How Democrats can harness grassroots energy

The Democratic Party saw a surge in grassroots activism after the 2016 election, after George Floyd's murder, and most recently after the Dobbs decision. However, the party seems to be sticking to the same old playbook of fundraising emails and text messages, rather than building long-term organizational power. Our guests this week explore why that is and how the Democratic Party can use grassroots mometum to build and expand coaltions.

Lara Putnam is professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and previously appeared on the podcast ahead of the 2018 midterms. Micah L. Sifry is the founder of Civic Hall and writes The Connector newsletter on Substack. They teamed up for a New York Times op-ed in August and a series of follow-up pieces in The Connector.

The New York Times: Fed Up With Democratic Emails? You're Not the Only One

The Connector: An Activist Base is a Terrible Thing to Waste

The Connector: Connections, Capacity, and Impact

‍

‍Michael Berkman
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. I'm Michael Berkman.

Candis Watts Smith
I'm Candis Watts Smith.

Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle, and welcome to democracy works. This week. Our guests are Lara Putnam, who is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. And Micah Sifry, who is the founder of Civic Hall and writes a newsletter on Substack called The Connector, and Lara and Micah worked together on an op ed that was published in the New York Times at the end of the summer, and some subsequent posts on the connector newsletter. And if you if Lara Putnam's name sounds familiar to you, we had her on the show back in 2018, one of our first episodes was before the 2018 midterms. And we talked with her about the kind of grassroots organizing that had happened after Donald Trump was elected, sort of between 2016 and 2018. And this is, I think, a fitting time to have her back to kind of see where we are. Now, as we head into the 2022 midterms.

Michael Berkman
One thing that I always really appreciate about, about Lara, both in terms of listening to her and then following her on Twitter, is that she really has a very nuanced and close look, she does a really nuanced and close look at what's going on in terms of organizing within the state of Pennsylvania. And not only before the 2018 election, I remember around the times of the Black Lives Matters protests to that Lara was in all kinds of communities, small and large throughout Pennsylvania, talking about what she was seen, in terms of protest activity, a canvas, I thought maybe it'd be a good place to start by talking about why every time we approach a midterm election, we don't expect very many people to vote.

Candis Watts Smith
Well, that's people don't. mean I you know, so, you know, presidential elections are easy, they're flashy, there's a lot going on. And you know, Americans, generally speaking, don't, you know, politics, I think, has not been at the, you know, kind of center of their world that we think about, usually there's like someone in your community, there's like one guy or one lady who's like, totally into it. And then the rest of us are like, yeah, yeah. And so you know, just the trends show typically that there is a significant drop off between presidential elections and midterm elections. And though in 2018, they're just way higher than normal. Folks, that turned out I think, maybe like almost over a little bit over 50% of I think eligible voters

Michael Berkman
It looked like a presidential election.

Candis Watts Smith
What I guess one thing that that you that you said, that made me think of something else, and it's that we kind of tend to think about voter turnout, in terms of your kind of individual orientation, toward politics and the resources that you might have. So education, income, gender, age, all of these things, we kind of tend to think about it on the individual level about people kind of making choices, and that their choices to turn out might be higher, depending on these groups that they belong to. But one thing that I appreciated about leren and Micah is kind of insights are the role of kind of larger organizations, institutions, and then the parties as playing a role in bringing people into into the fold and keeping them in the fold in between elections. So this kind of, you know, the issues around midterms, we tend to just, you know, look at Americans and think like, Oh, you guys aren't doing your civic responsibility, without also thinking about the kind of larger structures, laws, organizations, institutions that would facilitate people participating in politics, both at the ballot box, but then outside the ballot box.

Michael Berkman
Yeah. And what I think is pretty interesting about the kind of work that Lara and Micah are doing that, you know, will hear in the interview coming up is that they appreciate that the way in which people have are mobilized has changed over time. Yeah. And, you know, so we go back, I mean, actually, you go back to pre Progressive Era, and voting turnout was in the 80 90%, sometimes even over 100% It was remarkable how many people turn out to vote in the times of machine politics, but what that really points to is this at parties really played a major role, you know, going back in American history and turning voters out and, and parties are less effective at that than than they than they used to be. And of course, A lot of the progressive reforms were intended to, to weaken parties, and we made our ability to do that. But also, I think it's important and they speak to this a bit, that especially on the Democratic side, that unions played a very important role in turning people out to vote. And while you know, teachers unions, for example, are still very important in helping to mobilize voters for Democrats, unions don't play quite the role that they that they used to play. So that that leaves that leaves a vacuum that I think they're trying, they're going to try to speak to.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and yeah, really how best to fill that vacuum, what role should the parties play? Those are all questions that our that are central to Leora and me his work and some other recent writing. So let's go now to the interview and hear more about it.

Jenna Spinelle
Micah Sifry and Laura Putnam, welcome to democracy works. Thank you both for joining us today.

Lara Putnam
Delighted to be here.

Micah Sifry
Yeah, my pleasure.

Jenna Spinelle
So I was just telling you, before we started recording that, it's always a delight to see two people who have been following separately for a while come together to write something as the two of you did, recently in the New York Times, and some follow up pieces in your newsletter. So can you just maybe start with with a bit of an origin story? How did you come to know each other? And and what were some of the common threads that you saw between your work?

Micah Sifry
I think the answer is Twitter. Inevitably, I think Lara and I zero in on many of the same little nuggets and oddities that you can find in the great wasteland known as Twitter. And then we discover, of course, we have, you know, mutual friends. And you know, I think I've certainly came across some of Lara's early your work going back to like 2017, when she was writing about the rise of the anti Trump, quote, resistance in places like Pennsylvania. So we, we absolutely resonated on a bunch of levels right from the start.

Lara Putnam
Yeah, there's, I think, I had been falling mica from afar, as someone who was really interested in both the big picture of how national shifts in funding and understandings of national level organizers or sort of progressive voices, how that impacted what was happening on the ground and individual people's forms of engaging with the political process. And you know, there aren't that many. There are lots of people who are interested in one slice or one layer of that sort of stack of the healthy functioning of democratic systems. But Micah really is interested in how the different layers interact. And that's always what I'm eager to be learning about. And so that's, that's sort of what drew me into his range of writings. And then it was great to find that we, you know, resonated and could build off each other's observations.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and so this this piece in The Times on one level, it's about, about emails, maybe too much about emails, we could talk about that but at the at the heart is is kind of churn and burn strategy. As I I believe you you describe it, I'm sure many of us are familiar with this on an individual level from receiving emails and, and text messages that seem very urgent in their their appeals for money. But can you walk us through the higher level strategy? Where does it come from? And how long has it been around? Those kinds of things?

Micah Sifry
I think you have to go back to the decline of the sort of old party structures that mobilize people in politics, which you know, really start to die out late 50s, early 60s, as the country suburbanizes, as television takes over as the main medium for reaching people and so TV advertising and the money required to buy those ads comes to dominate both parties, and how they engage at the highest level but also the hollowing out at the at the local level, which I think has been worse on the Democratic side than on the Republican side. Fast forward to the last 25 years the rise of the Internet as a you ubiquitous connection and communications technology, which first is discovered by Politico's as this amazing fundraising spigot and they start investing more money in digital forms of campaigning and engaging with voters. Number one, because it's profitable, they get more money out, then they have to put in. But it also is through a period on the Democratic side period where grassroots activists also start forming their own networks, and in many cases get vacuumed up into verticals called email lists, move on being, you know, sort of the mother of the mall. And, and then the Obama campaign, which seem to combine a revival of the grassroots distributed decentralized empowerment of local precinct volunteers and super volunteers, who were given some some autonomy to run the Get out the vote effort in their particular neighborhood or precinct, combined with unbelievably sophisticated use of analytics, to do everything from analyze how to target which voters with what messages to how to most efficiently spend money on everything from paid media to, you know, where you locate, you know, a local, get out the vote operation. And the Obama cycle, which was from 2008 to 2016. Is what still powers I would argue, the beltway brain, the the approach that so many Democrats as well as Republicans take towards voters, which is these are, you know, people to be harmed, you know, money and data to be harvested from them. In the case of volunteers just in time, activities, like sign up for this phone bank or sign up for this canvas. And that wet that is where we get what we have now, despite the anti Trump years where millions of grassroots activists Democrats decided to get involved on their own. And that's for me, and Larry, I think the silver lining of the story is that there have been a lot of, of interesting, important local political formations that we think offer a different, different way of doing things. But it's a it's a big hole that Democrats in particular have dug themselves into you don't do gout of and you know, one cycle.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and Lara, let's let's pick up with sort of where where we left off. The last time you were on the show was 2018, you were in the midst of this work with grassroots organizers in in western Pennsylvania, I think feeling fairly optimistic, at least as optimistic as any academic ever feels maybe about where things were going. It's a where are those groups now is is there a sense that the some of that momentum has been overshadowed by these seemingly dire emails and text messages about democracy dying and needing to support it financially as opposed to building grassroots coalitions?

Lara Putnam
You know, I think the big picture story is that that surge of new grassroots organizing that you're talking about, and that we were talking about in 2018, has in fact, managed to build in many places significant local structures that are remaking politics and remaking the practice of politics on the center to the left, but they've done so by really, all the things that they were doing that were ignoring the directions that they got from above that were ignoring the emails or ignoring the advice of national leaders who were and campaign staff who all of whom, understandably, were really focused focused on short term channeling of countable actions, you know, join this text bank, knock this number of doors send this many, you know, postcards to voters. So it totally makes sense that from national level leaders and political professionals tend to have, you know, short short term interests and be focused on what they can either show to their candidate or show to their funders as as sort of visible countable evidence of, quote, unquote, grassroots grassroots involvement. But all the actually important stuff that comes out of grassroots involvement is the stuff that you can't count so easily, because it doesn't come in neat little identical boxes. It is it is important because it is locally specific. It is important because it is adapting to and shifting form depending on who it's connecting to. It's important because who the partner the relevant local partners are going to be, aren't the same in rural Pennsylvania in the excerpts in the city. So we see this And so grassroots involvement has remade politics in lots of places, but not in immediately sort of predictable or entirely uniform ways. And so we see this, for instance, in, you know, in the city of Pittsburgh and in Allegheny County, the old cohorts of old, old school, Democratic politicians, whose core allies within the city had been developers on the one hand, and the trade unions, on the other hand, have really found themselves sort of sidelined or not, if not sidelined, at least pushed out of the driving chair in terms of local democratic politics, and new alliances with a new coalition that involves service workers that involve people trying to organize hospital workers, and home health care workers. So it's labor involved, but it's a different sector of the labor different realm of the labor union movement. And folks who were energized over Black Lives Matter protests and issues of the incarceration and racial justice. Those folks have come together and elected a whole new round of judges to county wide offices within Allegheny County, unseated and incumbent mayor elected a new mayor, and have essentially made possible an opening for new leadership within the local Democratic Party, who are already much more actively than their predecessors working on voter registration, for instance, and addressing barriers to voting. So all of those things are super important.

Jenna Spinelle
And is there any evidence that you found in the in the course of your research that this turn burn strategy is discouraging people or preventing them from getting involved at at the grassroots level? There were some comments on on your time is peaceful, you could just unsubscribe from the emails or you you know you This is like a solvable problem on that level. But I wonder about people getting burned out feeling like they can't really do anything feeling helpless or hopeless. And I you know, I wonder if that has come to bear in any of the the research you've you've done in this area?

Micah Sifry
Well, I think that we do know from some of the academic research that over communication can turn people off, that there's really declining returns from, you know, knocking on somebody's door, or texting or calling them for the fourth, fifth sixth time. Anecdotally, there is an enormous resentment of the apocalyptic emails, the fake deadlines, and at the same time, and by the way, in the industry, there are there are more people now than I've ever seen, who are trying to change the practice. In the industry itself, there's a new website called ethical emails.org. That was put together by a guy named Josh Nelson, who has been really trying to get the vendors to change what they will allow they're they're wary of getting into, you know, monitoring and deciding what subject lines go go too far. Are you really abusing senior citizens with the which you are, frankly, abusing them? But the industry is wary of self regulation? I think the possibility of change is unlikely, unless the leaders of the the actual bodies that do the bulk of this, which is party leaders, and campaigns decide that this is just not the right way to go about it.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and I guess that is one way I suppose other than I mean, it's sort of similar to unsubscribing from email. So if enough people just don't give, I suppose that's one way to push for change if they see that this strategy is no longer financially viable. Yeah, too.

Lara Putnam
You know, and I think, you know, our argument wouldn't be that giving money to campaigns is a bad idea. I mean, frankly, this this may be a point where where we can I slightly disagree but you know, the evidence that having an advantage and in much cash on hand in order to for instance, run television ads, especially in dumbbell campaigns, so not in the Presidential Center, so saturated, but for for, you know, state rep campaigns, to be able to have parody or or to predominate in television advertising is, it's super important. It's very impactful. So I think there's a world of, you know, deserving candidates out there, and donating to them will make a difference with your dollar if you find a candidate who's out who reflects your values and who is advocating for policies that you care about and who's running to flip a seat or to hang on to a seat that's that's you know, a narrowly as a as a narrow margin. Absolutely. That candidates a great target for your For political donations, if you have the ability to give, you know, we would encourage some of the encouraging signs that we see is the evolution of what some people are calling the sort of volunteer donor advisors or donor advisor hubs. So sort of networks of giving circles on the, on the, in this in the case that we're setting on the center to left where people intentionally come together and say, well, let's work together to educate ourselves about races and come up with a plan for how we're going to learn about which race is really where our money can make an impact. And then we're going to use our relationships to reach outward and ask for money and explain what we're doing.

Jenna Spinelle
Because you also said earlier in our conversation, that this churn and burn strategy is something that that Republicans engage in, too. I just read that former President Trump sent something like 100 emails around the the FBI Mar a Lago situation, but what's what's different about the the underlying structure and organization of the Republican Party? That may be, you know, what, what do the Republicans have in terms of a grassroots structure that maybe the Democrats don't?

Micah Sifry
Well, I think they have a couple of things. One is they have a cleaner brand. It's it's fairly easy now to say what Republican ism stands for, and it's been true even going back before the Trump years, you can summarize it in a few words, you know, lower taxes, bigger military, you know, restore the patriarchal family, they wouldn't use those words, you know, white Christian values, it's a bit more explicit. Now, I don't think Democrats have a clear brand at all, it's really quite muddy. The second thing is, is that they have, you know, more committed billionaires who invest in long term institution building, in a way that Democrats have not ever had George Soros, etc, to the, you know, exception. And the third thing, which, you know, we got out a little bit in our times piece is that they have an alliance a very close relationship with 1000s of local kinds of social formations, be it gun clubs, or or evangelical churches, or Christian homeschooling moms networks, that were the bigger message of the day resonates locally. You know, they also do have quite a committed media system from Fox News, further to the right. But that it's that last mile, and I really should let Ltalk about the last mile, because this is her her term, where the Democrats, I think, especially since local labor has really shrunk in a very defensive way, you know, after decades of attacks on the ability to organize, where Democrats don't have the same kind of local resonance for, you know, whatever their national message might be. Larry, do you want to add on that last mile is really important.

Lara Putnam
You know, the, the crucial question is, you know, for within so many different communities in the United States, from urban to suburban to rural, who, who are the trusted local messengers, who are sharing and developing and shaping the message. This is what Democrats stand for. And this is why your vote matters. And this is why you this is this is this is why you should be part of the system. Everything that we know from the sociological research about voting emphasizes how whether people the ways that people participate in the political system are hugely shaped by what they saw their parents do when they were growing up, and what what is going on with the people who they know in their daily lives around them. And the whole apparatus that tries to send, you know, postcards to voters or knock on doors, is basically trying to make up for the gap that has arisen in local daily organic ties that do that work of saying, oh, there's an election coming up. And here's why it matters to me. And here's, here's why people like us, whatever that us looks like people like of course, people like us are going to vote and of course, what each party wants is for it to be natural. For when you say, of course, people like us are going to vote each party wants the implicit addendum to be and of course, we're going to vote for Democrats or of course, we're going to vote for Republicans so that like implicit Of course, of course we do this people like us to do this. atrophied on the Democratic side, because it was so dependent on On these, you know, crucial local organizations, first and foremost labor unions played that role of, you know, why was it that there's such a long legacy of people voting and voting as Democrats in places like Greene County, and, you know, the sort of the legacy mining areas of Pennsylvania, because people grew up in communities where, of course, we're going to vote. And of course, we're going to vote for Democrats like that was the the legacy of the mine workers struggles, that was the legacy of the New Deal. It was the legacy of, of Roosevelt's, you know, throwing the force of the federal government in support of labor organizing in industrial areas. And another counterpart to that is, of course, the totally critical role of black churches in as a forefront of a broad support and engagement in the civil rights movement, such an end as a place where people told created within the community, the of course, of course, we're going to vote. And of course, we're going to vote for the party that represents us. And this is which that party is so that the Democratic Party sort of skated by not having to really rebuild those and sustain and respect those ties, because they were benefiting from the ties that the labor unions were building from the ties that the churches were building, and as sociological shifts, and also attacks on the ability of people to organize labor unions over the course of the 1970s and 80s. And 90s, that wasn't just something that magically happened, there were a huge amount of money and litigation was invested in undercutting the ability of unions to play that role. And the with the result that they have no longer been able to what that created that as a whole at the local level, but local everywhere, in this kind of local connective tissue that binds people within communities to each other and to the political system. And rather than investing in building that out, again, that, you know, Democratic national organizations focused on the sort of short term like the high high sugar quick fixes of fundraising through, you know, emails, fundraising through texts.

Micah Sifry
Or donating or just nominating self funding rich candidates, which is another way of solving the same problem. I did one more thing to Larry's point, which is, while there still is, especially in the black community, a lot of this organic connection, many, many Democrats run away from that. They think that they actually have to keep those voters at arm's length while they appeal to some mythical, you know, white swing suburban voter. The Democrats have a very difficult problem there. I don't see Republicans running away from their core voters in the same way. And so that that's a challenge. And the challenge has gotten even more intensified. Since 2020. With, you know, the Black Lives Matter surge, which was huge, probably the biggest grassroots mobilization that our country has ever seen in terms of local protests taking place in places that have never seen solidarity with black lives as a public expression. But the backlash has also been severe. And it's still roiling our politics now.

Lara Putnam
And in the places where, you know, we've seen political movements most transformed in the in the piece that we wrote for the times we talked about changes in the northern suburbs of Pittsburgh, which had been really remarkable. It's because people have been focused not only on local elections, but on local elections, in addition to congressional Senate and presidential elections. And so they've gone out and met their neighbors, that, you know, they focus canvassing locally in 2017, because they were trying to elect people to the school board. So literally, that was the there was no like, oh, maybe I should like do something to Georgia. It's like, no, it's this school board. So I need to be out there talking to to other people in this place to get their votes. And not only did they make an impact on who voted for whom, in November, but they also learned themselves. And you've and I've seen and really been, it's been amazing watching the wisdom gained and the savvy gained by local people doing politics in their own place, and that doesn't push them to the far left. It doesn't push them to the far right, it pushes them into the space of actually solving problems. And that's something that I think can be replicated anywhere. It's not unique, the explicit content of what the stakes are is going to are going to be different in an urban neighborhood or a suburban neighborhood in a red state or blue state. But the basic fact of of the enormously positive impact of getting out and doing In politics in a way that learn in which in which you're building connections and learning from what you learn from the wins, learning from the losses and moving forward together, that's the hope that I see moving forward.

Jenna Spinelle
I think that is a good place to leave things, we will link to your New York Times piece and also me here to your newsletter, the connector in the show notes if people want to go in and read more from both of you. But thank you so much for joining us today.

Lara Putnam
Thank you for having us.

Micah Sifry
Real pleasure.

Michael Berkman
Well, Jenna, it was, it was great to hear from from Lara again, and this time with Micah as well. Candis, what do you think about all these email blasts that we're getting?

Candis Watts Smith
I hate them. I also, I also don't like the text messages from people who write to me like they know who I am. They know me. And I think what's going on here is that there is a recognition that relationships matter. And in this case, people are kind of faking a relationship, but I am with Lara and Micah on this that. What if the parties leveraged real relationships for more robust participation? So you know, I don't know, I think that people think that they're being hard on the email blasts. But I think one of the things that we're missing out on and what I think they illuminate really well, is that these kinds of blasts come as like these emergency moments, or right around elections. And they don't do the work of bringing in people for long term participation in between elections.

Michael Berkman
Well, my the worst summer job I ever had, I was doing direct sales by telephone where you're calling people randomly, and always pretending that you're their best friend. Mm hmm. And so you know, it's a technique is as old as can be, because it was a long time since I've been been doing this. And of course, the technology has changed. Now, it's not phone calls, it's text messages that can go out to you know, I don't know what millions of text messages at a time, I have no idea what they're able to send, certainly 1000s That, you know, they only need a return rate of a very small percentage, I would think to be able to make some money out of them. So they must be doing it because it works to raise money. Not right, not necessarily for the purposes, that Larry is talking about which people out, but to raise money. And I mean, to me, it speaks to, you know, complaining about them too much is, is just takes us back to well, electrons are too expensive.

Candis Watts Smith
You know, during the 2020 election, a neighbor of mine, who is a Republican was just kind of feeling like, he wasn't sure if voting for Trump was what he should be doing. And we had a whole conversation, but my pitch to him was, if you care about democracy, then maybe voting for Trump is not the thing that you want to do this time not to say that you're not a Republican, I think that's fine. And there's down ballot candidates that you probably really like. So vote for democracy, and for the people that you think are going to uphold the kind of rule of law, the things that you care about the institutions that we have the norms. And, you know, we talked for 20 or 30 minutes, but I also know him and he knew me, and that is a different kind of participation. It's a it's a more meaningful participation. And I think that that's what Lara and Micah and more people are looking for the people who went out and protested. And, you know, the people who were really galvanized by the 2016 election, they have energy, they have a desire to participate in government more than just voting and putting in money. And so, you know, on some level, we are kind of wasting that away, by focusing on by using those people to just send out text messages and emails

Michael Berkman
Interesting about their work or point that I find really interesting about their work, and that's who's going to do this, who's going to do this? Like, who's gonna go out and have these conversations and make this contact and create this energy?

Candis Watts Smith
Well, I mean, I think that there aren't people who doing this work already right. Lehrer shows that there are plenty of grassroots activist who are trying to make change in their communities, and whether they're getting the support of the major parties. I think that is that that seems to be II, where there is a mismatch that there is not a link, there's not that's not connected. And I think that's a point that Lara and Micah bring up that it's probably better for me to canvass my own neighbors than for some person who lives on the other side of town to come in, and even kind of suggest that they would know better than we would know about our own issues and concerns.

Michael Berkman
And certainly parties appreciate that. I think when they send people out for canvassing on the weekends, they're generally trying to send people to their own neighborhoods, where they're, you know, more likely to know their neighbors. I mean, one thing that I can't help thinking about is that one way in which the people that are doing this work has changed is that they're more likely to be activists and, and not completely because and Laron others have been really good in identifying how, for example, women have become mobilized. And, you know, the thing about the Dobbs decision, I think, is that Democrats are much less likely to run from they're pro choice activists, and they're pro choice activists, who are who I now maybe I'm wrong about that candidates, and let me know if you think otherwise, but I think they see they're pro choice activists is more likely to be, you know, the, the middle class women that are often the the or professional women, I should say, that are often really central to their coalition. And they want to get them out, they want to activate them, they're comfortable with the message. But that's not true if they're climate activists. And I don't think it's really true of their Black Lives Matters activists and racial justice activists more generally.

Candis Watts Smith
So one, one thing I think is important to note, though, about the marches and protests is that we also tend to think about activism. Sometimes we the media treats activist as like, they came out of nowhere, when a lot of those people are expert, and building networks and coalitions. And so again, by distancing oneself from those folks, I think that any party that does that does a disservice to, to the possibilities for bringing in more people into politics.

Michael Berkman
Yes, yeah. And that activism, you know, that getting involved in that project that teaches them also the skills that they need to be able to organize.

Candis Watts Smith
So I will say that I appreciate Lara and Micah for really kind of keeping their fingers on the pulse, these changes in the dynamics, and also just really, for kind of highlighting this kind of political industrial complex that can turn citizens into just voters and ATMs that, you know, are called upon, on, you know, by, you know, every other year, rather than laying down a foundation on which relationships can be built for constant political participation, even between elections. So I am thankful for them for for for doing that kind of nuanced, close reading of what's going on at the at the very local level, which, you know, we can have that same debate about, you know, is all of our all politics local, but we know that it does matter. We know that local politics matters. So, with that, I would just say thank you to Lara and mica for joining us, and for highlighting these dynamics.

Michael Berkman
For Democracy Works, I'm Michael Berkman.

Candis Watts Smith
I'm Candis Watts Smith. Thanks for listening.

‍