The Battles We Pick

Send us a textThe Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center is well known for tracking and exposing the activities of hate and extremist groups. So it was great to have one of their researchers, Hannah Gais, as a guest on the podcast. Discussing her work on White nationalist and Neo-Nazi groups, Hannah told me about the extremist voices and ideas that the MAGA Republicans have welcomed into their Party. As one example, Hannah gave the back story on the Holocaust-denier who appeared recently on Sean Hannity's show, arguing that America was on the wrong side of World War Two.The conversation was a sobering reminder of the authoritarianism poisoning our politics and society—and the stakes of the upcoming election. Hannah talked about an authoritarian strategy called entryism, which focuses on reshaping institutions to serve autocratic purposes. It sounded a lot like Project 2025. In a discussion of how women feature in white nationalist narratives, I mentioned a pair of historians. Kathleen Belew's Bring the War Home is about the emergence of the American white nationalist movement in the 1970s-1990s, and Tim Snyder's Road to Unfreedom similarly traces how Vladimir Putin cemented his position as Russia's strongman. Both accounts talk about the narrative of the need to protect women from sexual violence or perversion.Looking beyond the dangers posed by Donald Trump as a chief executive or nominee, there is the larger problem of millions of Americans abandoning democratic principles in favor of authoritarianism. To help grapple with this difficult problem, Hannah and I listened to a clip from the classic post-WWII US government propaganda film Don't Be a Sucker.

Send us a textIt is often noted that the last time Congress enacted comprehensive immigration reform was in the 1980s. Charles Kamasaki was not only deeply involved in shaping that legislation as an advocate, but he's also written an authoritative history of the effort titled Immigration Reform: The Corpse That Will Not Die. Kamasaki has for several decades guided the work of  the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, Unidos US, formerly known as the National Council of La Raza. The Migration Policy Institute has been the sponsor and outlet for much of Charles' research, including his book.With the MAGA movement having  stoked fear and made immigration a hot-button issue, this episode was a chance to explore the challenges of one of the most vexed issues in US politics. Charles and I traced the issue’s political roots back to basic questions of what it means to be an American. As the country becomes more diverse, how will we hang onto a national identity based on ideals rather than race or ancestral lineage? Drawing on the history of the 1980s reform law, comparisons with healthcare reform and Obamacare, and Charles' extensive experience, we discussed key fundamentals of advocacy such as: Battles over narrative Bipartisan cooperation Splits within coalitions Keys to legislative successCharles argued that achieving reform isn't as impossible as it seems, but will require a reckoning with political realities. He makes an interesting case for advocates to battle as well as reach out to opponents, expand their approach to narrative, and accept some splintering of their coalition.

Send us a textCornell Law School Professor Sabeel Rahman is coauthor of an important recent book, Civic Power, about the urgent need to revitalize American democracy with much closer links between government and those it's meant to serve. The only path to meaningful equity and true government "by the people" is to engage affected communities as genuine agenda-setting and decision-making partners. Putting the traditionally disempowered at the center entails a fundamentally new approach to reform. Sabeel and I discussed some of the traditional frameworks for reform such as civility or transparency—abstractions that skate right past America's longstanding power disparities. The only real answer is a shift where affected communities go from getting the policy short shrift (for instance as neighbors to all the worst polluters) to co-governing and actual authority.This will entail multiple shifts, including for longtime public interest advocates like your humble podcast host. One is a change of focus to a different level of government: from high-profile political debates to day-to-day administration that has more immediate impact on people. Another is for advocates to get our cues on agendas and issues from these communities. It was great to get Sabeel's extremely important and useful guidance toward more equitable and inclusive governance.

Send us a textLolo Cynthia is an African reproductive health activist, social entrepreneur, and experienced communicator. She shared some of the negative experiences that led her to focus on healthy sexuality and talked about how she gets schools to open up to the curriculum on sex and relationships that she developed. Drawing on what she’s observed about various advocacy efforts, Lolo has clear advice to offer on the best way to develop narratives as the basis of your advocacy on. It was also interesting to hear Lolo's perspective on the dangers of having advocacy efforts coopted—particularly by political forces and leaders. In an earlier conversation I had with Lolo, it was clear that she follows US events and politics very closely. So I asked what she does—and what she reads—to keep up with American politics. We concluded with a discussion of neurodiversity, with Lolo and I comparing notes about our ADD / ADHD brains.

Send us a textSuzanne Nossel leads the US chapter of PEN, the international network of professional writers dedicated to promoting and protecting the basic right to freedom of expression. Suzanne's book on the subject is titled Dare to Speak: Defending Freedom of Speech for All. Recently she highlighted the broader global struggle between freedom and autocracy in a Foreign Affairs article on The Real Culture Wars. I asked Suzanne how we got here, how a society that had prided itself on commitment to democracy could have lost touch with those values. She pointed out all the ways the MAGA movement had prepared the battleground with relentless gaslighting. We talked about schools, libraries, and efforts to ban books as a key battlefront in the struggle to preserve freedom. Top political strategists see the threat of book-banning  as an issue that could help draw pro-democracy voters to the ballot box this November, and Suzanne shared PEN America's successes in defeating book bans. As she said, book-banners don't just keep books out of their kids hands, they block access to books for all kids. In our conversation, we discussed the particularly high stakes for gay, lesbian, and gender queer students who are often the target of harassment and abuse.  (Your humble podcast host recently researched and wrote about such a battle in a local Iowa school district.)Suzanne and I also talked about wider attempts to make school curriculum conform with ideological agendas. Digging deeper into the roots of the issue, Suzanne pointed to demographic trends and an increasingly diverse society that are motivating those resistant to change. And as Suzanne said in our conversation, the uncompromising winner-take-all political dynamic of our times has helped fuel the fire.

Send us a textAfter Tyre Nichols was killed by Memphis Police officers who had pulled him over for a trivial traffic infraction, City Councilwoman Michalyn Easter-Thomas "had never seen so many CNN cars and trucks and people in my life trying to see what was the next step for Memphis." With all that interest and scrutiny, colleagues on the Council assembled a package of police reforms. For Councilwoman Easter-Thomas, most notable was a big gap in the proposed ordinance: no reforms of the types of pretextual traffic stops that led to Nichols' death at police hands.Finding herself cut off from the normal support she would usually get in crafting legislation, the councilwoman turned to Local Progress, an advocacy group that connects local elected officials with a network of peers around the country.  As Michalyn details in our conversation, Local Progress linked her with Philadelphia City Councilman Isaiah Thomas (no relation), who successfully sponsored a new ordinance keeping police there from using traffic stops for minor infractions like broken tail lights.  Actually, I met Michalyn through a Local Progress webinar last winter to highlight their new resources on Driving Equality Ordinances. Beyond Councilwoman Easter-Thomas' fascinating story of receiving legal advice from a city council a thousand miles away, what I found most interesting was her handling of the politics. First off, her decision to briefly step back when the police reform package went through without driving equality. Her instinct was that the omission would only become more of a glaring injustice. Next was her careful drafting of the driving equality ordinance. The core of any such legislation is a list of minor infractions that police are not supposed to stop drivers for. The councilwoman knew it was necessary to leave some natural items off the list (tinted windows or the smell of marijuana) or lose the support of others on the Council. Her assessment proved shrewd, given that her proposal ultimately was approved unanimously. We also talked about a topic I always find interesting: dealing with opponents spreading misinformation.

Send us a textOne interesting angle on advocacy are the effort some people  devote to prodding certain key players to get more involved. In sectors like philanthropy, there can be a reluctance because it seems too political. As founder of the Center for Community Foundation Policy Leadership, longtime criminal justice reform advocate Stephen Saloom has been focused on encouraging and supporting community foundations to advocate on their issues. As Stephen shared on the podcast, the strongest case for doing so traces back to these organizations' stated missions. Community foundations' missions typically commit them to the well-being of the local populace in the broadest terms—as broadly as any governmental body or public official. So it's only logical, Stephen argues, that community foundations should get engaged in questions of policy that affect the local community. We talked about one of the deterrents that make organizations hesitant about taking up advocacy: tax laws prohibiting lobbying. But we also gave an immediate disclaimer that we are not tax lawyers offering counsel. For excellent info on such questions, we both recommend the Alliance For Justice's Bolder Advocacy program.  Next was a really interesting conversation about what constitutes politics in a democracy (something more basic than just partisan competition). And because of Stephen's extensive experience with criminal justice reform, we made sure to discuss his view of what progress has or hasn't been achieved since the advent of Black Lives Matter. While the horrific series of high-profile police killings of Black Americans has sparked some new awareness, Stephen pointed out how deeply entrenched the racial injustices of the system are—and how powerful are the politics of racist fear-stoking.

Send us a textFirst episode back after a hiatus of several months, so I needed a great guest.  Sarah Stachowiak is CEO of the Seattle-based evaluation consulting firm ORS Impact and has been an important role model for me and helped steer me toward becoming an evaluation consultant. Sarah's firm not only does great work for clients, but they provide vital thought leadership through the excellent resources they publish. Sarah and her colleagues advise some of philanthropy's most influential foundations, giving them a broad overview of the work of making change. In our conversation, For instance, Sarah offered an update on foundation attitudes toward supporting advocacy, a realm that some donors have approached with trepidation.This episode was a chance to speak with someone who relates to advocacy as a social scientist and analyst, a great perspective to bring onto the podcast. Sarah and I talked about the challenges entailed in trying to change the deep-rooted narratives and assumptions that underlie the debates on so many issues. We talked about the trade-offs between seeking small incremental progress versus transformation of an unjust society. We talked about the problems of having a professional class of advocates, and why marginalized communities should have a greater agenda-setting role. We talked about “defensive advocacy” and what organizers do during political tough times. And we concluded with a discussion of clearly defining terms in our field, and why that’s important.

Send us a textThis episode is a special holiday edition featuring a conversation with my daughter when they were home for Thanksgiving. Sadie Bender Shorr is in the early phase of a career in social work, currently working in the University of Arizona's counseling center and planning to begin studies next fall for an MSW. Social workers talk about the micro and macro levels—which translate, respectively, as service provision versus advocacy—and that's where we started our discussion. For instance health care reform makes a huge difference in opening possibilities for the uninsured through new programs, rules, and resources. But it takes additional on-the-ground work to help people actually receive medical care. Sadie explained that much of their own work is a matter of helping University of Arizona students navigate the paperwork and hoops the students encounter as obstacles. With Sadie's special interest in transgender and other LGBTQ people, there is often an issue with students' reliance on parents' health insurance. Many of them haven't yet come out to their parents.  As another challenge of prodding bureaucracies to truly serve the populations they're supposed to help, Sadie talked about their earlier job as a case manager for unaccompanied minor migrants. That position with a nonprofit family services agency entailed facilitating family unification for kids with relatives in the United States as well as advocating for kids in a group home who didn't have that option.

Send us a textThis episode's guest is a journalist rather than an advocate, the author of one of the best books focused on advocacy work. Political reporter Sasha Issenberg's The Engagement tells the story of the 25-year fight for same-sex marriage, documenting the various efforts, strategies, course-adjustments, and outcomes from the perspectives of proponents and opponents alike. Sasha says he was drawn to the subject particularly because of the way same-sex marriage burst onto the agenda quite suddenly in the early-1990s—then coming to the fore as a hot-button topic in national politics. It was fascinating to hear Sasha talk about the complexity of a struggle playing out in Washington as well as state capitals, while also alternating between the judicial and political arenas. Sasha said when he started this project, he assumed proponents would have "this big national plan, but there wasn't one." He said it was a fight where both sides were simultaneously on offense and defense on different fronts.Sasha recounted a key messaging shift by marriage proponents going from a fairly dry and clinical argument for legal protections and eventually opting for an emotionally resonant case for recognizing two people's commitment to each other. In our discussion of the differences between litigation and political battles, Sasha stressed the higher stakes of losing in court and being stuck with a negative legal precedent. One thing that enriches Issenberg's account in The Engagement is the way personalities play into advocacy and strategy. Sasha begins the book by focusing on a Hawaiian LGBTQ activist who decided it would be dramatic to hold a mass wedding to celebrate gay pride. Bill Woods' impulsive gadfly style won him few fans or allies among methodical litigators, but he played a crucial role as an originator—though he's often left out of other accounts of the struggle. As Issenberg told me, "We would not have had the Obergefell Supreme Court decision in 2015 if it hadn't been for Woods starting this ball in motion in 1990."The podcast ends with the same question as Issenberg's book: the rights of trans people that were left aside by the marriage equality struggle. Sasha predicted that the fight for trans rights will gain momentum as the public takes the cue from science that gender is an innate part of identity just as sexual orientation is.

Send us a textElection law attorney Yael Bromberg is principal of her own firm and litigation practice.  With a specialty in student voting rights, she serves as outside counsel to the Andrew Goodman Foundation—which works on college campuses around the country to promote student voting and is legacy of one of the activists murdered in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964. Yael teaches election law at Rutgers University Law School and works with the Harvard Kennedy School’s William Trotter Collaborative on a multi-campus voting rights course drawing students from three historically black colleges and universities.   The episode features a great discussion of the Republicans' voter fraud myth and how their voting suppression efforts resemble the multi-headed Hydra monster from Greek mythology. Yael said we have to confront that monster with the full range of tools—a mixture of legal and political tactics—and she gave examples from her work. I especially liked Yael’s idea of redefining public confidence in elections as a matter of maximum participation and the most inclusive electorate possible. Yael also talked about her scholarship to highlight student voters as a protected class under the Constitution’s 26th Amendment, which recently led to the introduction of the Youth Voting Rights Act by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Nikema Williams.

Send us a textTo mark the podcast being ten-episodes old, I invited close colleague and good friend Kathleen Sullivan of Fine Gauge Strategies to listen back to some of the most interesting points made by those first ten guests. Similar to the way she and I delve into our interviews for evaluation projects, I wanted to have Kathleen highlight the insights she gleaned from the guests—as well as draw connections to trends and perspectives in the evaluation field. We revisited Angela Bruce-Raeburn's account of how, after George Floyd's murder, international development practitioners and organizers were newly willing to discuss the way racism skewed their work. As Kathleen noted, such sudden openings pose the challenge of being ready to take make the most of them, especially with the uncertainty of how wide or long-lasting the opening will be.We also listened to two pairs of clips. Adotei Akwei and Gawain Kripke compared and contrasted the inside game of working with policymaker allies versus building movements and constituencies for more ambitious change. And we heard the perspectives of Richard Healey and Elisa Massimino on why it's important to keep sight of long-range overarching aims for social change, to properly orient current efforts. Drawing on those sets of observations as well as our recent attendance at the annual meeting of the American Evaluation Association, Kathleen and I discussed the recent rethinking of the role of professional advocates. Over the last several decades, the professionalization of the field has skewed the agenda toward established advocates' sense of the best opportunities for change. In the spirit of Julia Coffman's call to "stand up and step back," we talked about combining the skills and perspectives of professionals and affected communities—forging alliances on a social change agenda with the goals and priorities set by those most affected.

Send us a textThe podcast's tenth episode was a reunion with the former executive director of the group where I was an intern right after college. Richard Healey was executive director of not only the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy but also the Institute for Policy Studies as well as founding director more recently of the Grassroots Power Project. In fact, Richard's career as an organizer goes back six decades to his involvement in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. I was spurred to reconnect with Richard by his recent fascinating Stanford Social Innovation Review article on the lessons the progressive movement can learn from how the military does strategy. His central point is especially apt for a podcast called The Battles We Pick. Richard stresses the need to be clear not just about our battles, but crucially the larger wars those battles are part of. As the old saying goes, you can win the battles and still lose the war. When it comes to incremental changers versus major transformation, Richard makes a persuasive case for "both / and." On the transformation side, he says progressives should think in terms of goals for decades in the future. "But then we back-cast and ask, if you want to achieve those in 40 years, then what are the big major steps that would have to have happened in ten years to be plausibly moving us toward the 40-year goals?" Richard pointed to Working Families Party leader Maurice Mitchell as a good spokesperson for this approach.

Send us a textClarence Edwards has worked on nearly every side of US foreign policy and politics—from presidential campaign finance to the State Department to the Council on Foreign Relations to lobbying Congress for groups like the Friends Campaign on National Legislation and Bono’s ONE campaign for global treatment and prevention of  HIV/AIDS. Clarence even worked in the Washington embassy of one of America’s allies. As he says on the podcast, his career has been everything he’d hoped for as a Black kid in Baltimore reading World Book encyclopedias. Clarence and I had a fascinating discussion of the thing that interests him most: how power works in Washington—and how that changed when Trump came on the scene. For anyone working to sustain an advocacy career over a period of decades, curiosity about power dynamics and gleaning the right lessons can be very helpful. The episode concludes with a conversation about the challenge of getting climate legislation through Congress, particularly the difficulty of building much-needed bipartisan consensus. Despite the years of Republican resistance, Clarence doesn’t view bipartisanship on climate change as impossible. He says he’s seen too many things change that once seemed permanent.

Send us a textIn our conversation, Eileen Hershenov of the Anti-Defamation League kept coming back to the theme of advocacy's broadest challenge: to keep progressing and sustaining change over the long haul. As Eileen explained, the only way to sustain progressive organizing is by getting people involved in the effort. Having activists and leaders  who are committed to seeking change is how we build progress upon progress.Eileen and I trace our career roots back to our first jobs after college, when we were colleagues at New York Public Research Interest Group (NYPIRG). It's remarkable how many of us went on from NYPIRG to long careers as organizers and advocates. For Eileen's part, after law school she had senior positions with Wikipedia, Consumer Reports, George Soros' Open Society Foundation (where she helped Soros found Central European University), and the Anti-Defamation League, where she's been responsible for ADL's democracy initiatives. Looking back at her time with Consumer Reports, Eileen talked about a fascinating effort to keep patients from picking up infections during their hospital stays. Turns out the answer was checklists and report cards. And because that campaign drew on the personal stories of people who had health problems -- or lost family members -- from hospital-acquired infections, we talked about the power of narrative as a double-edged sword.The latter part of our conversation focused on the work Eileen has been doing at ADL to counter the homegrown threats to American democracy. She's been working with opinion researchers and scholars specializing in political violence, gaining deeper understanding of the Trump personality cult, Christian nationalism, and racism and antisemitism.

Send us a textWhen Terry Woodbury was fresh out of his masters program at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late-1960s, an internship with a wealthy Kansas congregation—essentially an experiment in changing local racial relations—sent him on a career path as a community organizer. Terry shares his story of facilitating dialogue between Black and White community members in Hutchinson, Kansas. Terry is white and was given a mandate to lead the process of forging relationships with black neighbors whom the congregation's leaders knew they were disconnected from. In today's terms, he catalyzed difficult conversations that the community needed to have.A little further into his career, Terry was tasked with assembling a community's bid for a highly competitive national recognition. That experience spurred him to an idea about the four key sectors of any community: local businesses, schools, government, and human services. He sees all those sources of leadership as integral to address the most serious local challenges. They comprise the public square, and he named his consulting business Public Square Communities. Indeed, Terry developed a specialty in helping local areas confronting near existential-level threats. He says that he's typically contacted by someone "worried about things going south."This episode was a great chance to explore the differences and interrelationship between organizing and policy change advocacy. Where most of Terry's work delves deeply into local power structures and life conditions of community members who've been marginalized, policy advocacy is aimed at whatever changes can be achieved without the heavy lift of mass mobilization. Host David Shorr was connected to Terry because of a shared interest in the workings of the public square. But David's notion of the public square is focused on the deliberations and decisions in the government sector.Which is why it was especially interesting to hear about a turn at advocacy that Terry took recently on rural water and irrigation issues. The title of the episode—"Twenty years left"—was the degree of threat that an area of Kansas faced  due to the overuse of water by a small set of large farms. With all of the consensus-building and bridge-building work that Terry does, it is noteworthy that he ventured into advocacy in a situation where he faced powerful self-serving businesses who closed themselves off from changes to the status quo.

Send us a textSandra Ionno Butcher has been chief executive of the National Organisation for FASD for six and a half years—and active in efforts on behalf of the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder for nearly a decade—after spending the bulk of her career advocating for nuclear disarmament. With Sandy having lived as an American in the United Kingdom for even longer, it was interesting to get her perspective on the United States' recent tumultuous politics / fascist threat. Sandy has had a long association with the Pugwash movement, a network of scientists founded by Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell to eliminate the threat of nuclear war that their generation of physicists had wrought. With the problem of nuclear weapons persisting to this day, and with only modest progress, we had a fascinating discussion of a core theme of this podcast: incremental change versus more sweeping transformation. Sandy's latest career phase was also excellent fodder for reflection on advocacy work. Working on the challenges of FASD put her in a strange new policymaking context. It was fascinating to hear her talk about the basic advocacy skills that carried over to her new field of work.

Send us a textPrior to launching his consulting firm Double Dogwood, Gawain Kripke spent the bulk of his career with Oxfam America, most of that time as policy director responsible for the organization’s advocacy efforts.  That role put Gawain in many different advocacy contexts, including lobbying Congress for measures to help reduce global poverty. As we discussed on the podcast, it also gave him an appreciation for the judgment and instincts of elected political leaders. He called on advocates to heed the recommendations of their legislative allies when picking which policy changes to pursue. As Gawain pointed out, it's the politicians—with their dependence on voters' support at the ballot box—who help keep advocacy grounded in the electorate as the ultimate authority for governance. He also cited his own experience knocking on doors as a successful Washington, DC Advisory Neighborhood Commission candidate, saying that all advocates should have the experience of engaging voters at their doorways. Gawain raised a number of important questions about the challenges of seeking change and justice with our country’s political system being so badly broken right now. Are significant strides forward even possible under current circumstances? Should the recent gun safety legislation be counted as progress? Does bipartisan cooperation make sense any more, or does it all come down to electing Democrats to gain control of Congress and the White House? Give a listen for some very interesting thoughts on these major questions.

Send us a textAdotei Akwei is a seasoned and accomplished advocate who has worked for the American Committee on Africa, Human Rights First, CARE USA, and spent over 25 years with Amnesty International USA. Currently he is Amnesty's Chief Membership Collaborations Officer. That role with the organization represents a shift—one he sought out—toward movement- / power-building  after many years of inside-game advocacy on human rights in Africa. The relationship between those two halves of the change-making profession is a core topic of the podcast, and we talked about the need to appreciate the differences between them as well as the ways they complement one another. Adotei talked about the minimum requirements that, for him, justify picking a policy change battle. And he highlighted some of the important forms of progress that go along with policy change "wins"—some of them just as significant, or even longer-lasting, than the substance of the policy outcome itself.  In discussing Adotei's organization and it's history, he explained the importance of Amnesty USA taking stock of the justice and equity issues both in our own country as well as within the organization itself. Because credibility and legitimacy are absolutely vital across the board from individual advocates to groups doing the work to international diplomacy, such a reckoning will be essential for further progress.

Send us a textRecently retired teachers union leader Bob Walsh shared many useful insights from his career going all the way back to politics on the college campus where we both went. As a student government leader, Bob was the farthest thing from the Tracy Flick stereotype. He was set on making a positive difference from the outset and learned lessons that he drew on for decades afterward.In discussing the all-important timing of advocacy and picking moments when issues are ripe for change, we talked about the politics of abortion rights and marriage equality in a heavily Catholic state. Rhode Island also gives an interesting vantage point on the (d)evolution of the GOP in New England where moderate Republicans once flourished.  We wrapped up with a discussion of relationships in advocacy and organizing work -- from the Thanksgiving dinner table to behind-the scenes deal-making. In the latter category, we talked about a topic that doesn't get enough attention: working to limit the damage of an unavoidable bad outcome. As Bob recounted from a comment he got after such an episode, the softening of those blows can be really significant but you don't get much credit for it.