Using Tech to Save Our Democracy || D'Seanté Parks of 1000 MORE

in the world. I've lived there for two years. Actually, in my worldview, seeing us successful in every industry and not having any limits on our potential largely was shaped by Atlanta. So to be there with you doing this podcast talking about how we build or leverage technology to build wealth. Come on, man, doesn't get better. I want to see you there. Get your tickets today at Black Effect dot comback Slash Podcast Festival. I'm with Lucas and

this is Black Tech, Green Money. Deschante Parks is founder and CEO at one thousand More and that that makes it easier for people from underrepresented communities like the one she's from, to engage in politics the top of that is super important to everyone's well being in growth, but often difficult to participate in. Her approvised, digestible, nonpartisan Summer Reason legislation coming up for a vote written in a

way that doesn't require a law degree to understand. You can also find the popular arguments for and against bills, and it also helps you connect with elected officials and participating in crowdfunding campaigns for organizations you care about. Her mission of civic empowerment started at Louisiana State University and she worked on the Senate campaign for now Vice President Kamala Harris, and she has a Master of Public Policy

degree from Harvard Kennedy School. And preparing to talk with her, my mind immediately went to lobbying and how the voice that people can be suppressed by big money. So I asked Deschante to break down how this happens time and time and again, both negatively and positively for the issues that might matter most to you.

The term lobbying comes from the men who used to stand in the lobby of the hotels where the elected officials who would stay when they came to DC to vote, because they would live in their districts most of the time, all over the country, and then they would come into DC to vote as a legislative body, and there would be men who literally hung out in the lobby of these hotels and would buy them drinks and would talk to them and would therefore have an influence on whatever

they were voting on. That was a lobbyist. So the way that they still have influence really, I tell people all the time. The money is part of it, but what's even more important is lobbyists full time jobs are to talk to your elected officials. So while you're working nine to five, and then you get home from work and you got to cook for the kids, and you gotta exercise, and you're tired, and then you got to even make time to watch the news. Then you got

to digest the news, form an opinion, then call. They're not even at the office to answer the phone at that point. Whereas lobbyists, this is all they do. This is our job, and by the way, it's not a bad job, right there. I have friends that are lobbyists. There are people who lobby for children's rights, you know, there are people who lobby for education and lobby for health care. You can lobby for all kinds of things,

and so lobbyists are not bad people. What is potentially bad is this system that we've created in which it does create an imbalance and power when it's when organizations with a lot of money can afford to have people full time staying engaged with your elected officials when you don't have time to talk to them at all. So what happens is your elected official hasn't heard from you since the last time you voted, and they hear from lobbyists every single day. So that's just who has their attention.

So that is that's what lobbying is. That's our relationship to lobbing as people. I created an app that completely dismantles that. So with one thousand more, you see every bill coming up for a vote, So actually coming up for a vote. There's a lot of bills that get caught up in in committee and those are honestly kind of a waste of our time because they're never going to get an actual vote. I put in every bill

that's coming up for a vote. I write everything at a third grade level, because fifty four percent of Americans read below a sixth grade level. And also it shouldn't take you an hour to digest what a bill is. I spend an hour figuring out what the bill is. I write the summary at a third grade level, so you can spend a couple of minutes know what the bill is. You can see the arguments for and against. We're nonpartisan, and then you can take action on it,

including calling, email and tweeting. There's a little scripts in case you're nervous about what to say, so the script is different if you're for or against. And then you also can donate to an organization that's advocating for the bill. Because when we crowdfund our dollars, we actually outspend the lobby here in America. So the lobby spends about three point five billion dollars a year. Americans spend five billion

dollars a year crowdfunding philanthropy. So we're talking about things like GoFundMe, So we quite literally are bigger than the big lobby with our voices and with our dollars. But before one thousand more, there was no mechanism for us to crowdfund our dollars on policy, on every single piece of legislation. So people have already figured out that small dollar donations make a huge difference in politics. You know, when I talk about small dollar donations, we're talking about

donations that are two hundred dollars or less. Those sorts of donations power campaigns. Campaigns can't win without millions in small dollar donations. We already know that. But before one thousand more, there was no mechanism to make a small dollar donation between election seasons. So you shouldn't only be participating during an election cycle. You should be anticipating between election cycles. Because that's how we hold our elected officials accountable.

That's how we stay informed, so that number one, we can tell them what we want them to do, and number two, when they don't do it, we can hold them accountable when it's time to vote for them again.

it's intentional. I think we have an education system in this country that rewards people that have money and punishes people who don't. So you are assigned a public school based on your zip code, and your zip code is assigned a tax bracket based on the cost of housing in that zip code, and based on that tax bracket, your school is allocated resources. So schools in the neighborhoods that have expensive houses get more resources than schools that

have inexpensive housing. And so, you know, if we have an entire part of our society who's already not getting the funding that they need, maybe in their personal lives, so you know, their parents don't make a lot of money, people don't make a lot of money. Then in school, they're not getting the kind of education that would help them move in status at all. Help them help themselves, if you will, And then the people who are already

in power get to stay in power. So the people who have money, they get a good education, they learn how to make more money, and those people tend to be people who have more access to politics. Even you know, when I was out on the campaign trail, and so my family's from Streetport, Louisiana. I was raised in Fort Worth, Texas, and people would tell me all the time, like, you know, it doesn't matter what I say, It doesn't matter what

I'm thinking. You think rich people think that rich people don't think that they know it matters what they say and what they think. Part of this is a mindset too, So yes, I think the way our education system is set up is the foundation for disenfranchisement. I think it is directly tied to civic engagement. And I think that the entire system was built in a way that protected the interests of at the time slave owners. That was that's when our country was founded, and it was founded

with those ideals. It the way that laws were structured protected the people who already had power because the people in power were making the laws. And of course, over time, thank god, there have been revolutions and movements, but at its core, the way the system works still does reward people who already have money, who already have power, and it takes disruptive It takes disruptive movements or tools, in this case with one thousand more technologies to really flip

things on its head. So, you know, I hear people all the time say, you know, we can't keep working within the same systems. Okay, fine, here's the deal. We're not going to see the lobby going anywhere in our lifetime, you know. And I say all the time, if I could go back in time and talk to the Native Americans, what I have been like, you should really start a yoga practice because there's some serious about.

the I think they say we're post COVID. I mean we are post COVID, but we're out of the pandemic era. Do people still feel that level of engagement as we felt after George Floyd? Immediately after George Floyd in the pandemic?

know what that means. If you think politics doesn't affect you, you might be very rich, or you might be willfully ignorant. You want to believe it doesn't affect you because it is so psychologically difficult for you to confront that there are people that have a lot of power over your life. And that is really scary, and I know it's hard. I think a lot about civic engagement is tied to our willingness to confront some very difficult things about the way the world works that we live in. But no,

I think I agree. I have not seen the stat that you're talking about. I agree that when people are personally impacted by a policy, there is outrage, and it tends to happen in communities. And what's important is, you know, as people try to build coalitions, they try to build coalitions across communities because we're bigger together. But also what I want to talk about is how even when we

think we're seeing civic engagement, Like, what is civic engagement? Yeah, if you post something on Twitter, sure it's civic engagement. Even if you just watch the news, that is in theory civic engagement because you're engaging with what's going on. You're engaging with the news in your own home. But when we talk about civic engagement, that translates into action, and specifically legislative action. What sorts of things move the needle on that, and it's not talking on social media.

I built this so that it integrates into social media. We built a web app and not a mobile app because I didn't think people would want to download a new app. I was trying to create something that could integrate into Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, So wherever people were, we met them where they were. And you don't even have to leave the social media platform you're on. You and your friends are talking about a bill. You drop a link to one thousand more to the bill in

one thousand more. They click, They read a little a bit about it, they read the arguments for and against. They choose, if therefore against, they can call, email, tweet, or donate, go right back to scrolling very quick so that translates into actually letting your elected official know and believe it or not that matters. People think that it doesn't matter if you call your elect official, and it absolutely matters. These people want to be re elected and

they know that it's only your votes that can do that. Now, the money that they get from some of these big donors, they will use it in like TV ads or digital ads on social media when your vote. But if you are already knowledgeable about their track record, if you've already been paying attention, it's going to be very difficult to get your vote. And they know that. So when you're

talking online, they do see that. When you're calling their office, they see that it doesn't take long and they're just telling, you know, how many calls did we get today about that infrastructure bill or about that education bill, about that healthcare bill? How many calls did we get today? And then they're like, Okay, people really care about this. It moves to the top of the agenda because when you're not saying anything, then they don't even know how much

the people in their district care about this. And again, those lobbyists are talking to them every day.

speak to that. And then on top of that is i've heard this phrase of all politics is local, and so if the important things that actually may make a bigger difference to me are my local elections versus the federal ones, even though the federal ones do have impact, but the ones to your point, you know, is your street, are the potholes you know covered up? You know, are the women in my life able to go get healthcare, etc?

Can you talk about how it's important, how that one vote does make a difference, and the other things you should do beyond just that one vote, and how local politics matters to your everyday life.

have been elections that were decided on one vote. There was one in Louisiana recently. So this stuff is real. Like that person who thought my vote doesn't matter, that would have tied it, and if they had brought their friend, it would have been two votes, and then maybe the other person would have won. This stuff is consequential. Also, you're not wrong bring more than one person. That's why

people are out here building coalitions. So I think that the intuition there is right in that you want to try to advocate for your position so that you have more people on your side. And honestly, most of us are hanging out with people and spending time with people who agree with us anyway, and so you just need to get them to the poll or to the phone or whatever it is. So there's that.

because they need to know that you matter. They need to know that you're paying attention because then next time they will be actually vying for your vote. If you just don't show up at all, they think that person's not even going to get off the couch. I don't have to listen to them at all. And you can see it is public record who is a voter. It doesn't tell you who they voted for, but you can

see every time a person has voted. So if you're if you are calling your elected officials office, you are in theory, more likely to be listened to if they know you're a voter, if they know that you vote every single time, So go out and vote for somebody, vote for something, because it really just signals to them that you have some kind of value in what they want, which is to get re elected. And also, by the way, that's not the only thing. There's all types of civic engagement,

you know I mentioned earlier. So also not publicly shaming them on social media. That's a way to get their attention. All like any kind of civil disobedience. There's a reason why people shut down interstates because money moves on interstates. If people can't get to work, if shipments can't get where they're trying to go, that disrupts the economy. There's power in that too. So there's all sorts of power in civic engagement. And you know, we can signal to

elected officials in all kinds of ways. Voting is one of them, calling is one, emailing, social media stuff like that, and then your other question.

more of course wants to do local politics eventually. Right now we only do federal We've only been doing this for a short amount of time. But you know, I would say that these things all work together. So America has a very decentralized democracy, which means that it's not one central government that makes all the decisions. It's decentralized. We have the federal government, then we have our state governments, then we have our local governments, and they all work

together in different ways. So if y'all will remember like when California made marijuana ly, but then the federal governments that marijuana was not legal. Remember that, and that caused a lot of confusion and they were like, well, you could still be arrested if you're driving with it whatever. You know, it like depended on the circumstances of an arrest. Well, that's that's sort of how our government works together. The government also, the federal government can protect you from in

just laws locally. So a historical example of this is, you know, the federal government. Oh, the Supreme Court ruled that schools had to be integrated, and states still didn't do it. You know, again, my family's from Louisiana. My dad was in the first integrated class of his high school. My dad's not that old, he's like fifty something. So the federal government had to step in because state governments

were violating people's rights. And we see sort of the same thing, the same concept when we talk about like access to abortion. You know, when that thing happened in Alabama where the court there ruled against the IVF clinic and everyone with this was just a few weeks ago, and everyone was like, IVF is going to be legal. The federal government tried to put in place protections for IVF so that it would then say that your local

government could not take that right from you. So they all work together because there are going to be times that you agree more with your local government. There are going to be times when you agree with more with your federal government. And you know, people talk about states rights versus federal rights. There's a lot of Southern states that are like, we want the federal government to stay

out of it. You know, we want states to be able to make these decisions, and the decisions tend to be decisions that are infringing on other on individual rights. So yes, politics is local. The more local some thing is. I By the way, I love working in municipal government. It's my favorite place to work because you can move, you can change something so quickly, you can get that whole filled. You can you know, if there's a water issue,

you know what happened in Flint, for example. You can very quickly put policies in place to protect people if you're working in an efficient municipal government. So I love municipal government. It's just I want people to understand how all these things work together. It's important to vote on every level totally.

well while doing well? So can you speak to how you find find wealth you know, unicorn opportunity with your one thousand more company working in community, I want you to speak to that the motivations here well.

Like I So, I never considered myself tech savvy at all. What happened was I was working in politics. What I always did want to do with civic engagement. What I really wanted to do was have a political talk show that was funny and entertaining for black people. I wanted it to come on right after one o six in Park because I knew no one was going to tune

into my show on purpose. I thought maybe they would, you know, still be finishing their snack as one of the park was ending, and maybe they would just hang around. Maybe I would be funny enough that maybe people would stick around and get the news of the day. That's what I wanted to do. So I got a degree in political communications from LSU, which was the journalism school. I produced the first public affairs show on Tiger TV, and then I ended up needing a job. In my

life took a different direction. I you know, I graduated, I got a job offer, I took it. I was working in politics, and I was very obsessed about how do we get people to pay attention, how do we get people to absorb information, how do we get people to take action, and especially people like the people where I'm from. So I knew that that had something to

do with like the intersection of pop culture. You know, like if some celebrity was talking about a thousand more, I would have a lot more weight than me talking about one thousand more, a girl who just spent a lot of time working in politics. And that's what I was doing. I was working in politics all over the country. I worked on Kamala Harris's usn and campaign in California. I was on Jason Candor's usn A campaign in Missouri,

mary landrews USNA campaign in Louisiana. All over the country working in politics, I end up and down the ballot as well. There were lots of other races. But I would always hear people say, why do we only hear from these people when it's time to vote, And I'd be like, no, you don't have to. And I would say, like, just call me, just text me. And I just was very obsessed about this. And one night, I and this was at a time in my life when I was

just feeling very hopeless about the state of politics. I was like, I've dedicated my whole life to this. I don't think I'm making any difference. I'm not even doing the job I originally wanted to do. I don't know that I'm helping people. I don't even know that these people that I've worked for are really upholding the values that I wanted them to or hope that they would. And I was just I was, you know, I was feeling very frush and very hopeless about what I was doing.

And one night I had a dream and I saw one thousand more in the dream. So in the dream, there I was taking a nap. There was like a ruckus outside. I walked outside and was like, why are y'all being so loud? I'm trying to take a nap. And this man was like, we're about to stop this bill. And I was like, yeah, right, how are you going to do that? Because I'm thinking I dedicated my whole career to this and I don't even know how to tell you to do that, So how you think you're

going to do it? And he was like, we use this app? And I was like, what app? Show me? And he showed me the whole thing. And I woke up in the middle of the night and promised God I would build it. And I've been building it ever since. So it wasn't even about it wasn't about money. But that said, this is a billion dollar idea, right, This is the GoFundMe of politics. What the Robin Hood app did to Wall Street is what we're doing in politics. This is absolutely a billion dollar business. And I am

so grateful and can't wait for that moment. But yeah, I think you can do good while doing good, and I think, really my only advice about that is I think there was so long that I was like, why am I doing this? Like why am I out on the campaign trail this, I'm not on TV, I'm not doing what I want to do at all. I didn't know why I was doing what I was doing, and

it made me really sad. And then I think one day God just showed me a very clearer vision of what I would be doing, and stuff started making sense, Like A thousand more would not be what it is if I hadn't spent all that time on the campaign trail talking to tens of thousands of voters, hundreds of donors, you know, thousands of politicians and community leaders and things like that. It took all those perspectives and it took all of that experience for me to build what I did.

have education about. And I wonder what your thoughts are on are we doing that same thing for the things that we vote for.

education is the foundation of it. Journalism is the foundation of it. Again, my degree is in journalism, so I built it so that it's all these summaries, all these bill summaries are read by me. I make sure that I have a team of people, of course, but I make sure that they are a fair representation of what's in the bill. I make sure that they're written in a way that does not require a law degree to understand.

And I made sure that it was easily shareable because I did want this to first and foremost be a source of information that in itself breaks barriers. It gives people a trusted source of information so that they can even just verify what they're saying on social media. If you hear it first from a friend, that's fine, but you need a place to verify the information. And I yeah, I think people get a lot of their news from

social media. I don't think it's always a bad thing, but I think that there needs to be a real education on media literacy. You know, how do you know if something is factual? You should If you hear from a friend, that's fine, but you should check it. You should check the source. A lot of times people don't even ask the source. I always will say where did you get information from?

was like, I think it's brilliant. And the advice that she gave me is tell anyone who will listen. Most people want to hold their ideas close to the vest because they think that someone's going to steal their idea. She was like, most people can't even execute their own visions, much less yours, So tell anyone who listened. I had already been accepted to Harvard at the time, so I started my master's in public policy at Harvard, and I was just telling anyone who listen. Now again, I know

that's a huge opportunity that most people don't have. Was Harvard is just throwing money. If you get into Harvard, they're throwing money everywhere. So yeah, there was like, you know, a couple thousand dollars here and they're a pitch competition. There was a class I took at the Business School at HBS where they give you two thousand dollars to execute a business plan. And I took the class twice,

like you know, and I ended up meeting. So the first step was I ended up meeting a dude in my class who he was a lot of people are in transition at Harvard, going from one career to another. His first career had been in projects like product management, product tech, products management. So he was like, do you have a product roadmap? I was like, I don't even know what that is. And he was like, look, you

should make a prototype. I'm like, what's a prototype? He's like, hire a graphic designer to draw a picture of what's in your head. Wow, that makes so much sense. I literally asked my girls back in Louisiana do we know any graphic designers? Hired Morgan Hilliard, who is a black woman graphic designer who happened to I didn't even know. I hired her because I thought she was a good graphic designer. Her husband owned a tech startup. Wow, so she was like, I know how to make a clickable prototype.

I said, oh, we next level with it. I gave her the money Harvard had given me, because at the time I think I'd gotten like maybe twelve hundred dollars or something. So she made a clickable prototype for me, and then I gave that to a software developer. The software developer built it. I mean we built it together. Obviously. We even had to create our own language because I didn't speak any of his coding language. He didn't know anything about politics. So we started talking about it like

we were building a house. Like we'd be like, Okay, we're in the living room. There's three different doors. This is like the user experience, and yeah, we just truly I think just being solutions oriented got me through this. There was I knew there was always an answer, so I just would talk to anyone who listen. I asked a lot of questions, and I did what people told me to do, and I, you know, got some of

the money. I went for the money and was able to pay people who could help me build this thing.

And you know, there's a there's a lot of people like him, a million people like him, And when those people come together and make it clear that this is a priority for the community that these elected officials represent, then things get done. And in so many ways, right like the war on drugs, people being imprisoned wrongly, these are these are people's lives, uh, And some people are

impacted more than others. But I'm sure you can, when you really think about it, think of a way that politics or policy has impacted you, or your family, or your community. So what I would say is, don't be afraid of that. Don't run from that confront why it's scary, and know that there are people who you can trust, and that I've created a way for you to engage from the comfort of your own home, so you can in a very safe environment. Just start tinkering with this,

Start reading about you know, a couple of bills. Try to call. You're alone in your home. If you call and hang up one time, no one's gonna know, you know, Just call again. Read the script verbatim. If they ask a follow up question, I don't have anything to say. Just try. Just try. And the first time you do it, it's going to be scaring. The tenth time you do it,

it's not. And that's like anything in life. You are a person who matters in this democracy, even if, by the way, even if you're not a citizen, if you live in this community, if you live in this country, you are important to this democracy. And you just need to believe that. The thing is is I know it, Your elected officials know it. The media knows that everyone knows it, and they are banking on you to believe.

People who are currently in power are banking on you believing that you have no power that's the easiest way for them to take your power is to convince you that you have no power. So if you think you have no power, ask yourself who told you that, why do you think that? And then know that it's not true and take your power back. Get on one thousand more.

to somebody go get your money, peace and love. Check me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast Festival, happening Saturday, April twenty seventh in Atlanta. Live podcasts are on deck from some of your favorite shows, including this one, Black Tech, Green Money, and also some of the best podcasts in the game, like Deeply Well with Debbie Brown and Carefully Reckless. Atlanta is one of my favorite cities in the world.

I lived there for two years. Actually, in my worldview, seeing us successful in every industry and not having any limits on our potential largely was shaved by Atlanta. So to be there with you doing this podcast talking about how we build or leverage technology to build wealth. Come on, man, doesn't get better. I want to see you there. Get your tickets today at black effect dot comback Slash Podcast Festival