Factually! with Adam Conover - A Third Party That Actually Works with Maurice Mitchell

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

The left lost hard this election, and it warrants a deep examination of what the ideals of the Democratic party even stands for. Are voters on the left represented by their party anymore, or is it time to consider alternative means to enacting progressive change? This week, Adam speaks with Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, about how activists on the left can build power and effect change. SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» SUBSCRIBE to Why Won't You Date Me: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWontYouDateMePodcast» SUBSCRIBE to The Lamorning After: https://www.youtube.com/@TheLamorningAfter» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factionally. I'm Adam Conover. Thanks so much for joining me on the show today. You know, the election of Donald Trump has caused a real reckoning for those on the left. The Democratic Party took its best shot. They said that Trump was bad a thousand ways.

People voted for him anyway. And the question is, what's next? In an era where democratic politics has completely failed, how is the right wing to be defeated? And what do we need to build in order to do so? Well, one observation that's been made all over the place is that there's been a death of mass membership organizations in America.

That the sort of organizations that used to organize politics for working people, unions, churches, a lot of others have declined in recent years, and that we've built a political culture that just asks us to vote, asks us to donate, and asks nothing else of us. And a political culture specifically dominated by two main parties that have been in place for decades. People are craving something new.

There's a long longstanding craving for third parties, an effective third party that could actually change our political culture. And there's a craving for a new kind of politics itself that actually represents the needs of the actual people who are voting, a politics that doesn't just ask us to vote, but that involves us in the struggle to build a better country. So what would that kind of politics look like? And what could a third party that practices

that kind of politics look like? Well, today on the show, we have the best possible guest to help us answer these questions. He is the leader of what I believe is the most effective third party working in America today. His name is Maurice Mitchell, and he is the national director of the Working Families Party.

We had an absolutely incredible, wide-ranging conversation. I know you're gonna love it. Before we get into it, I just wanna remind you that if you wanna support this show and all of the conversations with amazing people, we bring you week in and week out, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show and all of the conversations with amazing people we bring you week in and week out head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show ad free.

And just a reminder, I am touring my new hour of standup comedy. Now, next weekend, December 13th and 14th, I'll be in San Francisco. And then in January, I will be in Dallas, Texas and Toronto, Ontario. Come see me, Adam Conover.net for tickets and tour dates. And now, let's get to this interview with the incredible Maurice Mitchell. I know it is going to inspire you and fire you the fuck up. Maurice, thank you so much for being on the show.

It's good to be here, man, really, truly. I'm really happy to be part of the conversation. It's good to be anywhere right now. Let's just start. For real, I mean, sometimes, right now a lot of people are going, hey, just remember you're alive. That's how you know things are really bad. No, I mean, look, we even said that

when we're working Babi's party, like we were like, we're here, you're here. Like we put that out, but it's actually when somebody experiences something truly traumatic. And I think for a lot of people, what happened on election day was traumatic for good reason. It is important to remind people and it sounds woo or whatever, but like you are in your body, right? Um, whatever happened, that's not happening right now. We're here.

We're present. We, we have choice. We have our agency. We could do things like it's actually good to remind people of that. And, uh, something really traumatic did happen to the country and the world. Like we shouldn't pretend that that's not true. Yeah, as an organizer, you almost become a therapist. Like I remember one of the first things

my therapist ever told me was, if you're feeling really anxious, look around the room and find all the blue things, right? You're just like, look, just to be present in your space, just look for something that's blue to like interrupt a panic attack, basically, right? And I feel like that's what you're talking about with your people is you're saying hey Just remember your feet are on the floor take a deep breath

But let's get into it. Tell me about what the working families party is I have admired the organization for many years, but you are a very unusual organization Not a lot of groups operate the way that you do so so how do you describe? What the fuck it is you do? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, there's a lot of ways I can, but you probably hear people say, man, there's the Republicans and I know I'm not them.

I am not a Republican. The Republicans are batshit crazy. I am not a Republican. The Republicans are batshit crazy. I am not a Republican, but the dem, what is that? The Democrats? I'm not a Democrat either. I know I'm not a Republican. And man, I really wish there were more choices. I wish there were more parties.

I wish there were more options. I wish there was something else. We are seeking to build that something else. We are that something else. And are seeking to build that something else. We are that something else. And we've been around for 26 years. We came out of a moment when the Democratic party had chosen to move away from the interest of labor unions and go closer to Wall Street. And a lot of the folks in those labor unions were like,

we deserve a party that is focused like a laser on the interest of everyday working people. And we're gonna build that. And that's where the Working Families Party came out of. And over the past 26 years, we've done this, what I call, non-delusional third party building. Right.

And what I mean by that is, you know, in 1992, Ross Perot spent all of his money and he didn't break 20%. So we think every four years trying to run this big epic presidential campaign and building a party that way, we don't believe that that's really viable, but we do think that if you do the hard work, county by county, city by city, focusing primarily on local races like state house, municipal races, that over time you could build the power. And we have proven that state by state that we could do it. And it requires the type of long arc thinking that we think the right and the

corporations tend to have, right? People want to understand, for example, like where did project 2025 come from? You know, why are we living in this hellscape that we're living in? Right? It's like, well, this is the byproduct of thinking that started in the mid to late seventies when, you know, the Christian right and the corporate right, they wanted to develop a multi-decade ambition to be able to be in power. And we believe that that type of thinking and ambition

and that type of plan and that type of organizing, which isn't something you could put in the microwave, it isn't something that's gonna happen in one election cycle, that's how working people actually get the goods. So we're not simply just fighting the power, we wanna be the power, right? And so we are building a third party.

But the other thing is we know that we're in a rigid two party system. So many times we recruit people who are working families people, and they are in democratic party primaries where they fight corporate Democrats and they fight Democrats that are, you know, way too preoccupied with what the real estate lobby is talking about or the pharmaceutical lobby is talking about. And then they they're able to govern. Right.

We focus on governing. We don't just focus on telling a story or, you know, making a scene with politics. We want to govern because we know when we govern, we could actually make people's lives better today and create a little bit more space tomorrow to have a multi-party democracy, you know, and that's the, that's the unique lane that we occupy at the Working Families Party. And we've been putting our heads down and we've been ordering our steps over the past few decades.

I've, I've led the party for the past six years and we got receipts. Like we're, we're doing our thing, you know, in, uh, I think you're in California right now you're in. But I previously lived in New York where working family's party was a big presence as well. But yeah, yeah. So like in New York, in Connecticut, in Oregon, we actually have a ballot line, right?

So people could vote on the working families party ballot line. And I could say more about that. In places like California, where we don't have a ballot line, there are, I think, yeah, we're at up to a hundred working families party elected officials on the municipal level, school board, on the county level. Our elected officials, our candidates, I think just in the state of California, 170 races.

We endorsed 750 elected officials across the country. And our bread and butter are the local races. And it's not just about the wins. It our bread and butter are the local races. And it's not just about the wins. It's about what the wins lead to. So, you know, in Philadelphia, Philadelphia is a city where we have people who are not Democrats or Republicans, working families, party only people who sit on city council where Philadelphia is a two party city, Democrat and working Families Party.

The Working Families Party through Kendra Brooks, who's one of those elected officials, was able to pass this groundbreaking eviction diversion policy, this eviction diversion law. And what it means is during COVID, people were really concerned about being kicked out on the streets because they couldn't draw an income because folks were sheltering in place and they were able to pass this temporary eviction diversion. Now fast forward to today, Kendra Brooks and the Working Families

Party and our coalition, we made that temporary law permanent in the city of Philadelphia. The trend, because there's an affordability crisis that's taking place all across the country, which is like one of the things that, you know, Democrats were pushing up against. And in Philadelphia- As happening in Democratic-run cities.

Yeah, yeah, the Democrat run cities. In Philadelphia, there's a 41% decrease in evictions because of that law. That wouldn't have been passed if you weren't able to, on the grassroots level, recruit somebody who isn't paid off by the corporate lobbies who are willing to take the fight to the corporations and win.

And then very recently, Nicholas O'Rourke, who's also in Philly and sits as an at large working families party only city council person, he was able to pass a law that prevented algorithms and AI from artificially jacking up rental prices. So you can't do that in the city of Philadelphia. It's something that should be true everywhere. Um, so these are, these are people who are independent people who are accountable to their neighbors, accountable to the issues of labor unions and grassroots organizations, and they get elected not through, you know, corporate money, but through people power and through small dollar donations and they get elected not through, you know, corporate money, but through people

power and through small dollar donations and through the union dues of unions. And then, and then when they're in place, they have the freedom to govern in that way and to govern with the people who got them elected. Um, we, we do, we run that play again and again and again and again, dozens and dozens and dozens of times all across the country and slowly it aggregates to this independent third party movement and you know, in 2020 we, as an independent third party, this is the non-delusional part. We take, we take seriously whether or not we have the power to call a shot. Because parties, one way of describing a party is parties organize winning.

So we take seriously this idea of is there a path to victory? And we did not see a path for us, even though we've been around for 26 years, we're in 20 states, we endorse a thousand candidates just about every election year. We couldn't figure out the path in 2020 or in 2024 to surface our own candidate for president. And so what we do, what we believe is... Because you felt if you ran one, you would not be able to win or you would not be able to accomplish any strategic objectives that you had. We could not accomplish any strategic objective. We could not accomplish a victory.

And because of the rigid two party system and the first past the post nature of the two party system, because of how undemocratic our system is, a working families party presidential run that in 2020 and 2024 would actually involve some spoiling. We don't wanna do spoiling sort of spoiler politics. We don't want to convince people that in a binary fight that there's an option that actually doesn't exist because it's not honest, right? And we want to have the honest conversation, which is in this fight

today in 2024, it is Harris versus Trump. And so the question we need to ask ourselves as an independent third party that we're not Democrats, but the question we need to ask ourselves is the Trump version of the future or the Harris version of the future going to create more opportunities for us as working people to build the independent power that we believe in. And based on that, who should we be telling our folks who to vote for? Right. It's not a candidate-centered question.

It's a strategy-centered question, right? And so that's what we did this cycle, and we got together and we agreed and we reasoned that Trump and MAGA is orders of magnitude worse for us than Harris and the Democrats. And there's overlap between our agenda and the Democrats' agenda. There is zero overlap with the MAGA agenda. And with the Democratic Party, there are people inside of the Democratic Party,

people like AOC, people like Rashida Tlaib, who we align with, who we include as part of our movement. And so when you elect Democrats, you're also creating an opportunity for all of those people to be able to govern and to be able to fight for their position, right? Like from Gaza to immigration, to all these places where we disagree with a lot of the mainstream Democrats,

when you're voting for a president, you're also voting for their party to govern, which includes people that we do agree with. Right, so there is a minority coalition within the Democratic Party that you feel that you can support, that you are in alignment with. And it sounds like what this really requires is a really specific amount of clarity

on your own objectives. That you are not just there as a protest vote or something along those lines. You have specific objectives for working people that you're trying to accomplish. And you're saying, which of these two presidential candidates is going to be better for your objectives

and which will help you achieve more of your objectives in the future. But I wanna zoom out for a second and talk about the third party question because there is maybe no topic more toxic in online political discourse than third parties. I waded into it a little bit myself on Twitter and let me tell you, my mentions were hopping

for literally two weeks. People are still replying to a post that I did on like October 28th, right? And what I did in the post was I explained that because of First Past the Post and Winner Take All districts, there is an unfortunate reality in America that our system stabilizes around a two-party system

because since we don't have parliamentary, you know, proportional representation like they do in England and some other places, etc. That, you know, a third party always ends up taking votes away from the party it's most closely allied with. And so what ends up happening throughout American history is when a third party does arise, it ends up replacing one of the two parties and we end up with this two party equilibrium again. And for that reason, strategically in a presidential race, you end up centralizing around two parties

no matter what you do. Now there's a lot of people who fucking hate that argument, right? And they say, I just wanna vote for a third party, how dare you tell me who to vote for? That's right, I need a third option. I have a red line around Gaza or whatever else it may be. I try to not frame it around telling people

who or who not to vote for. I just want people to understand the reality of American politics and the political system. But it strikes me that you and Working Families Party are trying to do something very different than the other third parties. It feels like you're trying to grapple with that problem in the structure of American democracy

and actually do a third party in the most strategic possible way to build for the long term. Do I have that right? And how would you contrast it with some of the other third parties, not asking you to talk shit about anybody, but what makes you guys different,

and what do you say to people who are in that very angry, toxic debate that comes up every four years and never goes anywhere? Okay, so I believe as an organizer, my job is to tell the people the truth. To tell the people the truth about the power that we have and the power that we need, right? And so our feet are planted on the world.

Let me say this a different way. Our feet are planted in the world as it is, but our gaze should be towards the world as we want it to be. Right. And so what that looks like for us as a party is to say the truth that this system that none of us created doesn't create the options that we want. We want, we don't believe that living in a world where you have unlimited

choices of butter, but only two choices for president is satisfactory. Right. We get that, but we live in that world. And if we want to change it, we don't just change it by moralizing about how bad it is, we change it by organizing enough power to change the structures. Of our government, which is what the far right did in the mid seventies. They understood they lived in a world that they did not want to live in.

And they understood that they had to build power, they had to build organization and they had to run a plan. And so a party in some ways is a practice of building power together, building organization together, and running a long-term plan for governing together. And that means accepting today the fact that we have these barriers. And if we're really upset with those barriers, and we really believe that the two-party system, as rigid as it is in the United States, the first-past-the-post electoral system, that they are fundamentally undemocratic, then that will build in us the stomach to do the hard organizing to change

those systems rather than, in some ways, rather than say, as an individual, I'm mad at the system and so I'm going to protest against the system with my vote. And this is a protest vote. I know it's not going to change the system, but I want to, as an individual, mark my displeasure with the system. mark my displeasure with the system, I'd rather build the power to dismantle and rebuild the system in our image, which is a much harder long-term task.

And to me, that's the task of political parties. Political parties are not just there to make a point. Political parties are ultimately designed to govern. Political parties say this audacious thing. Political parties say, our view of the world, we believe in it so much that we want to run the country. That's what political parties say when they put their pants on every day and go out into the world.

And so if you really believe that, then you have to show the steps, you have to show the steps to make that happen. And we try to in the open show the steps to the people that we want to organize on how we're going to make that happen. And so for us, it means on the local level, on the state legislature level, trying to recruit as many independent people into our fold and getting them into governing positions. It means in places like Philadelphia, where there's interesting little sort of hacks,

where we could actually run our own people because there's minority party set asides, we get our people elected. It means in places like New York and Connecticut and Oregon, where we have fusion voting, we use the fusion voting law to have our own party line. And it means. Yeah. And tell me what fusion voting is. Cause I experienced this when I lived in New York and I voted locally. I was able to fusion vote for working party, working families, party candidates.

But for the folks who haven't had that experience, what is fusion voting and why do you feel that it's useful as an electoral strategy? Sure, and I want to be clear, there is no magic bullet. So what fusion voting does, and it's very powerful, it allows, it gets us over that spoiler dilemma that you talked about that is real. Look, there's no, it's not a myth, it's basic math, right? It's basic math.

The spoiler dilemma is the reality that when you are a independent third party person and you're running in a first past the post-election, you're likely to recruit people from one of the main parties that are closer to you ideologically or issue-wise, which makes, we actually might end up advantaging the candidate that's farthest from you. That's just kind of what happens. What happens with fusion voting, basically what it means is that a party can cross endorse the candidate of another party.

And so in 2020 and 2024, we, the WFP, cross endorsed at the top of the ticket Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024. Well, why is that important? ticket, Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024. Well, why is that important? It means that our voters can vote and say two things at the same time. Can say in the binary choice between Harris and Trump, we prefer Harris. And we want to say more. We prefer Harris, but we want her to know that we're voting for you

from the standpoint of people that want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, from the standpoint of people that want the Democrats, when they're in power, to focus like a laser on the concerns of labor unions, on the concerns of labor unions, on the concerns of working people that want to focus on public safety from the standpoint of investing in our communities instead of just simply investing in jails, prisons, and more police, right? It allows you to say more with your vote.

And the other thing is, and this is really important, because- And allowed that, sorry, let me just, and please continue with that point, but it allows you to say that because Working Families Party is explicitly a separate line on the ballot. When I used to vote for you guys in New York,

it said, okay, here's the Republican, here's the Democrat, and then here's the Working Families line, it's the same candidate as the Democrat, but it's its own little bubble. You fill in for Kamala Harris, whoever else, under the Working Families Party, and then that vote is tallied as we got this many Republican, we got this many Democrat, and then we got this many working families party,

which also goes to that Democratic candidate. Now you might say, why does Kamala Harris care about that? Well, maybe, maybe she never gets the memo because she's such a big deal. But if a New York city council person, right, gets, you know, oh, I got however many thousand votes, you know what pushed me over the top was the people who voted on the Working Families Party line, then they're gonna take your phone call, right? Because you just delivered a bunch of votes for them.

Is that the idea? Let me tell you, it's not only the idea, it's the reality. And there's places in New York, there's some places where in the general election, like one third of the voters are choosing to vote on the Working Families Party line. Wow. So it's not a small thing in certain places. There's a high concentration of Working Families Party voters.

But just this last election cycle, there were very close congressional races where the Working Families Party vote made the difference. Wow. And you might be thinking, well, if there was no Working Families Party line, wouldn't those people just vote for the Democrat on the Democratic Party line?

Well, some percentage of them, but absolutely a significant percentage of the people who are voting for the Democrats on the Working Families Party line are people who might stay home, right? And when, when we think about what happened, like why Democrats lost this cycle, a lot of the people, there are some people who voted for Trump, who maybe voted for Biden last cycle, but there were a lot of people who voted for Biden

last cycle who stayed home, who did not feel like the appeal that the Democrats were offering was enough for them to be engaged with politics. The Working Families Party line and having, this is why we believe that a multi-party democracy is one of the things that are necessary in this country if we want to move forward and actually continue to be a country. People need a reason for politics and the two party first past the post system is creating the conditions where more and more people are so cynical about politics that they're simply staying home.

And many of them share our values. It's not like the lesson that we should learn from this election is that our country is far right, or our country is a right Christian nationalist country because Donald Trump was marketing those appeals. A lot of our neighbors simply did not go to the polls because our politics are not offering people something that is inviting enough for them to show up. Which is why we need more parties and organization. Yeah, and the best argument that folks who voted green or argued in my mentions about voting green, for instance,

said this year was, hey, I'm either gonna vote for nobody or I'm gonna vote for the Green Party. Like, this is, at least this way I'm voting. That sort of disaffection is real and it needs an answer. Now, I think what you guys are doing is much better because you are organizing and exerting power strategically rather than simply being a protest vote every four years. By the way, if anybody wants to make a protest vote,

fucking go for it, that's your vote, right? I do not shame anybody for doing it. And by the way, I would never blame any third party voter for any outcome because it's the responsibility of the parties to get their votes. However, for folks who are saying, I want that third party, I think that what you're doing is so strategic

and smart and interesting. I also think it gets around a real problem with American political culture because, okay, so I got into it on Twitter with a couple folks, right? Because I just want to pick their brain and figure out what are they thinking about the third party question. And what I found so interesting was, my critique of some of the other parties is, hey, these groups don't actually organize, right? Like, they show up every four years, and that's sort of the main activity that they do, right?

And what we really need to do is organize. That's our solution to everything. Absolutely, I agree. Our solution is not electoral. And yet these folks were like, no, I just want another option at the ballot box. They were so focused, right, on the expression of my power is who I vote for.

I wanna be given another option to vote for. And I found that really interesting because it struck me as this limited, this way in which the American political system is designed to limit our political expectations because these are folks who are radical, they're super left wing, you know, et cetera. And yet they had bought into the notion

that the most important political action that they can do is go tick one box every four years and that's it. And that's the only, and that's the most important thing to them. And I think that is a trap that a lot of the third parties fall into is that they provide that option and they do nothing else. When in reality, who you tick the box for every four years, that's the beginning of your political action,

but that cannot be the end, or else you are giving up a lot of power. Oh man. And so I feel like you agree with this, and I feel, and the reason I respect you is I know you organize the rest of the year. I want you to tell me, what is it that you do that goes beyond just ticking that box?

Absolutely, and I wanna say something to the point that you made, because it was spot on. And I think to me, it's the distinction between, look, I think everybody, everybody of good conscience understands that our political system is not working. And the distinction between focusing on a voter-focused solution, which is looking at

politics, mainly as self-expression, a candidate focused solution, which is like empowering candidates and looking at politics mainly as the entrepreneurial pursuits of individual candidates or an organizing focus solution, which is what I focus on at the Working families party where I party built. Right. And because I believe, and I think that one of the things philosophically that many people on the left have believed have, have accepted is that our job is to build organization, our job is to build solidarity, our job is to do politics together,

not give individuals the right for political self-expression, the way that people might express themselves on Elon's device, right? It's... That's a really great connection, actually. It's the Tweetification of voting, right? It says, hey, in the same way that there are people out there who think the most important form of activism is to post

and to say what you think and do nothing else. There's also people who think voting is like posting. Hey, just tick the box and then that's it. It's self-expression, nothing else. That's such a great connection. Yeah, and so, and the way that we, the way that we bear that out is our commitment day in, day out, every hour on the hour to organize. Right.

And so directly after the election, what's common in electoral politics is that the day after the election, it's like almost like a Broadway set. You strike the set. And so all of the campaign offices, all of the staff, whatever, everybody goes home. It's like a ghost town. What's left in the places that we organize often what's left is the working families party. And when I say working families party, I want to be clear. I'm not talking about one organization. A party is activist candidates.

For us, we're a coalition. The labor unions that also agree with the direction of the party, the grassroots organizations that agree with the shared governing agenda of the party. Parties actually include, you know, um, so, you know, uh, m- media personalities that agree with a particular point of view, all types of things, right? The Republicans, right? They have Fox News. You would, I would argue that the Democrats have MSNBC.

We don't, we don't have a, we don't, we don't have a network, but if we did, it would reflect the interest of everyday people. And so when I say the Working Families Party, we're there. It includes Unite Here and SCIU members. It includes the few people that work every single day as Working Families Party organizers who are talking and working with and governing with the people of North Philly and West Philly or the people of New York City. Or, you know, it includes like, you know, very recently some of the some of our local

elected officials that just won in LA, right? And how we work together every single day with the folks that recently voted for them to stay in a movement and to help make meaning together. So we've had in-person several debriefs about what this election might mean and what we have to do going forward. We had a virtual debrief where 48 hours after the election, us and hundreds of

other organizations came together and there was more than a hundred thousand people on that call. And the thing that we invited people to do, thousands of people took it upon themselves to go into their communities and begin to have conversations with others because we want in this moment for people to think about what solidarity looks like, what organizing looks like. And, you know, people could offer their critiques of the WFP and we engage in all types of critiques ourselves.

But the one thing I think people would that know us will say is that we are in the communities that we operate in and that we organize every single day. are in the communities that we operate in and that we organize every single day. And we are in the lives of the everyday working people that voted for our candidates before the election and after the election. And I think that is what's required in order to build a solidarity movement

and not simply look at, especially like look at politics as every four year sort of spectacles, right? I actually think that that's very destabilizing for our communities. Every four years, it's a spectacle. There's another main character that is somehow going to be the spear of the revolution for you versus, no, you are the main character. You, working people, us collectively, we are the main character and the work that we do is hard. There's no saviors, there's no presidential candidate that's gonna save us.

There's no candidate anywhere that's gonna save us. The thing that's gonna save us is us choosing one another and doing hard things with one another. That ultimately is how working people throughout history have ever won anything. And I think that lesson is the most important lesson to tell rather than like replacing one savior with another and telling a story about how one person and one person alone will be the working class hero that will finally make the revolution possible.

I think that's actually a very, very bad lesson to to tell anybody because it's not true. It's that's not how it's not how things work. We've lived through it not happening, you know? I mean, we lived through the Obama era. We lived through the Bernie revolution. You know, these are both movements that attracted a lot of people to one person. I think the Bernie movement did a much better job

of creating a durable movement after the candidate, you know, ceased to run. But, you know, these were two movements in which, hey, change is coming from this person, right? And we saw them not work. And, you know, I think it's a mistake to keep looking for, okay, who's the next person who's gonna run, you know? Like, oh, where's the-

Who's the next leader? Who's the next savior? Where's the good Democrat? Or where's the good third party presidential candidate? Yeah, no, it's gonna be us, you know? Yeah. Folks, are you looking to make your holiday hangout with friends extra special this year?

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When I think of organizing, I think of, when I think of an organization that organizes, it means that if I'm a member of that organization, they are going to ask me to do things, and they are going to enable me to do things, to actually exert power over the world. So I'm right now wearing my Writers Guild and SAG after t-shirt, right? These are the unions I'm a member of. Not only am I a member, not only do I pay dues, not only do I vote in the union election, not only am I represented by the contract, they say,

we need you to come out on the street and march. We need you to talk to your boss and tell them XYZ. We need you to come to your boss and tell them XYZ. We need you to come to the meeting and tell us what you think because your input is going to shape what is happening. It is an organization that beyond mobilizes me. It involves me in the project. And this is something that the right has done for a long time. This is what the NRA does, right? You get your NRA card. they teach you how to shoot, and they say, now show up at the local state house to yell at the candidate that we're mad at

for not proposing concealed carry or whatever the fuck. And those organizations have largely died on the left, with the exception of unions which have shrunk, et cetera. So that's what it means to me. I wanna know what it means to you and how do you do it day to day? Okay, so in some ways, organizing is my religion. It's the one thing that I am expert at.

Everything else, I'm kinda mediocre at, right? Yeah. I like someone who knows what they're good at and just fuckin fucking says it. Yeah, I mean, everything, you know, I was in bands when I was younger and like, you know, I did a lot of things in my life and, you know, they were all like on some level kind of mediocre efforts,

but the organizing thing, I think I could say that I'm expert at, right? And so organizing is a few things. Organizing, if it's done well, we'll take an individual from kind of living out their individual problems in this, in this world that is hyper individualistic to recognizing like, oh, um, there's actually other people who are experiencing these problems and there's a value in us doing it together.

So it takes you from me to we, right? That's one thing that it does. Organizing what it's done well also take somebody and most, most people live individual lives, like super atomized, just kind of trying to figure out your thing. And then most people, um, feel, subject to the decisions or to the rules or to the realities of a world that they don't feel like they have a lot of impact on. So it moves you from subject to agent where you're like, no, I could do shit. I can make shit happen.

Or both of those things happen at the same time in an organization. So that's what's happening. That's what should be happening to you. Like philosophically and psychologically through the life of an organization. So that's what's happening, that's what should be happening to you, like philosophically and psychologically, through the life of an organization. You feel more powerful, and you feel more connected to other people. It's a relationship.

That's how you know you're in an organization, if those things are happening over time. That is how I feel in my union. I'm connected to other people who have the same struggle as comedy writers or as television writers, and we all had the experience of actually making our industry better by working together, and like, oh my God, we had power that was greater

than I've ever had as a voter in Los Angeles, for instance. I was able to change this city more by working together and standing out there with a sign with a couple thousand other writers than I've ever had in my life. Absolutely. And then the other thing, if you're doing really good organizing,

it's a two-way relationship where your organization is making demands of you, making demands of your time, making demands of your money, making demands of your spirit, right? Your organization is making demands of your money, making demands of your spirit, right? Your organization is making demands of you. But then also you are making demands of your organization, which means you get a say in what your organization does and how your organization does those things. And it's a two-way relationship.

So for example, anybody who is part of a WFP chapter will know this to be true. When it comes time for us to chapter by chapter, make endorsements on the local level, there are opportunities that are real for both our organizational members, like our, the labor unions and grassroots organizations that have bought into the WP strategy and our WP activists to actually be a part of those candidate interviews. They actually get to sit down and ask candidates questions about, well, where are you on the minimum wage? Where are you on Medicare for all?

Well, why did you make that decision and struggle with the candidate and then get together and vote? Sometimes those votes are contentious. Sometimes there's multiple candidates that we think might be good, but we get to struggle to figure out who are we choosing, right? And everybody who is committed to WFP in that chapter actually gets to do that. And then not only candidates, but the long-term direction of WFP. When we talk about a governing strategy, that's not going to happen overnight.

That is a long-term project. If we're doing our job well at WFP in California or in New York or in Delaware, our members get to be a in California or in New York or in Delaware, our members get to be a part of that in real ways. And, you know, in most places, you don't get to be a meaningful part of a lot of decisions. It is transformative to find organizations where you get to be a meaningful part. Does that mean that you always win every debate? No.

In an honest organization, it means that you get to struggle. It's a family, right? So Thanksgiving is coming up and I think people could identify with this analogy. You know, in a family, you have debates, you struggle. Sometimes you like people in your family, sometimes you dislike people in your family, but whatever the outcome of those debates or struggles or arguments, whatever you, however you might feel about your family member, you all are family and a good organization is able to hold those debates and those struggles, um, without anybody deciding that at the end of the debate, they're going

to leave the family. It's like one thing we're assured of is that we're sticking with this family because we've decided that the concept of family is more important than any debate, any struggle and struggling together is actually why the whole point of family. Wow. That solidarity is that we are in it together and we are going to come to a joint decision

and respect the joint decision. And that's happened in, again, happened in my union where we have minority views, but we all agree, hey, we're gonna go forward and support what the majority wants to do. If it's taking a strike vote, we know that, hey, maybe 5% of our union didn't vote to go on strike, but we hope you're with us anyway.

And we're with you too. We're all in it together, right? That's right. That's right. So you're describing an organization that, and I'm sorry for giving my definition before you gave a much better one, but I think we're aligned.

No, no, it's fine. Yep, yep, absolutely. Absolutely. You're describing an organization, go for it. There's one other thing, there's one other thing that should happen as you engage in organizational life, you should learn some shit, right?

Yeah. And so, one of the things that organizations should be doing is helping people understand their world from the standpoint of the organization, what we call political education, right? Actually taking the time with members, not simply to ask for like small dollar donations or, you know, volunteer hours, but taking the time to be like, Hey, donations or, you know, volunteer hours, but taking the time to be like, Hey,

um, so we worked really hard on this campaign and we lost. Let's talk about why. Yeah. Let's actually zoom out and talk about all the forces at play. Let's talk like our perspective at, at our organization, for example, WFP believes that a combination of the rigid two-party system, the migration of working people away from the Democrats in this two-party system and a lot of them away from politics altogether, but some of them to the right wing, the corporate control, like this is capital, this is corporations and big business, the corporate control of our

system in general, right? All of those things together, as well as the ultra right nationalist capture of the Republican party is why we can't have nice things, right? And so we take the time to explain that so that people aren't just hammering a political nail to a political plank. They actually are understanding what they're building. That's, to me, if you respect your members, you will take the time, you will invest the resources in that type of education so they could become more sophisticated, take on more tasks, take on more responsibilities, and truly co-own the organization.

And yeah, you're describing co-ownership of an organization. That is what organizing means. What strikes me is that this is the opposite of how the modern Democratic Party operates, right? Like the Democratic Party, if I were to be a member, right? What would that even mean? Is there a thing I get to go to? And I know there's probably a local Democratic club

where I live, I could go to that, I could go to those meetings, we could have some influence in local elections, et cetera, but it's generally a vehicle for donations, for getting people to vote for who the party approves of. It's not, it doesn't feel like something that I'm a member of. They don't send me a card in the mail, right?

And then here's your orientation meeting. And then here's the monthly meeting where you get to weigh in on what we're doing. And then here's the, et cetera. And then here's your T-shirt. And here's what we want you to show up to, and et cetera. It does not have that reciprocal relationship. It's a, I don't know, it's a lot more like just signing up

for Netflix or something, right? It's just a transactional relationship. And again, the number of organizations that do what you're describing has also shrunk. Unions are growing again, finally, but we're at a historic low point. If you look at what they used to do in America, you know, in the, look at what the UAW used to do in the sixties, right? It used to be, we used to have many,

many more organizations that did this and created this sort of civic society and involved people. And now we're all atomized and we vote and we're told, vote, donate, and then stay the fuck home, right? By most of our political culture. That's correct. So I guess let's talk about the overall picture like of American democracy. A lot of people are very worried about the Trump victory, is what you are describing,

how does this model address the challenges that we're about to face for the next four years? So the challenges that we are about to face over the next four years, it's hard to be able to predict because in some ways, their strategy is chaos, which is why it's really important that we develop a point of view so we're not simply reactive to Trump, right?

And it's not- And you said recently that, I believe on Twitter, that dusting off the resistance playbook from 2017, that wasn't gonna work work again. Right. That ain't it, chief. No, that's not, that's not going to work. And we could draw some lessons from that. It was highly reactive. They were putting, they were setting fires and we were putting them out. Right.

And I think as long as they're setting fires and they reliably set fires, we reliably put them out. Then what we essentially signed up for is to be cast as, you know, liberal activist number one in a Steve Miller written and produced drama. Right? And I'm not interested in being a minor character in a Steve Miller or Steve Bannon written and produced drama. I want our people to be the main character.

And the only way we could do that is by deciding in this period where we could imagine a lot of destabilization, what is our point of view and what are the interventions we want to make. And also we need to be reminded and a friend of mine, Leah Greenberg, who helps lead Indivisible, she's one of the co-executive directors, she wrote this in their new guide, or they wrote this, that presidents are not kings. And I think it's important for all of us to remember that. We lost the fight for the federal government over the next period.

But in places like Connecticut, the Working Families Party had an incredible election day where we flipped a lot of statehouse seats from red to blue. Like I said before, we won 70 races in California. On the state and local level where we have governing power, it is our mandate that we push the outer limits of that governing power to express, number one, to block the right, but we have a duty to build. And so, the only people that are thinking about governing and being bold should not be the far right. We should be, this is a time not to obey in advance.

This is not a time to obey at all. This is a time to be bold. And I know it could seem sort of, uh, sort of counter-cultural after a loss where they've gained the upper hand in the federal government to be defiant. But look, let's take a page from them. Republicans, when they lose, man, they don't, they act, they act like they want something. Oh yeah. And they successfully drive the narrative from the minority.

I mean, if you look at, there's a lot of power in being out of power, right? Because then the people who are in power set the agenda and of the federal government, but you can sort of take rhetorical power. If you look at how the right was able to change the perception of immigration during Biden's term or of law and order or et cetera. Yeah, exactly.

They took the bite to Biden, right? And we have that. They didn't say, oh, we lost, let's give up. Right. Right. Or I saw, you know, the, the, the governor of Colorado, he tweeted like, Oh, really excited about that RFK pick. It's like, look, this is not the time. I mean, he really did that.

And like, I was like, this is this, what we're going to see is they're going to be folks inside of the Democratic party that will not understand the assignment and think that this is a moment for appeasement. This is a moment to, like, this is not, like, these folks are in many ways, they are saying out loud, they have written in print what exactly they intend to do. And I think it's hard for nice liberals

to actually wrap their heads around the period that we're gonna be in. This is gonna be a street fight. This is not fencing. This is a street fight. And what we need are street fighters for democracy. Muller report and, you know, oh, the courts and all that sort of genteel democracy stuff.

This is like wield power to get what you want, right? The ruthless pursuit and wielding of power, period. And we need people on our side that are prepared and willing to bring the fight to the other side, right? And we're going to, the people that I believe that will lead in this moment are people that are interested and have the stomach for that. And that's going to require a lot of things. It's going to require organizing, which means talking to people who don't agree 100% with you because we need a bigger we. And struggling with people around all types of issues and figuring out how to bring people along. It's going to mean taking the fight to them so that we could define who they are,

rather than them constantly defining reality and us living inside of their reality. It's going to mean not reflexively taking the bait when they drum up one controversy after another, but choosing our shots. And it's gonna mean rebuilding a, you know, not to use like the nerdy term, but civil society, rebuilding connections to one another, rebuilding solidarity, which means everyday people choosing one another

and reversing some of that, you know, the atomization that you talked about, some of that like, my world is just me that you talked about, some of that, like, my world is just me, maybe, maybe my family and how I get through a day, but actually expanding what your world is as being my world is my connection to other people, other people that that share some things in common. And we're going to take some risks together to make our lives better and to be able to have some joy in the limited time that we have on this planet. Right.

And it's our job to argue for that because they're going to be telling us the lie that nothing we do matters, that we should shut up, that there is no society. There's just individuals and maybe, maybe your family that they've won. So we should just, just give it up. And every single day, um, we're going to have to build, build up the leadership to challenge that. And that's what we're doing at Working Families Party. You know, like I, I had a, I had a few, you know, rough days where I had to

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Use promo code Adam at checkout. How do we involve people in the fight when they are ready to tune out? You know, I think about I knocked doors in Phoenix for two days. And, you know, I ended up feeling a little bit mixed about that form of activism because, you know, afterwards I was like, you know what? I was knocking on people's doors trying to convince them to vote. How was I involving them?

You know, how was I getting getting them involved in the struggle? A lot of people, one guy, this is your nightmare when you're knocking doors. One guy opened the door and he said, dude, I'm just trying to watch the game. I worked all week, I'm just trying to watch the game. And I was like, okay, but have you considered voting? He was like, I don't care. You are bothering me.

This is my one day off. I'm just trying to watch the game. And I felt for that guy, right? Because I had interrupted him. And this is a guy who's, this guy's life is hard. You know, he was probably about 30, you know, he's like struggling to make a living and he's, you know, let's say he's working 12 hour days or whatever,

the man is tired, you know, and things are gonna be chaotic for the next four years. This guy's main impulse is gonna be to keep his head down, keep working and keep watching the game on Sundays. And that's about all he has time for, right? That is most people's general world. So we can talk about, hey, for us who are more activists, we're politically plugged in,

we're political junkies reading the news every day. What do we do? Okay, let's organize, you know, et cetera. But how do we involve like the average person? And because those are the people who won the election for Trump, right? The people who showed up, okay, I'll vote today. I'm not that involved,

but you know what prices used to be lower? Let me vote for the old guy. You know, like that, we sort of know that was the constituency. And those are the people who, you know, ultimately organizing means getting those folks off the couch and involving them in the struggle. How do we do that?

It's a great question, and it's one of the reasons why we invest in culture, right? So just to, I wanna really bring that down. So the WP is very leaderful. So we have wonderful, we have a limited staff, but we have wonderful people who are staff leaders who have been at the working families party for many years. Nalini Stamp is one of them and she leads our cultural work. And I'll give you a concrete way that we practice that.

So we, we do a lot of things. We do some of the traditional, we do door knocking, right? Which is a tactic, right? And what you just experienced is real. If you're not in that person's life, right? Then when you knock on their door, they're like, who the hell is you? Yeah.

Who, right? Who the hell is you? And why are you disturbing me? That's a legitimate question, right? Yeah. And so, which is why we try, we try very hard to be features of people's lives before and after we're knocking on their door, right?

But we, we do all types of things. Like we held, we held, um, these WNBA parties where people are watching the game, right, they're enjoying themselves. They're watching the game. And we're also talking to them about politics during the breaks. We're inviting them to do texting, which is helpful. And we're making community with them. And we're saying that your party isn't simply your ability to text or give a $5 donation.

The way that you experience your party will not simply be a breathless text where somebody is saying like, Adam, it's Nancy Pelosi. All is lost. We need two more dollars or whatever it is. But your party also is a community where you can watch the game and you can just kind of hang out and drink a beer and be with people that you trust and like, or maybe love, or, you know, maybe meet somebody that you might want to go on a date with afterwards or whatever. But your party shows up in your life in ways that matter to you, right? Not simply in ways that matter narrowly to electoral politics.

That's actually really important. And, you know, we, we do other things where through art and culture, we're engaging seriously and it's not just like, oh, we're going to do the typical political meeting and at the end, we're going to ask somebody to, to recite their shitty, you know, shitty slam poetry or whatever, right? It's like, and we're not going to pay you for it, right? It's like, no, really thinking through how culture and all culture really is, is how we choose to come together and the unwritten rules of how we come together,

how we think about culture as being leading. This is, which is why like Republicans engage in the quote unquote cultural war. Right. I used to think that the culture war was a distraction. So I'm like, man, when we're fighting the culture war, we're not talking about Medicare for all or whatever. I realized that the culture war is the main event because culture actually deals with the highest level of how we think about things, right.

Who is part of the community? Who is part of the community? Who's outside of the community? How do we show up with one another? Or, you know, what are the standards of day-to-day interaction with one another, right? The Trump culture says like, it's okay to be a dick. In fact, you should revel in being a dick. Right? And then you get to be a dick. In fact, you should revel in being a dick. Right? Yeah.

And then you get to the political question. And so people make dickish political moves because they're part of a culture that says, yeah, part of your job is that the id inside of you is to express it politically and express it publicly. And one of the ways that you can express it is by voting for Trump, right? How are we focusing on culture as a serious way that we express ourselves out in public

life? That is how you deal with that question of that guy who you knocked on his door. And how is he going to greet you? He will greet you differently if when he sees like, so for WFP, you know, for the Republicans, they have the elephant, the Democrats, for some reason they have a donkey and we have a wolf, right? Our job is to work every single day in our community so that when he sees the wolf, he's like, oh, oh, okay, cool. I got two minutes. I really want to watch the game. What's up. Yeah. But I know these guys, I know these guys, right?

Our job is to be in the lives of working people to the point where when you add them knock on that door in Phoenix, he sees the Wolf and he gives you two minutes and then he goes back to his game. And then he also understands the assignment. He's like my party, my party is doing the work so that I could live my life. And I, I could come in and out of party life. And I know the assignment when I get the party's, when I get the party's voter guide, I trust the party's voter guide because I've trusted the party in

different areas of my life. the party's voter guide because I've trusted the party in different areas of my life. That is the work that if, I believe if the Democratic Party had raised and spent billions of dollars, which it did, and invested in that, they might've had a different outcome. That's what we're attempting to practice at the Working Families Party with, trust me,

not billions of dollars. And that's what unions have historically done, right? That's right. In places with high union density, and Hollywood is one of them. Oh, I can engage with the union or I cannot engage with the union, but I know that they're on my side either way.

And maybe a year will go by, I never go to a meeting, but I know what they stand for, I know that they help me. And that's what churches have historically done. Absolutely. If you look at the, you know, the civil rights era, that was, you know, the mass membership organization of the church. And also, again, if you look at on the right, groups like the NRA, churches on the right, et cetera,

and those groups have fundamentally withered in the US. Now, I do think that there are some counter examples because we could, from this conversation, say this is what we need in American life, right? We need you guys to grow and we need more mass membership organizations that serve this role for their communities. I also have to think about counter examples.

For instance, I think about the Teamsters, right? Who are one of the biggest, still most powerful, still best organized unions in America. They have, I don't recall exactly how many, but well over a million members who are, you know, who they like really organize strongly. They fight for contracts, et cetera. And, you know, the Biden administration

saved their pension plan, right? They literally passed a bill that saved their pension plan, right? They literally passed a bill that saved their pension plan. And by the way, it also saved the Writers Guild pension plan. And I know that because the Writers Guild told me that. They said, hey, guess what? They passed this bill that saved our pension plan,

saved multi-employer pension plans that a lot of unions have. And yet we know what happened with the Teamsters, right? Where Sean O'Brien spoke at the RNC and ultimately didn't make an endorsement, et cetera. And so this is an organization of the type that we're talking about that does the work that you are talking about.

And yet, did not seem to, at least if you are looking at it from the point of view of a democratic strategist, right? Did not do the job that they would have hoped it would have done. And so I'm a little curious for your analysis of like, is there something missing from that equation or was that organization actually doing what it was designed to do? I don't want you to go too far on a limb here because it is a different organization, but you know, curious for your thoughts.

Yeah, it's true. I always try to be really careful when I'm engaging around a different organization's processes and, you know, unions are democratic organizations like the Working Families Party is. And so I wasn't a part of their processes. I can't speak on that. But what I could say is that, you know, I've had conversations with folks in the UAW. And one of the things that I appreciate about the UAW, as well as the SEIU, because I've had a lot of conversations with them,

and the SEIU and CWA are actually organizational union members of the WFP on the national level, and then in our respective chapters, is that there's one way that you could look at the obligation of your organization and if you're a union is contracts and benefits for your members period or you could believe that that is absolutely one critical aspect of your job as a union of bargaining. But then also another aspect, another investment is organizing and being explicitly

concerned with the broader issues of the working class. And there are unions that I think are more ideological in that way, where they take risk that are outside of the narrow interest of maybe bargaining and benefits today for their members that are really for working class people in general. And those risks include political risk. And so I, to me, I think, I think a lot of that, some of those distinctions tend to align around how ideological is the union, meaning, how much of an investment is the union making in the broader concerns of working people in general, their members, other organized people who aren't their members, and people who are not workers, who are not organized at all, and workers who might be out of work, right? The broader class interest of working people as a class. How concerned are you? And then how do you politicize that? I think

those are the questions that come up inside unions that might help people understand decisions that may or may not make sense to them. And that's the best way I could process what was going on there. And also, you should know that in a democratic organization like an international union, like the Teamsters, many of their locals after that decision was made, where they didn't endorse in the presidential, many of their locals said, as a local, we wanna be clear,

we believe in that binary choice, Kamala Harris is our choice. So that also happened with the Teamsters, which I think is important to know. Yeah, that's true. And that is it operating as a democratic organization that has multiple levels of democracy and presumably, you know, those locals have a connection

with their members in that area, despite what the national does. That's a wonderful answer. Let's talk about the working class generally. You have, you know, you really have a laser focus on improving conditions for the working class or advancing the priorities of the working class.

But it looks like after the election, we're looking back at the results, looks like a lot of the working class voted for the polar opposite of what you are trying to provide. And so does that give you any kind of dark night of the soul? Do you think, wait, am I actually not giving the working class what they actually want? Have they said they want something else or how do you analyze that?

Um, I think there's, there's a lot of, um, hot takes that I want people to refrain from, uh, because things like the district by district voter data won't be available for a while. And I think we're going to learn definitively what actually happened and didn't happen. But the thing that we've been saying for a while is that this phenomena and like the academic term for it is class de-alignment, but basically working class people basically checking out the Democratic Party because, you know, when I was born, um, basically the Republican party was the, the party for fancy people and, you know, the wealthy and business

people. People kind of understood that. Yeah. It was the party of big business. Yeah. Yeah. People just kind of got that as like big business country club people. People kind of understood that. Yeah, people just kind of got that. It's like big business, country club people. Okay. And the Democratic Party was the party of labor unions and regular people. Like most people understood that. Where I grew up in Long Island, I grew up in a working class suburb of New York where most people were working class and it reliably voted for Democrats. It was a pretty diverse group of folks,

ethnic white people, immigrants, black folks. We kind of got that. Over time, that story has changed and people kind of look at the Democratic Party as maybe not being that as much, you know, kind of being sort of the maybe fancy college educated folks or whatever. Is this party really for me?

It's the NPR party. It's the whole foods party. It's the Harvard party. Yeah. That's been happening for a long time, right? And so we have focused on the laser, like a laser to try to understand what's happening. And what it hasn't meant though,

is that working class people are becoming more right wing, which I think is what people have suggested. Even with this election, some working class people have chosen Trump. Some of them have moved to the right. Some of them who voted for Trump didn't necessarily move to the right in a election where so many people are

rejecting the party and power, right? Some of them voted for Trump because they wanted to reject the status quo, not because they agree with right-wing politics or right-wing nationalist ideology. Some of them did. And I think we need to be curious about in the working class, not look at it as like some blob, but as a number of people who have a number of cross pressures that are driving why they do certain things, including their vote choice. And that's kind of what we've been doing.

And when we're outdoors, we talk to folks when we're organizing, we talk to folks. I could tell you that a lot of people and and another thing, when people say working class, some people think in their head, a white guy with a hard hat. When I say working class, I mean men and women, I mean people of all races, I mean people who are doing industrial jobs, but also service jobs and healthcare jobs

and all types of things. That's the working class. I think of a hotel housekeeper, that's who I think of. I think of the lady who knocks on my door and says housekeeping, that is a working class job to me. And that woman, that person tends to be a woman, that person tends to be a woman of color, oftentimes that person tends to be an immigrant.

The working class is really diverse, right? But when we're talking to folks, we do encounter a lot of people who are like, I don't believe that these people actually care about my life. Or if I vote for them, anything is going to change. Right. A lot of them are like, I'm not a Republican. I get that.

Like we don't have to have that debate, but I don't, I don't know if I really need to vote. I don't know if my vote matters. And you know, like I don't know. And maybe you could, like I talked to I talked to a 24 year old woman in North Philly very recently and she was like I could tell you this nobody on my block cries anymore when somebody dies from gun violence and I don't believe that voting for Kamala Harris is gonna change that

Wow and that's real. Those are the issues that people are dealing with and a politics, a political party, a campaign, a politician that is in the life of that woman and is arguing from her very real experience every single day, living in a place where just based on where you live, you might not make it out because a stray bullet might hit you or your kid, if we're not dealing with that and we're operating in some realm outside of that, absolutely. Those folks are going to check out or might just say like, Hey, let me rock with the other side because at least they are offering a alternative, right?

There are people who, I've met them, who know Trump is lying, know he's a con artist, but want the institutions to change or have given up on the institutions and want them to fall. That's not everybody. There's some people who are like, I'm racist and I love the fact that want them to fall. That's not everybody. There's some people who are like, I'm racist and I love the fact that this guy's racist. That's true too. The thing is, the thing is like, there's a stupid debate of like, oh, is it race or is it class?

Number one, race has a lot to do with class, right? And so there are, there's so many different types of working class people is the point I'm making. There are working class people who recognize if they're white workers that there is something about this caste system that exists. And I do get a material and also a psychological benefit of always being on top of the racial caste system. And I want to vote for maintaining my status there, especially because life is really hard and I'll take any benefit. You know, and if there's a racial benefit, I'll take that too. And who's the party that's going to maintain that?

There are people who are making that choice. That choice isn't just a moral choice, it's also a economic choice, right? To choose the strategy of racial hierarchy, right? And so we can't like treat that as simply a moral decision, because when we talk about race as like a moral position, we actually lose the value of why racism exists to begin with, right? And some people, some people are really saying like, look, this

economy doesn't work for me. Like I know Trump is saying a lot of crazy things, but he keeps on saying tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. I don't even know what that means, but maybe that's the thing that will make my life better. Right. I don't even know what that means, but maybe that's the thing that will make my life better. Right.

Yeah. And so I, I think that there was a misdiagnosis of what politics is for. Politics is for answering in a real way, the question that that 24 year old woman in North Philly was, was asking, right. I politics is not one marketing scheme versus another, which I believe way too many of the billions of dollars that were raised and spent went into. And I hope in the wreckage of this election, we could focus on her.

If you focus like a laser on her, I believe that the political vehicles and the campaigns that you won will win. And if you choose to be a real person to her and authentic to her, because like at the end of the day, anything that's not growing out of the ground is shit that we made up. Right? Yeah.

And so all like society is a bunch of humans deciding to do things. A political party is a bunch of humans deciding to do things. A political party is a bunch of people deciding to do things. Um, you can't pull test your way out of the fact that people have developed through our evolutionary biology, a keen sense of being able to detect bullshit. Yeah. We know what's real and we know what's not real. And if you want to, to, to actually be in the life of people politically, your job is to ensure that people believe you, not agree with you.

There's a difference. Wow. Which means you have to be committed to building that trust, which is like just show up and be a person versus reading diligently whatever is in the message box that was poll tested, you know, to be the effective message. We could tell, ask people the difference between the two. Of course, yeah, the messaging and all that stuff has a value, but it's like the trusted relationship that you build

when people believe in you, allows you to have a conversation about the issues, not the other way around. I love that so much. Having a focus on people's material lived reality, like the day to day of the woman you mentioned or anybody else in America, right? To say like, I know that you are struggling,

I know what it is, I know what life is like, right, and responding to it. I often think about it as a comedian when I do standup comedy. My job is I step out on stage, there's a couple hundred people in front of me, however many that day, they all are experiencing a reality, right?

They all are in, literally in the room with me right now, but then they're also all living their lives. They have an emotional state, right? And part of my job is to understand what their lives are like and what their emotional state is like, and then respond to it and say something that they actually fucking find funny as a result.

So I went out and did standup the day after the election. And my job is to know how are people feeling? How is this specific audience feeling? And then a week later, everyone was feeling different and I had to adjust all my jokes because everyone felt different now. A politician has the same job, right? To say like, not, I feel your pain,

but like, no, I literally am listening to and understand what you need. And I'm going to actually tell you something that I actually want to do to actually make your life better. And you know why I know it's gonna work? Cause I heard about it from you. Cause I actually talk to you. That's right.

That real connection. So one of the reasons why, and you, because I actually talked to you. That's right. That real connection. So one of the reasons why, and you know, I'm not just saying this because I'm talking to you. I think standup is like a superpower. Like there's no way. Pretty shitty superpower. I wish I could like lift buildings or save people.

Instead I can make a couple people laugh on a good night if I'm lucky. Yeah, no, I agree. It's not, I mean, if you could have chosen invisibility or super strength or whatever, but the ability to make people laugh is, like you can't fake that. Like people are either laughing or they're not.

You're either funny or you're not. And in some ways, politics are honest in that way, right? Or the best politicians have a similar approach. And like you try things out every single day, if something doesn't work in your routine, you might not, you might let that go. You're kind of trying out new material all the time and you're sharpening it, right?

I thought that was funny, but I was wrong. The audience was right. I got to stop telling the joke because I told it five times and nobody laughed any time you don't keep telling it. You're just, it's the audience tells you what works and what doesn't. And it's not like, okay, just brute in the same way where like, all right, maybe the, the Biden campaign should have noticed that Biden-omics wasn't working in the way that maybe that, strategy of talking about the economy wasn't working maybe in the

way that they theorized it would work and so how are they being adaptive right like that's okay right in fact that is what politics should be it should be a back-and-forth and a listening right the the policies of Bidenomics I think I would argue were more more of the industrial policies that we think are the way that government should be operating. The storytelling around it and how people perceived it was something that I think all of us

should take some notes around, right? And when people are saying, I'm struggling around this economy, simply saying, you know, the IRA was passed and billions of dollars were invested in state and local governments and, and in, in industrial policy that will show up in your life or look at these macro, um, economic indicators that prove it's like, you're having the wrong conversation there. And, you know, organizing one on one 70% listening, 30% talking, 80% listening, 20% talking. A good stand up has to listen to the audience.

I think a good organization or a politician has to listen to the constituencies that they're attempting to bring into their movement. Yes, that's I think you absolutely nailed the mistake that the Biden-Harris administration made of trying to tell people how they should feel rather than listening to how people did feel and speaking to it, you know? Like something that I learned, something that I've always felt is

if you ask anybody in America, hey, are you getting fucked? They'll say, yeah, yeah, I'm getting fucked every day. So, and then what you want to say is, okay, here fucked? They'll say, yeah, yeah, I'm getting fucked every day. And then what you wanna say is, okay, here's who's fucking you, and here's what I'm gonna do to fix it. Or here's what we can do together to fix it is the more important thing, right?

You have to tell them that story. You can't say, no, actually, things are going pretty good. Just think about it a little bit differently or wait a little bit. You have to speak to people, you have to meet people where they are at because guess what? they're the ones who are gonna vote for you,

and they're the ones who you're gonna represent. It's just like, look, in the union, we, our philosophy is, and I've been in leadership for a few years, might be for a little bit longer, but the philosophy is if the membership tells you, hey, we don't wanna go on strike, then you don't go on strike.

If the membership says, hey, we do wanna do that, then you do it, right? You can lead, you can shape, you can respond, et cetera, but it is, you are the expression of the will of the people who you represent. That's all you fucking are. And so that's what you have to be focused on every, what are people's actual lives?

Let me listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, then ingest and offer a response. But if you start to think you know better than the people, then you are, you are screwed. Absolutely. This is such a important sort of understanding or an expression of what leadership is. So leadership is not just simply aggregating

the feelings of people. It is absolutely the listening and also the ability to help people make meaning. It's a back and forth, right? And when you've like, some people ask how far ahead of my base or my members should I be, and I strongly believe you can, your job, if you're organizing well, your job should, should never be.

So ahead of your people that you are disconnected from them. Yeah. Right. To me, then you've not done the organizing work. Um, and you have to listen. If people are saying, if you're saying, for example, we need to pass this bowl policy because I think it will improve your lives and your membership or your constituencies are like, we ain't with it chief, you've got to listen.

Yeah. And you, and you have to, you have to decide like, well, maybe we need to take a beat and have more conversations about what that might look like, right? Your job as a leader is both listening and leading, which often means creating the spaces where people could collectively make meaning, right? And hopefully that collective meaning making isn't simply, it's something bigger than just aggregating the feelings of all the people together. It's, the meaning making is actually like collectively coming to terms with these contradictions.

So it's like, oh, as an individual, it was hard for me to make sense of this. But because we were in that like three day sort of like, you know, member meeting or the two hour member meeting or I got together over a few months, I actually see things differently and I understand why we need to take that risk. And I feel more trust in leadership because of that process.

It's a back and forth, you know, and I'm really happy that we're talking about organizing and we're talking about the kind of granular nature of it, uh, because there's a way where, um, people look at organizations and they'll be like, well, why didn't they take that stance? They weren't bold enough. Sometimes it's because you're a democratic organization and the people are saying, we're not ready for that. We don't have enough power.

We'll get decimated if we take that position. Let's take a beat and build more power so that we could take on that position. And from the outside, we're just like, well, we want, we want the hot take. It's like, sometimes you got to let it cook. Um, and, and, and so that when, you know, for example, I hear this every single time general strike, we need a general strike. Oh, sure. You know, you're in a union.

So you understand that the decision to strike just as one union, it's a big deal. Yeah. It's really risky to get a bunch of people to decide to do that. It's not like a, a, a moral proclamation. It's not like a strike should happen every single day and you're more moral. You're more down, you're more down if you choose to strike or not.

Strikes are tactics that people are collectively deciding should happen at a right time, at a right place, at the right conditions. And knowing when to pull the trigger is as important as pulling that trigger. And so when I hear the general, it's like, well, you have to earn that. It's not just that.

You don't just have to earn it. You have to actually make it happen as an organizer. Like in the Writers Guild and the SAG After Strike, right? It's not just about declaring a strike. It's not just about getting the membership to vote for a strike. It is how do we get nearly 100% of our 10 to 12,000 members in the case of the Writers Guild,

over 100,000 in the case of SAG-AFTRA, how do we get every single one of those people to refuse to work and to show up with a sign instead? Because guess what? If you declare a strike, even if people vote for a strike, if 20% of those people say, ah, I really got to eat today, I got to go to work anyway,

your strike's done. You cannot have any of those people, like, that is an individual decision on each of those people's part that you have to respect. You know, you can encourage them, you can say, solidarity, we want you to go on strike. But if you don't literally get the buy-in from all those people, you have nothing.

So when someone says, hey, let's have a general strike, wouldn't that be great? I'm like, well, that is a wonderful hypothetical idea. How are you, the person proposing it, going to get millions of people to individually decide to stay home? You can print out flyers, you can tweet about it, but I don't think that's gonna get them to do it.

The question is, how do you literally get them to do it? Like not how do you propose it? How do you, and that's organizing and that takes years and it's not just a strategic consideration. It's even deeper than what you said. I'm sorry to disagree with you, Maurice. It's a practical consideration. How do you literally make it happen

and you can do it, they do it in Europe all the time, it's happened before in American history and Sean Fain is trying to do it now at the UAW, he's trying to coordinate contract expiration dates for multiple unions to have a multi-union strike, perhaps, to wield that power, but it takes years and years of planning and that's what's difficult about it. strike, perhaps, to wield that power. But it takes years and years of planning. And that's the that's the what's difficult about it.

That's correct. And and no disagreement there. It's a very literal and practical question. And like, I I actually think that pragmatism is something that we shouldn't see to centrist and to other folks like pragmatism simply means I care about how we make this happen. And I care about how we make working class politics happen, right? And so the pragmatic question to me often is the question. Yep, and the pragmatic question of how do we build power? And we don't mean abstract power.

We mean literal power. We want power for working people. That means we want working people calling the shots. We want the billionaires to be saying, what, what, what? We don't want you to do this. And we say, fuck you. We have the power.

We're doing this. We're doing it whether you like it or not. And how do you build that? And something that I often hear on the left, this is, we gotta wrap it up in a second, but I think we're getting to one of the biggest questions facing the left is there are people who just wanna complain and they wanna be right

and they want to raise a big stink and what they are not thinking about is how do you force the world to change in the ways that you want it to? How do you build power? And sometimes there are forms of complaining that, or there are forms of activism that actually reduce your own power, right? Because they fracture your community, they fracture your side, they create division,

they reduce your ability to organize. And if instead your focus is, hey, I I wanna complain as much as the next person, but let's have our North Star always be, we are building power for our community on a practical, literal level. That's otherwise nothing ever changes, right? That's the only way that you do it. And so that's like something that I think we need to really be building into our culture

is that is our goal is to make the, in the Writers Guild, we made these companies fucking bend the knee. We had David Zaslav and all of them saying, we don't wanna give you what you want. Guess what? Five months later, they had to do it because they had no other choice.

How do we win victories like that? And, you know, I was lucky to be a member of a union that already had that power and has built it over decades. You are trying to build it now. How do we build that power throughout our society for working people? Yeah, I love this quote by Amokar Cabral. We are not going to eliminate imperialism by shouting insults at it. I love that quote. I love it.

Because it puts in a quote everything that you just talked about, right? Yeah. We can shout the insults. It's fun to shout the insult, but that's not going to be what actually makes the change. I'm not even saying don't shout the insults, but don't confuse the shouting of the insults as actually wielding or building power. And the way that you know you have power is that you're able to make things happen in the world, um, against the interest or against the desires of the people that want something else to happen. Right. As much as they want that something else to happen, you're still able to make it happen. That's how you know you're working with some power, right? Yep. And so I promote the the ruthless pursuit of power. I think there's a lot of people

who believe in the ideas that we believe in that are kind of ambivalent about wielding power. Yeah. Right? And I want to promote for everyday working people to not be ambivalent about wielding power. I was talking to our friend, Jeff Johnson, and I said, yeah, our people need to be power hungry because we've been starved of power for so many years. And he was like, yes, power hungry, but never power drunk. And I like that distinction. Right?

And so to me, what that looks like, and it also, it kind of requires some bravado and it requires like us to kind of say with our chest that, oh, I actually believe that our ideas should be the ideas. Like our ideas should be the common sense and we should govern, which is why I love doing work with a political party because small parties, large parties, like I said, they all wake up and believe that they should govern, that they should run the country. Right? And I want working people to have that bold desire, like we should run the country.

All right. So let's start from that premise and work our way down. All right. Practically, what will it take? It's not going to be easy. We know it's not going to happen tomorrow. It's not going to happen next election. But we believe we live in a world where it could happen. Yeah. We just need to figure it out.

And so what is our path to governing where no matter what anybody says, any corporation says, any ultra wealthy persons, we could just, the full throated working person's agenda. I believe that over the next decade, we could do that on the city, on the county, and then on the state level. Like you live in a state where there's a lot of progressive people. Unfortunately, in the state legislature,

there's way too many quote unquote moderate Democrats who basically serve the function that Democrat, that Republican serve in places where Republicans, um, actually have governing power. This is true of California to a T. Yeah. And so a majority of people in California agree, yeah, Medicare for all. Let's have it.

We should have a single payer system. Nobody should go hungry simply because they live in bodies. Right. And they, right. Like, um, but that doesn't happen, not because the people don't want it to happen, but the people have not organized enough power to make it happen.

And if we just focus like a laser, not on, we all agree it should happen, right? So we don't have to argue about whether or not it should happen. We all agree that it morally is the right thing to happen. Let's not focus on moralizing. Let's just focus on building the power to make it happen. Where there's nothing they could do.

There's nothing the Ma Democrats could do. There's nothing the pharmaceutical companies could do. All the lobbies could do. We built up enough power. We've gotten enough independent people in the legislature in Sacramento, for example, where it's going down. That's the thing that I wake up and fight

for every single day. And it continues to make me excited, even after Trump and MAGA won the election. I'm like, all right, I licked my wounds and I'm hungry now because I just experienced this loss. I'm hungry for a win and I'm more hungry than ever for power. Great. So let's bring it home with this.

Because a lot of people right now are looking for hope and they're looking for something to do. And they know that, you know, the kind of organizing we're talking about is not gonna be easier under the Trump administration because they are gonna put institutional roadblocks in place. I mean, they literally might invalidate like the National Labor Relations Act,

and drive a stake through the heart of unions as best they can. So A, what gives you hope right now, looking specifically at the political future that we're about to enter? And B, what can people literally do? Let's do the pragmatism. You know, if people want to join the movement and organize

and build power for themselves in their community, what do you recommend they do? Okay, so the thing that gives me hope is the fact that after a loss like this, and it's hard, it's a tough one, what I've experienced, because I've been organizing for a while, so I've experienced like the highs and the lows. I've experienced the wins. I've experienced the losses. I've always noticed after a loss, there is an explosion of innovation that takes place, right?

Like, you know, necessity is the mother of creation. I know that when Trump and MAGA do the things that they do, it will inspire people to come up with new solutions and new solutions are something that we need. Because everything that we've been doing to this point, I think we could all agree, everything that we've been doing to this point did not land it. Did not create the great utopian vision for working people. And so we need to be in a space of innovation and experimentation. The other thing is what gives me hope is after losses, not for everybody, but for many people, people grow an appetite for a win, which means people tend to be more serious

about the power that we have and the power that we need. And people tend to be more committed to building relationships and coalitions. And so there's an opportunity for people to meet each other, to see each other, to not be super sectarian about what I mean. It's like, oh, it's my way of the highway. It's my organization or bust. And my organization is the greatest organization on the planet. And the only thing that happened is that more people didn't believe in our vision.

Right. That there's more, more opportunity for introspection. And I'm looking forward to seeing all of the amazing experiments that come out of it. And the, the, the other thing I'll say is that we shouldn't fall into the survivorship fallacy. Right. And what I mean by that is after a loss, oh, everything we did was shit. Or after a victory, we're all geniuses.

I want to remind people that when it came to the federal, at the top of the ticket and the federal government, we did suffer some, some pretty hard defeats and we have to wrestle with that. But I'm super excited about the fact that in Connecticut, we flipped a half a dozen Republican state house seats to, to Democrats who are all union backed people with the Working Families Party. Yeah, they're not just Democrats. They are people who you put in office from your, who represent your constituency.

Yep, they just happen to be governing through the Democratic Party because of the rigid two party system, but there are people. I'm like, I'm super excited about that. And there are so many examples in Portland. So, and a night that wasn't great in Portland, we swept the city council. Um, in, in New York, we were able to elect a number of working families,

party candidates on the state house level, um, on the local. These are really, really exciting little green shoots of organizing that we shouldn't get lost simply because of the hard loss at the top of the ticket. Those things are legitimately making me excited and being able to govern with those folks. And especially in a moment where there's going to be a dark cloud over the federal government. We need the people on the local level and on the state level where we do have governing power to be bolder than they've ever been in their entire lives. And now they certainly not abstractly, but in a very real way, have

a reason to be bold. And the thing that I'll invite people into is join an organization. And if you are having trouble finding an organization, I invite you to join the working Families party. It's very easy. You could find us easily online. You could text us. We have all different types of ways.

If you don't mind, I'll be happy to share the call to actions for people to do that. Yeah, what is it? Just tell us the easiest website to go to. Yeah, just go to workingfamilies.org. Go to work at Working Families on any of the social media apps. You could find me on social media as well.

And I actually slide into my DMs. I will reply back. We try to be really responsive. I'm at MauriceWFP everywhere. And we want to be in relationship with you. And look, if for whatever reason, our strategy, our positions don't align with you, if you're a working person, I still desperately want you to find an organization, there's likely an organization that is local to you that

aligns with your values. And if after all of that, all of the investigation and all of the research, you can't find an organization, perhaps this is the day for you to build one on your own. So this is, I think, a time for us to invest in organizing. You can also join an organization and radicalize it, you know what I mean? And turn it into a political vehicle. You can join a church, you can join a union,

you can join a, yeah, and you can raise its consciousness, right, and turn it into something. Yeah, and when I say organization, I definitely mean political organizations, but I mean just find people, right? Find people. Maybe it's a church, maybe it's a religious organization,

maybe it's a hobby, but be connected to people. Choose in this moment where some folks are feeling afraid, some folks are feeling like, well, let me just put my head down and just one foot in front of the other, choose connection. And there's so many different ways to make that happen. And in real life, like the phone is powerful,

social media is powerful, but that real in-person connection with people, that is the bonds that make the world go. Oh, absolutely. And there's this distinction, right? Between when people say, how are things going? There's how are things going here in real life, right? In the life that I could touch, in my community,

with the people around me. And then there's this distinction that we have of like, well, what's going on over there? And sometimes, and this is something that happens in our politics, when you ask people, well, what's going on in your community? Well, things are kind of okay. What is the direction of this country?

Man, we're going backwards and there's, you know, there are roving gangs of migrants who are like, you know, who are on the hunt and, you know, the worst fever dream from the far right is real and palpable. It's like, wait, so you're both living in a community that is relatively safe. And the people around you are in good standing with you. And, you know, America is a post-apocalyptic hell hole, right? The way to like, the way to jam that is by insisting that you are in public life in person is the best way to do that.

And I really recommend that people do that. Maurice, I can't thank you enough for being here. Once again, everybody listening, go check out the working families party. Drop the URL for us one more time. Okay. It's working families dot O R G. Invite everybody to, to, to join us and be part of the conversation. And if we join, you're not just asking me for 10 bucks. You're asking me to go participate.

Yeah, this is the thing I like. We will. We will ask you, right? Like we will ask you full disclosure for for your money and your time and everything else. Like we will. But you will not get the breathless text minute by minute. Right. Our, our democracy is over. This is Nancy Pelosi. Please, Adam, give $3. You're not going to get that. You

will be invited and we will respect your boundaries. You'll be invited in the life of the party in as much as you want to participate in the life of the party. And membership primarily isn't paid membership or dues paying membership. Membership is committing to a shared political identity, a shared political project, right? So our members are the people that say, count me in. I'm ready to live in a world where working people govern. And then if you want to be a dues paying member, yes, we'll be more than happy to do that.

But it's about being with one another and choosing one another more than anything else. What a beautiful vision I'm going to join today. Maurice, thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you. My God, thank you again to Maurice Mitchell for coming on the show. That conversation blew my mind.

I hope it blew yours as well. We're all getting blown today, baby. If you wanna support the show, once again, patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode ad free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name in the credits of the podcast and put it in the credits of every single one

of my video monologues. This week, I wanna thank Thornton, Samuel Montour, David Snowpack, Eric Carlson, Scooty Chimkin Nuggy. I just wanna say that one again. Scooty Chimkin Nuggy, a wonderful name, Miss Me With a Fascism, another great name, Aaron Explosion, Robert Fuss, and Game Grumps,

the amazing YouTube channel Game Grumps. Thank you so much for supporting the show. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover if you'd like to join them. Just a reminder, December 13th and 14th, I'm in San Francisco, and then in January, I'm going to be in Dallas, Texas, and Toronto, Ontario. A lot more tour dates after that. So head to adamconover.net to check out all of them.

I wanna thank my producers, Sam Roudman and Tony Wilson, everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible. And until next time, I'll see you next week on Factually. Thank you so much for listening. I don't know. That was a HeadGum Podcast. Hey everyone, I'm Dan LaCotta. And I'm Nick Nani. And we are the hosts of Chicken Padme John now on HeadGum. It's the very first podcast for and about Italian Americans.

That's right. But if you're not Italian American, you can listen to, I guess. I suppose we can let you in, cut you a deal. We're talking about all sorts of crazy topics on this. Who's a better cook, nonna or mama? Who you got in that fight, nonna or mama? I mean, I can't say bad about n none or else she smacked me across head. We got some great guests on the show.

We got Wayne Diamond. We got Edie Modica. We got Mike Hanford. And our wife, Severiolan. So subscribe to Chicken Parmesan on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Thursday.