Votes for Women
9/27/19 - Starting next year, you'll see celebration galore for the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, often celebrated as voting rights for American women. But which women could vote? We talk with historian Lisa Tetrault about the myths of suffrage (spoiler alert: it's not actually a right) and the racist politics of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Then we move to the state of suffrage today with activists Arekia Bennett of Mississippi Votes and DeJuana Thompson of Woke Vote, who are working to ensure that marginalized people are enfranchised under new waves of voter suppression.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
Episode Photo: George Kelly
LINKS
The Myth of Seneca Falls and other writing by historian Lisa Tetrault
Mississippi Votes is working with youth to expand voter access and civic engagement. Read more from Arekia Bennett in a recent editorial for The Root.
Woke Vote works to train new organizers and mobilize historically disenfranchised voters of color.
TRANSCRIPT: VOTES FOR WOMEN
[Ads]
(0:12)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: Hi Ann.
Ann: Hi Aminatou Sow.
Aminatou: I feel like you're about to troll me. Well what are we talking about today?
Ann: Okay, so we're talking about history and milestones, possibly fake milestones, like i.e. are historical milestones related to social justice a scam? Like that's kind of the underlying . . . [Laughs] the underlying theme of this week's episode, right?
Aminatou: Ooh, child. So you're talking about the scam of women's suffrage? Tell me about it.
Ann: Oh my god, if only women scammed their way into like full, complete, unfettered suffrage 100 years ago. So yeah, so this year marks 100 years since the US House of Representatives approved a resolution that said to the US government "Hey, you can't stop women from voting." [Laughs] Which is the 19th amendment. And then when it was ratified the following year in 1920 it allowed 26 million women to cast their votes in time for the 1920 presidential election.
Aminatou: What kind of women?
Ann: Well interesting you should ask that and also what does it mean that it allowed them to cast a vote? You know, as we know from all kinds of voting rights shenanigans that have happened in our lifetime there is the kind of on paper who has the right to vote and then there is in practice who is actually able to exercise that right? And so basically we wanted to talk to a historian to give us the real talk on why and how suffrage was not the like great, let's just dust off our hands, now women have the right to vote, cool, we're moving on kind of milestone that I think we're often taught that it is. Like my school textbook was definitely like check, check, women got the right to vote. Cool story.
[Theme Song]
(2:33)
Ann: So I talked to Lisa Tetrault who is an associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University and she's also the author of The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement. And I'm just going to let her explain what suffrage or women's suffrage as a milestone was and wasn't all about.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Lisa thank you so much for being on the show today.
Lisa: Great to be with you.
Ann: We have a big, important milestone, you know, that we are kind of right up upon for women's access to the vote. And I'm hoping you can talk a little bit about specifically what that milestone is and what it represented.
Lisa: We are coming up on the milestone of the so-called Women's Suffrage Amendment which will have its centennial next year. What the 19th amendment -- people often talk about the 19th amendment as giving women the right to vote and it in fact doesn't do that. In fact in the constitution there is no granted right to vote for citizens of the United States. Suffrage has always been regulated by the states. And at the constitutional convention and in the subsequent ratification in the 1700s they clearly left suffrage up to the states.
(3:42)
And all the 19th amendment does -- and it's not insignificant what it does -- it says that you cannot discriminate in voting on the basis of sex. So what it means is that the states cannot have clauses in their constitutions saying that voters have to be male which many states did. Not all states. Many states had already dropped that before 1920.
So one of the things that we get wrong is we miss all the women that were voting before 1920. And the other thing we miss is that many women still could not vote after 1920 because although male was dropped it was still perfectly constitutional in many states -- for many states to have things like literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses. So lots of women were still barred from voting on other grounds even though sex was no longer the thing that kept them away from voting.
So 1920 is a really significant moment when the federal government intervenes in what is otherwise a state story and says you may not universally use male to exclude voters. But it is not A) a conferral of a right to vote because actually the United States has always been really clear that that's a privilege and not a right even though we think of it as the most basic right of American citizenship. It is in fact not actually a right that Americans possess. And the other thing is it doesn't positively give people the right to vote; it just says you can't be barred on the basis of sex.
Ann: Right. And I feel like that distinction of are we just not barring people or are we encouraging people all across the large swath of America to actually cast a vote and making that easy for them, this is a distinction that I think when I think about voting rights today is still the operable one right? Like it's not just -- yeah.
Lisa: Absolutely, yeah. And so part of what happens is that tons of people are not enfranchised in 1920. Lots and lots of women for a variety of reasons. Some are state disqualifications, right, that are usually racially targeted if not racial in their explicit language which would've violated the 15th amendment, the only other time before 1920 that the federal government interferes in state regulation of voting.
(5:45)
One thing the US constitution does is still to this day allows states to discriminate in pretty much any way they see fit. There are only four amendments to the US constitution that regulate voting at the state level: the 15th amendment which was ratified in 1870 which says you can't discriminate on the basis of race; 1920, can't discriminate on the basis of sex; then no poll taxes, there's a constitutional amendment that says that; and there's another constitutional amendment that says people who are 18 and over can vote. And other than that the states are still perfectly allowed to discriminate insofar as they see fit, constitutionally at least.
There was then in 1965 the Voting Rights Act and there have been some other legislation that has profoundly affected how the states can or cannot discriminate. And the Voting Rights Act was probably one of the most important and most effective pieces of federal legislation when it came to regulating voting. It struck down a lot of those things that the states were doing and policed the states and kept them from doing some of those things, particularly in the south, so that a lot of women only got access to the ballot -- women of color -- in 1965 or after.
And for other women the things that barred them from voting were exclusions from citizenship. So Asian-American women, Pacific Islander women, Native women were barred from voting because they were barred from citizenship.
But the thing that talking about the right to vote doesn't equip us to realize is there are still all kinds of ways in which the states can and in fact increasingly are disenfranchising Americans. It lulls us into a false sense of security when we talk about our right to vote because we presume that exists somewhere when in fact it does not. And as long as it does not then states are still perfectly capable of and allowed to discriminate in voting, particularly since the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act in 2013 in Shelby v. Holder.
Ann: Mm-hmm. I'm struck by the fact that just how much we want to believe there's kind of a hard fight for a really clear win.
Lisa: Yeah.
Ann: And then we just win and we keep going as opposed to say . . .
(7:50)
Lisa: Yeah, exactly. I mean it's the kind of narrative of American progress that we love, right? There were some problems but we overcame them. It's a sacred American myth in the way we narrate our own history but of course the reality is much more complicated than that. It's not quite the total win that we would like it to be.
Ann: Right. And so your book from a few years ago is called The Myth of Seneca Falls and I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about some of the other persistent myths related to suffrage. Not just this idea that it was all of a sudden then all women could vote.
Lisa: Yeah.
Ann: But maybe also some of the myths that apply to the period all those years before 1920.
Lisa: Yeah. I think many of the stories that we tell about suffrage are meant to convey certain morals but they aren't necessarily the true story of what happened. There are lots of other ways of narrating the same story by using different facts. So in my 2014 book The Myth of Seneca Falls what I was curious about was not the 1848 Women's Rights convention in Seneca Falls but where and how did the story that gets built up around that convention take shape? Because it's not automatic that it would follow from that meeting that it was the birthplace of feminism and the birthplace of the women's suffrage movement. So when and how did that story get born and how was it used and what political purposes did it serve?
And what I found was nobody really tells that story until the post-Civil War period like some 30 to 40 years later. And that Stanton and Anthony fight really hard to make and tell that story and persuade the movement that it's the story to know and they use that story to try to do a variety of different things inside the movement and outside the movement.
Inside there's all kinds of fighting about who should be leading this movement and inside the movement Stanton and Anthony clearly use Seneca Falls to say "Follow us. We originated the movement, therefore we are the movement, so we are the proper people to follow now" as the movement splinters and goes into a great deal of factionalism.
(9:55)
And the thing it does outside the movement is it says basically we have had a long history of demanding this right and we should not be postponed any longer. So it does a variety of other political projects as well in trying to be explicit in recognition of those political purposes of stories. Because I think once we get good at doing that we can use that skill across a whole variety of ways in which people narrate the past and the present.
Ann: Right. I mean I think one thing that we obviously really wanted to talk about and highlight is the way that -- the narrative of when did white women or women with relative financial power or class power get the right to vote has sort of become the voting timeline, you know what I mean? It's like obviously . . .
Lisa: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we narrate -- yeah, we narrate American history according to sort of middling upper white class people.
Ann: Right.
Lisa: Yeah. So it's as if they stand in for all Americans which of course they don't.
Ann: Yeah, and I'm wondering about whether race as an issue even came up in . . . I mean I understand it played a role in the earlier founding days of the suffrage movement. I'm curious if you could just talk a little bit more generally about race and about who was sort of held up as the typical voter who's going to get their rights because of these shifts.
Lisa: So yeah, race and racism runs through the suffrage movement in really powerful ways, from beginning all the way through to whenever we want to date the end. And that of course should be dated well past 1920. But racism among white suffragists is rampant. And for example when in 1920 the 19th amendment passes and so many women of color still can't vote they come to the flagship largely white suffrage organizations and say "Help us, we can't vote." And they say "Not our problem." And they basically just throw black women, Latina women, a whole variety of women under the bus and say "That's a race problem. It's not our concern."
(11:55)
And the movement always was willing to sacrifice and throw women of color under the bus. It tried very hard to court the white south, the white supremacist south by saying just enfranchise white women and not women of color to try to get their support. And if you go all the way back to 1869 when the post-Civil War movement takes shape there is a very famous fight between Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton where the 15th amendment is proposed by Congress, passes by Congress, says you cannot discriminate in voting on the basis of race. It would've effectively enfranchised African-American men. And Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton say "We refuse to support this because white women first."
And it causes a huge rift in the movement and Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton say unspeakable things using all kinds of racial epithets about Sambo and ignorant black men and Frederick Douglass says back "We need this. This is life-or-death. We are having our brains dashed out on the pavement and we are being hung from lampposts." And Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony say "No, us first. White women -- educated white women before anybody else." They lose that fight and the 15th amendment gets ratified but it's just another example of the ways in which the white suffrage movement was willing to define women as white and sort of leave out the needs of lots of other women of color.
Ann: Right. And then do you see -- I guess I'm curious about not . . . I mean obviously we talk a lot about the way this is still something that affects feminist politics or activism even today.
Lisa: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Ann: But I'm curious about closer to the immediate aftermath of the passage of the 19th amendment is there something that roots me more in this 1919/1920 era of once these self-appointed suffrage movement leaders realize that . . . did they ever have a come around? Did things shift once they felt a little more secure like okay, we've got our rights?
(14:00)
Lisa: It'd be nice to think that but no. Largely they continued to define the movement and the interests that are needed in terms of white women. And like I say, you know, what'll happen after 1920 is not that they continue -- those self-appointed leaders of the suffrage movement -- not that they continue to fight for all women's voting. The National American Woman's Suffrage Association, one of the flagship organizations run by Carrie Chapman Catt will turn into the League of Women Voters after 1920 and what it will say is we should educate voters so that they can be informed voters. They're not at all concerned about the women of color who come to them and say we can't vote.
And then the other flagship suffrage organization, the National Woman's Party run by Alice Paul will not again take up the cause of all women voting but they'll instead shift and propose the first draft of the equal rights amendment basically saying the constitution now says you can't discriminate in sex based on voting; what if we had the constitution say you can't discriminate in the basis of sex in any way? So they in 1923 propose the Equal Rights Amendment and that becomes their cause.
Ann: Right. In taking this long view of rights and progress I know I kind of started out asking you about milestones that are not really as clear a milestone as we might like. I'm wondering if from your perspective you see certain things as milestones that we don't fully recognize as maybe the milestone they really were when this stuff is taught and these kind of easy narrative are dispensed. If there are some things that aren't just overblown but maybe underappreciated.
Lisa: Absolutely. And those would be all the milestones that come after 1920, and those would be when a variety of different groups are brought into citizenship in the United States. 1947 you get Native American citizenship and voting although for many Native Americans they see that as a kind of cooptation of their political power and a kind of colonialism and not necessarily something they desire.
(16:00)
So I think one of the things we can also think about in terms of milestones is when does enfranchising people take away their sovereign rights? And a lot of Native Americans would see US citizenship and voting rights as something that denied their sovereign rights.
1952, Asian Americans are brought into citizenship and voting. 2000 when the federal court says no territories can vote, Puerto Rico citizens of the United States can't vote, things like the many state laws that govern disenfranchisement around felons, around a variety of other things. 1965, the Voting Rights Act. And 2013, Shelby County v. Holder, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act are all incredibly important dates in the story of women and voting none of which we generally pay attention to in that story. They usually belong to other stories.
Ann: Right. We don't see them as part of this larger narrative.
Lisa: As part of this story, right. And so what we get is this kind of triumphalism, right, of 1920 because we leave off this latter part of the story. And if we bring that story to the 1920 story then we have a very different kind of story.
Ann: Ugh, completely. I'm curious about the ways in which not just the most well-remembered actors of the suffrage movement but as a more kind of like how this issue played out around kitchen tables or how it was discussed around America in the lead-up to an aftermath of 1920. I'm curious about the ways that kind of suffragists were portrayed. I'm curious about . . . I guess I'm thinking about living through the debate over like Obamacare or things that feel very obviously like yes, this is the way we want progress to march.
Lisa: Yeah.
Ann: And yet it obviously took a very, very long time for this to be enshrined, even with all the racist trappings right?
Lisa: Yep.
Ann: So I'm curious if you could just give a little bit of a sense of maybe the tone with which this debate played out.
(17:55)
Lisa: It had its detractors, it had its supporters, and it was a national conversation for sure. So the conversation got louder at various points and one of the things that happened is the west takes a lot of its state constitutions much sooner than the east does and there's this big question mark about why is the west willing to not define voters as male so much sooner than the east? There were lots of conversations about how if women voted they would destroy the family which is of course a thing we hear constantly about, you know, proposed changes came up with gay marriage, came up with interracial marriage. Everything is going to destroy the family.
There were lots of cartoons impugning suffragists, you know, showing a man kind of sitting at a washing table with babies on his knees while the mom's headed off to vote and clearly this was the end of civilization. And they were always white women, right? And then if you go to the south there were lots of women who argued that if you enfranchised white women this would be negro domination is the term they would've used at the time. You know, this kind of fear-mongering that was left over from the end of the civil war that you can't enfranchise African-Americans because it will upset civilization itself.
So there were all kinds of ways in which the opponents of women's suffrage really catastrophized what would happen if women were enfranchised or if women of color were enfranchised or if white women were enfranchised. But then at the same time there were lots of Americans, the way there often are, people who thought this is just not that big a deal. It should be fine to do this. It was a knock-down, drag-out fight around ratification in various states. The liquor lobby was really concerned that if women got the right to vote they would vote in temperance which of course they did before the 19th amendment. The 18th amendment, you know, put in place prohibition.
(19:42)
So the liquor lobby was super afraid of women getting the right to vote. I have to correct my own language. Not women getting the right to vote or women being enfranchised I should say. So one of the things they did in the ratification fights was in the various states since the states had to ratify the amendment for it to be attached to the constitution was just get the legislators blasted drunk the night before a vote and try to persuade them to vote no. So it was kind of a brawl and a circus in some ways.
Ann: I just think it's helpful to hear that sometimes when it's easy so many years later to kind of be like "I'm sure it was hard but wasn't it all civil then? And they had no social media."
Lisa: Oh yeah, yeah. We always sanitize these stories, right? And they're -- yeah.
Ann: Exactly.
Lisa: Yeah, because we put an orderly narrative around it. And it seems as if oh, it just all proceeded according to plan and that's not at all how it happened. But yeah.
Ann: Right. So if we're trying to be precise with our language, I know you stopped yourself at the kind of right to vote language.
Lisa: I'm still correcting my own language, yeah.
Ann: What would be some more precise terms that we would use when talking about suffrage and particularly these milestones for women's suffrage.
Lisa: Yeah, so I think we can't say when women got the right to vote, A) because women are coded white in that situation and B) there's no right to vote. It's difficult. I think what we say is when suffrage got extended, when more and more people got into the franchise -- because it is true. I mean for all its limitations some historians and some political scientists have shown that 1920 was the largest single expansion of the franchise in US history. So it wasn't insignificant, so we don't want to also erase that story in our kind of overcorrections. But I think saying when more and more people gained access to the ballot might be a better way to put it.
Ann: It's not as catchy on like a . . . [Laughs]
Lisa: No, it's definitely not as catchy. Yeah, no, I know. It definitely makes this story a much harder sell.
Ann: But true and we like that. Lisa thank you so much for being on the show. If our listeners want to find your work what is the best place for them to connect with you?
Lisa: Probably my webpage, Lisa Tetrault at Carnegie Mellon University. And there's a couple other podcasts I did there. There are some magazine articles I've written about the centennial and access to my book and some of my more scholarly work.
Ann: Fabulous. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Lisa: Thanks. It was great to be with you.
[Interview Ends]
(22:10)
Aminatou: Ooh, child. [Laughs] Women -- the myth of Seneca Falls. Got it. Got it.
Ann: Also just like Susan B. Anthony stomping around claiming her legacy, like I hate it and also I can't help but be impressed by the tactic. Like do you think this is something people are doing on social media now? I'm like she was really all about I'm laying claim to this.
Aminatou: Susan B. Anthony is like an OG bully, like for real.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: Bullies throughout history. I'm telling you.
Ann: I know. Only bullies get their name or likeness on US currency and monuments, let's be honest.
Lisa: Real. Real shit.
Ann: Okay, let's take a break.
[Ads]
(26:30)
Ann: Okay, so knowing what we know about the fact that, you know, the right to vote is not just one-and-done we also wanted to talk to some activists who are working to ensure that people who are parts of communities that have historically been disenfranchised actually have access to the vote like now in the year 2019 and also ideally in the year 2020.
Aminatou: We love to see it. We love to see it. Voter enfranchisement.
Ann: We love to see the work. Yes! Enfranchisement, 100%. And a lot of this work is happening at the state and local level which, you know, is something that's important to remember. It's not all like big, sexy, national organizations that you are hearing about all the time. So the first person we talked to is Arekia Bennett who is the executive director of Mississippi Votes. They run voter registration, voter protection, and get out the vote campaigns that center young and marginalized people.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Arekia, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Arekia: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Ann: I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the history of Mississippi Votes and where the kind of idea for this organization came from.
(27:40)
Arekia: Yeah. A lot of people think that I founded this organization. That is not true. [Laughter] I rebirthed the organization I'll say. So 2015 a group of college students from Mississippi State University and Ole Miss got together based on some research that they were doing around voting trends in Mississippi. And if you know anything about Mississippi State and Ole Miss you'll know that it's a PWI.
Ann: Can I pause you and ask what a PWI is?
Arekia: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Predominantly white institution.
Ann: Got it.
Arekia: And did some initial research around like I said voting trends in Mississippi and they found there were about 300,000 eligible voters who were unregistered in the state of Mississippi. And most of them obviously were from the more poor places in the state who are young, who are black, and fell in the lower end of the education spectrum.
And so these white kids were doing research on black folks like white people normally do. [Laughs] And it just wasn't enough. They were going into communities to do voter registration with no impact from registering to vote then what, right? So I started kind of consulting and engaging folks from historically black colleges and universities. The first HBCU that was engaged was Jackson State University and they had these wonderful campus programs at JSU, Mississippi State and Ole Miss and those students were just registering folks to vote, having voter registration drives, and that wasn't enough either. [Laughter]
So I came onboard as the executive director and kind of took everything and kind of gutted the organization and put it to like three different programs. So now we have a policy research program, we have a voter services program, and the youth civic engagement program which is like I said kind of the lifeblood of what the organization's foundation was upon. And we started thinking about there needs to be this campaign because we understand that the 2018 to 2021 election cycles are going to be crucial to Mississippi's modern election history and the way people show up would define the next decade of our lives as Mississippians.
(30:05)
And so we expanded to just more women and girls, more black folks, more people of color. So last year we registered about 4,000 something young folks to vote and about 75% of the folks we registered showed up on election day and voting to the point where we have dramatic increases on college campuses. That's the nuts and bolts of how I got to this place and where we're going.
Ann: I love that. And I'm curious about how you see voting rights as something that essentially all of us have to really work to protect or like maybe not even protect but make it really felt.
Arekia: Yeah.
Ann: Like make them applicable to people's real lives rather than just being like oh, great, this was the milestone X number of hundred years ago when this population got the right to vote. And I'm curious if you talk about that at all, the historical angle versus okay, we have to keep doing this work.
Arekia: Yeah. Like how can we not talk about those pieces, right? Because you look at the summer of 1964 we have the biggest voter registration, voter engagement, and empowerment program to date to be launched in a place like Mississippi right? And so a part of what we're doing is a reiteration of that. Last year some of the veterans from the summer of 1964 came and canvased with us on National Voter Registration Day and helped us register folks.
And so a lot of what we've been trying to do in terms of expanding voter access and talking about who even gets to lead this work at Mississippi Votes, we're looking at folks who've lived on the fringes or who are living in the margins of whatever it means to be marginalized in Mississippi like queer folks and black women and trans folks. Last year in one of the locations in south Mississippi as I was giving my spiel I thought I was hot stuff.
Ann: [Laughs]
(32:00)
Arekia: And one of the ladies got up and she was like "Listen, thank you so much for coming to talk to us. This is cute. But when I leave this place, granted you gave us some nice next, when I leave this place the reality for me is I have to find childcare for my baby. I have to figure out how I'm going to get to and from work tomorrow. So how is my registering to vote impacting my day-to-day life?" And she was right and I had to take a step back in my pearls and be like okay, all right.
And so full context I started out my work in reproductive health and justice so I got exactly what she was saying but that wasn't enough for me to say this is what I can connect you to at that moment. It was taking a step back after and saying okay, how can we engage community in a way that feels real authentic and give them what they need in order to see themselves as viable characters in their own lives?
And so we partnered with different direct service organizations this year and gave them a supplemental grant to do some extra engagement work because they already do wonderful work at engaging folks who may not ever come to a Mississippi Votes forum but they go to the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund or they go to the Children's Defense Fund, they go to Teen Health Mississippi. What does it mean to give those groups access to things that they need in order to do their work and in order to engage their base authentically around an issue like voting rights that seems so farfetched to a black mama who's got to feed her baby when she gets off work?
Ann: You know, like constraints on the time of people who are marginalized in this country are extremely real. Where do you kind of find the line between these are big structural changes that we need to make to enable people like her to be voters versus what is emotional or what is based on knowledge or something like that?
(33:55)
Arekia: So several things.
Ann: I know, sorry. That was huge. [Laughs]
Arekia: It was always clear to me that voter registration is cute and voter registration forums are nice and they're necessary. But -- or also and -- civic engagement doesn't just mean registering to vote. It means participating during the legislative session and trying to get some of these problematic and voter suppressive laws or whatever out of place right?
So last year I took some of our students to the capital after engaging several legislators around online absentee voting for college students. Literally there is a process in place already that allows people who are serving in the military overseas to vote online in the state of Mississippi. That process could've been adopted for college students who want to vote. And you'd be surprised that particular bill did not come up in committee which means it didn't make the floor. Two, that the legislator that introduced this piece of legislation didn't defend it, didn't offer it to be on the agenda. And also ran -- not ran because he was old but literally rushed out of the committee room away from myself and about two or three students when we were like "You said this was going to come . . ."
Ann: Wow.
Arekia: So there's a lot of different layers to this for me but we literally in the face of a solution being presented, to run away from what we say we're going to stand up for in a committee hearing. So that -- yeah. [Sighs]
Ann: Wow, like physically ran away from you.
(35:55)
Arekia: Oh yeah. Like made eye contact and like saw me coming towards and walked clean out the door. And it wasn't about me at that point to be clear. It was about the young people who were with me.
Ann: Of course.
Arekia: Because they're in a position where they see power in the elected official's seat, right? And so there are so many different solutions that already exist that we could be utilizing to expand voter access.
Ann: Well it's convenient for them right? Like it's much more convenient to be like oh, young people just aren't interested in voting than it is for them to take some responsibility for the ways people have to actually cast a vote. Yeah.
Arekia: Yeah. And yeah, it's stressful and it's disheartening but it's also encouraging because a couple of our students, they were like "You know, this is kind of trash. I'm going to run for office."
Ann: Yes! The best outcome.
Arekia: You know, and part of it is like all right, cool, we want young people to be excited about not just participating in the electoral process but also running for office because they can. So a number of our students, maybe two, have decided to seek public office. And I'm excited and proud of them for even doing a thing like that because I would be scared out of my mind.
Ann: Yeah. Have you ever thought about running for office?
Arekia: In my dreams. [Laughs] No, no, I haven't. I think I'm much more effective in this capacity and/or in the classroom so . . .
Ann: Okay. I'm just saying I'm listening to you and I'm like hmm, my donor button finger is itching. That's all I want you to know. [Laughs] If our listeners want to learn more about the work you're doing or support your work where can they find it and where can they find you?
Arekia: Yeah, we are super funny and interactive on Twitter. [Laughs] So Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, it's all @msvotes and if you want to learn more or partner or send us nice gifs you can email us at info@msvotes.org or visit msvotes.org and see all the cool stuff on our website.
Ann: Awesome. Arekia thank you so, so much for being on the podcast.
Arekia: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
[Interview Ends]
(38:22)
Aminatou: Go Arekia Bennett. This is great. This makes me really excited.
Ann: I know. Okay, well just like hang on because we're not done yet. I also chatted with De Juana Thompson who is the founder of Woke Vote. She is based in Birmingham, Alabama and Woke Vote activates, trains, mobilizes, all kinds of amazing active verbs historically disengaged voters of color. And she is really out here doing the work of like hello, we did not pass something in 1965 or 1920 and call it a day. This is something we have to actively protect month-to-month, week-to-week.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: De Juana, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
De Juana: It's exciting! I'm excited to be here.
Ann: So when we talk about suffrage or the right to vote in 2019 I would love to know what that means to you in terms of what you're seeing on the ground with the work that you're doing.
De Juana: Right. Well and as a black woman from Birmingham, from the south, I think that we've historically had an odd relationship with the right to vote, with the activism that it took to actually secure that right for people of color in the south. And so I think that, you know, when you think about 2019 and the fact that we're still fighting to increase access to voting, to make sure that people aren't being impacted by voter suppression and voter intimidation, while there's been quite some great strides we still have a lot of work to do and it's just prevalent when we look at races like Stacy Abrams' race in Atlanta or Andrew Gillum's race in Florida we know that people were inherently denied the right to vote and many of those people were black people and black women.
(40:12)
So I think the work we're doing right now is critical. I think that it builds upon a legacy of those who know that one way to liberate our community is through the vote and we're just going to keep pushing.
Ann: Yeah. And I'm curious about what you say to folks who are like "Yeah, we have voting rights. What's the big deal?" [Laughs] Like someone who might be divorced from some of the issues that you are really seeing as relevant to affecting who is practically casting a ballot. Like not just who is sort of on paper able to but who is really enabled and empowered to vote in our country right now.
De Juana: Yeah. I think that, you know, one of the things we always say as we're engaging is if the right to vote wasn't so precious people wouldn't be trying to take it away from you.
Ann: [Laughs] I love that.
De Juana: And in some places -- right? And in some places that works and with some people it doesn't. And I think what we have really tried to focus on is the fact that voting is a tool in our liberation toolbox. It's not the only tool, right? But for so many people the first sort of entryway into justice work or into activism is through the vote. And so we try to help them to understand that while every time we cast a vote it may not be for the winning candidate or we may not always see the turnout we want in an election it's part of a larger practice. And so you can't throw away the voting part of the strategy for liberation. And I think that helps people re-imagine what voting is and why it's important.
(41:50)
And the other thing that we seek to do most importantly is to decentralize candidates and to refocus on building the electoral power of the communities that we serve. And so it's more about how do we utilize our voting power to bring about the change that we need versus how do we vote for this candidate so they can get in office?
Ann: Right. And I think that big picture is something that I know it took me a long time to come around to that idea, right? Like I was kind of raised with like oh, you evaluate some people who are on the ballot. You like them or you don't and that's it. I wasn't taught in high school how it fits into this bigger picture of voting -- people who vote as an important constituency. And I feel like your work really addresses that too. It's like oh, if we're all voting we become more of a force to be reckoned with, like people have to sit up and listen.
De Juana: Right.
Ann: Does part of your work involve speaking to folks who might not understand a lot of the mechanics of essentially why someone wouldn't turn out to vote? Are you kind of explaining like okay, this is what's really happening on the ground for people?
De Juana: Yeah. [Laughs] All the time.
Ann: How would you kind of explain that to someone who's maybe like "Listen, I vote all the time. What's the big deal?"
De Juana: When you haven't had a burden or a barrier to voting there is this privilege of being able to walk in and cast your vote that you don't even recognize because you've never had that experience. But if you're someone who has attempted to register to vote, show up, the machines don't work, show up, someone tells you you're in the wrong place. Show up and someone tells you oh, you can't vote because last week we changed the rules those kinds of things are happening in so many spaces, particularly in marginalized communities, that it has created a disdain in a lot of ways for the process.
(43:40)
And so when we start to give those real life examples of how people are experiencing their voter suppression and voter intimidation that begins to change the conversation. Because, you know, for most people if they haven't experienced it on the surface it seems like everyone can just walk in. On the surface it seems like everybody has access. But when you start to throw that whether it be through video or our favorite is bringing people who've been impacted by voter suppression or voter intimidation and letting them tell their story in those spaces and lifting those voices up, it automatically changes the conversation for people who are like oh, okay, well I see why this is an issue. Because right, if all you did was move and for some reason no one allowed you to update your voter information that's a problem.
And so I think it's giving people real-life examples a lot of times and taking it out of this narrative of if it's accessible to me, it's accessible to everybody and helping people to see it like no, actually your neighbor, someone in your community was not able to vote because of something erroneous. And I think when you do that that helps with the conversation a little bit more than just saying let's fight for this because nobody -- some people are having issues and some people aren't.
Ann: Yeah. And I feel like I have to ask you as we're all watching these 2020 Democratic candidates fight it out, I hear what you're saying in terms of like look, this is about building a broader base of power. This is not about one candidate. But when it really comes down to it, when I think about for example all that energy behind Obama, I think about people who were really drawn into the process by that one candidate right?
De Juana: Yeah. Right.
Ann: And I wonder how you balance those things of like both people understanding the big picture but like at the end of the day it's easier to get out of bed for a candidate you just really believe in, you know?
De Juana: Right. I think while I agree with you that -- I mean I worked on both presidential elections for President Barack Obama and there was something absolutely magnetic, something just insane really about those two election cycles. But what I would say is this and I have to believe it to be true. One of the things I was taught when I was working on President Obama's campaign in 2008, he told us -- he got on the call one day and he said "Listen, people are going to come in for me but they're going to stay for you." And what he meant by that is people are going to get excited by what they may hear me say but whether or not they stay in this campaign and whether or not they stay involved after this campaign and whether or not they feel empowered is really based on their interaction with you as an organizer and you as a person that's talking about what our policies are.
(46:23)
And in that he really emphasized the power of the organizer and the power of our voices and how we can change our communities. And so what I've seen is that yes, a candidate that can embody and move us is a luxury. It is a privilege. It is not something that should be incredibly necessary to motivate people, especially when people are hurting, especially when people are being left out, especially when there's so much at stake. The privilege of falling in love with a candidate is something special but it's not a requirement.
And I think that we're in a moment right now -- a very critical moment in our country -- where yes I want to fall in love with my candidate but more importantly I want to save my community. And if it means getting out here and making sure that the people who are running for office reflect my values, if it means that I may not like to see them play basketball but they can actually argue my court case effectively, whatever that may be, we're talking about right now the critical moment that we're in. And so maybe we'll get to another space in time in our politics where we can fall in love with candidates and, you know, fan out on them. But I think right now what we have to fall in love again is what it means to be American, what it means to be community-minded, what it means to be my brother's keeper, what it means to provide resources. We have to fall in love again with what that is and let that be the guide for this 2020 election cycle.
(47:55)
Ann: I love that and I cannot think of a better note to end on honestly so I'm not even going to ask you another question. [Laughs] I'm just going to let it end there. If our listeners want to get involved with Woke Vote or find out more about the work that you are doing where can they find you?
De Juana: Absolutely. We are on every social site. We also have @wokevote, W-O-K-E V-O-T-E. Our website is www.wokevote.us and if you want to get in contact with me and the lovely forum that I supported and co-founded which is Think Rubix you can find us at www.thinkrubix.com.
Ann: Thank you so much De Juana.
De Juana: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
[Interview Ends]
Aminatou: You know this conversation is fascinating to me because I think that it's fair to say that in the entire world America has a country has suspiciously low voter turnout and people complain about that a lot without realizing that some people want to vote and obstacles are placed on them at every step of the way to get them to vote right?
Ann: Yes.
Aminatou: So when we talk about turnout don't lump voters of color in that because voters of color are actually doing their damned best to have access to vote and historically are the ones who show up the most. It's also just so interesting to me -- interesting, a nebulous word that you use when you don't want to say what you actually think.
Ann: It remains your most Midwestern quality, using interesting in this way. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I love it. But, you know, it's just this thing where I never see this anywhere but in America this is so acutely true that there is an entire political party whose strategy revolves around the fewest number of people possible showing up to vote.
Ann: Right?
Aminatou: That's wild, Ann. That is wild and we let them get away with it.
Ann: Right. I mean well not everyone. Clearly Arekia and De Juana are not letting them get away with it but yeah, this idea too that hmm, I wonder why there is such high voter turnout among like wealthy, old, white retired people. Who has the time? Who has the resources? Who has the support of a lot of people in government where they actually want them to cast a vote? It's not rocket science.
(50:10)
Aminatou: Oh my gosh. Well I am really grateful for all of these people doing the hard work because it's important right now and it'll be important in the future.
Ann: Yes. So thanks to our guests, Lisa Tetrault, Arekia Bennett and De Juana Thompson and we will link to Mississippi Votes and Woke Votes in the show notes if you want to click through and maybe kick a little money their way, see about how you can get involved in if you live in one of the areas where they work, or maybe just signal boost. Tweet and support the work that they're doing because now is definitely the time to do it, like not two weeks before the presidential election in 2020.
Aminatou: Whew. See you at the polls, boo-boo.
Ann: I will see you at the polls.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf where Sophie Carter-Kahn does all of our social. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.