Latinx communities to make sure that we were getting out to vote or participating in a candidate campaign.
It was the work of many years to make sure that our communities were registered to vote participating in elections, knew their rights, were giving us input on policy. Beginning to also, be acutely aware that it wasn't also just the Latinx community that was being targeted. Now we were seeing the intersection of the struggles of Black community, of indigenous community being targeted by police as well. And so you begin to see the surface of activism in many different forms.
And I really want to talk about the coalition that we formed Me-AZ. Me-AZ is a configuration that came together of grassroots partners and labor and environmental group and Black led organization, and we were able to accomplish over 8 million phone calls. Over 1 million door knocks in Arizona during a pandemic, but also being able to respond to the pandemic. We formed another coalition to fundraise for the Arizona undocumented workers fund because undocumented communities in Arizona were left out of any relief. We raised 1.7 million during the pandemic as well.
Chideya:
The State of Arizona, like America as a whole, is beautiful and complex and sometimes troubled. What do you see ahead and what do you want to build?
Gomez:
There's so much healing that has to happen as a nation. And for us making sure that we are paying attention to the federal promises that were made and continuing to organize at a local level. And move from a place of our families just surviving to our families being able to experience joy and being able to thrive. And so that means for us is that we are taking back governing power. So we're getting ready for the governor's race in 2022 here in Arizona.
This is about the long term vision, building the leadership development of so many so they can be the next generation of change, and the current heroes of today.
Chideya:
Well, Alejandra, thank you so much for talking to us.
Gomez:
Thank you so much.
Chideya:
That Alejandra Gomez, co-executive director of LUCHA.
My next guest is Dr. Camilla Pang. Her book An Outsider's Guide to Humans. What science taught me about what we do and who we are, when the Royal Society insight investment science Book Prize for 2020. When Dr. Camilla Pang was eight years old, she was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. How other people behave seemed mysterious to her. Her curiosity about the way she was different lead her to a career as a scientist in bio informatics. Hi, Dr. Pang.
Dr. Camilla Pang:
Yeah, thank you for having me on here.
Chideya:
First of all, I totally loved your book. And it reminded me how much I love science. I was someone who was a premed my first year of college and then became an English major. My mother worked in medicine, my sister is a doctor. And I had forgotten about things like the different types of proteins. And one of the things I was struck by was your section on, how proteins can be used to explain different types of personalities and friendships. How do you come up with metaphors like that, and maybe tell us a little bit about that one.
Pang:
So basically, one of the things that I found quite hard to associate myself with when I was little were characters of people, especially when the social nuances of them were something that I was still trying to elucidate. And so when it came to science, that just was completely in tune with my chain of thoughts and how I modeled the world. And when it came to proteins, it was just something that I knew existed, and they were very dynamic around the cell, they came in lots of different forms. And they behave different in different contexts, yet, we're serving a kind of universal role for cell function. I was like, this is it. It just felt so natural. It's like seeing patterns that were on a level that just made seNsé to me.
Chideya:
You have all sorts of different scientific metaphors. Thermodynamics, molecular dynamics, evolution, what is your favorite area of science that you got to write about?
Pang:
Oh, that's really hard. I think the fact that I can write about all of them was something that I really enjoy doing, because once you get a taste of one, you kind of want a taste of another side of science. And so I think the whole process was something that really appealed to me. However, the chapter that I always go back to, because every day I'm reminded of it, be in the form of me, my messy room or my tidy room, be it in my energy levels, or how I see people handle their day, it's [inaudible 00:45:21]. Because it's the science of determinism and what if something will happen or not?
Chideya:
If you had to explain thermodynamics to a 10 year old, what would you tell them?
Pang:
Why is it always hard to tidy your room when everything feels in place? Because ultimately, we are a species on this planet that is subject to I guess the universe expanding. We're not beyond the laws of physics. And so sometimes because of that, it's amazing because we can feel the perils of living and I mix in terms of having to put in energy to create order. And I think this is something that I want to teach people is that, because you don't have one manifestation of order, or the form that it looks like, that doesn't mean it's wrong. You could have your own seNsé of order.
Chideya:
You talk a lot in the book about your relationship with your mother. And it sounds like in understanding yourself, you also understand the differences between your mom who I believe to be neuro-typical from your descriptions and you. What does it mean to be non neuro-typical for you?
Pang:
I feel like a lot of people get caught up in this whole kind of alien-ism of what I mean to be neurodivergent as if we're some kind of different species, because we feel like we are. That doesn't mean you could treat us like, we're a different species. It's an experience of the everyday world in which you have to navigate through, be it through. Like the seNsés are heightened, and there's no signal to noise, it's not obvious to know what the red flags are in a situation. It's not obvious to know the intention of the people. It's not obvious to know the nuances that tie social tapestries together.
When it comes to social conventions, I feel like neurodivergent people are less judgmental by nature, because we almost can't afford to be, because we know that people judging us because we don't fit into the boxes, is actually one of the most dangerous things you can do.
Chideya:
I was struck by two examples in your book of how you learned to be good to yourself as a neurodivergent person. One was how you used a game mentality to navigate difficult streets or crowded streets. Can you tell us about the street navigation?
Pang:
The thing is, I was both scared and completely and utterly spellbound by human movement. Because if everyone's telling me to walk in a straight line, and to be the straight line, and how come people are so hard to model? I was like, you're telling me to be this, then you're not this. And I just was both mistreated and intrigued by this discrepancy. I was like, this is interesting. And I wanted to challenge that further. And so because of that my curiosity kind of paved the way in navigating things that diluted me.
Chideya:
How do you understand your race and ethnicity having parents from two different backgrounds and is that important to you or not really?
Pang:
Yeah. I never really ascribe my identity as being this or that. And for me, when I was little, it really showed me that different cultures have different etiquette. Be at the table or just how they greet people. And that was really important in me adapting my algorithms. And I think that's all well and good making algorithms, but adapting them and making them flexible, because the rules bend and flex is one of the best things you can do for it, because then you test its tolerance. And I think being from two different cultures where I've had to exercise the different models in different environments has been a really good opportunity for me to see how the rules bend and flex, and how I can be more adaptable, and how great they are in their own right.
Chideya:
Dr. Pang it's been such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.
Pang:
Thank you so much for having me on here.
Chideya:
Dr. Camilla Pang is the author of An Outsider's Guide to Humans. What science taught me about what we do and who we are.
Chideya:
Thank you so much for joining us on Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Our Body Politic is presented and syndicated by KCRW, KPCC and KQED. It's produced by Lantigua Williams & Co. I'm creator and host Farai Chideya. Juleyka Lantigua Williams is executive producer. Paulina Velasco is senior producer. Cedric Wilson is lead producer and makes this episode. Original music by Kojin Tashiro. Our political booker is Mary Knowles. Our producer is Priscilla Alabi. Michelle Baker and Emily Daly are assistant producers. Production assistance from Mark Betancourt, Michael Castañeda, Zuheera Ali, Sarah McLure, and Virginia Lora.
Credit:
Funding for Our Body Politic is provided by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, empowering world-changing work.
CITATION:
Chideya, Farai, host. “How the New Georgia Project Made Voting Cool, and What Inspires Local Leaders from California to Arizona.” Our Body Politic, Diaspora Farms LLC. December 25, 2020. https://our-body-politic.simplecast.com/