02/13/23
Good morning! It’s Monday, February 12th.
Galentine’s Day! Which times out really nicely, as you’ll see when I get to the rest of the episode but Galentine’s Day is a Leslie Knope sanctioned holiday that celebrates female friendships. And as we all know – I’m just out here doing my best impression of Leslie Knope at all times.
And now, the news.
Special Episode!
Before we get started, as a reminder… this is a special, pre-recorded episode. There will be no news tomorrow, and I’ll be back to the regular… whatever this show is… on Wednesday.
Let’s talk about… me! Ew. Wait. Just kidding, I hate that idea. Let’s talk about voting.
If you’ve been listening to this show for a while, you know that anytime the opportunity presents itself, I start running my mouth off about voting. Which is because, as some of you may know, I run a Get Out the vote nonprofit.
I started it almost 10 years ago. Or at least, started the starting.
10 years ago this June, this wasn’t anything. It was me on the couch at my parent’s house, watching Wendy Davis’s filibuster on YouTube.
Little heart eye emojis watching this woman stand up for me and every other woman in America.
Watching this woman harness her voice, her power. The same thing I’d been watching women do my whole life. The thing I was trying to figure out how to do myself.
Over the next year and a half, after Wendy announced her run for governor, I decided I wanted to make a documentary about her journey. Which is all I set out to do. That’s all this was supposed to be.
On a hiatus from Hart of Dixie, I put everything I owned in storage and lived in a Texas hotel for a month, following the campaign all around the state.
And when I wasn’t following the campaign I was… meeting people. Talking to voters and nonvoters alike. And I learned that there’s no singular reason someone doesn’t vote. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. And it certainly can’t be written off as simple apathy.
It was 2014.
The previous June, the Supreme Court had just taken its first slash to the Voting Rights Act. That April I watched from a Texas hotel as President Obama reaffirmed the vitality of those rights. Reminded the country of the fight for voting rights - the work that had already happened. The work that was now required.
A reminder that the fight for rights is never over. It is always ours to own.
Because we knew that 2013’s Shelby County ruling was not the end, only the beginning.
Wendy lost her election - spoiler alert if you haven’t seen that episode yet. I was devastated, but not done. While I tried to figure out what to do about this movie, I also started to figure out what to do with everything else. Everything everyone told me in Texas. Everything I’d learned while I was prepping for the movie.
As 2014 turned into 2015 and 2016, I knew exactly what I’d been headed towards when I watched Wendy speak.
I wanted to turn this documentary into a nonprofit.
I went back to school for a master in political science. I started planning. I started wondering what a new, better, system could look like.
What would it take to get people voting in higher numbers?
In 2018, with both my schooling and documentary finished, I officially started working to turn out voters through programming like the voter pledge and postcards.
And it felt like… it felt like I was going something important, but something bigger was around the corner. I was doing a lot, but we could do more.
For the last few months, I, along with board president Dan Moyle and vice President Troy Sandidge, have been having a lot of meetings. What will the next (part) of the org look like?
And for me, what it’s always come down to since that time in Texas, was education.
Civics education is required in all 50 states. But that’s just about the only requirement. The class itself is the requirement. What’s being taught is up to a school board of elected and underfunded and under resourced teachers.
There has to be a better way.
And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re reimagining the way civics are taught in this country through an ambitious k-12 education program. We also don’t believe access to a civics education should end when school does. Communities should help make that information available to all who want it.
And speaking of communities, as we elect leaders, those communities should be working to create the best possible leaders. We’re going to high school and college students for mentorship’s that grow community leaders. And we’re going to teach them how to be great mentors and mentees.
Finally, we’ve spent the last four elections saying polling is broken. What if it’s not broken - what if everything has changed but pilling has yet to catch up? By bringing on leaders in data and polling, we’ll be able to get a clear picture, not of who’s going to be elected president, that’s not our job. Ours is to know what voters want, and whether we’re best serving them with our programming.
Notice how I didn’t say “we want to,” but rather, “we are”?
Almost ten years ago, I named the documentary, and then the organization, We’re the People.
It was meant to be an inclusive statement. We, you and me.
We are the deciders.
Today we are relaunching the organization with a focus on education, community building, and data aggregation. And we are relaunching with a new name.
Because we’re not just people.
WE are voters. And we can change everything.
To tie it all together, or at least tie together all my favorite things… voting and Leslie Knope. Because what we’re building – it’s big. It’s big and we’re moving fast, because democracy can’t afford for us to take our time. And yes, sometimes that can be scary. But, to quote Leslie Knope - "I have the most valuable currency in America: A blind, stubborn belief that what I am doing is 100 percent right.”
Head over to wearevoters.org to see the new site and the way your support helps grow our programming.
And that’s it. That’s the special episode.
I’m proud of Leslie Knope, who almost certainly believes that the promise of America is not in this moment, but in the work we do in service the next one.
“Work hard at work worth doing,”
Put another way – “Just do something. Something that matters.”
As always, you beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk ox – I’m proud of you.