Financial Feminist - 27. How to Save Our Democracy with Amanda Litman

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Does our vote really matter? How do we make our politicians listen to us instead of bending to lobbyists and corporations? Is there hope for our democracy? Today’s guest, Amanda Litman (Run for Something), is here to show us the path to getting more progressive candidates in office who can begin to affect change locally and, eventually, nationally. A path that starts right outside your front door in the community you love. The hope, as it turns out, is all of us. This is one of the most important episodes we’ve ever recorded, and it’s crucial listening –– now more than ever before. Pre-Order “Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy’s Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love”: https://bit.ly/3PpHvlC Abortion Resources: https://choice.crd.co/ Follow Run for Something on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runforsomethingnow/ Become a Candidate with Run for Something: https://runforsomething.net/run/  Voting and election information: https://www.vote.org/  Our HYSA recommendation [affiliate]: http://sofi.com/herfirst100k Follow Financial Feminist on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/financialfeministpodcast/  Follow Her First $100K on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/herfirst100k/ Looking for more actionable money advice? Take our FREE money personality quiz! https://treasury.app/herfirst100k/money-journey-quiz  Leave Financial Feminist a voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/financialfeminist  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, Financial Feminist listeners. My name is Kristen, and I am the podcast producer here at Financial Feminist. Before we get into today's episode, we wanted to take a moment to address the Supreme Court decision on June 24th that overturned Roe versus Wade. This decision stripped away the legal right to have a safe and legal abortion. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. This decision could also lead to the loss of other rights. To learn more about what you can do to help, go to choice.crd.co. That's choice.crd.co. We will also have links in our show notes. We recorded this episode with Amanda

a couple months ago after the leak had happened, but it was before obviously this decision was made. We wanted to give this little disclaimer off the top, and I especially wanted to give it. As a woman who lives in a Southern state who has just severely restricted abortion, this episode is one of the most hopeful things that you could listen to at this time. It really genuinely will give you hope. We here at Financial Feminist and Her First 100K encourage you to speak up, take care, and spread the word. Thank you, Financial Feminist. Hello, hello, Financial Feminist. Somehow, we are already at the end of June, which means

that 2022 is halfway over, which is absolutely wild. So as we finish out Pride Month, today's episode feels particularly relevant with everything happening in the United States, everything happening in the world, especially considering it's election year if you are based in the United States. Something you've heard me talk a lot about, of course, on this podcast is fighting the patriarchy, fighting these patriarchal systems that exist that keep folks disenfranchised, women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ plus community, disabled people, anyone who's of a minority group. And in fighting the patriarchy, we do that with our time, with our money, with our vote.

And one of the biggest ways to make meaningful change is by engaging with elections and elected officials. And that means not only showing up on the first Tuesday in November and voting in national elections, voting for our president, it means the random Tuesday in May to vote for the school board primaries, for our mayor, for the sheriff, for even the coroner, which doesn't sound important. But let me tell you after this episode, you will understand why it is. It means emailing, calling your elected officials, engaging in the process outside of election day, and making your voice heard. It is so important. It is so important to engage with your politics at a local level. I didn't even

realize how important it was until after I did this interview. These national elections are incredibly important, right? The presidential election is incredibly important. However, the things that you can actually do in terms of seeing your impact on a day-to-day basis, that happens at the local or state level. That happens with local government. You can have more influence and more sway, and local and state officials are going to have a bigger impact on your life, on your day-to-day life. Their decisions about schools, about policing, about healthcare, about pretty much anything is going to affect you more personally on a day-to-day basis. What's even more important than these elections is running for office. So if you're like me, again, I walked

into this episode thinking like, oh, running for office seems fun. Yes, I would like to live out my Leslie Knope dreams. However, that sounds, I'm busy. I'm a busy person. And also don't elections take a bunch of time. I just that's not for me. But today's guest is here to dispel that myth. I literally walked out of today's interview. It's one of my favorite interviews we've ever, ever done. I literally called Kristen, our podcast producer, after I walked out the studio and just, I am in absolute awe of Amanda. And in addition, I left the studio wanting to run for office and realizing I actually could. So today we're joined by Amanda Lippman, the founder of Run for Something. Amanda is impressive as fuck, y'all. She has worked for both the Hillary Clinton campaign and Barack Obama's campaign and now helps progressives under 40 run for local

office. This episode is incredibly inspiring, and if it doesn't make you want to run for office yourself or at least get more involved, it will at least have you thinking about the town you live in in new ways. Please do not skip this one. Please share it. I was, again, so inspired walking out of the studio after we recorded this one. Amanda is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met in my life, and I was so thankful she came on the show. So without further ado, Amanda Littman of Run for Something. I'm so happy you're here. We had a fun little rendezvous before this because of a studio mix-up, so it's fun. We've already chatted for a while, which I—it's great.

Eating soup. Eating soup! Hanging out. Makes us a little less awkward, two people who haven't met prior to this. What got you into politics in the first place? I have never not been into politics, which is a really bad answer. It's not a bad answer. I grew up in Northern Virginia. My best friend's mom used to take me to marches and protests.

The first thing I remember doing was like stuffing envelopes for NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia when I was in my teens. Knocked doors for Virginia Democrats. I just always thought politics was a way you could change the world. I thought it was interesting. And that if you wanted to make this a better country and a better democracy, like, duh, elections were the way to do it. You had the Padme Amidala version of democracy. Kind of, yeah. It was pretty cliché.

No, because I grew up thinking politics was, yeah, very – Gross. Not gross, but just grew up with parents who were very like disillusioned by the whole thing. My parents were not political in any way. My dad was Republican. My mom like voted, but it just like wasn't the primary topic of conversation. But I did grow up pretty religious, like Jewish, went to summer camp and a big part of the summer camp I went to was that it is your responsibility as a Jewish person to try and fix the world, to save the world and to fix the broken pieces.

And that included like social action projects like recycling and cleaning up parks, but also through government. And like I did a program once where you went to the hill and you lobbied about minimum wage or like whatever the Jewish issue of the moment was. And that was just baked in. Wow. So I knew I wanted to work in politics. I didn't know exactly what sort of part of it. I thought maybe campaigns, maybe journalism. Junior year of high school, I skipped a day of class and went to go see Barack Obama speak. Before he announced his presidential campaign, he was doing a speaking tour. And I heard him speak at George Mason University and was sold. I was like, that's what I want to do.

I want to work for him. So my senior year of high school, I skipped another day of school to go to the DNC winter meeting because that's what I did as a high school senior, my little truancy. I got to see all the other Democrats speak. And, like, that was when the presidential campaign primary was still in full swing. And you got to see like Hillary and John Edwards and, you know, and Obama and, you know, the whole field. Was it with Warren at that time? She was not yet. Okay.

I went, I had a family friend who was at Northwestern University who was working or interning on the Obama campaign. And I was like, I want to do that. I want to go to Northwestern. I want to work for the Obama campaign when I'm in college, which is not a great way to pick a university, but it's not a bad one. And so that's what I did. In college, I jumped around a little bit. I did college journalism. So I did a summer internship at the American Prospect. I worked at Ms. Magazine at one point. I did a summer on the Hill as a Hill intern, which made me realize I don't like governing that much. I worked for my local county Democratic Party, but by my senior year, I knew I wanted to work on campaigns. So in between writing my thesis, I majored in American

Studies and I wrote my thesis on women running for office against other women and the way it changes gender performance in TV ads. So I've been always on brand. Tell me more about that. The gist is that as more women ran for office and as gender became less of a differentiating factor, there were more ways to perform gender. So you went from the singular like women in kitchen with kids and pearls to like woman outside, woman at work, woman in pants, woman in short hair, long hair. And now it's actually really, I think 2018 in particular, you saw like women breastfeeding on their TV ads. Women like showing off somewhat traditionally masculine coded activities like

motorcycles. Women in hijab. And it's an expansion of what is possible when more women run. You get more examples of how we can do it. So I got an internship on the Obama campaign my senior year of college doing online fundraising. And I've been working in this field ever since. Sounds like you've been laser focused. Did that focus ever wane? I always knew campaigns and I always knew it wasn't really again like journalism maybe but by the time I was a senior I sort of caught the bug of like you do a hard sprint to a full finish, either you win or you lose. If you win, the possibility for progress is exponential. It's unbelievable. If you lose, the consequences are also really high and the stakes are really high, but that's what makes the work worth it. And you can do anything for, you know, 10 months, nine months, six weeks. You can

work until you can't see straight, until you get shingles, until you like sacrifice your family and your friends. Which isn't ideal. No, it's not good. And it's not a good work culture, but you do it because if you don't, at the end of the day after the election, did you do everything you could? And at the end of Election Day 2012, when we were in the McCormick Center seeing Obama accept and win that re-election. And I think that in retrospect feels very obvious, but in the moment felt so improbable. Like that makes it worth it. Plus you build an incredible family of friends that you work with. And it's like being in the trenches with people. I was just going to say you're in the trenches together.

Yeah. So some of my closest friends are people I've now known for over a decade, having worked with them in 2012. Why did you start Run for Something? So Run for Something was born of the ashes of the 2016 election. HFK was too. Her first 100K was born as well. Just a time for us to rise like phoenixes. So after I worked for Obama, I worked for his nonprofit for a year. I moved down to Florida and worked in the governor's race for a while. And then I moved to New York to work for Secretary Clinton's campaign, which was a dream come true.

All I wanted was to elect the first woman president. I'm going to get like teary thinking about it. No, and I'm literally, you just said that. Yeah. It felt so possible. You know, we worked so hard. I worked from before the campaign launched all the way through to days and days and weeks after. And we used to get pep talks throughout the hardest days of if we win, the little girls across the country would be able to say that you did this. You gave me an example of what is possible to achieve. And if we lose, everything is on the line. Like we used to make up headlines of what we would see under a Trump presidency, and honestly, we couldn't have made up with the reality.

That pressure, though. Fuck. It sucked. And afterwards, you know, in the weeks after Election Day, it's not just a personal failing. Because, like, I, Amanda Lippman, failed to do my job, which was to elect Hillary Clinton president. And because I failed, so many people are going to suffer. Did I do everything I could? At some point you have to let that go. Yeah.

A lot of therapy. Yeah. But, you know, you find a way to. that go. Yeah. A little therapy. Yeah. But, you know, you find a way to. That's so heavy. It sucks. I mean, it was a privilege. It was a privilege and an honor to work for her. And it was one of the coolest, hardest, best things I'll ever do.

And it was crushing. The week after Election Day, I'm still in a haze. Depression and grief. And I haven't been to a grocery store since March 2015. So I'm still in a haze, depression and grief. And I haven't been to a grocery store since March 2015. So I'm hungry. I get a message from somebody I went to college with. Hey, Amanda, I'm a public school teacher in Chicago. I'm thinking about running for office because if Trump can be president, it seems like anybody can do this.

You've worked in politics. You know the space. What do I do? And I didn't have an answer for them. And I was getting messages like this from people all across the country. Like I was getting people DMing me on Twitter saying, I want to run. What do I do? Like I was being people on Facebook, just like reaching out, asking me, what do I do? Because like, if you don't really know how the political system works, you don't even know where to start. So the friend of a friend who works in

politics feels like a pretty good entry point. The more that I thought about that, the more that I realized that the fact that I didn't have an answer for them, the fact that there was nowhere you could go if you were in your 20s or 30s and, you know, maybe didn't have the capacity to raise a bunch of money, but maybe weren't super new to politics, but like you knew that this was a way you could solve a problem you cared about. You didn't want to vote or you wanted to do more than vote. You wanted to do more than volunteer. If you wanted to actually lead, there was nowhere you could go that would take your call. That felt like a symptom of really big problems in the Democratic Party and in our democracy.

Yeah. So on a very depressing vacation that I took with some colleagues a couple weeks later, during which I read the book by Ellen Malcolm about how she created EMILY's List, which is the organization that elects pro-choice Democratic women. Yep. I'm a supporter of them. They are phenomenal. And she talks about how one of the reasons she created Emily's List was because women were not seen as viable candidates.

They did not see them- By who? By the gatekeepers, by the donors and the party officials and like the people who make- The system. Yeah. So she created Emily's list to give those women who were not seen as viable candidates a base a place to call home a political entry point and i was like oh we could do something kind of like this i would do it a little differently you

know it's 2016 at this point not you know the 80s i would do a little differently but we could do something like this but for all those people who were reaching out to me, like what if we created a place for young people who wanted to run for local office for the first time for them to get help? I sent an email to a whole bunch of people saying, here's my idea. Tell me why this is dumb. Talk me down if you need to talk me down. Sure. This feels really obvious. Like surely somebody must've tried this. Like tell me why this is stupid. And instead I got back dozens of emails being like, yeah, this feels really obvious. Like, surely somebody must have tried this. Like, tell me why this is stupid. And instead I got back dozens of emails being like, yeah, you should absolutely.

It's really hard. Sure. You should do it. And one of those people connected me to her husband who had been working in politics for about 15 years. His name is Ross Morales Roquetto. And he had been, like, chewing on this idea for a while, too. Yeah. And Ross and I sat down and we wrote a plan and we built a website and we filed the legal paperwork.

I was unemployed. At what point? What month is this? This is December 2016. So you... I'm a workaholic. You got your shit together in like two months?

Yeah. Six weeks? Six weeks. Amanda. Yeah, I was... Are you sleeping? Well, you probably haven't slept for a year. So I'm sleeping and I'm writing a plan and I'm getting on the phone with people to ask them

to tell me why this is a good idea or a bad idea. I'm getting feedback. Ross is managing a congressional campaign out in California. So he's like working and then we're talking at night. By January, now I'm like really in this in this shit because I dislocate my knee on New Year's Eve. So I'm literally. Doing what? Are you drunk? It's like dancing in a friend's apartment. I'm being like, we're more fun to end New Year's Eve than an emergency room. I have so many friends who have gotten fluke injuries because they've been drinking. And like shit.

Sucks. Yeah. So I'm literally sitting on my couch. Can't do anything. Can't go anywhere. Can't have any fun. Can't go to the March. Can't like go put like can't go anywhere.

Oh yeah. So yeah. So this is January 2017. We're like, okay, we will launch Run for Something. If it works, great. If not, what a cool hobby this will be. I had sent out my resume to some online marketing jobs because that's what I'd done before. Who knows what I'm going to do with my life.

I had envisioned a world where Hillary Clinton was going to be president, and I didn't know what I would do in that scenario either, but at the very least, like, I would have friends with interesting jobs. I could find something. So we launch Run for Something on Trump's inauguration day. That morning, a little blurb goes out in Politico. Our website goes live. I send an email to, I don't know,

a thousand people who I've ever talked to in my entire life, being like, I just put this thing out into the world. Tell me what you think. Please give us money. And it goes viral. We thought we'd get maybe 100 people who sign up to say they want to run in the first year. We have 1,000 people in the first week. My inbox is flooded with people who want to help. All of a sudden, I have people reaching out to me saying, let me talk to the folks in Kansas. Let me help the people in Florida. I have seven friends in Maine who I think you should talk to. So I figure out how to build the thing and fly the plane and hopefully not crash the plane as we go. As of today, we're up to more than 113,000 young people, mostly women, mostly people of color who've raised their

hands to say they want to run. My multimillion-dollar 24-person, maybe six people, 20-something staff has helped endorse more than 2,000 candidates, and we've helped elect 640 across 48 states, all people 40 years old and younger, all first-time candidates, all to things like State House, State Senate, City Council, School Board, Library Board, Water Board, University of Michigan Board of Regents, Community College Board of Trustees.

They have done things like expand Medicaid in Virginia to hundreds and thousands of Virginians and bring early voting to New York and get police out of traffic enforcement in Berkeley and bring paid family leave after pregnancy loss to the employees in Waterloo, Iowa. They have fought to reduce the cost of insulin in Texas and personally helped nearly 50,000 Floridians access broken unemployment search systems. They're amazing. And they are just the beginning because we have so much more work to do. But getting to be a part of this and what it was going to be my hobby, now my full-time, more than full-time job, hobby now my full-time more than full-time job is just such a privilege and such a joy and so exhausting um and has transformed my understanding of what is possible in politics both for better

and for worse so that's run for something i don't know what to say i always joke that i cry on the show but i've never cried this early oh no no it's a good thing I'm I'm in awe of you oh thank you oh gosh where do I even go one thing I've thought about a lot is how Secretary Clinton must have felt to be the most qualified person to ever run for that office and to lose to an absolute buffoon yeah and what that must say about the state of our world. I have thought about if that was me, how much that would fuck me up, to be honest. On election night, I was at the Javits Center.

We were in the backstage in this little staff holding area with digital and comms and research people. We were waiting to see what the results were because we had plans. We had a website to switch over. We had an email to send, social tweet, all of that. And when the results came, obviously we all crumbled. And the conversation I remember having most vividly with one of my friends was,

what are all the little girls going to think? And just as important, like, what are all the little boys going to think? But they can and maybe have to behave in a certain way to gain power. What kind of example are we setting for kids? Well, for all of us. I mean, for all of us. But, like, what does this mean for what is possible for women?

Yeah. And, you know, a little bit later, and I wrote a book in 2017 as well about, you know, how to run for office. And in it, one of the things that I put pen to paper and I didn't, it was the hardest part for me to write was like Hillary Clinton losing didn't feel just like a professional failure. It was the rebuke of a woman who was smart and ambitious and qualified and was told over and over again, you are too much, too loud, too aggressive, like too bold, too brash. And like, I'm an ambitious young woman. I get told I'm too loud. I get told I'm too good.

You do all the time. Which like, what does that mean for people like us? What does that tell us? What I've choose to interpret it and what I've choose to take away from that experience and from seeing how she has thrived well, at the very least least come back from that with incredible grace and poise the most and what i've seen these tens of thousands of women more who've said her loss may have broken me but it does not discourage me it makes me think like she went first so i could come next jennifer pomieri in her amazing book Madam President talks about the secret service expression like step forward

draw fire. That's what Hillary Clinton did. She stepped forward and drew the fire. Yeah and regardless of how you feel about her Yeah like

she took the hits. Yep she did. So that the rest of us can come next and maybe it's a little bit easier. Maybe there's more of us. Although you see what the other side is now doing to AOC and it's what they did to Hillary Clinton 20 years ago. But

to know that like that path has been paved and now we get to walk on it and we get to like make it better and prettier and wider and bring more people with us. Right. Well, I think, you know, there was, I think, more harm than good that, of course, came out of that. However, you and I are both sitting at this table in the positions we're in because of 2016. 100%. I would not be here if 2016 hadn't happened. No, I think about the alternate universe where Hillary Clinton had won, my life would be wildly different. In a lot of better ways of course yeah right but i also am like my business would not exist what i'm doing i would not feel as activated as i do i wouldn't

run for something would not exist i would not have met my husband i wouldn't live in new york city like yeah and every level my life would be wildly different and i would i trade this life for that one on a heartbeat i don't know but like that's not a productive counterfactual but it, and also sitting here, you know, is a very privileged statement to be like, you know, like our lives are, you know, this way when. Yeah. But I'm just more thinking about, I think, especially like hearing everything that you've accomplished since then. Right. It was like it was the catalyst that I think. I wish we didn't need it.

Of course. Of course. God, I want to be clear. Of course. I wish we didn't need it. Of course. Of course. God, I want to be clear. Of course I wish we didn't need it. It's just incredible that you took that and was like, okay, let's...

Let's fucking run with it. Unintended, right? For every person there's a different response to trauma and to grief and to anger and I am a campaign person whose response is to work,

which is... Both good and bad. Not great necessarily, but has its pros. Totally. Oh, man. I'm like, I have so many questions for you, but it's also. What is the most surprising thing that a regular person doesn't know about a campaign or an election? I think people think that it's rocket science. Like people think that it's hard.

And I want to be clear, there is a distinction. It is hard. Running for office is difficult. It is time intensive. It is a personal bearing of who you are and what you believe. You're putting yourself out there and asking people to put their faith and trust in you and to delegate, honestly, some of the most important decisions that are ever going to be made into someone that, like,

they're going to barely know or maybe, you know, know for a couple minutes at their door, you're going to decide how well their streets are paved and how fully their schools are funded and whether or not they have access to the reproductive rights

that they deserve. Yeah. And the mechanics of a campaign are actually not that difficult. There's a lot of jargon around it that's meant to keep... It's like personal finance of jargon around it that's meant to keep – It's like personal finance too. Yeah, it's meant to keep normal people out.

Yep, yep. Sounds about right. And it's not that hard. The point of a campaign is to be able to answer as a candidate three key questions. What is the problem I care about solving? How is the office I'm running for giving me a place to solve it? And why should voters want me to win? Which is different than why do you want to win?

You want to win because winning is great and losing sucks. Voters want you to win because you're going to deliver for them. You're going to do something for them. You're going to stop something from happening to them. But you're going to, you know, you're going to touch their lives in a meaningful way. Once you can answer those three questions, the rest of a campaign is just figuring out when and how to communicate that before the deadline. Knocking doors. Making calls. Sending text messages, doing ads.

Like, it's mechanics and it's logistics, which is complicated in and of itself. But most races are not that expensive. Most races aren't that many voters that you actually have to talk to. We're thinking hundreds or thousands. That's way less than I thought. I mean, think about a school board race in kansas city or a city council in oklahoma or even in you know rural florida a county executive race a county commission yeah so we were talking before we got on mic i think a lot of people assume if you know

maybe somebody's just kind of learning more about politics a lot of the media and a lot of people assume if, you know, maybe somebody who's just kind of learning more about politics, a lot of the media and a lot of the splash rate is on these. And we just spent 25 minutes talking about a presidential election. Right. So I hear you say city council. Right. Or, yeah, the school board. And if I'm a listener, I might be going, well, what does that matter? Yeah.

Can you tell me why those matter? OK, so let's zoom out for a moment. You think we have one government. Yeah, with the president, Congress, Supreme Court. We got the federal government. We actually have 50 state governments plus D.C. and territories, 3,000-ish county governments, thousands more city governments. thousands more city governments and within those cities and counties various governing districts that cover things like water and agriculture and mosquitoes and fire safety and then education governance boards like health care health care boards public health officials most of which

are elected there are half a million elected offices in the United States. Yeah. Is it sheriffs are elected too? Sheriffs in many places. 1,300 counties elect coroners, which feel, the coroner is actually a really good example here. Feels like a position that like, who cares? Yeah.

I don't know. We just lived through a global pandemic where coroners in many places were making critical decisions about what went on death certificates. Shit. global pandemic where coroners in many places were making critical decisions about what went on death certificates shit so for example there was a coroner in missouri i believe who would not put covet as cause of death on death certificates because of his politics yeah directly affects the way that we measure things right and therefore how many vaccines are available in the county, the masks support the ventilators and that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. People, coroners will often make decisions about whether someone who died at the hands of the police was killed by the hands of the police or by something else. Wow. Criminal justice issue. Wow. Another coroner example, we had a candidate running for coroner in Jefferson County, Colorado, whose big issue was gender affirmation on death certificates. Trans people within the county were being misgendered on their death certificates, which has a direct effect on

the way that we measure homicide and suicide statistics. That's such a great example, because yeah, you said coroner, and I was like, oh, okay. Who cares? You're right. I'm like, yeah, okay. There are hundreds of thousands of elected positions like coroner that directly affect your quality of life that can make your life infinitely better or infinitely worse. Library boards. Women, it's been in the news a lot lately because we've seen a lot of far-right efforts to ban books out of libraries and to remove funding from libraries. We worked with a woman, Dr. Katie Clark, who is the president of the board of trustees of the Altadena County Library Board in California. And she explained this to me in a way that I'd never actually heard articulated.

The library is the place of government where every citizen and non-citizen comes into contact. It's where homeless people go to apply for jobs. People don't have access to computers. It's where immigrants go for English language classes and citizenship classes. It's where kids go for story time and senior citizens go for social hour. It is the center of government and it maintains the space, the idea of what a community is. Totally. Like she was telling me how her library board at that point in time was thinking about the

civil rights and like historic monument walk throughout the town. It was maintained by the library. Like a library creates a sense of place. What a beautiful thing. And what a thing that could get utterly fucked if the wrong person is in charge. Yeah, I think about my own experience. I would literally get out of school and before I'd have like an hour before my piano lessons when I was growing up. And so my mom would drive me and I'd do homework in the library pretty much every day after school. And I was thinking about like two years, yeah, what, a year ago when the libraries reopened? I cried. I was so happy because I had missed books and going to the library so much.

It's the third space for a lot of people. Yeah, it is. And they're governed by, in many places, elected officials. Wow. So as you think about where is the place I can solve the problem I care about. That directly affects you

in a way that maybe a national election or a federal election won't, right? The answer is almost always on basically everything except for foreign policy. And even that, sometimes you can find a way in.

The answer is local. And especially right now when the federal government, I guess, God bless them, has absolved themselves of the responsibility to act on so many issues, we are going to see even more importance of who is in charge locally in red states and in blue states and purple states, if one believes those are a thing. I think for young people, especially, you think about housing. Housing is not a federally solved problem. I mean there's stuff that the federal government can do obviously but housing is about zoning and building codes. I live in

Seattle which is it's it's has a massive houseless issue. Massive. And every person comes in and claims they're going to solve it, and no one has. But it is any sort of progress has been made at the local level. And, you know, I think especially with housing, it is one of the issues where it is even more important that young people are involved. Because right now homeowners are the primary stakeholders in these places. The number of candidates and elected officials we've worked with who are the first or only renter to win a position on their elected body, the perspective that you bring as a renter or as someone who maybe is like still saving to buy a home or thinking about your first home or can't fucking buy a home because the homes are a million dollars. Yeah. Like that is a very

different perspective than the room full of homeowners and all the landlords that are there. And the people who have had the house for 40 years that it's now quadrupled in value. Who are, it is against their best interest to build more housing. Right. So, you know, on basically every issue, I think housing is the one where it's the most clear. I've had people come up to me and say, you know, my parents don't understand why I live with three roommates that I met on the internet. Because they don't understand what the housing market three roommates that I met on the Internet. Because they don't understand what the housing market is like for a 20-something right now.

It's everybody on Twitter being like, well, I had to go to college and I paid $2, so you should too. And it's like, yeah, college isn't $2. No, it would be nice, wouldn't it? It would be nice. It would be very nice. So, like, even college affordability. A lot of these decisions are being made by state legislatures. Community college affordability.

University of Michigan Board of Regents is an elected position in the state of Michigan. And it's governed by a board. One of the members is Jordan Acker who when we helped him win, I think it was in 2018. Also, so impressive that you've got like – you have this shit down. Oh, man. It's memorized. My brain is 80% run for something stats and 20% M&M works from the 90s.

Because I do this shit with HOK. Like 45% of Americans over the age of 55 have nothing to say for retirement. Like I can spout that like let's go.

It's just ingrained in my soul. No but you can tell you've been courting donors for a couple years. You've been doing this like a while. Well I think it's like

they're compelling stats and they're compelling stories. No I'm not not. I am, again, in awe of you. I think it's great. Thank you. You're spouting it like it's nothing. So Jordan Acker is on the board of Regents of the University of Michigan, and he was the first person to graduate from the university in this century to win a seat on this board that governs one of the biggest public universities in the country. Say that again. Jordan Acker, first member of the University of Michigan Board of Regents to graduate from said university in this century. So Jordan wins. It's a statewide position.

Very cool. Oh, so they're alumni. They're just older. Yeah. They're like 50s and 60s. Oh, I see. Okay. I see what you mean now.

Since 2000. So Jordan comes in with the perspective of like, hey, we should raise the minimum wage for university employees. We should change the way we handle sexual assault complaints on campus. Yes, please. Right now he's talking about what it will take to if Roe v. Wade falls, which feels very likely, and abortion becomes illegal in Michigan as is currently on the law books there. What is the University of Michigan going to do to make sure that it's a safe space for its students, that they can get their students access to the care that they need?

It matters to have people who share our lived experience in these rooms at every level. And I think, you know, sure, like Congress is good. I think it sounds like the most miserable country club in America, but Congress is good for many things and has importance. But the further down the ballot, the closer to your door, the closer to your home, the closer to your daily life.

Yeah. So think about what you can do locally. Yeah. It is so powerful to get to walk or drive or bike or live the outcomes that you work so hard to bring about? I'm thinking about like the media I consume, even just as, and again, listeners, please do this yourself. Like if I'm thinking about, is it a lack of discussion about these sort of issues locally? Because the other stuff's sexier, like presidential campaigns are much sexier. Or am I not looking in the right places to get like news about what's going on in my city? A little bit of calm, a little bit of calm. OK. So the death of local news is a huge problem.

And there's really interesting studies about this. When local news outlets disappear, as we have seen thousands of local newspapers and magazines disappear over the last 20 years. I'm from Tacoma, Washington, Tacoma News Tribune. If you get it still, it's you can't see me, but it's like an inch. No, not even. It's like a fingernail big. This is the story in countless communities across the country. And there is a local news desert. When local news outlets disappear, local lawmakers pass fewer laws. Civic engagement and voter turnout in local elections goes down. Fewer people run for mayor because there's less exposure to what is happening. It has a direct outcome on civic engagement. So the news problem is a democracy problem. Right, right, totally. And compounded by that, national outlets have to find a way to make the ones that still exist,

have to find a way to make the local news stuff exciting. Sexy. I work with reporters every day for my job. I help tell the story of what Run for Something is doing and what our candidates and our alumni are doing. And every day I get reporters who say to me, I would love to tell this story, but how do I convince my national editor that our readers will care? That doesn't seem like my job. But, okay. Let me help you tell the – I'll help you make the case.

You're like, you're the reporter. Figure out the headlines. Not my job. But, like, okay, what's the trend? How can we – what's the bigger meaning here? So give it the razzle dazzle. But I do think part of it is the death of local news and part of it is the outlets that still remain

have to tell the bigger story. Yeah. And that's not to say that what happens in Washington doesn't matter, it does. Is it going to affect your day-to-day lived experience in the same way that you- Or could I affect it? Could you affect it in the same way? you could i affect it could you affect it

probably not doesn't mean don't vote in national elections but it's like if you call your city council member to complain about something they will they personally will probably pick up the phone when you email them like they probably don't have staff maybe they have one right when you call your school board member or reach out to them like you're going to talk to them directly one of the coolest things i got to do when i wrote my book a couple years ago was talk to a bunch of now higher elected officials who started out locally and i talked to one person who told me how when he was still i think he was on the city council at that point. He would go out to dinner with his

girlfriend, I believe, and would have people come up to them at the table and be like, hey, hey, hey, my trash didn't get picked up. Hey, you didn't pick up my trash. Your staff didn't come pick up my trash. He was like, I would have to apologize to my lovely girlfriend for the guy yelling at me about trash pickup over dinner. But like, that was the job. I don't think they do, though. Yeah. And it's like, you can have these personal relationships.

Like the people who serve on your school boards and city councils. Respect their boundaries, please. But yeah. Yeah. My dad, I said, was a Republican for a long time. In 20, I think either 17 or 19, I forget what year it was. boundaries please but yeah yeah my dad i said was a republican for a long time in 20 i think either 17 or 19 i forgot what year was he was like you know i'm gonna vote for a democrat and i was like oh why i was like well you know kathy kathy tran who is the the candidate for state house

she goes to our synagogue i know kathy i'm gonna see kathy at shabbat services if i don't vote for her like she's gonna know right and i was her, she's going to know. Right. And I was like, well, she's not going to know. But you should think that she's going to know. And you should feel personally accountable. He will know. Yeah. That personal relationship between voter and candidate is what makes those offices so compelling and is what makes those elections so meaningful.

Because if you're running for state house or state senate or city council or school board, whatever it is, the doors you knock, the voters you talk to are also going to show up for everything else but that the reverse isn't necessarily true totally especially in a lot of places where the top of the ticket just isn't competitive yeah can we break down the like financials of different levels of campaigns. So if I am listening and I'm like, could I run? Is this a possibility? Like I even, you and I were talking before, like I'm like, maybe I run for office. How much does it take to run at like different levels? Yeah.

How much money do you need? How much money do you need to raise? How, like, am I out here pounding the pavement? Like if I'm not ridiculously wealthy, can I run for office? Like, what does that look like? So obvious caveat to all this. There's so much variety here. Totally.

Between cities, within cities. Campaign finance laws vary wildly. Like, in New York City, if you run for city council, there's matching funds where every dollar for the first, I think it's either $200 or $500. Gut check me on this. But if every dollar up to the certain amount gets matched eight to one by the state. Well, we're recording this in New York City. So let's use New York as our hypothetical example. I'm actually going to go even broader than that.

So let's take it by its types of offices. Okay. School board races. Many places that elect school boards, generally speaking. What is a school board? Can we go even back there? School boards govern schools. Right, sure. School boards, and there's a lot of different ways that these get cut. These are public schools? Public schools, elementary school districts, high school districts.

Some places they'll divide them by level. Some places they'll be countywide or citywide or there'll be multiple ones within a county or town. What sort of decisions are they making? They'll make decisions like hiring who principals or superintendents are. They'll make decisions about teacher pay. They'll make decisions about capital campaigns and funding. It's almost like a board of directors if a school was a company. Yep. Sometimes they'll make decisions about curriculum. They'll make decisions about books that are available within a library. We saw a lot of this over the pandemic of mask mandates was a school board decision, testing requirements. Basically, everything that determines the quality of the school, which is, as we know, often used as a shortcut to determine the quality of a community. It's a good place to live because the schools are good.

Well, I'm thinking of, yeah, I mean, pandemic last two years would be a very interesting. You have a lot to your point, like you have a lot of influence there. Mask mandate, you know, anti-racist curriculum or lack thereof. You know, you have a lot of influence just right there. You get to decide what kids are learning, which helps shape the kind of citizens they grow up to be. So one of the leaders of one of the far right sort of Christian moral majorities in the 90s told folks, I'd rather have a thousand school board members than one president. Because if you have the school boards, you get to shape the kind of kids people grow up to be. I mean, we see this in textbooks. There's a difference in the way that textbooks in California and Texas describe the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment in Texas

is framed very differently than it is in California. So school boards, boards of education, I would cover library boards in there too, all directly affect how kids are being taught and what kids are being taught so what kind of funding if you were running for school board like what does that look like 75% of school board races cost a thousand dollars or less what 85% cost five thousand dollars or less i have a thousand dollars you don't even need it all yourself that's i know but i have a thousand dollars most of these races amanda! You know, LA, Miami. More money.

More money. Yeah. Oakland, more money. Yeah. Big cities, big, big districts, more money. Most places, not that much money. What's the kind of time commitment? Now I'm literally just interviewing.

Can I, tell me if I can do this. What's the time commitment? So the campaign itself is pretty time intensive, but most candidates that run for something works with, and in fact, most most candidates that run for something works with. And in fact, most candidates generally are not full-time candidates. You work a 9 to 5, you campaign 5 to midnight. You work whenever it is that your hours are. Do I have to like campaign for a school board?

Yeah, knock doors. Yeah, talk to voters. Okay. And that's the thing. For most of these races, and this is true really at any local level up until about state house state senate you can outwork someone who's outspending you because the doors that you knock and the conversations you have on a higher up level but yeah totally yeah the conversations you have with voters are more meaningful and political science research has proven this are more meaningful than any amount of tv ads because how many tv ads do you just like breeze right through you don't remember.

Especially when they're back to back to back to back for like two weeks. Yeah. And like, okay, you see a newspaper ad, you see a yard sign, whatever. You meet someone at your home who shows up and says, Hi, I'm Amanda. I want to talk to you about what our kids are learning. This is my face. This is my name.

This is my name. I want to drink iced tea with you. Right. I want to like have a conversation with you about what you care about. That breaks through the bullshit in a way that most other stuff doesn't. Especially right now. And what that does is inure you to the bullshit that your opponents are going to say. Because like they can drop some ad that's like Amanda is a monster and a socialist and whatever, whatever.

And it's like I don't believe that. I met her. Like she's pretty normal. I see her at the gym. She posts photos of provocative bikinis on Instagram. Like, she's, that's not, I mean, maybe that's true. I might be talking about me, maybe. Maybe that's true, but also, like, I met her.

She's smart. She has great tits, and she's smart. Get you a candidate who can do it all. Get you a girl who can do it both. So that conversation and those hundreds and hundreds of conversations can outweigh the money. I mean,

at the end of the day, what you need money for is the filing. Sometimes it costs money to get on the ballot, a certain amount of filing fees. Filing's just getting on the ballot? It's getting on the ballot.

Okay. Why does it cost money to get on the ballot? Some places, you can do petition signatures instead. Some places, it like an administrative cost. Oh, okay. And you raise it.

That's the thing. Campaigns, like in some places, in some races, like, yeah, it would be nice to have money because then you can pay for it yourself. And then maybe you probably have wealthy friends who can donate to your campaign. But most candidates do not self-fund. Most candidates do not self-fund. Most candidates, in fact, I would say 99% of candidates and definitely all the ones that run for Something Works With are asking people to commit not to them but to their community. I'm not asking you for money for me. I'm not asking you for a loan for lunch.

I'm not asking you to buy me a sandwich. I'm asking you to invest in this place that we live and we love. I'm asking you to invest in the shared vision we have for our hometown. That's not money for me. That's money for you. Right. And your children or your kids. I'm asking you to invest in what we believe is possible.

And a good candidate, I often say fundraising is an act of service. Asking someone for money is an act of service. And here's why. Think about what you did in the weeks and months and years since 2016. Something terrible happens. And, yes, you march and, yes, you protest. But also maybe you make a recurring donation to a bail fund. You throw some money at the ACLU.

Or you give five bucks to Planned Parenthood. Or you donate to Run for Something. Donate to Run for Something. Runforsomething.org? .net. .net. We'll link it, of course. You give money because it is a way to fund the people doing the work and it is a way for you to have value. So for me to ask you to give to my school board race to make our schools a better place for our kids is a way for you to do something practical and tangible for this place that we love.

It's a gift I'm giving you. It's an opportunity to help do something meaningful. Well, and I'll talk about it in the intro, but that's our whole mission. to help do something meaningful. Well, and I'll talk about it in the intro, but that's our whole mission at HFK is it's like financial feminism is build your own foundation, take care of yourself

so that when you're taken care of, you get to use your resources, financial, social, emotional, every resource you have to be able to affect change in your community and in the lives around you. So we have an obligation as if like you're

going to commit to listening to this podcast, if you're going to commit to this sort of lifestyle, it's a commitment to, okay, I'm going to take care of myself first because I can't take care of anybody until I can take care of myself. But then when I'm good, it's my job to take care of everybody else or to use my resources in order to make the change we want to see. You know, we work with a lot of candidates who say, I'm not in the right financial, like my financial house is not in order. I can't run for office yet. It's like, that's a totally reasonable thing to say. Right. Absolutely. Like you should make sure you know how you're going to pay your rent or your mortgage. Right. Or please don't donate to a

certain fund if you are not ready. If you're not ready, you're not ready. And there are so many, such a need for people who have been where you are, who understand your lived experience to serve. So when you're ready, those months or years where times were tough, where you had bankruptcy or overdraft, that makes you a better candidate, not a worse one. Yeah. Well, again, we keep coming back to AOC, but she's a great example. Yeah. Well, that all this again, we keep coming back to AOC, but she's like a great example. I think everybody like, you know, we all know that campaign where it was like, you know, the right makes fun of her for being a bartender. And she's like, no, I know. I know. So, you know, I've talked to people basically for a living. Like, yeah, I make drinks, but like I talk to people and I know what's going on in people's lives and I'm a regular person.

People will come to us and say, I've been divorced. I have student loan debt. I got a DUI once. I have pictures of me on the internet that I would find embarrassing. All of that makes you the kind of person who more people can relate to. Because you know who's the least relatable human being alive is the guy who's been preparing to be president since kindergarten. that dude's never made a mistake that dude's never learned that dude's never lived and that dude almost certainly has some secrets that he's ashamed of for you to be your full authentic self that's why the campaign is very scary is because you have to be your full authentic self it's an mri for the soul but to do so and to put yourself out there is to give people a leader and a champion

for their lived experiences too. You can be the candidate who's got bikini photos on the internet for all the other women who have bikini photos on the internet. Again, get you a girl. Get you a girl, do it all. Okay. School board. What other options we got? School library board. What else we got? Do you think about city council? Right. Leslie Knope. Leslie Knope. City council. Queen Leslie Knope. Our angel from the great state of Indiana. I love her so much. City councils, the rules vary a lot from place to place, but they'll do things like building codes and zoning. They'll do business licensing. Do you feel like Parks and Rec, I mean, obviously it's a show, but do you feel like it's pretty accurate?

I think in terms of the minutia that a city government deals with, it actually directly affects people. Right. Or like the change she conveyed because she did. She made a lot of change in people's lives. Or they filled the pit. The whole first season was filling the pit. They didn't get the pit filled for eight, what, seven seasons? Six seasons? Yeah.

See how much better all those families' lives would have been if they filled the pit? Right. It's good. So like, yeah, it's city councils and city governments. Getting sweetums in check. Bringing business to communities, making sure that communities are, like, family friendly. Making sure all, yeah, the Harvest Festival. I'm a big person, right?

Oh, so good. I would also loop, like, county governments in here, too, because, you know, some places it's governed on the county level. What are the sort of positions? some places it's governed on the county level. What are the sort of positions? So you might have your county council or county commissioner. In Texas, for example, the county executive is called a judge. It's the judge of the commissioner's court. Do you have to be a lawyer? Nope. Nope, certainly do not. Not a single position, as far as I know, or almost none. DAs, maybe you have to be a lawyer, have a law degree, but there's nowhere in any of these places that says you need a law degree or 10 years on your resume or any schooling.

No. Okay. Sometimes there'll be residency requirements. You need to have lived within the district, but that's not even true everywhere. Wow. Most places you probably need to be a registered voter. Some offices there are age restrictions. So it's maybe 18 maybe 21 to be governor of

oklahoma i believe you need to be 31 oddly but generally speaking it's somewhere in the 18 to 25 range for most places these cover everything from county services to how the county or city you know employees are treated public health uh trash pickup water cleanliness that comes through our pipes. There's a huge stuff to do on climate in terms of city and county government. Tell me more. Building codes are actually a really big way you can do this. You can require that buildings are built in a way that is more climate friendly. It's something that New York City has done.

You can change electricity delivery from whatever it is to solar or wind or whatever makes sense for that place. You can change recycling rules in that place. You can switch the entire county or city's cars over to electric. Could be cool. There's a lot of different ways in which you can do this. You can govern a lot of cities and county governments oversee police departments or police budgets. So it's a direct way to play into criminal justice.

You can often govern the way in which higher education interacts with the city or the county. Often the biggest employer, similarly hospitals. Now I'm listening to you, I'm like, this is everything. Think about health, community health care centers. Right. That's how they get funded is often through city or county government. Especially right now, we're talking about abortion access and reproductive care. Cities and counties can do a lot around, is this place a safe haven for people seeking care? Are community health centers, what are the protest zones around them like? What kind of rules are we issuing around crisis pregnancy centers, which are meant to trick

patients into getting not the care they are seeking? All of these issues are touched by city and county government. The cost to run for one of these offices can range from a couple thousand bucks to hundreds of thousands. It really depends on how big it is and how competitive the race is. But it's not millions in most places, almost nowhere. And depending on where you are, the campaign finance laws will really vary. Like I said, New York City has really interesting public financing. Seattle has fascinating stuff. They have democracy vouchers. really interesting public financing. Seattle has fascinating stuff. They have democracy vouchers. Okay. I think it's like 200 bucks. They basically mail it to every Seattle voter.

Yes. And you get to disperse them to the place, to the candidate that you like. I think it's so cool. It helps candidates get sort of a headstart in their fundraising. A lot of cities have some really interesting stuff like that. So you can look all of this up. If you go to runforwhat.net. It's a website. It's a tool that Run for Something has built where you can enter your address and it will show you all the local offices available to you. I was just about to ask. Cool. In 22, 23, and 24. We're adding the next two years and it looks like a week or so. But you go, you'll see the address, you'll see the requirements to file, you'll see when the elections are, and you'll click through. You can get guides on how to file to get on the ballot in every state. We have written it for real people. We're trying to democratize access to the information you need to get on the ballot. No more gatekeeping.

And then we'll help you. You sign up, you'll start getting emails from our team that will say, did you know there's candidate training coming up? Read this article about the young woman of color who ran and won. Aren't you inspired? Right. Join this call. Come to this conversation. Listen to the Financial Feminist Podcast episode. Yeah. All of this is in service of making sure that if you are thinking about running, you know that the door is open to you. You know there is an on-ramp.

And you know that once you do, Run for Something will hold your hand every step of the way. We will be with you all the way through. Win or lose on Election Day, which is not the end of your civic engagement, no matter the outcome. Just another part of the journey. I'm like pumping my fist. Okay. Let's say I live in a Republican state with a blue city. Great.

Texas, Georgia. How can having locally elected progressive candidates impact the issues that we care about when these like general state politics are counter to somebody's values? So some examples in Texas. Really good place for a proof point here. Run for something helped elect Lena Hidalgo, the county executive. She's a judge of the commissioners court. So she's Judge Lena Hidalgo in Harris County, which is the third biggest county in America. Is there a major city in that? Houston. Okay, got it.

Third biggest county in America. She's one of the most powerful women in Texas. She was 28 years old when she was elected. In 2018, nobody thought she could win. She took on an 11 year Republican incumbent. Let's talk about some of the things Lena has done since she took office. 10x to the election administration budget Reformed the way the county does budgeting.

Expanded homelessness services. Ended cash bail. Worked with the district attorney to sue the state when they passed voter suppression laws. Changed flood relief management, which is really the reason she ran for emergency response relief, because the way that the county, which Houston is undergoing some serious flooding, thanks to climate change, has transformed it. Over in Austin, blue city and a red state. I was just reading earlier this week, Vanessa Fuentes, who's a member of the Austin City Council, is currently working to make sure that there's infrastructure and services for people in Austin who need to seek abortion so that they can go to New Mexico to get the

care they need. All of this matters. All of this matters. And even in the state legislature, run for something has alum who are serving in the state ledge, including Jasmine Crockett, who's currently running for Congress, Aaron Zwiener, who has helped lead some incredible work on getting student IDs being able to be used for Congress. Aaron Zwiener, who has helped lead some incredible work on getting student IDs being able to be used for voting. James Tallarico, who changed to lower the cost of insulin in the state after he personally underwent a diabetic episode. John Busey III,

who has been an incredible leader in some of these fights. All of them, along with Jessica Gonzalez and others, were champions and left the state when they tried to pass egregious voter suppression laws over the summer. They were the champions who led this work. It matters, even in a red state, to have people who are willing to fight. So I'm sure you have it somewhere. Is there a list on the website of like every Run for Something candidate? If you go to our website, you'll be able to see our full candidate directory broken out by year, by state. You can go read their stories, go to their websites, find a few that inspire you.

And we're doing more endorsements every month. Run for Something is going to endorse probably 700 candidates this year. Wow. You have to be progressive, right? Any other requirements for participating? Run for something exclusively works with people 40 years old and younger which is not to say that folks older than 40 shouldn't run you should we're just probably not the right group for you like we had to limit our focus a

little bit and young people are wildly underrepresented in government at every level so i don't think anybody's mad about it i get some people mad about it but i don't think anybody hopefully is not losing yeah good yeah okay um you need to be running for office for the first or second time okay so if you've run before and you've lost that's okay but if you are like mayor so you can do run for state ledge we're just not the right group for you yeah you're really trying to get like newbies yeah we're trying to expand the pipeline you need to be running for something local so state house state senate city council school board library board any of the other offices we've talked about you need to be a progressive but we define progressive

pretty broadly. And I think that's important because we work in all 50 states, because we work with a range of offices. We have a set of values that we hold dear. Pro-choice, pro-quality, pro-tolerance, pro-working families, pro-raising the wage for working for American people, pro-comprehensive and compassionate immigration reform, pro-reducing gun violence, pro-climate change is real. Yeah, it tends to be more left-leaning. Yeah, sounds like it. But there's a lot of different ways that that shows up in your race. reducing gun violence pro climate change is real yeah it tends to be more left-leaning yeah sounds like him but there's a lot of different ways that that shows up in your race and we ask you as part

of your endorsement application okay what does it mean to be a pro-choice school board member what does it mean to be a pro-choice city council candidate other than that we want to see people who are willing to work hard who have a strong rationale for running yeah Yeah. And who, yeah, and who just make us say, hell yeah. Yeah. You know it when you meet them. And the stories of the folks we work with are incredible. Sounds like it. It's what makes us worth it.

Like, this is so hard. Yeah. It's so hard. Yeah. But getting to see people take that journey from I'm a person who cares, to I'm a person who's running, to I'm a candidate, to I'm an person who cares to I'm a person who's running to I'm a candidate to I'm an elected official and to I have done something meaningful for this place that I love.

I ran a podcast for about a year. I ran for something podcast. It was super fun. If you go back and listen, I did a conversation with three amazing trans women who ran for office and won each making history

in their own state. Delica Danica Rome in Virginia, Representative Brianna Titone in Colorado and State Senator Sarah McBride in Delaware. And Sarah in particular said something that I have repeated one million times over because I think about it every day. She said, if you want to fall in love with your community, run for office. Talk to your neighbors. You'll learn about the people around you in a way that you have never even considered. You will see and hear and learn things that will blow your mind.

Yeah. And you will love this place that you live. Like, what a beautiful sentiment. It's like the feeling you get when you travel somewhere new because, yeah, I don't live in New York. And I walk around, you know, my neighborhood now that I've lived in for three and a half weeks and, like, still in awe. And I feel like it would probably be a similar feeling even if you've lived in that neighborhood for 20 years. Every candidate I talk to will say the best part is when I knock doors and I talk to a voter who unloads on me because you are the first person to have ever asked them, what is wrong and how can I help? Most people never meet someone running for office. Most

people never meet a candidate. They never meet an elected official. I'm trying to think if I ever have. Probably not. I mean, I understand that I am acutely atypical in this regard and I've worked in this space my whole life. Most people never meet an elected official or somebody running for office. So for you to show up at their door and say, hi, Iri i want to serve you i want to care for you tell me what's going on like what a gift you are giving to be to feel to make someone feel seen and feel heard which really is all any of us ever want anyway you know that's all we all want anything's beautiful what does it feel like to elect these like firsts first trans woman first muslim person like what is what is that feeling for you it is both incredible and infuriating yeah it is like equal parts amazing

and infuriating and it's how i feel about my work too yeah it's like this is amazing also what the fuck we shouldn't this is so broken you know the thing i have to always remind myself is like calling someone the first implies that there will be a second and a third. There will be more. And I have, again, I mentioned earlier talking to reporters a lot and some of them will be like, well, it's like kind of boring. But like a lot of women are running for office. I'm like, that's the point. That's the point.

It should be boring. It should be boring. They said that to you? Yeah, I think it's awesome. It should be boring. I don't think it's boring at all. Six years ago ago it was not barely a thing

yeah it's like first woman who cares and I'm like well one a lot of women care but two a lot of fucking people care

two it should be boring the goal is to make this very boring yeah and I understand that's a harder story for you right but my dream

is that it's totally the goal is to make this normal and less normal not newsworthy it should be totally not newsworthy in the slightest but until it's boring I think it's totally not newsworthy. It should be totally not newsworthy in the slightest. But until it's boring, I think it's amazing.

Yeah. I have to touch on this before we go, and then I'll ask you one other question. We are recording this about a week after it's been kind of public that Roe v. Wade will most likely get overturned, which, if you've been paying attention, is not really shocking. However, it's very infuriating. We're protesting, we're marching, we're voting. What else can we do? Run for local office. The fights for reproductive choice and productive freedom are going to be local. They're going to overturn Roe v. Wade. And then hopefully, as long as Joe Biden remains president,

there will not be a national abortion ban because he will not sign one into law, which means we've got two years maybe because let's assume Republicans win in November, which is always a thing that could not happen, but could. The places where reproductive choice and abortion access will be decided will be in state capitals. They will be in counties. They will be in DAs who get prosecutorial freedom to decide what they will or will not prosecute. They are sheriffs. They are county executives and cities who decide how easy or hard it is for people to get the care they need. New York has an abortion fund. The city has it.

If you need access to care, they'll pay for it. We have seen in Washtenaw County, Michigan, where Ann Arbor is. The county attorney is a guy named Eli Savitt. He's a Run for Something alum. He has said he will not prosecute abortion providers or patients. We have a woman running for Maricopa County DA in Arizona. It's where Phoenix is, who has said if she wins,

she will not prosecute. The Republican will. So when you think about abortion care, when you think about the most basic, fundamental right to control what happens to your body and your life, the decisions that are being made will happen locally. So whether you are running yourself or working on a campaign or voting or donating, especially in state legislative races and counties and DAs, these are the races where it's going to come down to the wire. races and counties and DAs. These are the races where it's going to come down to the wire. So if I'm an individual, because I am, I'm sitting here actually asking you as me, but also listeners, obviously women's issues are my big thing. And pro-choice is the one that's most obvious in terms of needing support, especially at this moment. What office should

I run for? Think about state ledge, depending on where you are. There might be also something in the city or county. You should think about whether you want to volunteer for your governor's race, depending on the state you're in. Governor's going to be really important. Right, because they're signing that into it. Attorney generals are also going to be really important. You said DAs, right? DAs, county attorneys. There is no race too small.

Even think about school board. What kind of sex ed are our kids getting? What kind of contraception is available in our kids' high schools? All of that plays a role here. Healthcare. In a lot of counties and cities, healthcare providers are some of the biggest employers. What does it mean when they can no longer provide care? OHSU, there's a ton.

The university healthcare systems are often really big employers. Yeah, University of Washington. And alternatively, insurance companies are also really big employers. Yes. Yeah. So all of these offices interact with abortion care in some way, which means we need pro-choice people in them who are willing to fight and stand up for our values.

It's 2016, election night. What are you saying to that Amanda that you know now? The future seems so dark, but I promise you it is brighter than you ever could have imagined. Like the present right now is really bleak. And even like, I still say this to 2022 Amanda too, like the present's pretty bleak. not great i see the amazing young women young women of color young lgbtqia folks young teachers and parents and nurses and scientists and musicians who have said i am willing to brave the fear be very vulnerable be very vulnerable who have said to me i am afraid but i'm doing it afraid which i love i love that yeah I'm doing it afraid, which I love. I love that. I'm doing it afraid. Being fearless is not the absence of fear, right? It's deciding to do something anyway.

To do it anyway. I am doing this because I believe that what I want to fight for is worth it. Every candidate we work with to a T, win or lose, has said that was worth it. I'm glad I did it. The future, if our democracy survives, if things survive, has the possibility of being so bright. Yeah. We just gotta get up there. Every way we can support Run for Something.

Tell us, plug away. Okay, so you can go to our website, which is runforsomething.net. There you can learn more about the candidates we work with. You can learn how to run for office. You can learn how to volunteer. We will take your time, your talent, your treasure. We will take whatever you are willing to give.

There is so much to do, and we need lots and lots of people to do it. If you want to run and you're specifically looking for offices available to you, that's runforwhat.net, although you can also find that on our website. You can find us on Twitter at runforsomething and on Instagram at runforsomethingnow. And find us on Twitter at runforsomething and on Instagram at runforsomethingnow. I am too often just being mad on main on Twitter at Amanda Lippman. And on Instagram, I'm Amanda L-I-T-M. We'll link it all.

Thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you for being here. I am so inspired by you. And I just so appreciate it. Thank you for letting me convince you to run for office. I mean, I'm like. Sorry for Seattle City. I know. I kind of of like it it's got a good ring to it i gotta i gotta delete some photos though thank you for being here you're quite welcome the most massive thank you to amanda for joining me

for this episode holy shit y'all this episode it's just so good i hope that this conversation got you excited to vote in your local and state elections and maybe also inspired you, like me, to explore running for office, running for your local school board, running for your city council to make the change that you want to see in your community. And again, financial feminism, right, is not just about your personal finances. It's a very small part of it. It's about being an engaged and informed citizen. It's about showing up in your community and making an impact to, you know,

not only fight the patriarchy, but to elevate the communities that so often don't get a voice. And one of the best ways to do that not only is voting, but actually running for office, running for something. So if you're interested in getting more information about becoming a candidate or exploring that, visit runforsomething.net to learn more. We'll also link into the show notes. And I actually did this literally after my conversation with Amanda. I donated directly to Run for Something. So if you cannot run in an election right now, it's just not for you. You can support Run for Something with your dollars as well. election right now. It's just not for you. You can support run for something with your dollars as well. Again, cannot be stated enough. Change at the national level often starts just outside your front door. So if you can't run, that's not an option. Donate. If you can't donate money,

offer to phone bank or to canvas and please, please vote. It is a privilege to be able to vote. And in every election, you can vote from the comptroller to the president of the United States or the president of your country. So engage in the civic process. We are not hopeless. We have more power than we know, and we just need to use it to make our communities the best that they can be. Thank you so much for listening, financial feminists. As always, if you love the show, feel free to subscribe. Feel free to leave a review. Share this episode with friends, especially if you've had those conversations that I think we all have had lately of, I am hopeless. What do I do? This is a great

episode to spark a conversation with your friends and family. So thank you for your support of the show. Thank you so much for engaging in potentially difficult topics. We always love and appreciate your vulnerability and your openness. And we can't wait to see y'all later. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, marketing and administration by Karina Patel, Olivia Koning, Charisse Wade, Alina Helzer, Paulina Isaac, Sophia Cohen, Valerie Oresko, Jack Koning, and Ana Alexandra. Research by Arielle Johnson, audio engineering by Austin Fields, promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah

Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K team and community for supporting the show. For more information about financial feminist, her first hundred K our guests and episode show notes, visit financial feminist podcast.com.