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Yasmin Radjy State of Florida this year, 54% of voters supported reproductive freedom. That is more voters supporting abortion access in the state of Florida than support Ron DeSantis. It's a higher percentage. But 54% did not reach the threshold of 60%. And I'm saying that because whether we're talking about attacks on civil society, attacks on voting rights, this is the Republican playbook that is not specific to any one legislative session, any one state. It is part of their long game. (.......)
Sanam That's Yasmin Raji, CEO of Swing Left, my guest this week on If You Were In Charge, with me, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. Welcome, everyone. The show is brought to you by the Robert Bosch Academy and my organization, ICANN, where for 20 years we've been working with women peace builders on stopping wars and violence around the world. Each week, as you know, I talk with other doers and imaginers about the tough issues they tackle. And I ask them what they do if they were in charge. Yasmin Raji, as CEO of Swing Left, has been really busy the last few months, as you can imagine. We've been trying to find her and scheduling and then postponing the calls. Because Swing Left is a grassroots-based organization in the U.S. They have over a million members. They have over 400 groups organizing across all of the states. And their focus has been on getting voters out in support of Democratic candidates from the highest levels, presidential elections, Senate, Congress, all the way down to the state legislature, to move things towards progressive politics. We've been excited to try and get her on the podcast because of what's happening in the U.S. And in fact, I think it worked out the best to have her in the aftermath of the elections because we also wanted to have a kind of a future vision and perspective of where they think they're going and what's happening with politics. The fun thing about this conversation is that Sole is joining me for the duration of the interview with Yasmin Raji. Sole, hi. Hi. Why did you want to be part of this conversation?
Soleh I'm excited to hear from her, like, what have we learned and what are we going to do with what we've learned? And what's actually the vision?
Sanam I think that's a really good point because it's, you know, the question of what have we learned or what they've learned, if you want, in terms of both the bigger picture Democratic Party, but also I think progressive movements around the world is really important. And where do they need to go given this kind of uptick of far-right political forces right now, both in Europe and the U.S.? So, yeah, so it's going to be interesting to hear what Yossi has to say.
Soleh And I'm doubly excited because, of course, she's a close family friend. So it'll be nice even to just have a catch-up and, you know, hear about her two new kids.
Sanam I know. They are three and one. So doing this full-time and having the kids is quite extraordinary. So let's see how she's coping and where she is. Okay, let's get into it. (......)
Yes. Very, very welcome to If You Were In Charge. We're doing a special this time because Sole, who usually joins me afterwards in terms of commentary, is actually joining us for the questions. So she wanted to be part of this whole thing.
Yasmin Radjy It's great to see you both. I just wish that we were together in person. We miss you here in currently very rainy D.C., but it's a pleasure to be here.
Sanam Well, it's very rainy, cold London as well. So it's all the same. Yes, before we start, I just wanted to ask you, first of all, how are you? And have you managed to get some sleep? And how on earth did you manage with both the kids? They're, what, three and one? Almost, yeah.
Yasmin Radjy Reza will be three in March and Roya will be one in February. So time is ticking on by. I hope you all get to see them soon. I'm doing okay. I mean, I think I'm physically fine, spiritually very tired and very ready for the holidays and to really have some time away. Um, I think, um, you know, to state the obvious, um, we knew this was going to be a very close election at every step. We knew in a close election, the odds are high that you don't get everything your way. Um, and I think mentally we're prepared for that. Um, I don't think, uh, it is possible to prepare for just how, uh, much of a gut punch a loss of a federal trifecta is. And then, you know, we have, we had stability at the state level. Uh, we lost some, we gained some, but overall sort of status quo, but a status quo that was not a very favorable environment legislatively anyway for Democrats and progressives. So, um, yeah, you know, I think it's, uh, it's been a, it's been a, a really tough moment. And I, I was just speaking with a colleague, a former colleague of mine, who's been organizing for 30 years in Arizona and something that he said to me, that's really resonated around sort of where we are just in the calendar timeline of the cycle. As he said, your imagination right now is structurally really limited. So I'm actually not that interested in what your ideas are for the path forward. Obviously, I'm very excited to talk about those things, but he, his perspective is, he's like, I'm not that interested because if I ask you the same questions in January, once you've had a few weeks to breathe, your imagination is just going to be sort of more expansive. And so I think that's a very grounding thing of what another colleague has said that to me feels like the wisdom that is anchoring me in a very unstable time is she said, you know, it sounds like you are operating, uh, with clarity, even if there is no certainty in this moment. And so what is clear is the fight has got to continue. Like, it's just, that is crystal, crystal clear what that looks like. You know, I think any of us who is pretending to be crystal clear on that is either lying or trying to sell something. So, uh, so excited to explore that, especially with, uh, you two who I think operate constantly in the complicated, uh, areas of gray in the world as it is, as we try to push toward the world as it should be.
Sanam I'm, you know, as an old person, I, I, I understand the spiritual tiredness very, very well. I'm just like, we're like handing over the generational thing to, to, to the, you know, to the kids. But, but, but, but, you know, when you hear that, so what do you think when, when you hear Yassi saying that?
Soleh I mean, it makes sense. What was it? That there's clarity, but not certainty. The clarity is that there is no certainty, right? Like, I don't know, but, but it's, it's kind of, it's just, I guess the other question is like, where next? (.)
Sanam Where next? Yes. So for me, what's, what's on the one hand, right? I see this issue that all of us, my generation, you know, older generations, we have never been here in terms of the United States being at the brink of de facto authoritarianism that that's, or at least, you know, people talk about the McCarthy era. Maybe, maybe I, maybe that was a moment, but this is very sort of severe. I think, I think, and, and I sometimes worry that, that Americans don't understand what that really looks like, what it means. And this isn't a revolution from the outside, you know, storming the bestie and, and going, it's actually from within. They're going to do it through the laws. We're already seeing the law, you know, to try and sort of get rid of non-profits that might criticize Israel and things like that. So an average, ordinary people might not feel or see any of this until it's too late. How does one raise awareness and mobilize, and what should the public be doing? Last time around when Trump was, was in power, they made, they created so much chaos that the environmental movement, the education movement, the, you know, everybody was, was in their own crisis. Nobody coalesced. And then for four years, we wondered what we were doing and it's happened again. So I'm just, I'm just wondering, like, is this something that you're worried about that? It's not just holding ground, but actually going backwards in a way that we don't necessarily know in America that we don't have the, the, the safeguarding against.
Yasmin Radjy Yeah. I mean, first of all, just to briefly address the attacks on civil society. I think that the way that I've seen coverage of the recent House bill that you're referring to has been through the lens of foreign policy organizations and specifically organizations who've taken a pro ceasefire position, it's a much bigger issue, right? So I think like what is underneath, and it's not just one bill, it is a package of several bills that we expect to pass in the new Congress because the Republicans have, have both chambers and, you know, are doing everything, all of Trump's bidding for him. But it's things like when you have a broad definition of what it means to be involved in terrorist activity that is subjective to, you know, a party that has no interest in anything, but bending the rules in its favor as they've done at the state level, as they've done federally, as they've done at the courts level, A, it can be broadly defined, B, within one of the, the attacks that I think has gotten less attention is organizations that have quote unquote received foreign money are restricted from political activity. So what that means is labor unions, such as the culinary workers, which is one of the biggest power hubs in a state like Nevada, if there is a dishwasher in the Bellagio Hotel, which is, you know, union labor, and that dishwasher is here legally, but is a Mexican national, and so they pay 50 bucks or whatever it is in membership dues to their local, that could count in their definitions as foreign money, meaning that local of the culinary union would be prohibited from political activity. I think it's for seven years. It's some large number of time. So I'm saying that because I think this goes to the broader point of these are really, really smart, scary, targeted attacks that are not just on issues that are peripheral. They are on the core infrastructure that undergirds our institutions and our ability to fight back. And this is not new, right? This has been the Republican playbook for a generation, but it's also been a really effective playbook that has made the rules of engagement really hard for us, right? So, like, a perfect example from this past election, we know that abortion is a winning issue, not just with Democrats, but with Republicans and independents, right? We know that public sentiment is totally on the side of the Democratic Party position on this issue. That is also in red states. We saw that through a lot of the ballot initiatives, etc. Republicans knew once there was a bill, I think it was in 2020, that allowed for formerly incarcerated people to be re-enfranchised as voters. And that passed because it's popular with Republicans and independents also is to give people the ability to vote. The state legislature in Florida changed the rules so that you can't just pass a ballot initiative with 50%. You have to pass a much higher bar of 60%. So what that meant is the state of Florida this year, 54% of voters supported reproductive freedom. That is more voters supporting abortion access in the state of Florida than support Ron DeSantis. It's a higher percentage, but 54% did not reach the threshold of 60%. And I'm saying that because whether we're talking about attacks on civil society, attacks on voting rights, this is the Republican playbook that is not specific to any one legislative session, any one state. It is part of their long game. And I think there are plenty of reasonable disagreements within the Democratic caucus that are areas where we should, you know, hash things out and figure things out. But where we cannot disagree is that what we have to invest in is in the long-term. And if we are not invested in a long-term perspective as a party, as a progressive movement, then we are not playing the same game. We are sort of playing a very, it's like on a mini kid's checkerboard and they're playing chess powered by a computer, right? And so it's just, it's just, it's not just not an even field. It is that we are every year making it more difficult for ourselves and the stakes obviously continue to get higher,
Sanam but the path to victory gets narrower. That's extraordinary because basically, (.) in my work internationally, when I used to work with the UN, the UN would go on and on about the rule of law, right? And I would say, but you don't understand in authoritarian states, they're using the rule of law, but it's the rule of bad law, right? So if the law now says that you have to have 60% or 70%, I mean, they could change it 80%, right? They can, then it's like gerrymandering, which was what they started 40 years ago. This horrible devil in the detail is not getting out into the public sphere at all. At least from, and I'm, you know, I feel like I'm kind of pretty well informed and (..) that's really even more horrifying than, than, than we've kind of understood. So to this date, I think.
Soleh I guess the question though is like, you say that the, the Democrats need to like, the caucus kind of needs to come together to focus on the future. But I feel like one of the main complaints about the election and like the campaign, like Kamala's campaign was that there seemed to be no real platform. I don't think it's always true, but people felt like there wasn't, like they weren't running on any like real issues, like it was abortion and then everything else was kind of like unclear. Seems to be one of the big complaints. Like, so then what, what are the Democrats coming together around or has it not been decided? I don't know. So I think, I think there's
Yasmin Radjy two things here. One is the Democratic Party, I think learned both through the grand shellacking we had in 2010, when Obama was president, he won his trifecta and we just got destroyed down ballot. And 2010, of course, being a really critical year because power was, is what determined how the state laws would be written, right? That was not just a, an electoral loss in the short term. It was an electoral loss that dictated the next decade ahead. And so I think one of our learnings there that we learned even more deeply in 2016 is we can't think cycle to cycle and just say, okay, well, 2010, there's going to be an anti-incumbency thing. We have to think in a decades long mindset. And that is how we then do things like the right has done, which is stack the courts and stack state legislatures in ways that are far out of step. Not, I'm not saying we should go far out of step, but what the right has done because they think generationally, they are thinking about how do you set up a talent recruitment and retention program in law schools so that you have a whole bunch of 20 and 30 somethings that are ready to join lifetime appointments in our federal courts, right? So it's that institutional, long-term structural investment that they are doing that we have gotten better at, right? Like they're, we've done more around redistricting around state legislatures, but the average citizen Democrat, and this gets to the second point underneath your question is most of us just talk about the presidency all the time, all the time. And that is actually, to me, a symptom of the problem. Now we'll get to the party platform questions. I don't want to ignore that, but I think this is an important point underneath it, which is if we are serious as a democratic party about long-term investments, what that means is when a presidential campaign comes to town in a state like a Pennsylvania or a Michigan or a Wisconsin, we ought to have, and in some places we do, in some places we don't, a healthy state party where people are already doing work and have already been talking to voters before we even knew who the candidate would be, right? Before any primary, before everything, you know, hashed out between Joe Biden and Kamala, that should already be happening. There should already be deep knowledge of what is moving and not mooting voters. There should already be outside infrastructure. Organizations like Swing Left, we have a very symbiotic relationship with the party. We are not the democratic party. Our organizations need to be healthy and strong and doing that year-round long-term work because a lot of the volunteers who are active with us aren't going to be the ones who are going and getting active with the democratic party in those battleground states. They are active through us and then we hand them off later in the cycle. And so our organizations need to be stable and strong and successful on a year-round long-term basis. That's also, that's everything from on college campuses. There need to be ways for people want to participate to be able, I mean, it's just, it's at every level, right? If all of that is healthy, then a presidential campaign should be a moment where all of that, we call it the sort of like hockey stick, which is basically like a sharp exponential curve of all of a sudden the people who don't volunteer year-round join and the messaging that is already happening then goes in supercharges and the digital ads all of a sudden get a big infusion of money and so on and so forth. And if we do that right, it creates some space for presidential campaigns to be able to make the mistakes that are inevitable in every campaign. I worked on the Obama campaign. We made a lot of mistakes. Like campaigns are not perfect, but when we win, we forget all the mistakes that we made. And when we lose, we often sort of forget some of the things that we did well. So I think that is like, to me, that is the solution of let's not wait for a candidate to come in on a white horse and save the day. Let's build the power that we need to so that some great candidates and some mediocre candidates and some in between, some candidates that are, we don't particularly like, still can get the job done and get across the finish line. Because ultimately, even the Democrats who inspire me the least are significantly better than any Republican in the entire Republican caucus because of how extreme the Republican caucus has gotten. And now one day, maybe that will change and we will return to times where there's more diversity, but that's just not the world that we're in right now. Then I think the final point just on on the issues, our volunteers started knocking on doors, making calls, communicating with voters, starting a year and a half before the election. So they were out in the, you know, wintry cold, before we even knew who won some state primaries and so on and so forth. From the very beginning of that work, all the way through election day, when we do surveys of what are the issues coming up with voters, the two issues that voters talked about in every single phone bank, canvas, community conversation, were abortion in the economy. So I'm saying that to say, I think it is the most important thing for every candidate. And we as an organization are not pushing them in any direction on the issues left, right, center, sideways. We are saying, you've got to listen to what voters care about and you have to communicate to them. And we're going to make sure you have the volunteer army and the money to do that so that you can win and get across the finish line. I think the daylight between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden before her and Donald Trump on those two issues was crystal clear, especially on abortion. The economy was more complicated and happy to get into that. Economy was more complicated also because I think we started from a major messaging deficit. And what we'd hear from volunteers over and over is when they talk to even voters who were on their little walk sheets as this is a Republican voter age 60, those voters were really open to our message on abortion. When Joe Biden was top of the ticket, when Kamala was top of the ticket, when we were just talking about down ballot on the economy, they really, it was hard.
Soleh My question then, like kind of going back to what you were saying about like building this, like the atmosphere, like even outside of election cycles and, and that kind of thing, and then ramping it up is then about like this non mainstream, like the outside of mainstream media thing that's happening that I guess the Republicans are doing really well. Like with, you know, I mean, Joe Rogan and whatever that everyone was like, oh, she should have gone on Joe Rogan, which like probably would not have made the difference. Right. But those kinds of things, the Republicans have been really good at using and recruiting. Yeah. I mean, I haven't really phrased that as a question, but it's just kind of like, what do you think about that?
Sanam You know, one of the things that as I watch it and I see, I look at it globally, right? Back in 2012, I was in Turkey with my colleagues from around the Middle East. And what I saw was the rise of identity based extremism, weaponization of singular identity. Now, in that context, it was jihadis using Islam. But what's interesting was that the tactics were micro targeting and then being locally rooted. So it was these trust networks. When you ask people, where are you getting your information? How are people getting radicalized or into these movements? It was through their, through their mosques basically, but through family connections, through their buddies, through their peers. For the first time, we were seeing that young men weren't necessarily getting a lot of their influence from older men, which, which was historically the way men came into sort of manhood, if you want. But they were behaving along peer lines, right? So we, I was seeing this around, around the world, around the world. But again, looking at it from what is this sort of supranational, transnational thing that's coming around identity. When we then put that framework and those strategies, and we looked at white supremacy in the US, it was the same thing. It's micro targeting. It's very gendered. It's very much about macho men and women have a specific role and anti-LGBTQI and all the rest of it. And then we started seeing that this movement isn't just in the US, it's their connecting to the white supremacists in Europe. And, and Steve Bannon says this, right? And, and then the time that I spent in Germany, the last six months at the beginning of this year, when I was looking at these issues in Germany, which is, of course, also having problems, was that the AFD had a vision platform. 20 project 25 comes out 2025 comes out. And the progressives in Germany, the progressives in England, the Democrats in the US, the vision is lacking. We don't like the vision of the other side, but they're actually tapping into a lot of genuine grievances, like you're saying about the economy or, you know, in Germany, it was about government administration stuff. But then it's sandwiched between the really awful stuff as well, right? But these guys have, they have a global strategy. And this is what's missing. I mean, it's the vision, the strategy of being embedded in the communities, all of these things. It's a lot of work that needs to be done, but the vision is missing. Do you feel that as well?
Yasmin Radjy I have a few conflicting thoughts on this. I think to start with, and this goes back to, to Soleh, one of your points, I've long believed, and this is not an original framing by me, um, but that the biggest divide in the United States is not a red blue divide. It is between the people who pay attention to politics and the people who don't, right? The classic we all know in DC, people who are political animals, we may be advocating for different policies, but we are breathing the same air. We operate the same way. And I think to Soleh, to your kind of initial point on media, I think that if we believe that we should communicate with full-time political professionals who live in Washington, DC, or media professionals who live in New York City and San Francisco and LA, the same way that we talk to the people who tune into politics for 10 minutes a year, then we are kidding ourselves, right? And so I think the answer is a complicated one, right? But I think the principle, the core principle of organizing is you meet people where they are, whether that is in my, you know, first organizing job on the Obama campaign that is spending a lot of time at barbershops, right? Or if that is you are gathering in the places where they listen, where they gather, whether that's on their Instagram or TikTok feed, whether that's on, you know, podcasts. And most people do not listen. I got my, you know, Spotify wrapped, and it's like, you are in the top 0.01% of political podcast listeners, right? So we should not try to target the podcast that I spend all my time listening to, that the average voter is not listening to, because I've never even heard, like, I hadn't even heard of Yellowstone when I read that that was, you know, the number one show in the US, head and shoulders about everything else, because I don't have the same taste as the average American. So it's sort of like, we should not operate in a world where we are talking to our own tastes and our own preferences, good organizing. And this is why that long-term work is not just on the structures, but on the process. Good organizing means deeply listening to people who have idiosyncratic, inconvenient, and often surprising perspectives. And really good organizing means not sort of just talking at and communicating at, but getting that feedback loop. And again, that there's a lot of mediums for that, that can be face-to-face, that can be online, that could be in media, but that, that I think is a real, is really, really important for us. But then I think there's this other piece that you're, that you're getting at, which is on trend lines that are so much bigger than an election and that are bigger than the United States. And I think one of the political scientists that I found to be the most kind of grounding in this moment where we have so few answers to some very, very big fundamental questions. His name is, uh, Scourneck, I forget his first name, wrote a book about what he calls the transformer presidencies. And basically the premise is throughout history, you have a lot of presidents, right? But there are a few who, who come in at a moment where they completely transform from a economic and a foreign policy and culture perspective, what the next generation or more is going to be like. And so he, uh, spotlights FDR as the beginning of big government investment, both in terms of the role of government intervening abroad and also in the role of government domestically. And then Ronald Reagan being the other of sort of the neoliberal approach, again, both in foreign policy and also in terms of our economic and domestic life and the role of government. You know, and then you have things like, like Eisenhower is much closer to FDR than he is to Ronald Reagan, even though he was a Republican. So this, this goes across party lines and this, this is global. This is not just, he's focused on the United States, but you, we of course see these trend lines in authoritarian and democratic leaders all across the world. And so he concludes his book with a open question. And this is, I think he wrote it in maybe 2009 or published it first in 2009, but an open question of is Obama going to be a transformer president or is he going to be a continuation of the Reagan arc? And I think the answer is really clear. He was the end of the Reagan arc. And I remember thinking back in 2016 with a sort of wonder of, well, maybe it's possible that Obama was the beginning, but kind of a soft beginning of an arc. And I think we've, the answer is now settled, right? Trump is the transformer president that is changing the arc of what the next generation is going to be. And that is, for lack of a better word, a very populist arc. And populism is not a four-letter word. It is, there is tremendous richness and really tremendous policy that can come with a populist approach. And there is authoritarian, corporatist policies, as we see in both Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and, you know, the authoritarians abroad that he spends, uh, sort of an alarming amount of his intellectual or intellectual is not the right word, his brain time, uh, on, but yeah.
Sanam That's such a good framing because in the years that I lived in the United States, which is from 2001 to 2023, I was like, oh, the Republicans go, go right. And the Democrats follow. And then, you know, Bush goes right. Obama follows. And, and, and then the Trump comes along and Biden falls. I mean, it's, it's, it's an extraordinary thing to see and to see how the Democratic Party, especially in the last, this, this last round, what they did in Afghanistan, what they've done on Gaza, what they're doing. I mean, how could Biden's administration be the one that's up turning and, and destroying so much of the international, uh, order of, you know, of international law, right? I mean, it just, or the, or how is it that the Democrats have become the parties of war, but they have, it's just, you know, Obama started wars. These guys have started wars. It's, it's kind of crazy to see. So I think that you're right. It is about the transformer element of this. Um, the question I have, and, and this is the, you know, at the heart of what all this conversation is, is that you're really at the front lines. I mean, you're at the sharp, sharp tipping point of what's happening on the ground, but connecting back to the big, big political picture. And at this point, I know you're tired and, and, and it's, it's been a rough ride, but if you were in charge, I mean, if they came to you and they said, help us figure it out, this is what we have to start doing tomorrow. Basically.
Yasmin Radjy I love that question. One just point in reaction to the conclusion of the, of, of what we're just talking about that I think is important is I do think just for, I think it's important to hold on some, to some optimistic nuggets. The beginning of this arc, which I think Trump is the presidential transformer, unfortunately that he is. When we think back to Occupy Wall Street and what the narratives were at Occupy Wall Street and how fringe that movement felt. And then we think about how close Bernie Sanders came to the presidency. And we think about the fact that AOC is, you know, potentially, uh, going to be running the oversight committee. I mean, and then we think about Trump who, when he first ran, it was like a joke. I remember laughing during the first debate and finding it comedic, right? Like, I do think that's important to say in terms of, it is not that we are in an authoritarian arc. Now we might be, I don't know, we're in the eye of history, so it's impossible to know. We are in a populist arc. And so I think that is something that the good, the bad and the ugly is the wave that we are on. That's why we're seeing these tremendous anti-incumbent movements to the left and to the right in every, uh, industrialized election that has had, uh, an industrialized country that's had an election since inflation followed COVID. But I think that's important. And I think it's important to say, like, we are not in the beginning of a generation of doom. We are in the beginning of a generation of transformation and whether it continues on a doom arc, uh, I think is actually something that we have a lot of agency in and transforming things in a way where things that would not have been possible during that Reagan arc that might be possible, uh, under this, whether we want to call it a Trump arc or a populist arc, like it's just, we're in a different moment. And so we have to think big and imaginatively, and we cannot be in a rinse and repeat moment. And so that, I think that's a segue to your question, um, which is, I think that the most important thing that the Democratic Party needs to do is invest in the long-term. And I know I said that already, but I, I think that that is, that is the answer to every piece of what we need to fix. If we are not invested in the long-term, we will not be set up from an infrastructure perspective to do the deep listening, relationship building, connective tissue, trust building with voters, because we will be in a state for two months, three months, four months, and then we will leave, right? The infrastructure will be gone. We will not have the, the incentives, uh, to actually go and sit down with people who have opinions that don't pull very clearly and who don't show up in a focus focus group and try to understand what's beneath their sentiments of, to me, uh, sort of a great example of this is I think we've misunderstood parental anxieties following COVID, right? With teen mental health being the second biggest public health crisis in the United States after loneliness. If you just take what parents say about schooling, you hear a lot of dog whistles, right? You hear about sort of anxieties about trans kids and your anxieties about, you know, DEI curriculum. And if you just take that because you're in a short-term mindset in an election cycle and say, okay, so how do we message on DEI and trans, uh, you know, inclusion, you're not actually doing that deep listening work to see what parents are really anxious about is a moment of uncertainty with their kids having had tremendous learning loss, being really, really worried about their future, an economy that does not have a lot of opportunity, housing that is tremendously expensive, all of these things. And if we do that long-term work, which includes organizing, it also includes doing the work to meet people where they are in media, online, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, then you can get underneath that anxiety and actually talk to parents in a non-dog whistle way where we're not just in reaction to the dog whistles that Republicans have. And I think that's important. And that is what Republicans do really well. I think Republicans really understand the problems that people are facing and the anxieties that they face. And then their solutions are either very dangerous or batshit crazy. I don't know if I'm allowed to cuss on this podcast or are crazy. Uh, you can cut that one out if you want to. Um, but they, but voters, and this is what we saw in this election, but it's not new. Voters think that they're listening to them because they are at least acknowledging the anxieties underneath them. And that is because they are listening in congregations. They are listening in neighborhoods. They are listening on podcasts. They're listening door to door when they are doing, you know, religious conversion conversations. They are also listening.
Soleh My question there as like, I mean, this is kind of a devil's advocate, like cynical question. (.) Maybe it's like for people who have like lost faith in the Democratic Party because they're not able to do this. Like what's, what's the argument for saying that the, like, if you're saying building, you know, from the ground up, like get catching people in law school to build them up and do whatever. And, you know, kind of organizing long-term, like why should people have faith that the Democratic Party is like the right organization, like to actually do this when they haven't shown that like they will. As opposed to a, I don't know, as opposed to, I don't know, something, something else.
Sanam Yeah, something new, something different.
Yasmin Radjy So to be really clear, I think that that long-term work should not and cannot exclusively live within the big D Democratic Party. But I think the Democratic Party needs to take that approach. And I think that in a really healthy democracy, for some people, what that investment in long-term power building looks like is through their labor union. For others, it is through their school or their community group. For others, it is through their progressive congregation or not progressive congregation. Those fundamentals of the kind of mores and habits of public life is not to get too, you know, cerebral, but like when de Tocqueville looked at what made American democracy so unique, it was that we had these habits of public life that were profoundly unglamorous, but we were all doing them through neighborhood groups and churches and so on and so forth. And I think right now we have such a fracturing of institutions that none of our institutions is thinking long-term. And so, you know, I think plenty of folks shouldn't do that work through the Democratic Party. They should do it through something else. And that might even be a nonpolitical institution, but the Democratic Party itself also needs to do that. And so I think swing left, we're in this sort of strange position of we are not the Democratic Party. Our very existence is a critique of the Democratic Party because our organization shouldn't exist, right? This should be a part of the way the party operates anyway. But what our work also entails is a profound evangelization of the Democratic Party. There's a dialectic in sort of our very identity. And I think that in a healthy democracy, a lot of those organizations that if they take the long-term approach and they do that deep listening and they do that work, then they can decide in that short window of the binary of who's on the ballot, how do they then use that power and that infrastructure to get that person elected or not? Just from, like, even a crass risk management perspective, I don't believe it is ever the right thing to invest in just one institution. And that, again, if I did, swing left wouldn't exist because I think it's a healthy ecosystem is that. It's an ecosystem with symbiotic and interdependent tendencies, a lot of different entities.
Sanam But, and I think, I think, I think this, what you're saying about these institutions, that's exactly what I've seen also around the world, but it's, it's what you trust. You know, you trust your church, you trust your, whatever, civic union, you trust your, your, your, your, it's the people and the entities that are authentic to you and they're part of your life as opposed to swooping in, swooping out. And certainly not just your politician, right? It's totally the source of information has to come, the message and the messenger matter. That this is, this is, that, that, that, that, that's a, that's a really key element in this. But to me, what, what's striking also is that they've lost the capacity to imagine and, and envision the future, right? So it seems as if we're going from the far right and then the far left, taking diversity in our societies and take, making that into differences, you know, diversity, and then differences into divisions, as opposed to somebody coming and saying, actually, our diversity should be framed around our similarities as human beings. And then our similarity should be a social cohesion of the richness that comes with this diversity. But nobody seems to be, nobody seems to have the courage to say that publicly right now, even though our lives on a daily basis, our children are the, you walk down the street, the food we eat, the, you know, where, where our products come from, it's, it's inherent to everything that we're doing, but no one's willing to stand up and come up with an alternative positive vision, right? You can be angry up to a point, but, but you need to be for something. And we, again, we've seen that with, you know, in the aftermath of revolutions and things
Yasmin Radjy like that. It's, I, yeah, I think here I disagree. And I think, and what I mean by that is I think Democrats are for a lot. I think we sometimes don't know how to communicate about it. And so what I mean by that is for the very first time in my professional career, I joined an administration, not for a long period of time, but I joined the Biden administration for a period. And the reason for that was because I felt like there was a real imagination in the scaled role of government that I had not seen in my lifetime from any president. And that is policy. So I worked on the American rescue plan in sort of how do we figure out how to talk about this huge transformative policy that I know the Obama years had some investments like TARP, nothing on the scale and of the level of imagination of the American rescue plan in terms of big role of big government in helping people work through an emergency. And similarly with the inflation reduction act. And what I saw was we passed all these great things. And I think Ezra Klein has a great recent piece on this where he articulates this point far better than I do. But part of our challenge is, even when we do have the imagination, and even when we do accomplish things, there is a disconnect in how do we make those accomplishments understood and materially impactful quickly in people's lives. And so Ezra Klein talks about how when, you know, at the turn of the century, very serious investments in train lines and in, you know, passenger trains took two years only for those trains to exist and for people to see them in their communities and feel the role of what imagination and government could look like. Plenty of places have passed high-speed rail, and it's going to take 20 years more in some places for people to even see the beginning of tracks, right? I think that there are some, some visionary leaders at the local and state level who have really robust imagination for a housing first policy. And people are paying rent and mortgages up the wazoo because those houses haven't been built. Those policies, even when passed, take forever to get passed. So I actually think the issue is not lack of policy imagination. I think I was surprised at how much more like even I joke often that um, I worked quite a bit with, um, a lot of the folks in the, I was at the treasury department. So a lot of folks on the tax team and, uh, and in the IRS. And I was blown away by how big a lot of these policy wonks think about the possible role of government and how, how much imagination they had, even in these like deeply nerdy wonky roles. But, um, number one, a lot of those, a lot of those accomplishments were held up in the States because we don't have power in the States. And number two, we have not figured out, and I'm a part of this, right? I was working on American rescue plan implementation and communication. We did not break through. And the other piece is Republicans take credit for the work that we did. So one of the moments that was the most frustrating for me was the governor of Montana put up a picture of a bunch of farmers holding up a check and said, Joe Biden doesn't believe in investing in, uh, rural America. Uh, whereas I have invested, however, you know, tens of millions of dollars in the future of farming in Montana. And the check that those farmers in that social media post were holding said in the corner, American rescue plan. So I think part of, part of what I'm getting at here is I think there is on the political side, I'm with you on lack of imagination. I think we need to think much more big and bold about what we need to transform on the policy side. Um, I think part of our issue is we get like caught up in our, in our heads and don't know how to get the public to make the connection between where there are ideas and imagination and even past policies and how those things materially can transform their lives so that we can have bigger majorities to get even bigger things done.
Sanam That's yeah. And, and, and the media, does it help or does it make life more difficult for you in terms
Yasmin Radjy of? I mean, I think our, our entire media system is in a moment also of transformation. Um, and so, you know, I think part of the issue is, um, this returns to something that we're talking about earlier of if the means by which we are trying to communicate these big policies are cable news, which people do not, the average person does not watch. I think solo watches at 24 seven, don't you? So
Sanam it's your generation is spot on on the MSNBC. I don't own a TV. So for sure. You know, I think like,
Yasmin Radjy I spent a lot of time thinking about how we as an organization at Swing Left communicate on cable news because the people we're trying to reach are potential volunteers and potential donors who do watch that who are like me and, and listen to political podcasts and think about this stuff all the time. But for voters, one of the questions we thought about a lot when I was, you know, thinking about these from a government perspective was what are, who are the influencers and the podcasts and the whatever is, but not all those folks want to go and, and interview a treasury secretary on a culture podcast. Right? So it's like, it's part of the challenges. How do you do this in ways that I think sometimes we kind of try to dumb things down and we're like, well, if we can get a celebrity to talk about this thing, then, you know, make it cool. But it's actually not about dumbing things down. It's about creating connective tissue in the mediums and in the ways that people communicate, not just showing up and doing like a nerdy policy brief on a fashion podcast. Right. I don't think anyone is kidding themselves and thinking that's the right
Sanam approach. It's interesting because when I started this podcast and we were thinking about it and thinking about it with Solen and the producer and every, and everybody, it was, I kept saying, you know, these problems, there are real people at the front lines are trying to solve the problems. And it would be really nice to know who they are and what they do and, and how, how are they thinking about it? Because the pundits only tell us about the problem, right? They don't, they make us just depressed and pessimistic and think that there's nothing else, but no one's actually, we don't have the platforms to say, yes, I can, you can do something. I'm doing something and, and, and give that kind of side of the imagination. So two last questions. If you had a billion dollars, what would you do?
Yasmin Radjy Oh my goodness. What I would give to have a billion dollars. Um, so what I would want to do is just like, um, folks on the right, my mom used to make fun of me. She'd be like, who are your, who are the people you most want to emulate their careers and look up to? And I would always answer with like the biggest cast of goblin, horrible creatures on the other side, because I think they get it right more often. I was like Karl Rove, right? Like the man has thought generationally in terms of his impact. Um, obviously to do that in a, in a way that brings light, not darkness to our country, but yeah, I'd use a billion dollars to create talent pipelines, uh, for candidates, uh, talent pipelines for volunteers, for grassroots donors to invest a lot of, I mean, you know this because you've been in this, uh, this work on the global front, but the best work is not always the funded work. Some really terrible work is really good at marketing itself. So I would, uh, I would do work to invest in the people, the organizations, um, the leaders that are thinking long-term and who have, I think the curiosity to, and the, and the courage to be wrong. Like, I think that's another part of the incentive structure of no one wants to say my organization or my leadership made a mistake that I want to do differently next time, because they're so terrified about funding their organization or their effort or their campaign or their whatever. And so if I had a billion dollars, um, I would want to create an incentive structure for part of the success of an organization or a campaign would be the autopsy afterwards, win or lose about what failures they had so that we communicate those transparently across the ecosystem and help a full ecosystem get better and learn and have that curiosity rather
Sanam than just sort of a defensiveness. That's great. And actually, I mean, the question of giving the support so that the candidates don't have to think on two-year terms also means that it pushes back the influence of big pharma and APAC and the arms industry and all the bad decisions that they end up making, even if they're good people when they first come into, into power, right? Completely. And one,
Yasmin Radjy one example of this on the positive side in terms of, you know, at Swing Left, this cycle raised 25 million dollars for candidates, for committees, for organizing, et cetera. What that means, those are big numbers. If a candidate knows they knew that they could count on money that they didn't ask for, they didn't have to call anyone fancy, they didn't have to take a position on any issue, they could count on grassroots folks investing in their district, often three, four hundred thousand dollars coming into their district through small dollar gifts at the moments that mattered the most. That was money that they then could cancel a fundraising trip, they could cancel call time for a few hours, and everything is, there's opportunity cost to everything, right? And so they would then use that time to be in their district and go do a town hall, go to the opening of a small business, to go talk to people. And so what one of our candidates told me that I found both really moving and really motivating in reminding folks around their agency is he said, I've become much more attuned to my district because organizations like yours have given me the gift of time through those small dollar contributions. And so, of course, big picture, uh, there are sort of giant sweeping changes we need to make to our campaign finance system that is ultimately, uh, profoundly broken. But in the world as it is right now, um, the more that we are creating power of the many, one of our candidates this, this cycle said, um, when you're up against powers like Elon Musk, who we all know invested more than any individual ever has in our politics. He said, uh, you need to have, uh, a really, really strong cavalry and your volunteers and donors were one hell of a cavalry. And that's, I think the, the more that we can, um, um, instill in folks and solely to your point, both through the democratic party and outside the democratic party, both with the sense of agency and the imagination of being able to transform and build that power. Then we will have the majorities that we need to do some of that big structural change that ultimately we need to do. Uh, but it might, it's going to take us a while.
Sanam Let's hope that somebody out there who has a few billion to spare, maybe one, we'll, we'll give it. They, there are plenty of them. I mean, there are, there are many of them. We'll just take one.
Soleh I mean, even half would be fine.
Sanam Even, even half, but, but, but I think we should aim higher. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, yes. One last final question. Um, what gives you hope?
Yasmin Radjy Oh, so actually a lot. I think I'll give two, two on my very long list. One is, um, I was really nervous after the election about how our volunteers, um, would feel, right. For obvious reasons of, uh, they worked so hard at one of our volunteers posted a picture of her sneakers and there was no rubber left on the bottom of her sneakers. Cause she'd knocked on so many doors over this election cycle every single weekend for a year and a half.
Sanam How many, how many volunteers did you end up getting? Like, was it, was it a big upswing?
Yasmin Radjy It was. Yeah. Um, we have 75,000 active volunteers who did a thing this cycle. And then we have 1 million members. So those are people who may have just sort of opened emails. Some may have done a thing, some may have donated, et cetera. So it's a, it's a really sizable, uh, community. And you know, these are people who ended up knocking millions of doors, making millions of phone calls, folks like that I was really worried they were going to say, you know, enough is enough. And folks like her have been doing this works day in and day out since 2017. And we did a call with 2000 of those folks of our real super volunteers, um, like a week and a half after the election. And to a person, everyone was like, I need a little bit of a break for Thanksgiving and maybe for Christmas. And then I'm back. We got to figure out how to do this better next time. And we're in. Um, so that gives me a lot of hope. And then I think the other thing that gives me hope is when things are really shattered, then there is no choice, but to completely reimagine what you're trying to build. People are going to die because of what happened in this election. Um, people are going to lose their families. They're going to be deported. So this is not to make light of any of that. But I do think with so much that we need to rebuild, there is no longer a question of we've got to go to the root of the issues and, and rebuild from there. You know, it gives me a lot of hope that we are no longer in a mindset and an imagination that is about surface level tweaks. But, um, what, what are the root issues that we want to call, uh, that we want to fix and how do we fix them? And those are the right questions for us to be asking. And I think we have an opportunity, um, and some real space to do that. And that makes me, again, feel tremendous clarity, even if I have no certainty about what that's going to look like, uh, in the long road ahead.
Sanam That's pretty phenomenal. And, um, so any, any last thoughts, words that you wanted to share with us or wisdoms that you want to, you know, convey from your generation in terms of.
Soleh No, I think it was, I mean, it's, I feel like it's very easy to be really pessimistic and like, there's so many people who just kind of, all they can do is point out what went wrong. And I think, yeah, it was really great to hear some more optimistic or at least like forward-looking ideas and motivation to keep going. So, yeah. (..)
Yasmin Radjy I'll say I have one more point that you just reminded me of, Soleh. We did lose the house, but we lost it by about 7,000 votes. Uh, I forget the exact number, but it's just over 7,000 votes. And this will be the tightest house margin in a hundred years. Uh, so we have the opportunity to win that back in 2026, even if we can't win the Senate until 2028. Um, and obviously the presidency and the, the thing that gives me hope there that I think is really important, just on like, let's hope, let's remember the wins. We won house races. We had no business winning. So we all, we, you know, we all, I think know the math by now, the presidential map, California and New York both tilted to the right by 12 points, which is just a mortifying state for my home state of California. We won seven out of the nine competitive congressional races in those. A couple of those came down. One came down to just over 200 votes. One came down to just over 600 votes. And that is because people did a ton of grassroots work for a year and a half, in some cases for two years, um, even before we knew who the candidates were. So that actually gives me tremendous hope of it's not sort of a theory of, can we hold back these tides? I mean, 12 points in these states is no joke. And, and we really, really were successful. And so, yeah, so we just have to, we have to figure out and learn, do much more learning of how do we do that and how do we do more of it? Um, but we're going to win back the house in 2026 if we start early.
Sanam And here's my last thought. Um, I hate giving money for elections and can't, because I'm like, you get my vote anyway, you know, why, why do I have to give you money? That said, your point right now about the fact that you need, you need basically a fund to be able to give them the resources so that they're not at the call and the, you know, the, the apron strings of, of the big donors and so, and so forth. That fund, I think, is a really important initiative to start. And just, you know, it's Christmas. Let's not go buy stuff. Let's put it for good causes. I'm, I'm even, I'm like, I should be saying, give the money for, for my peace builders and my Syrian partners and, and our folks in Palestine, which, which by the way, you know, people should. So if you want to give money for, for peace builders in the world, I can.org, we are also a non-profit. Um, but, but, but I think in the U S I think that would be an incredible initiative because it just, it's the power of the little, little people, right. But over the long term and, and I would love to think that big pharma and APAC and the arms industry and the NRA don't have
Soleh the year. But stop the fundraising tech. Every time I put my American SIM card back in, it says, hey, it's Kamala, please. I'm like, well, let me, we're both in luck because we've got something
Yasmin Radjy for both of you for the Christmas season. Um, in all seriousness, um, one of the things that we aim to solve for at Swing Left is that people who want to contribute to candidates, but aren't sure which candidates need the support they can go once we don't have our candidates yet for next year, but they can go to swing left.org throughout an election cycle. And through a donation, we will tell them these are the highest impact, highest ROI races. The money goes directly to those races. And Sully for you, one of our commitments is no spam. So we do not, the hope is folks can feel a comfort in unsubscribing from all of that because it is, it's not just ineffective. Although you know, the people who run those, they say, well, people give, and then here's the data for it, but it's ineffective for the longterm, right? You can raise a lot of money for someone's campaign in a six month period or whatever, but then they never want to listen to again. And they feel like they've been treated like an ATM machine. So it's very core to our mission is how do we allow people the opportunity to give to candidates in a way that does not feel transactional, feels high information, and is not the only way that we communicate with them. And then let them know, you know, this is what your contribution led to. And to your point, what the aggregate was of together, we raised $400,000 for a race that won by 600 something votes, right? Like that is a big deal. And $400,000 from one unit of people of, in our case of grassroots leaders is much bigger than what a lot of those big corporate entities end up raising. So it really does change the power
Sanam dynamic in a way that matters. The other thing I would suggest, which I really hated, was I would get, you know, you can pay $1,000 and come to a drinks party where, you know, you can be in the third room and maybe see the candidates head. And my response was, you know what, all of my friends are skeptical about this election. I'm happy to give a free drinks party or dinner or whatever for your candidate to come and actually hear the people that are going to be the naysayers. So flipping it, flipping it, come and listen to us. You know, don't shut us out. Come and listen to what, you know, those of us who should be voting for the Democratic Party, but, you know, have been doing it without holding our noses the last few times are doing. But, yeah, just flipping. We're willing to host you. We're willing to have you there and listen to what we're saying. So, anyway, things like that. We're with you. We are with you, I think. Aren't we, Sos? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. That was really enthusiastic. This is, it's been a whole season of this, of this, of occasionally Sola just like, you know, making fun of me for trying to sound enthusiastic.
Yasmin Radjy I'm now, uh, I'm looking into my future and I'm just like, uh, currently my daughter, um, thinks I'm a goddess because all she cares about is food. And so if I hand her like a piece of raw turkey, she thinks I'm the most incredible human on the earth, but what a future I have ahead of me. (..)
Sanam Okay. So on that note, I'm gonna say thank you to Yasmin Raji, senior of Swing Left, and to Sola for being with me tonight. Um, this is the final of our first, uh, season. Hopefully, we'll be back with the second season. So, um, so thank you, Yas, for taking us to the end of the year. And, and actually, I think this was probably the best time to have brought you on. We were, we were trying to schedule it, um, before the elections, just after the elections, but I think this is a perfect way to take us through the holiday season and, uh, and hopefully we'll be back and, yes, share it widely with your friends and family and, uh, like us and share us and, and, you know, will us to be back for a second season. //S02: Yes.// It's been a lot of fun and I hope you've enjoyed it.
Yasmin Radjy Yes. Enjoyed it so much. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for a great conversation. And also, thanks for your patience of the endless election cycle. I think our last race was called a week and a half ago, Adam Gray in California 13. And so it is such a relief to be done with the 2024 election. And what a great way to end this election cycle then, uh, on this podcast. So thank you both. Wishing you happy holidays and hope to be back in 2025. Big, big hug and enjoy the kids. Yeah. Bye. Love you.
Sanam Thank you. Bye. Bye. (13 seconds pause)
Soleh Okay. Yeah. That was a great conversation with Yossi. What were your main takeaways for me?
Sanam I thought she made some great points about the sort of the big wave of politics, like the transformational nature of some of these political figures, you know, Trump being one of them, transformation, good or bad, but kind of linking it back to, you know, what Reagan did and then, and then, you know, going backwards in terms of, of the sort of the waves of just ideologies and approaches and even personality traits or characters that we want in, in, you know, in leadership, just sort of framing it like that, I thought was quite interesting at the beginning of the conversation.
Soleh The idea of these transformative presidents and how everything becomes clearer as we go forward, which presidents are these transformative figures, but it was also nice. I liked how she framed it as it's not that he only has to be transformative for bad. Like she called him, you know, populist rather than fascist. So it's, there's still kind of a chance to turn it around in a way,
Sanam I guess, you know, the depressing part for me is that it's really hard to find the populists, if you want, with the progressive values that are either winning or have traction. I mean, you know, you, they exist, they're there, Bernie Sanders and others are there, but it just feels like they're on the back foot right now. I don't know, maybe I'm, maybe I'm just feeling cynical right now.
Soleh But I think particularly in the U.S. with the two party system, and then with this, like the organization that is the Democratic Party, you then, it just makes it extra difficult for candidates like Bernie Sanders, AOC, or people who might be, you know, further left or like them, who we don't know about at all, to actually break through because you have such like an entrenched (..) institution that is trying to like keep things basically just left of the Republican Party, right? Like that's, that's almost just what they're trying to do.
Sanam Exactly. And it's, you know, when we say left of the Republican Party, or if, again, even if you bring it to the, to the UK and you say left of the Tory party, they are so far, the Tory party or the Republican Party went so far right that the Democrats are now, you know, they're not even center right, they're center right, right? It's sort of, you know, it's, it's with each, you know, Obama brought it for the right, you know, Clinton started it, Clinton sort of brought it more to the right, and then Obama did it. And I feel like there's a lack of confidence and a lack of vision and conviction about what they should stand for, even though, again, as Yossi said,
Soleh As she kind of talked about too, it's what a lot of people say is that, you know, like progressive (..) policies are very popular. It's like about the framing. And there's this kind of of focus often on these like smaller issues, like even she brought up the, the, the trans rights thing and how that is basically just like a dog whistle that is used, you know, to scare parents and, and that kind of thing. So it's this kind of, it's the framing of it. And how, how do you put together an actual message and platform that will attract people without kind of getting stuck in these various traps, basically, that the democratic party seems to be constantly
Sanam digging themselves into these holes? You know, she talks about the Biden administration and how they started the rescue plan and, you know, going out and giving, you know, people resources or, you know, trying to do some sort of, you know, big infrastructure type projects. Right. And, but at the same time saying that, you know, when it was during the 1930s with a new deal, within two years, people could see the train tracks being built and the, and the speed rails or whatever coming along. Now they make the commitments, but it's 20 years before anything is built. So that was an interesting point for me. And one of the things that struck me is that in a way, the assumption that the progressive left or democratic parties or, you know, labor party, et cetera, um, have to be big government is also something they need to rethink, because I don't think it necessarily about being a big government and throwing money out, um, you know, public money out everywhere. I think it's about understanding what it is, what kind of society we want to build first. Like, you know, this, this disparity of wealth that in the first episode, I talked to Abby Disney about, you know, you can't, you can't just have a welfare state to try and compensate for that disparity of wealth. You need to have another much more holistic vision. And I, and I'm not sure they
Soleh have, they've come up with that yet. Right. I think that also goes back to her point about not thinking just in the single election cycle, but like building, you know, steadily like state legislatures, um, and local legislatures and, you know, governors and mayors and, um, representatives and all this kind of stuff, uh, over time building, uh, systems to keep the democratic party in power. So they actually can like make these changes, um, and probably pull things back to the left and show that like these policies do actually work. It was almost sometimes funny how it seems like it's like learning from the Republican playbook because they've just like infiltrated into these institutions and put their people in at every level. It's like using that same strategy, but like, I mean, let's say for good, like for the left seems to be basically what they're aiming
Sanam for. Right. And, and in the U S you see this, right. That, you know, in places where we're talking about conservative Christian evangelicals, the story of abortion has been a 50 year battle, right? You know, they call them baby killers and all that kind of stuff. And they've gone through the churches and they've done that. And it's just building these really strong foundations. Um, and, and it almost as if kind of, you know, we, what I would call micro targeting and then bringing it up to the, to the higher kind of national level. And now it's actually international because the kind of the move of far right, you know, often dominated with white supremacy is, you know, you see it in Europe, you see it in Germany and stuff. And these guys are all connected with each other. And, uh, the progressives just seem completely either floating at the top somewhere on, on unrooted, if you want, or as you say, unable to, to articulate their messages and, and build that trusted kind of fabric and support from the public. Right. Yeah. Then the other thing that really, uh, I found alarming and, um, you know, it's, it's made me really think about what we need to do as I can and other organizations like ours is the whole question of this, uh, the law that is being, that's gone through Congress. And then it's, as she was saying, it's going to get through the Senate around nonprofit organizations, whether you're a, whether you're a human rights organization or trade union or, um, you know, peacebuilding organization or even media. If you're perceived to critique Israel, you're going to be labeled as sponsoring terrorism. If you're perceived to be getting foreign funding, like she was saying about the trade union, you know, in Nevada, uh, you could get shut down. That's kind of the playbook of every authoritarian regime around the world. You know, Erdogan and Turkey has done that. Sisi and Egypt has done that. And to see that coming into the US, um, is also really, really worrying. Yeah. So, so I don't know whether, whether that kind of resonated with you or whether,
Soleh you know, well, it's, it's something we're at the end of the season already. Right. (..) In case I can get shut down.
Sanam Oh, thank you. Thank you very much for your vote of confidence. No, uh, yeah, we're, we're, we are, I think we have a plan and, uh, and, um, whether you like it or not, we're going to carry on. So, (...)
Soleh it was surprisingly hopeful, I think in a way more than I thought it would be right. Like future.
Sanam I'm so glad you said that because the whole purpose of this podcast project was to give people hope and a sort of a, the ability to look at the future and, and say, Hey, we can shape that, right? Like things are, things may be difficult, things may be bad, but a, there are really cool people like Yasi, Raji and others that we've had over the last, you know, 10 episodes that are doing phenomenal work. So you can support their work. That that's one thing, or you can join them and volunteer that, that, you know, there are all sorts of ways in which you can get involved, but also that the solutions they're coming up with are really practical, like they're doable solutions. And, and, and I think that's part of the hope. I mean, you know, hope isn't a strategy, strategy, but if you have a strategy and you blended with hope and you have a vision, it, it actually makes a difference. Right. And so, so I think that that's kind of, it's, it's a really good note to end on because that's, that's really the premise of the whole podcast that, um, we can shape the future and, and you can get involved in these people are really cool. So, um, so yeah, thanks. Thanks for that, uh, observation. Uh, this is officially the last of this season's, um, pods and we're really hoping to come back. Are you going to come back with me, Sus?
Soleh I'll think about it, you know, I haven't decided yet. No, yeah, of course, it's been fun. (.)
Sanam Well, maybe we can do more of the interviews together. That would be really nice too. Um, yeah. So, uh, it's, it's a function of whether we can, you know, get the sponsorship of course, and, and, um, and I have a whole bunch of people lined up already and would really welcome other ideas and share the podcast if you like it. I think we've had really lovely feedback and it makes a big difference when you know that people who listen are enjoying the conversations
Soleh as much as we are. Well, I'm excited for a second season and maybe bringing Liddy back for some of the episodes, you know. In my mind, I think you guys should just be, you know,
Sanam taking over and doing it together and, and having a lot of fun. But on that note, I'm going to thank our sponsors, the Robert Bosch Academy and ICANN for their generous support in enabling us to do this, uh, series. I want to give a huge, huge thanks to Pierce Lynch, um, of ADA Productions who has been working with us. We are complete newbies to this world and Pierce has been incredibly, uh, patient with us as we have done, as we've learned how to do podcasting and, and, um, recording and using mics and on all that, all the equipment, although it's been quite simple, um, amazing. The technology is extraordinary. So, uh, huge thanks to the production team and to our sponsors and to all my guests who joined us, uh, across the season and for the conversations that they gave, that they participated in. And, and a lot of the, in a way, the personal notes when, you know, when I think about every time I ask someone, what gives you hope? And people just kind of would pause and take a deep breath and, and imagine it and, and share their own feelings. I thought that was really, um, that was just really touching and really important. So thank you all and hope to see you in the next, uh, season in the new year. Uh, we'll be back. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye.