Bold New Consensus: Anand Giridharadas and Dorian Warren in conversation

so Anan I actually want to start with um you've rent lots of books the most recent one is the persuaders and you make the case that organizers and Advocates on the left need to spend a bit more time on hearts and Minds dare I say it emotions um space for disagreement allowing that we're all works in progress and also like a lot of us like data and numbers and policy wonky papers and all the things so talk to me I just want to get into the conversation with first because you're going to say a lot about storytelling your approach to it for this most recent book just go back to the context in which you were writing that book what was the state of the world then by the way really nice socks um what was the state of the I'm distracted all of a sudden what was the state of the world then because I actually want to then bring us to how things have changed in the moment in which we find ourselves now but go back to when you were writing the persuaders what was the context what were you trying to do what were you learning um I'm so honored to be here first of all um just an incredible space historic space and people doing incredible work on the front lines of these fights um I I started the book right after coid um when I realized I would need a new project to avoid um going you know Wild and the thing that was you know a lot of my books grow out of an irritation that is suppressed maybe even to myself and then you sort of figure out the thing bothering you in a more in a deeper way and and then sometimes it becomes the germ of a book and the thing that bothered me was bothering me was that in a moment in American Life in which the contest is not small government versus big government blue versus red left versus right high taxes versus low taxes in which the context is really pro-democracy versus anti-democracy some of us versus all of us it was a dead heat and sometimes you know we do well in the Dead Heat and that means like 4946 uh a couple States more than there and sometimes we lose the Dead Heat but as a writer as opposed to being a campaigner who has to eek out these narrow victories I have the luxury of stepping back a little bit and saying hold on we are going to the American people in this era and saying here is fascism and here is freedom and before you get to Jerry mandering or just p ping just like asking people what they want it's 50/50 is I'm not saying all the rigging stuff is not happening and it magnifies the problem yeah but I think I started from the premise of we're being a little bit easy on ourselves when we blame the rigging and I've written about the rigging the honest truth is we are presenting the American people in this era with a referendum on Fascism and freedom and the jury is really really out and a lot of people are really excited about the fascism option so I am not excited by 5147 victories or by making Wisconsin go our way this time although it is so important and I so respect people do that work we shouldn't be in a situation in which that option of fascism is appealing to more than a very small number of basement dwellers and so the persuaders started from the premise of how can the pro-democracy movement not just eek out a victory here and there or tweak these results but what does it look like to build a pro-democracy movement that would smash this American fascist offering and sweep it into the dust bin of history and what would it look like to do that by recognizing that when very large numbers of people are attracted to something so dystopian and dehumanizing those of us who want the other thing who want more and bigger democracy who want a bigger we we are clearly not doing something right and I think and we can go at a lot of different places with this at the end of the day listening to some of the previous things there's no question that on policy the pro democracy side is Good Very robust on data very good robust right we have more white papers than there are white people in this country and right however I think there is a real lack in this era of building an actual thrilling galvanizing inviting seductive movement not just asking people for $5 every 10 minutes or asking people to vote every two years four years inviting people into a movement that is exciting that people want to be part of that tells them a story about the world that educates them and pulls them in I think we need to throw a more fun party than the other side we have ended up in a situation in which the most dehumanizing dystopian exclusionary movement of our lifetimes somehow reads as the more fun time and a movement our movement which I would argue if you look in a very practical way is the most inclusive platform perhaps in any country in the history of the world our ancestors were awful to so many of us you can rever rever your ancestors but our ancestors were awful to so many people who lived in their midst we have a program right now to be good to everybody in our midst and somehow our side reads often as tedious moralistic scaly wonky we are playing the fiddle of wonery while democracy Burns and and the persuaders is trying to argue for a different way all right so let me let me let me push back a little bit um in defense of wonery wow um they should have called the panel in defense of woner that would it would actually gotten more people in the room and this is by way of this this is this is this is by way of bringing us to the current moment from when you started the persuaders so in the last several years right under in which we've lived in this country at least the pandemic the attempted and failed coup on our democracy and then the governing moment the response to particularly the economic crisis as we've heard already this morning you know giving people unrestricted cash major investment in decarbonizing our they're like all these there's a laundry list of things and those were ideas that some really smart Innovative people had to write right papers right so that those ideas were available to be enacted right to kind of create a floor for all of us to survive multiple crises at the same time so talk to us about this moment then in terms of what you learn from the persuaders and what we're not doing right given what I would say at least on economic policy um let me say it this way it looks very different the last couple years than I don't know 20 8 to 2010 um why is the storytelling so difficult I think we I would say progressive Forces in general partly by virtue of who is in this moment in American Life at the top of those structures whether in the nonprofit side or Civic side or in government um as unions have been decimated as the party has become more of what petti calls a Brahman party it's happened to Center left parties around the world wonky Harvard Harvard adjacent um there has crept into our spaces a view if I had to summarize it that things speak for themselves that if you do the right thing if you have the right numbers if you help if if you know where your heart is in terms of helping people if you are delivering the child care money or this or that people will appreciate it and maybe it's because I'm a writer and that's just my professional bias but this is not a book about me this is a book about organizers and activists who do this work do the work you all do I actually think nothing speaks for itself yeah I think absolutely nothing speaks for itself right which is why a Donald Trump can do nothing for people particularly his base I mean he he did something for his rich people but he did nothing for the people who love him most the rich people don't love him the people he helped don't love him right they just use him the people he who love him they wear his clothes right like they think of him when they're making love like they both way I mean it's um I don't even know how to anyway carry on even I had to pause with that one yeah I get your point sir we often like I feel I I actually don't like this thing about why do people vote against their economic interests I think it's a very tedious framing I I also think you don't know because the people who vote for him are conscious people making a conscious choice and weighing the full range of their interests and they are choosing to be part of his story in many ways at their own economic expense that is not voting against their interest that is having a different definition of their interest than you and I have they would rather cling they would rather cling to white supremacy and male Supremacy and and stop progress in its tracks then get two $2,000 more a year in something and that's not necessarily irrational if you've been if you've been offered a particular story I would you rather cling to be able to have a job in while being mediocre instead of open America up to everybody a lot of people might turn down the child tax credit to cling to an old regime that's a completely rational thing that we kind of condescend to they have been organized and persuaded into a story that is a powerful story if I were judging it narratively as a writer MH I would would say a very good story it's not a it's not it's a absolutely awful story in terms of Truth and policy and substance but it's but has the elements of a very good story so unpack that for us what what what what help us understand what are those elements as we're thinking about what is good storytelling I think here's how I think based on my own experience writing about politics and and people and also these people I read about in the book um I think there's a story many us have about how people vote or how people come to their political choices and that story is wrong because it's heavily dependent on how people like us come to political preferences which is a lot of reading a lot of thinking a lot of priors a lot of and then an issue comes up and you apply these Frameworks you have to that I think that is not how 95% of people think politically I think what happens most of the time and this is based on a long I basically talk to people about this for living I think people live their lives most people and things happen to them they're they encounter the stimuli of life and and certain things that maybe get into the political is realm happen to them okay that could be you're in your town in Arizona you're an older white person suddenly you start noticing that like the cashiers are all people who speak Spanish and you don't feel like you can talk to them anymore and you used to spend like eight minutes talking to them because you're lonely and you don't know anybody else and that's a change in your town that alone does not make someone a dieh hard immigration foe it's the early stimulus in like a political funnel Journey or your kid comes home this is happening to all of us right now with kids your kid comes home it's like is America a bad country was America always bad to everyone right which is like a six-year-old's understanding of some of the stuff they're rightly hearing MH that's just happen that's not that doesn't mean someone's against CRT on day one it's just like the stimuli you know or on the stuff that benefits the left more like people get some insane Healthcare Bill and they're like wait I did everything right I was in network what what these are the stimuli these are like the pre-political stimuli of everyday life okay to go from these stimuli to I want Medicare for all I want to wall on the border I want to stop the Caravan I want to ban woke education I want a billionaire tax to go from this kind of stimuli to a politics like that requires processing requires meaning making this to me and this is at the heart of the argument of the persuaders this is actually where politics takes place okay asking people for $5 and for their and if they they a plan to vote is like the last 1% of someone's political journey and often we are not even with them or participating in that first 99 percent of the journey when they first feel a little bit sad about not being able to have the Walgreens conversation if we had the kind of organizing infrastructure and meaning making infrastructure and if the president of the United States was helping to talk older white people like him through the era forthrightly and tell them why they're seeing these things why they're feeling these things why it's better to have a little bit of those moments of discomfort in order to have a country where we have the most amazing people from every corner of this Earth if you don't tell if you don't walk people through the age then these stimuli that they start with are weaponized by other people who have a different story and if I have one thing to leave you with I basically think the right has built an entire politics today on a very astute and acute psychological understanding of very large numbers of Americans not just their base and it's really an understanding of just the discombobulation of an era of extraordinary change we have done largely because of this movement and its forbears extraordinary changes in the status of women therefore in the shape of families in race in demographics in the structure of the economy what kind of jobs are good not good in climate we're trying to we're trying to change kind of everything about how everyone lives and actually we have already changed a ton if you were a white person over a certain age in this country the meaning of being white has gone through a more dramatic evolution in your lifetime than any of your ancestors ever your answers did not even know that they were white they did not know what whiteness was they never thought about it that was precisely the supremacy MH right they were just regular right we done the same in gender if we I I actually don't look at the stuff that's happening on the right right now as some weird ish thing that I'm so upset about I look at it as a completely predictable symptom breaking out on your body if you were doing the things that we've been doing if you were doing the progress that we've been doing when you do this kind of progress you get this kind of backlash nothing to be sad about this is totally normal and then what you do before it becomes a fascist movement that is pulling at 45% hopefully you understand that there's some 10 15 20% of people who are off their rockers and you say bye and by the way there's always a certain number of people like that right and then you think about there's some next group that is trying to figure out how do I be a man in a gender equal world when I never had that training how do I learn to have a boss who doesn't look like me when I grew up in a town in which I didn't see anybody who didn't look like me how do I not be a coal miner and get onto this climate stuff they're all talking about when my daddy and Granddaddy and great granddaddy all were coal miners and that was the only source of esteem and being a cool guy at the bar in town and getting a mate and building a family um how do I process who I will be in a bigger Wii and because I think we have a essentially built movements that try to transactionally ask people for money and votes at the end of their funnel of Education we are not walking with people through the age we are not talking them through these much bigger than any policy these transitions of power in race and gender and economic structure that are big we did trade with China someone was mentioning no one was ever I was actually as an intern covered the pass of pntr in Washington permanent normal trade with the China 2000 I think no one none of us I was an intern so it's not my fault but like none of the none of the more senior reporters it was all just like will it pass is it out of committee none of us wrote the story that being a man we're going to pass a bill that maybe is good in general but we're going to eradicate the meaning of being a man in like 20% of American communities within 12 months of passing this law I didn't hear anybody I I'd be surprised to go back and did anybody probably some activists said it probably some Union people said it did we think through hold on North Carolina like men in North Carolina have made furniture for 400 years and none of them will make it again in three years and then we're just like vote for uh like vote for vote for what like yeah sure vote for more redistribution you're not going to redistribute their esteem so I'm going to pull on this threat a little bit but I'm going to come around and maybe try to connect some dots and really the question I want to ask you is um and you addressed this in persuadables but I won't assume everyone has read the book yet um as you were mentioning particularly like okay white men in North Carolina there's a question like if you focus your narrative strategy on particularly when we say Independents or moderates what we really mean as white people I actually do not but go on um and and so I want to talk about black women for a minute and so does that mean that you just assume black women are captured voters nope and you don't put in the work now let me let me make a side point um I will be nerdy and wonky for a minute because the political scientist in me knows this concept I'll share with you called linked fate old concept the the question the scholar who Michael Dawson who came up with this was trying to answer in the 90s was why do wealthy black people vote their racial interests and not their economic interests so basically like why aren't rich black people voting Republican because that was a trajectory for white people if you got rich you vote Republican if you're working class and poor you vote Democrat so it was a puzzle to be solved like well why don't black why do black people particularly black women 97% vote Democrat that answer is really simple linked fate you make a mental shortcut about the stat your fate linked to other people that look like you and it doesn't matter economic standing in this case like you understand what your that's the definition of your interest now then there's a question about well how do you understand how your fate is linked in the first place and I think that gets at institutions churches uh my friend Laris Perry's book was like barber shops Bibles and beauty salons right there are actual institutions where black people make meaning and express anger and have fun and joy right while making meetings together so that's clear to me in terms of potential interventions right those are spaces I know I can go to to have political conversations with black people across the country where do those institutions exist I'll give you a hint unions where do those institutions exist for white folks part A Part B how do you ensure that we're putting in the work for ours base in terms of black and brown people immigrants while not centering white people it's such a great question and first of all I think we actually Comfort ourselves inaccurately with the thought that this meaning making challenge in an era of change is a white working-class problem I actually think it is an cross theboard problem let's remember if I have these numbers right you probably know better than me I was just talking to my mother in Chicago about the migrant crisis in Chicago and black people have a lot of feelings about it correct so I just want to say and I know this I'm not going to speak on the mayor in this town y'all have to deal with that whoever lives here um well let's just say the mayor in this town won in a way that probably everybody in this room or many people in this room didn't like or was blindsided by that's right because he actually knew who's in his communities that's right in a way that many of the leaders of the communities do not know who's in their own communities speak to that okay and that while there may be a decarceral and abolition movement by highly motivated political actors in regular communities of color those ideas have not been organized into a majority yes right they're just not there right so this is not I hate this whole white working class thing I mean Trump in his four years if you had to pick like two groups he ran a war against I would argue it's Latinos and black people like at above all the other both vote shares increased for him more people from each of those communities liked him after four years of it well for black people you could bang black men but go Carry On which is what I was about to say so it what that tells you is that just because he's waging a war on you I think some of this I think the most powerful stuff substrate stuff happening in our politics right now is masculinity right and also around the world y also in every major conflict and so again it's not nonsensical to me that in an era of extraordinary change and progress on gender a certain number of black male voters would go with someone talking about a retro puffed up idea of masculinity and be willing to overlook look mhm a war on their racial Community mhm that's not I mean who's to say what's stupid and smart but it's what happens when you don't organize people into a different understanding so talk to us about that how do we do with that one of the words that most came up again and again in the reporting of the persuaders I write about a bunch of different organizers and activists Alicia Garza said this to me and it was so profound she said you know we're not good at creating homes a political home for people we create policies for people we ask them to do things Nancy Pelosi sending her like all red letters and caps $5 solicitations you really feel a certain kind of way about these emails I've never signed up for them I get so many they're incredible and they all start like I will never email you again and it's just like and then she does um um and what Alicia was talking about she says you know the right creates homes for people so if you're in a minority as a right-wing student Harvard Law School campus there's a federalist Society it's not just actually some powerful institution doing supreme court stuff it's actually like a home the Harvard campus for persecuted white Republicans um if you homeschool your kids which is is an inherently kind of uh disconnecting experience there are these networks home of like homeschooled parents where they can get together bring the kids together once a week right churches some of these you know three 4,000 people at a time big Comm people doing three four five days a week of stuff and it's God it's community and it's politics yeah and it's hanging with people there's food involved right there's circles involved there's chairs involved our movement is an extremely online movement there's amazing exceptions which I read about in the book but what Alicia was saying is we're not really good at home home is not like do you like build back better okay home is do you feel safe here do you feel good here do you feel like it's your people here yeah right and we were talking about this I think there is in Black American political Traditions a greater comfort with being able to do anger and doing Joy at the same time being able to register people to vote protest something and have a cookout at the same time I think in more whel Traditions particular the Trump be has a feeling of like if we are doing serious anger activism we can't be having fun right I think this has by the way dominated climate activism I don't know how people turn saving the world into something that feels like boring and tedious right like we are not good at building a home in a movement that makes people just want to come in right at the end of the day people will actually come in if they just want to hang with you and they will stomach differences of opinion with you right I bet you a lot of Republican ladies read Michelle Obama's book they don't like her views they like her look at those numbers I would I I'm totally guessing but I would guess 30% of the people who read that book you don't want to know how they vote right but you can build movements that do that that trick people and our movements sometimes trick people into just like I want to go inside that don't you ever like walk by a restaurant and you're just like my entire life would be better if I was in that restaurant like I see all these people they're better looking than me better dressed they drinking better cocktails than I know how to drink um like I wish I was inside there we our movements can have that Vibe for people okay I'm about the trickery I'm about okay that's one tactic from wonery to trickery a conversation um I'm not I'm not above trickery but you you in the book you do mention this concept of relationship across Viewpoint which I would argue is a different kind of tactic or strategy in the sense of what we know in our world as trusted Messengers right who you're in relationship with so I'll just use my mother like my mother and I spent the last month with my mother I love my mother dearly um but it was also very difficult because we had some really hard conversations but we could make dinner together after and like have a drink after but we went at it on a range of things and then you know there's no love loss I I would argue that's relationship across Viewpoint right because she's still going to be my Mama she's still my mama I'm still her son we still love each other and we can have heated disagreements and conversations so unpack what you mean so there's trickery here what is this relationship across Viewpoint thing and how is that a potential intervention I think part of what I'm saying in a more framed up way is that I think we need in addition to all the very tactical campaigning that just has to be done someone has to do it it has to be done I'm very grateful that it's done I think we need an organizing mentality at the very top of these movements and party not just a campaigning mentality I did not pay him to say that and and it's not we don't we have a million organizers but I'm talking about that organizing the mentality that guides them kind of infecting the leadership of the top right I I you know I think the person who runs the Democratic party and people who run these should think like organizers trying to win the era and amass Power by pulling people into a different understanding of what America is and what it can be instead of just like each fight each kind of political whack-a-mole at the time someone's got to do that a lot of people have to do it's not that it's not important but I sometimes feel like we're just missing the bigger context I don't think this is about row I think it's about men not knowing who they're they're going to be once we do equality I don't think it's about CRT it's about the psychological transition of white people from oppression to equality like I don't think it's about you know wokeness and campuses and this and that like I think it's about if all the things I grew up learning are true are not true anymore am I an idiot and are my kids not going to respect me right there's a deeper I just through my own bias and interests I think of what is actually happening in politics as being mostly beneath the kind of deep emotional surface of people's lives and then it bubbles into these little issues and we're chasing the issues and we're ignoring the thing but the right doesn't ignore it when Tucker Carlson does an entire segment on how they're changing the M&M's and getting rid of high heels and putting women M&M's in flats and how it's a war on sexiness the obvious response is like that's insane but it's not insane it's not insane it is building on an intuition that is out there that is not yet fully meaning made but is out there that equality and progress and power for women will lead to the erosion of things people may care about or hold attachment to that's real it will by the way equality for women will absolutely result in a reduction in high heels as fast as possible actually so people are not wrong to be attached to a certain picture of women they grew up with to be attached the way their their mom looked when she went out in 1962 people are not you're not you're not crazy to be attached to the Past but if Tucker is going in and if Tucker understands that's what's happening with you and he's talking to you by doing a stupid segment on M&M's that is actually helping you walk through why feminism scares you and if flipping the channel or listening to the president there's not a different message about all the extraodinary things we're going to get by doubling the fraction of people empowered to do their best in the world if we're not telling the equal and opposite story of like yes you've lost some number of high heels but you've gained an ocean of talent and power and dreams and promise and Ingenuity if we can't win that argument because we're not even in that argument we don't deserve to win and so I want us to just actually start with and Center what is the emotional terrain of this country in this moment and we can get to issues and we can get to policies and we can get to candidates but if we don't understand the emotional and psychological landscape of America in this age of transitions we're not even playing so let me ask you this we we just have a couple minutes less left and I can't resist um because we heard from the general counsel the National Labor Relations Board earlier Jer bruso um my actual political Awakening was through the labor movement and unions and why I think that's instructive so I this is all by saying I want you to reflect on what can we learn from the recent successes of worker organizing in victories because in the union context unlike other parts of the Progressive Movement at a workplace you don't get to choose who you have to persuade you have the employer that has total dominance on communication as we heard earlier and then you have to organize that workplace or that bargaining unit and you can't decide you don't want to talk to so and so because they don't agree with you right now you need right 50 plus one to win a contract win a union you need some other persuasion solidarity building strategies to win a contract and as we just learned from the UAW shout out I know Cindy estada is in the room somewhere um the high risk of taking Collective action and going on strike requires a different I I would argue a higher and different level of persuasion solidarity than regular electoral organizing is there something to learn from the UAW successes UPS the writer Guild Starbucks on and on what can we learn from the what can worker organizing teach us in this moment around story the the I I talked to a lot of folks who've done both labor organizing and more kind of General Mass organizing for the book and many of them made the same point you did in a different way which is that I mean there is a range of views inside unions maybe not on narrow economic issues of benefit to the union but even universal healthcare pretty pretty contested I mean you know like because some of them have great benefits that they negotiated um and then you get to race and this and that I mean unions span the range of opinion of the country and sometimes are like even more toxic on average right because Trump got a lot of Union people and they have because it is a fixed defined they don't get to say you're not in the union they have had to deal with each other and they've had to deal with common cause and popular fronts and setting aside some things these are just very good coalitional skills and if we're wrapping like I think there's one other thing that's really important in thinking about what we've lost as unions have kind of been decentered from their role in the left and maybe now that's reversing again but generally speaking and your and my lifetime it's been a transition to a highly educated White Collar upscale Harvard and Yale adjacent left Democratic party Etc and I think one of the things that really got lost there was the ability to want to improve America while also being able to very clearly claim America and love America and know that America is a good country and a good project and a worthy project I think as a different kind of progressive has come to the top our movements risk giving off a Vibe or just not even making explicit the fact that we are all doing this because we love the hell out of this country and we've allowed ourselves to be painted into a corner of being of unpatriotic it's such crap and people who you know are trying to shoot beer bottles in their backyard to cosplay for Civil War do not own patriotism but we've sort of allowed them to own patriotism when I talk about patriotism people will respond like patriotism is nationalism and it's an ugly sentiment I definitely do not think that's how we win um running against love of country I also think patriotism is not nationalism look it up I think a lot of our spaces need to be much more comfortable with a forthright loud love of America and not love of what we don't love but I think there is a story to tell that we are failing to tell to go back to the very top that I would love to hear the president tell I would love to hear a lot of people tell about a country that was founded with Incredible incandescent ideals that were so profoundly radical and good that virtually nobody involved in their drafting could live up to them nobody there had the courage to be true to what they said but what they said was good and was a real break from what had come before in human history my family comes from India one of the most naturally hierarchical Societies in the world the idea that all people are created equal is not something people even believe on paper in India today this is not natural human equality is not a wide spread belief in India we have failed to live up to a bunch of things but we have some founding commitments and then the most marginalized people in this country for 400 years waves of the most marginalized people with unrequited love they loved America but America didn't love them have every generation fought to narrow the gap between what was said and what was true they have succeeded remarkably in every generation building a bigger Wii beating back the small-hearted faction who wanted to keep slavery they lost who wanted to keep workers in slums they lost who didn't want a safety net they lost who didn't want women to vote they lost who didn't want old age insurance they lost who didn't want School integration they lost who didn't want environmental laws gay rights they lost they lost you start to feel bad for them it's very very awful in the short term but in the long run in the ongoing contest between do we build a bigger Wii or do we build a smaller Wii keep a smaller Wii the bigger we has crushed it again and again and again and I think we need to remember that remember that we are endeavoring to do a really cool thing in this country which is to build a country made of the world a country made of all the other countries it is a hard thing it is really easy to do China or do Norway or whatever like everybody's a cousin you can do high levels of redistribution like no no shade to Norway but it's have you been to Norway like they all trust each other they all look you know it's just um we are trying to do an incredibly hard thing and we don't give ourselves that Grace we're trying to build a a country where every kind of person from every last Village on this planet can come here and realize more of their potential than they would have wherever they came from we don't live up to it a lot but it is an awesome Pursuit I think we're falling on our face in this moment of backlash because we are jumping high and trying a big bold thing I think most other countries virtually any country not doing and I think we should start acting like what we are which is a movement for Progress that has won a lot of progress and start acting like winners and taking to the American people the case that we can push through these changes and everybody's lives will be better and talk through the people who are scared and build with them and with the people who are already with us um a much bigger Coalition for Extraordinary change that will have to be the last word for us on this stage for now but thank you Anand for this conversation in this historic space which we heard earlier has been the meeting ground the home in fact for so much of the Progressive Movement for so many decades so thank you very much thank you thank you

Channel: Economic Security Project

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Id: 979IEzNlIl4

Length: 44min 21sec (2661 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2023