Organizing Playbook Pt.1 | Andrew Gillum SoloPod

welcome and also thank you for tuning in. I just want to quickly outline that these are really going to be very brief, if you will, by comparison to the show, maybe twenty minute long opportunities where you get to come in and hear from the various hosts about issues that we might consider to be important. And for me, I really wanted to kick these off with a little bit of a reminder and maybe some training support on what it means to get back to the basis of organizing y'all.

The moment that we find ourselves in right now, I think is requiring us to really, really really get serious about what it means to see our neighbors, hear our neighbors, protect our clan, our family, the people who we love and support, make sure they remain harmless through this very, very difficult and trying time. And some of that is going to require that we get back in touch with foundational organizing principles that have carried our community from back

there to where we are right now. And I know right now the challenges feel like one. They feel humongous, they feel exhausting, they feel tiring. I would even add to that heartbreaking, and I add heartbreaking because while I wanted to spend most of my time in these first twenty or so minutes with y'all talking about organizing and the organizing series that I'd like to I'd like to engage you all in Yesterday we learned about the cancelation of our dear Sister Joy and Reads show the Readout

on MSNBC. Now, some of us may have quit MSNBC back when they tried the same thing with Tiffany Cross, my dear colleague and fellow co host on Native Lampod and many of us even if we made the decision to step away from the network at that time because of the treatment that she received. A lot of us stayed around and said, hey, look that's where Joy is, and Joy is from my standpoint, she's not just a newswoman, She's not just an anchor. She's not there doing this

for anybody the entertainment value or for sport. Joy read the Joy read that I know, and the Joy read that we have all come to know and love over the years on the various platforms that she's been Joy quite simply is the bringer of truth and it doesn't matter how inconvenient that truth may be. She's going to

bring it to you anyway. And today's day and age, where you have a very thin skinned political leadership apparatus, and I would even argue maybe a thinner or equally as thin skin in the corporate media, who are prepared to wilter and bend to the will of the White House, in the party that's in control right now, it's going to cost us something, and in this case, it's costing us one of the best truth tellers that we have out there. Joy represents, and my opinion, the best of

who we are. She is fact based, her opinion is always supported by laundry lists of receipts. She is someone who, regardless of what the popular wins may be, has always deepened into what our true lived experiences are and we're in our community, and she broadcast broadcasts those experiences to the world. Y'all. She is going to be deeply, deeply, deeply missed by her viewers on MSNBC. But I got to tell you, you know, joy from from from my lips

to your ears. I hope. Uh, this is a setup for really God calling you into greater service, to higher purpose. While you have served an incredible purpose up to this point, you're being called into higher service. And sometimes in the process of moving into higher service, you have to be sifted. Remember those that old equipment that our grandparents, my grandmama used to use when she was doing her pancakes, a corn bread and the flour would go into the sifter

and it would sift all the way through. But what would come out as a finer grain of things and it made everything taste just that much better. Well, there is a finer grain of you that is through this process and on the other side, and so many of us just can't wait to see whether that takes you,

and more importantly, where it takes us collectively. But before we get to what Joy Read's next steps are, I think we have to send a very very important signal to the corporate folks who are making these decisions, are silencing our voices, are supplanting our voices with you know, minstrel shows and dictates of how they think we are supposed to show up on their platforms. We need to send them a signal that this is not a game, This is not a toy, This is not a transaction

that you trade in and trade out. This is our lives and we deserve and need voices who are going to speak truth and power to the powerful about what we're, what our lived experiences are, and what we need and what we demand of the system. And Joy has unapologetically done that on behalf of all of us standing in

the gap. We've got to send a signal, And so I want to join the bandwagon of folks who today are encouraging folks to watch Joy's last sign off show tonight on MSNBC during her normal regular seven pm Eastern Standard time, and wherever you live you can you can you can obviously look up the show times, but be with her, stand with her, hold her spiritually during this time where she has to make it through this show on the network that summarily decided that her voice was

no longer a value to them. At this moment, we want to say that her voice is valuable to us, that it means something to us, that we are powering her forward. Even if they can't see it, we're gonna help to make sure that they feel it. So at the end of the conclusion of her show tonight and Joy will sign off by telling her telling the rest of us where it is that we can go and find her voice beyond this current platform. And after that, y'all, we're gonna turn the TV off. We're gonna shut it down.

We're going to log off of whatever platforms in which you are watching or hearing MSNBC, and we're gonna send them a very important message that our voices matter. And guess what. My voice right now is being interrupted by my cell phones. And this has always been my theory about these lives. I'm telling you, y'all, I am technology of tooth and if it happens again, just charge it

to my head, not to my heart. I'm gonnaigure this out by the time we get into the next one, but we want to make sure that they hear and feel, more importantly, feel the effect of when we choose to take our time and attention, a very precious and non renewable resource, our time and attention, when we choose to

put that elsewhere. Joy, We're going to follow you wherever you go, and tonight we want to make a very very strong, important show of support that we're going to have your back because you have had our backs in our fronts and sides and other blind spots when we

didn't even know it. The last confession I'll make on this one with regard to Joy is that when I ran for governor of the state of Florida back in twenty eighteen, and it was looking like we might that we could potentially pull off a win in that race, I reached out to Joy and asked her if she could do her show live from Florida, and that I would grant her if I were to win that race.

The first interview after the race was concluded, possibly later that that election night or maybe the next morning, and Joy did what she had to do, and she showed up. I didn't get to see her that night. It was a it was of course, it worked out a different way, and it was a bit heartbreaking on one end, but she did what was necessary within whatever the corporate confines were, to try to bring to the American people the experience that we had here in Florida. And I'll never forget that.

And she's been her friend and the gap on so many, so many more occasions. Don't believe the hype that they're trying to sell us about unqualified, whatever stories they want to put out, ratings, all this craziness. You see the enemy tries to use. They do a little jiu jitsu. They take their weakest and most vulnerable place, and they then project that vulnerability onto other communities, other people, so

that they can then insulate themselves from attack. What am I talking about, Well, I'm talking very specifically about not just Joy's incidents, and which is an example of the corporate side, but this picture, it can be drawn a lot bigger. It's not just the corporate We want you to obviously watch her show this evening, throw our support behind her, but following that, we want to make sure that we follow Joy and read on every platform in

what she is listed. So if you in Snapchat, Instagram, blue Sky, whatever the platforms are that you get information and share information, please please please go ahead and put in the search engine right now Joy and read. If you don't already do it now follow her and then contact MSNBC. Let our voices be heard and let them know that we disagree with the step that they've taken and that they want our business. They best do better to bring us to voices who best represent our community.

All skin folk and kim folk and all folks who may reflect what we look like who are on television are not necessarily speaking our truth and telling our stories. The number at MSNBC, and we'll hopefully get this in show notes is two one two six six four four four four four. Let's light up that board and make sure that they know that we're watching. When prompted, press one,

then press two. Leave a message stating that you believe that their actions are unacceptable and that we need brave and honest journalists like Joy and Reid to come to us on their platforms as well. We want you to watch obviously tonight, but we want you to disconnect immediately following from the platform. That will bring us her show tonight MSNBC at seven pm Eastern Standard time, and look

for your local networks for your showtimes. And then, last, and certainly not at least, we want you to spread the word. If you post about watching the show tonight or anything related to it you're discussed around the decision, please use the hashtag. We need joy. We need joy in so many forms, joy in our spirit, but also joy the person. And we thank you for bringing us both of those joy. Thank you for your friendship. We will follow you wherever because you are a true and

an honest voice who has earned our trust. And know Johnny Come Lately or Surprise or pop up figure is going to have our trust. You have to earn it, you have to work for it. You put in the work, and that's why we want to put in some work for you. What I was getting to on second topic, just changing the page, and then finally I'll talk to you about what we hope to do with these on a regular basis when we come to you in these

solo pods. When I talked about the enemy weaponizing their weakness to insulate themselves from attack, I'm talking about this DEI stuff right which I have translated to the N word is how I experience it when they use it, it seems like the sessing out of us wherever they

can find it. Well, this weekend, something else happened in addition to the news and the corporate world regarding Joy Reid, the general who led the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is the which is the collection of all of the military chiefs and leaders across the various branches, including the National Guard. This is the group that assembles as advisory to the President of the United States, Defense Secretary of the United States, and the intelligent chiefs of our country.

They are the official advisory group Joint Chiefs that chairmen of the Joint Chiefs serves both and Democratic and Republican administrations. Why because their oath and their fealty is to the Constitution of the United States and to the people and the nation of the United States. Well, the current Joint the previous I guess I should say, before he was fired Chairman of the Joint chief of Staff was General C. Q. Brown, who spent forty years as a pilot in the Air Force,

met all of the criteria. There were no lessening of criteria, no quotas having to be met. It simply required that those making this decision looked across the entire board of qualified individuals underscore qualified, and choose from amongst them a person who would lead the Joint Chiefs. While President Trump

decided to dismiss CQ. Brown this weekend and removing him from his position in addition to a couple of other top brass within the United States Armed Services, and replaced him not with somebody equally qualified or really not with somebody who is just qualified for the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, which does require special experiences in

qualifications to be named. He decided to name a gentleman named Dan Caine, who I don't know personally, but yes, says served this country and we thank him for it. But in appointing mister Caine, the President actually had to waive the criteria necessary for him to have been automatically qualified for the President to make that appointment. The President has the ability to waive that criteria if he chooses,

if it is in the best interests of the nation. Well, he determined it was in the best interest of the name to appoint someone who was not qualified technically for the position, so he takes out a qualified individual who met all of the standards, no quotas simply qualified ready to serve, and replace them with someone who, while they have served this nation and we are grateful, was not qualified on paper to be named the Chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff. I think we would all agree that Secretary Hexseth, who is now the Secretary of Defense, who pales can't even be mentioned in the same sentence as his predecessor, quite frankly, but is unqualified for the position that he holds. And that, frankly is true across the board with almost all of Trump's appointments to the National Cabinet. So what do they do. They go on a rampage against Dei, which they say didn't earn it,

and truth all their folks didn't earn it. Yet they're in these positions, and they are placing men and women and folks of color and other marginalized people who fought to be just considered off their merit. They're being pushed out, while people with no merit at all are being pushed in.

I say this, y'all because I think we have to begin to forward our truthful narrative around this We shouldn't be pushed back on our back heel in this fight around DEI when it simply means take the qualified individual and guess what. Look beyond your circle of friends, Look to the people who are qualified but may not share your same lived experience, are committed to the constitution, but may not be loyal to you the individual, because their

oath is to the constitutional and to the country. We have no shame, we ought to have no shame around the term diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are not carry the load that they want to put on our backs of dishonesty. Like we didn't earn where we are. We earned it. We worked hard, in fact, in many cases, harder than most that surround us to get those positions. We're not going to tolerate that they want to apply that across the corporate sector and across now the public sector.

And it's simply a lot, and we have to reject it. Finally, y'all, I just want to say, when we come to you, at least when I'm doing many pots, I'm going to try my very very best to ensure that they're bringing information and education and hopefully that you'll leave our conversations having felt more informed and more equip than when you

joined us. And so in that spirit and in the spirit of where I sort of started describing these many pods to you, at least from my perspective, is that in the coming weeks, I'm going to take time, with the support and help of Lolo, one of our producers, who's going to pop in here in a moment to let me know if there are any questions, We're gonna walk our listening audience through some of the basics and

fundamentals around organizing. How do we get our communities ratcheted up, how do we move them not just through this moment, but to a place where I think as a community we begin to live our truest, fullest sells and have the policies and institutions that are around us being built to support that growth, that freedom, that independence, that ability to live truly free and unencumbered, in order to get closer to that beloved community that I think all of

us want and admire. It doesn't have to be a pipe dream, but it does require something of us and from us, and quite frankly, it's the same thing that democracy requires of us and from us, and that is that we be in the movement in action in whatever way that suits us and whatever way that deepens into our skill set. But you can't maintain societies that see us and respect us unless we're prepared to put in

the work. We shouldn't always have to, but given the challenges we face, the foes we face, our ancestors didn't let their knee break their necks, and we're not going to let it happen to us. But it is going

to require the work. So today, what we're going to make sure you have in the show notes as my time comes to an end, is a list of organizations and groups that you can research, determine whether or not they fit in your skill set and interest area, and then hopefully you make the move to deepen into how you can better support the work of those entities and organizations.

And in the coming weeks, we want to talk to you about how you then build that beloved community right where you are, either online or in person, hopefully a mix of both, but better equip each and every one of us with the knowledge, the skills, and the tools that are necessary to bend that arc more deeply, and more admittedly, and more permanently. In the direction of justice

for all of us. With that, I want to avite, Lolo, if there are any questions, I want our listeners to know, I'm not going to be just talking about organizing by what by virtual of what I read. I'm going to be talking about organizing from my own lived experience. For many years, was an organizer, mostly on college campuses and

then in greater community. And then my organizing work led to organizing elected officials who were our age and younger and diverse cohorts so that they can be more effective at bringing the benefits back to our community. And now we got to organize for all of us. And so I'm not going to be talking to you about what

I've read. I'm going to be talking with you and engaging and exchanging with you about what I know, and hopefully you'll bring some of your experience to the table and we'll just have a great exchange of how to do this and do it the best and most effective way. With that, Lolo, are there any questions, anything I missed, anything I need to reiterate, let me know.

corporate media quite frankly to do that for us. And so in my thought around how it is we get in front of just the reaction, just the response. And by the way, I don't take for granted that people are gonna automatically respond. I gotta be honest about that, lol. I don't know if you have thoughts on it, but I don't take for granted that people automatically have a knee jerk reaction that when someone does something that they

don't like, that they have a choice to make. They can continue to support the thing that is doing the thing that they don't like, or they can make another decision. It can't be well, that's the network I've always gone to. D there are other options, so we have a choice to make. I don't think any of us should take for granted that people are automatically going to do a thing and reaction to being offended or heard, or let

down or quite frankly, pushed to the side. The reason I mentioned this resource of other places that you can go is because we don't want to leave you empty. We want to make sure that our buying power can continues to show its strength except we get to show its strength and places that see us, know us, hear us,

respect us, and then respond lolo. I may have gotten off on the on the question, but I think I understood the question uh uh, and then reframed it to basically say, one, don't assume we know what to do when we're when we're pushed to the side. And then two, let's do the work of finding the platforms that are in service to us that we then support so that folks are then incentivized to do more of the things that are in service to us and not less.

were a grosser or retailer. It could be in the fact that you are including brands that are from communities or constituencies that are not your normal, normal vendors, that you're uplifting creative voices of black folks that have women and so on and so forth. It could be if you are in a workplace that there are deliberate steps that are taken to showcase the talents of all people and not just my homegirl or my homeboy who I

hang with. I know them. We share a lot in common, and that's why they're always the ones that are selected and tapped to give the presentation before the board or before they're coworkers, right, So it takes a number of forms. In my opinion, sometimes when we're climbing, we're bringing other people who may not look like us or share all of our identities along with us because they too have been marginalized. I'm never gonna make the fight between marginal

communities and other marginal communities. That isn't the fight that we want. That's the fight they want to give us. I don't have a beef with women, I don't have a beef with LGBTQ, I don't have a beef with black folks in general. I'm saying, if all of us are being oppressed, then we better figure out where we have common cause and start that process of rising. But they want us to gobble and fight between the folks

who they're marginalizing. They want us to fight about whether or not this minority group or this minority group is getting more time and attention and resource. And my suggestion is there's plenty enough to go around, plenty enough, and we're not gonna fight over the crumbs. We want to be at the table and we're gonna fight over the meal, period.

access resource. And what that means is you don't negotiate against yourself before you get to the negotiating table. You bring all of yourself to that table, and you negotiate over the entire pie, not the crumbs.

So if we're expecting the system to see us and to give to us because we're there, not going to happen.

We have to state our demands. I remember going in and trying to negotiate from my first salary increase, and I think I started by saying, you know, I hadn't gotten an increase in three years, and my boss responded, well, you hadn't asked in the past three years, And I'm like, you see my work, you know my effort, you know what we're doing all that to say, y'all, yeah, people can see that and they'll take it for what is worth, but it does not automatically trigger for them that they

ought to be paying for the services that were rendering. And so we've got to get back to the basics of organizing, how to do it, What do we start, what does the middle of that look like? And then

what is the north star that we're aiming toward. And I want to bring in some voices organizational leaders, people who have had the experience of doing this, not just in a professional capacity, but just as individuals in their communities and their neighborhoods on their block, organizing to move us towards the more beloved community economically, politically, socially and otherwise. I think we've forgotten a lot about that in the privilege that a lot of us have now come up in.

And while it ain't everybody, it doesn't reflect everybody's privilege. Right there folks who are much more privileged than we are.

But we've also ascended to some levels of privilege. And then so doing have I think forgotten some of the fundamentals, and we need to deepen back into those fundamentals, get back into those basics, understanding civics, understanding the pressure points, recognizing that the federal government is one thing, but guess what, we're a federation of fifty states, in a number of territories and what pressure points can we impact and input at our level to get the kind of outcomes that

we want. We know that pressure breaks pipes. We saw it just this past week with members of the Republican Party who host the town hall meetings that were explosive. The people showed up and they're let their voices be heard and by so doing, they're going to moderate the actions of those elected representatives. I'm willing to bet on it, but that's just one example. I think we can see greater examples and greater successes when we organize. We know

that they're coming for us. They've already started. They're not going to stop now. What we got to do is get shake off the shock and get information with the knowledge, skills and the tools that we need to fight back, but not fight back for fighting sake, but to win. That's what I'm committed to do, seeing us win, regardless of what party is in power. We ought to be winning at the end of the day, y'all, I appreciate you taking time, Lolo, thank you for the help on that.

We'll see you when we see you, and when we do, we're coming with our first deep training twenty minutes giving you some skills that I think are going to help transform our communities and our country as a result of Thank You Everybody by Native Land. Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Resent Choice Media. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.