Running for Housing (Because Someone Has To)

[upbeat music] It's Quinn. Maybe you're like me, and sometimes you just spiral out, not just because everything is a lot all of the time, but because some part of you actually wants to do something about it. But, I mean, holy shit, where to start, right? Great news. We built an app for that. It's called What Can I Do? Even better news, it's free and it's fast. It takes just three clicks to start unfucking the world. Visit whatcanido.earth to get started for free.

[upbeat music] Friends, we've been listening, and we've got something new for you today. In a moment when the news out of Washington can seem untenably rough, when the gerontocracy that got us here won't give up their hold on power, when billionaires own every single media channel, when everything from housing to childcare, elderly care, and healthcare, and even water have been made unaffordable, if accessible at all, and the question, what can I do, can feel more fruitless than ever,

I come bearing good news. Look to the young people. Look to our school boards, our cities, and in many cases, to our states. Our country remains a promise unfulfilled on purpose, our system imperfectly designed by imperfect men to leave a lot of people out. But there is hope. You, our listeners and readers and viewers across the country and across the world, want, no need, more examples of fight and progress you can actually see and touch and feel.

And beginning today, in partnership with our best friends at Run for Something, we are doing just that. Each episode of this new series, edited and produced, as always, by the infamous Willow Beck, will feature two guests, both sourced from the Run for Something pipeline and graduating classes, the next generation of American leaders.

First, I'll introduce one young elected official at the state or local level who's made real, measurable progress on an issue facing more Americans than ever before. And then in the same conversation, I'll introduce a bright-eyed candidate currently running for something like a state legislature, mayor, city council, or school board who's similarly hell-bent on attacking the same issue in their hometown or state.

For all you know, it could be one of yours. We'll find out together what they're working on and why, where they've made progress and where they've struggled, and how their exact tactics and strategies can be transferred to other schools, towns, cities, and states around the country.

Now, look, if these new conversations inspire you, you can do two things today. Because to be clear, it's not the young people's job to save us. We're not down with that shit. After you listen to these, it's your turn. Number one, find out what office you or some young person you love can run for at runforsomething.net. Two, find and support all of the current Run for Something endorsed candidates at our site, whatcanido.earth.

And three, yeah, there's a third one, share these conversations. If you need this, and I need this, many, many more people need this. So first up, today, our topic, more and more affordable homes for more of our neighbors. It's a big one. It's a complicated one. There are a million ways for us to chip away at being short four million affordable homes.

And good news, again, even if it doesn't seem that way, there are a million incredible humans already doing the work in towns and states across the country, and I'm gonna introduce you to two of them today. The first is our incumbent. Willie Burnley Jr. is a Run for Something alum who currently sits on the Somerville, Massachusetts City Council. And because he is an overachiever, he is actually also running for the mayor of Somerville.

Willie has firsthand experience with displacement, and he's a fierce advocate for tenant rights and affordable housing initiatives, and he has made some real progress in Somerville. Next, I'll talk to our candidate. Kelsey Bond is a renter, community organizer, and union member running for Atlanta City Council.

They've organized for everyone from Nabisco workers to Delta ramp workers, and they're running on a platform to expand inclusionary zoning, abolish parking minimums, and among other stuff, to create an office of the tenant advocate. So that's what I've got for you today. Two amazing humans fighting for more and more affordable homes for more of their neighbors, for our neighbors. Let's find out what it means for their hometowns and for yours.

[upbeat music] Our first guest for this fun new segment with our friends at Run for Something is a candidate for Somerville mayor, Willie Burnley Jr. Willie, there's no chance you're named after Willie Mays, is it, by any chance? No, I'm named after my father, Willie Burnley. Okay, perfect. Well, close enough. Bet your dad's pretty awesome.

I have a framed picture of Willie Mays making the catch for the Giants in my living room. He's the best. He's the best. Anyways, great. We're already off track. Willie, you are currently on the city council, is that right, in Somerville? Yes. I'm an at-large city councilor, meaning I represent the entire city. Ah, very important. Okay. And your focus is on creating a more inclusive and accessible city, a better place for all residents.

And in your bio, it talks about how you have faced yourself the challenges of displacement due to rising rent costs, which I think everyone listening will understand. And so you're a fierce advocate for tenant rights and affordable housing initiatives. Am I getting that right?That's absolutely right. Okay. Awesome. Willie, why did you run for Somerville City Council?

A few years before I ran for city council, I moved to Somerville. Right out of college, I went to Emerson College in downtown Boston, studied writing, literature, and publishing, wanted to be an author, got into journalism, moved to Somerville because the rent was cheap at the time. And like a lot of places, as development came in and as it became more desirable, rents started to skyrocket, and it happened very quickly. Mm-hmm.

So within living here for a year, my landlord came to my door one day and said, "Hey, your rent's going up at least $400 next month." I didn't have an extra $400 a month because unless I have a rich uncle somewhere who I don't know about, you know, I come from a working class background. I was just scraping by. And I was ultimately forced to leave Somerville and the state of Massachusetts, going back home to, uh, Southern California where I'm from.

And I made a promise to myself when I went back there and slept on my mom's floor for a few months while I got a job and got back on my feet, that I was gonna come back to this community and try to fight so that the kind of terror and anxiety that I experienced wasn't experienced by anybody else. And so that's what I've... I tried to do, and I was pretty successful at it.

And a lot of local advocates and community leaders said, "If you wanna fight for these things, if you wanna ha- make moral budgets with the city's authority, you should run for city council." And luckily, I had some experience on campaigns, so I thought, "Yeah, why not? Let's try it. Let's try to make a place where everybody can live regardless of their economic background." I love that. And I mean, you went back, I don't know where in Southern California you went back to.

I was in LA for 15 years, also one of the most unaffordable places on planet Earth, you know, so it's not like you went back to a utopia of that sort of thing. You know, we're all sitting around waiting for Governor Newsom to sign SB 79 this week, which- Ooh... just, you know, taking up space on his desk at this point.

So you worked on the re-election campaigns of Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, obviously two folks who really fight for the people and have shown a lot of measurable progress on that stuff, even if it's kind of all a threat right now. Right. Different conversation. So I guess we don't really have to get into, like, why this issue for you, obviously. Like you said, this was really your, like, origin story, and you came back and someone said you should run for city council.

And probably unlike most folks, that didn't immediately terrify you because, like you said, you had some political experience. You'd saw how the sausage is made, not made, poorly made, all those different things. Talk to me about how you started to approach this. So your experience was, "I do not have an extra $400 a month. I've only been here a year, and I'm already priced out."

How do you start to approach this since you came back and really kinda knew the ins and outs of Somerville a little bit? You're not a lifelong person there, but there are so many different ways we have to come at housing. It really requires the kitchen sink approach. Where did you start and why? Yeah. So my background really is in community organizing and activism.

That's how I got my entryway into politics before I started, uh, working for Massachusetts two senators and their elections, more in the streets, more on the side of yelling at politicians and institutions to do what the people demand. And so when I came back, the first place I started was looking at the landscape and saying, "Who is doing this work already?" Mm-hmm.

"Who is fighting for tenant rights and making sure that people can stay in their homes?" And we have a local organization in Somerville called CAAS, that's Community Action Agency of Somerville. They're our official anti-poverty organization. And at the time, especially as COVID hit, there was a lot of pressure for people to be able to stay in their homes.

Massachusetts had an eviction moratorium because at the time, people were losing their jobs, people were- Yeah... losing their healthcare. Mm-hmm. People were losing their housing as a result. And everyone knew that if we just throw a bunch of people onto the streets and our economy collapses, that's also gonna be bad for our public health. Mm-hmm.

And so I started organizing with CAAS and pushing to extend the eviction moratorium, pushing for state level protections like COPA, the opportunity to purchase, so that when landlord said, "You know what? I'm done with this place. I wanna sell," maybe the people who actually live there can be first in line to purchase the home that they're already living in.

I'm also a fan of the second right to purchase, which in my mind would be the city- Mm... actually being able to follow up through, too, because everyone knows one or two people in this economy, especially in a place like Somerville, have a very difficult time buying housing. Even four people can have a very difficult time buying housing in our area where the average place goes for about a million dollars.

So the city, with the resources we have, with the financial authorities that we have to borrow and bond out, it would be in a much stronger position to, uh, act as an anti-displacement agent, and also a means by which we can e- escalate and up-zone housing so that people can stay in the community that they love.

Sure. And that's a big key too, especially as we start to look at, you know, these various effects of climate change and things like that. And, you know, we just hear folks say, "Well, why don't they leave?" It's like, well, this is home, and that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of folks. But, you know, when you look at the Gulf Coast, you look at all these different places that are flooding or, you know, the fires in Southern California.

You know, Altadena was one of the few relatively affordable Black- Wow... communities in Southern California, and it just burned down. And so we have to look at this and go, "Okay, but then how do we make them able to come back?" You know? So that's where that upzoning in place really does matter, and I was at YIMBYtown for a little bit, and there's a lot of talk about that.

We even had some international folks saying, like, some of these people have been here a long time, you know? And they're not trying to price folks out. They just... This is home, and we have to find a way toSupport that as much as you can while still building many more places, right?

And make it affordable for new folks 'cause as I'm sure you know, and I don't know what the numbers look like in Massachusetts, so many people are leaving these w- you know, what we call blue states, historically blue states, to go to places that have a lot less regulation where they've just been able to build, frankly.

And so we've gotta wrestle with that in a real way. No, absolutely. And we have had conversations about that, mainly at the state level, 'cause in Massachusetts at the local level, we can't impose new taxes. Like, there's a lot of regulatory limitations on city councilors and mayors even, frankly. But a few years ago, we did pass something called the Fair Share Amendment, which is essentially the millionaire's tax.

Slight raise for people who make over a million dollars for education and transportation primarily, and education, transportation, and housing. Mm-hmm. And there was some who said, "Oh, we're gonna lose all our wealthy folks. They're gonna leave because the taxes are going up." When the stats that did come out were, no, the people who are leaving are the people who can't afford to live here. Yeah.

And they're leaving because rent is going up, and when they wanna have families and grow out their community, there's no space. Yeah. There's no backyards. There's no place for their children to safely experience their childhoods. Mm-hmm. And so they move out to suburbs, or frankly, sometimes they move out to other states where it's more common to have, you know, a plot of land for the same price you would get relatively small, like single family or triple decker in s- uh, our community.

Yeah. Sure. And you know, there's pros and cons to everything, right? In every version. But again, in a world where we are facing such a full on manufactured, often purposefully manufactured crisis in things like childcare and home care and elderly care, s- the ability to stay and be, and just choose to be near family of any kind, wherever you fall in that sandwich, is just so important.

But if the price isn't there, there's not a lot you can do about it. It's wild. So Cass is already there, so you've already got these one allies. This is such a lesson to folks, and we always talk about it here, which is whether you are someone coming at this what can I do thing because you are personally affected or you wanna invest or donate or volunteer, there's almost always somebody who is already on the ground doing the work because they have to.

And- Mm-hmm... one of the best things you can do is support those folks. And sometimes that literally just means contributing money, especially if you're coming from the outside, or showing up with your body in some way. It does not usually mean starting an entirely new organization. But in your case, you said, "Okay,

maybe the city is in a place where it can," again, like you say, have the second right to purchase and its ability to bond things out. And you said, "Well then, I should probably try to be part of that." Tell me about what the rest of the council looked like so far in your time there. Were there allies there? Have you been pushing a rock up a hill? What are we looking at? I mean, a bit of both.

Certainly, when I was elected, I had the joy and honor of being endorsed by Run for Something. And, and just for context, when I first ran, I was 27. Got elected, and two weeks later I was 28, so that was nice. Wow. But, you know, as a result, I came in with a lot of energy and a lot of ideas, and I was like, "Let's get all of this stuff done." And, uh, certainly I think there was, at the time, maybe a little like, "Okay, come on.

There's a process to these things. Let's work it through." Sure. But I've been very lucky in that in Somerville, we are one of the most densely packed communities in the country. We used to be number one, but now we're around top 10. Everyone knows housing is our number one crisis. The affordability is our number one crisis.

And so the council is generally highly aligned when it comes to if there's money we can give to make sure that people are stabilized, if there's ways that we can be a part of making sure that more units come online, let's do that. So the first law I ever proposed was a Tenants Know Your Rights law- Okay... where we just said, "Hey."

We had a law, the Housing Stability Notification Act, that said if you're going through an eviction process, you have the right to be told about what your rights are- Mm-hmm... in that eviction process, and your landlord has to give you a document that the city created with those rights. And I said, "That's great, but people shouldn't just be learning what their rights are when they're in the worst position-" Yeah "... that they've probably ever been in their life." Ever been. Yep.

I mean, imagine being told by someone, "Hey, you might not have somewhere to live next week or next month once a court gets involved." I thought that was a great outcome but the wrong approach. So I said, "Hey, you should also be getting your tenants rights as you start your tenancy."

And so we passed a law that says within five business days, your landlord has to give you a document that the city created with your rights, rental resources, people you can reach out to if there's disputes, and it is available in all the major languages in Somerville as well so that everyone can potentially have that. Now, is it perfect? Does everyone always get everything that they're, you know, entitled to? No. There's still room to grow there.

But I think it's really important that people are equipped with the knowledge and the resources necessary when we're talking about what is one of the foundational needs for a human life, which is shelter. Mm-hmm. I really appreciate that.

I don't know if you're aware of, there's a really great environmental journalism publication called Grist, G-R-I-S-T, and they've done some really cool work in the past few years of creating pamphlets in different languages to give to heat workers in the southeast and other places so that they understand the heat protections that are allowed to them, if any, and things like that, and things that are on the ballot if they're able to vote and all this.

It really matters to hand things to people because- Yeah... I mean, how many things do you get inundated with that is like, "You gotta go to this website," and it's like, "Great. I'm not gonna go."Hey, I'm gonna give it to you straight. I got three kids. I have no time.

I barely get them their, like, their field trip forms on time, you know, or their lunch in the morning, much less remember to go to this thing that reminds me about this until, like you said, you're in one of the worst moments of your life, and suddenly wouldn't it been nice if you had known this all along, right? Maybe you could be in a better position 'cause you would've known there are resources of people who could help you. So- Mm... and the city created that document, is that right? Yes.

They-- And it's available on our website, and it's downloadable, and we ask that people get it either emailed, mailed through certified mail, or literally hand it to tenants. Okay. You know, we essentially. [upbeat music] Hey, I have three kids. They eat so much. We try to eat real food. We try to cook when we can.

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[upbeat music] Was there any pushback from landlords on that vote? I, I think there was some pushback. We have an organization called Massachusetts COA, the Small Property Owners Association, and they really... Well, they try to throw around their weight. For some reason, the city council is on their mailing list, so we see emails where they're like, "Hey, can we get someone to sue this city because they're trying to have tenants' rights or more supports for folks?"

But I thought this was worth doing. It's kind of on the edge of where we could play legally. And so I thought, you know, if we can make the strong argument to uphold this, we should be doing it because every single year I lose neighbors to being priced out or being displaced. And we can't have a community if the people who make up that community are always cyclically forced to leave.

Forced to leave working jobs that, again, obviously as we pointed the conversation, like, do not create enough income for them to sustain a life, much less to take time off to take care of either young people or elderly folks or themselves. Mm-hmm. And it's usually hourly, so they can't come to these meetings, right?

They can't show up to a lot of these meetings where, again, you're on an email server where someone's like, "Who wants to sue the city this week? Who's got time, you know, to do this shit?" It's like, yeah, that... In a world where, again, a lot of the point of this series is to not only identify folks that run for something, has worked with who won either once or more and have created these positive outcomes around something really specific, and then people who are running.

But also, what are the most transferable aspects from- Mm-hmm... cities and towns and school boards and state around the country because yes, there's a lot that makes places very different, whether you're exposed to flooding or water or heat, all these different things, but there's a lot that's the same.

And a lot of the same is these folks that are able to, through a multitude of resources, show up to these meetings, slow things down, fight them, and often they're the only voices, and that becomes a real problem, obviously. So you worked on parking minimums as well, is that right? Tell me about that work. So in the effort to try to make sure that building housing was as

straightforward and easy as possible within, you know, the realm of our own values, what we need out of larger developments, et cetera, we were looking at what are those barriers for particularly af-affordable housing nonprofits especially, which really operate at the slightest margins 'cause these are organizations that are not coming in with billions of dollars and deciding to just, like, rapidly transform communities but are saying, "Hey, we can actually build housing that is truly affordable, not just affordable in, in name only but- Sure...

that can actually keep people in communities." But the slightest deviation in the plan can cost thousands of dollars. Sure. And parking minimums was part of that. So the city had a requirement that, you know, if a project was certain square feet, then it had to have a certain amount of parking with it.

And we've even had homeowners who made changes to their homes and were like, "Wait, I'm required to add a parking spot? I don't need that. That's... What's the point of that?" And we found that, you know, each parking spot that is, is built as part of these larger developments can cost tens of thousands of dollars- Oh, yeah... to build and maintain over the years, and where does that cost go?

It goes to people's rents. It goes into construction costs. And by removing that minimum, which is in effect saying-We're not gonna mandate that you do this. You can still do it if it makes sense, but we're not gonna force you to. We bring down the construction costs, which hopefully helps bring down rents and all the subsequent fees that are associated with housing.

Again, a- as we talk about transferable things, parking minimums is something that not every city and town, but many are now fighting in a lot of ways because, again, it is one part of that kitchen sink approach. Is it gonna solve, like you said, affordable housing? No. But, you know, the lesson I always go back to is, you know, smoking, which is that effort to reduce smoking in America, which was to really reduce lung cancer, right?

Came from lawsuits, came from marketing, came from the packaging, came from, you know, not having it in movies and TVs as much. Like, all these different- Mm-hmm... places. Like, it requires chipping away and chipping away. Of course, it would be great to have one big win. We know that's not how the United States works, especially in, you know, a complicated federalist society. But there are transferable things that really do matter. And like you said, we're not saying no parking.

We're just saying you don't have to, which reduces space in a finite city or town, but also, like you said, just costs for, as they say in Yimby Town, it's houses for cars, not houses for people. Yes. And I think it's really important to emphasize that in a way, this is about freedom, and it's about cutting unnecessary mandates on these operators who,

for better or worse, currently we need in order to produce more housing. Sure. It calls up... It plays up against some people's worries about convenience. You know, no one wants to have to look for extra parking or circle the block or have to, you know, walk that extra 50 feet to get to their doorstep. Sure.

And when we have to balance that for people who are able to do that with the ability for our neighbors to stay in our community, you know, I always try to put people over pretty much anything else. Well, I appreciate your efforts to do that.

So tell me of those things, are there other cities or towns that you have been inspired by or gone, "Oh, that's interesting that that worked there, and now we can try that here," either in your time so far on the council or as mayor, like, that you've got in your pocket? Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I feel like a big conversation at, at this point is also social housing.

And one of the proposals I had as a mayoral candidate is to build an office of social housing where we could, as a city, start to take part in the market. Mm-hmm. 'Cause when people often talk about, "Well, we should build more housing. We should do this," as a member of the government, I can say there's a real division when we're talking about who the we is. Mm-hmm.

In most cases, uh, especially in a place like Massachusetts, the people who are building housing are developers or construction companies, or it's not the actual government for the most part. And what that means is we have in a state like Massachusetts where there's no rent control or ability to regulate rental costs, it means we have very little control of what the projects look like, how much they cost, even where they go to a certain degree.

But if the city was actually playing a more active role, we could take more of a frontward-facing way of either acquiring housing- Mm... as I was mentioning before, saying, "Oh, this housing's going on the market and people might be displaced." If the ci- city steps in, and we can think long term about what it means to get a profit on that- Mm-hmm...

and where that profit would go because we're not a profit making entity- Sure... would hopefully be into building more housing. And there's a lot of communities looking at it. Chicago, Maryland has looked into it a lot. Mm-hmm. This is something I think that we're gonna see more and more cities moving towards. Sure. I know there was talk of some sort of land trust, and I know a lot of places are working on that kind of idea.

Can you talk about that for just a moment? Yeah. Somerville has a community land trust, so the Somerville Community Land Trust. It's only been around for, you know, a handful of years, but they've actually made great strides in that amount of time. Uh, in 2021, I was also doing a little bit of volunteering with them, so to say, to see where they were at, get the lay of the land. And at the time, they had zero asset or parcels.

They were, you know, trying to build up a financial, one, expertise, but also relationships. And they thought, "You know, we probably won't have our first building for, you know, maybe five years." Mm-hmm.

In less than that time, they now have, I think, four plots- Wow... and, like, three buildings with one to be developed that w- it's coming online less than half a mile from where I live. That's gonna be maybe, like, a dozen units, highly subsidized at 30% AMI, 30 to 60%, which is very affordable housing compared to, like, most of what comes on- Sure... uh, in Somerville. And they're really the model in a lot of ways for what I think the city could be doing around social housing.

And the city does play a role with them in offering them some s- financial supports, helping connect them to banks or other financial partners to get their projects off the ground. Sure. And that would seem to be a real ally for you as at least on the council, if not as mayor. Could you just... Let's back up for one second. 30 seconds.

Tell the folks what a real community land trust is, sort of what that model is, just if they hear about it in their city, if they look up it, if it exists at all, or how do you start one, or what the benefits are. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll do a very abbreviated one because the history of community land trusts goes back quite a long time in- Sure... in this country. It starts in, I believe, Mississippi and as, uh,

both a, a racial and economic justice endeavor. Sure. But when we talk about housing and the value of housing, a lot of that value is actually in the land beneath the housing. And so the land trusts are really models of somewhat collective ownership, not in a far left sense necessarily. Mm-hmm. Like, as a nonprofit saying-But we're gonna have this land, and we're gonna buy it in order to either develop housing- Mm-hmm... or to acquire the housing that is there so that we can,

as a nonprofit, manage it, get people in there at incredibly reduced rates. Because again, these are not profit-seeking entities. Mm-hmm. They're trying to make sure that we can have permanently affordable housing. Uh, the New York Times has a great article about it, I think that's called literally We Could Build Permanently Affordable Housing [laughs] from- Great. We'll find it. We'll throw it in the show notes. Awesome.

Th- yeah, that kind of stuff is really interesting, and your point about the land is obviously compelling. And a- again, a thing I don't think a lot of folks who don't have to think about it for whatever reason haven't thought of, and that's why, again, there's a lot of focus and talk now on working on land value taxes, right? And this- Absolutely... this is really important land, and it needs to be developed.

And I think that the connection that people sometimes miss, but they understand intuitively, is a place like Somerville, for example, 20 years ago it had a very different reputation. People called it Somerville. You know, we had the Winter Hill Gang, which had Whitey Bulger. You know, it was a very different place. But as perception of it changed, as more people want to come and be a part of this community, we saw a corresponding rise in rents, rise in the cost of everything.

And I think people intuitively understand, like wait, when more people wanna move to a place, everything starts to become more expensive, and that is often a product of what people are assessing the value of the land to be based on the demand. Sure. Absolutely. Okay, two last questions and then I'm gonna get you out of here. Maybe a third one. Sorry. You are both an incumbent and a candidate, which is awesome.

What advice would you give a young Run for Something candidate running for city council anywhere in the United States? Yeah. I would say be relentless, be principled, and be friendly. So much of campaigns are about how you make another person feel when they meet you, whether they feel like you have a sense of competence, whether you're friendly, whether you have a heart that's in the right place and are fighting for the right things.

And I think it's a real balance, particularly for young people who are often forced to prove their competence or prove that they can actually measure up in these roles, that if you're not incumbent, you've never had before. So showing that you have done your homework and you really care about your com- this community that you're trying to represent, I think is top of the list, uh, as you try to earn people's votes. I love that. I love that.

Okay, we always ask this, so might as well ask it. What are you reading these days? What's on your nightstand or Kindle or whatever, audiobook? Don't care. And it can be related to housing or it can be about dragons or a coloring book. I don't care. Just love books. We have hundreds of books that our guests have recommended on Bookshop, and people just love that stuff. Well, let me, let me look over here 'cause I got... I just happen to be right next to a shelf.

Winners Take All, that's right here, is a really good book about the ways in which the hyper wealthy shape our understanding of charity, of philanthropy, of how wealth should be distributed throughout our society. And the effect of that is often let's not do anything about taxes. Let's just have a few individuals who have, if you're Elon Musk, $500 billion, decide what would be most impactful for all that money goes. Right.

I love that. That is a, it's a pet peeve of mine. You know, folks who work on the charitable front lines are incredible. I'm sure a lot of them, I know a lot of them would love to put themselves out of business by solving housing or childhood cancer or whatever it might be. But at the same time, how to phrase this correctly, a lot of it is unnecessary, and it's there simply because so many of our wealthy do not pay their fair share, like your bill.

And boy, is that adding up in a lot of ways. I can't thank you enough for coming. Anything else I'm missing here, Willie, before we let you go? This is the problem with saying I'm gonna do these sort of shorter ones and two is that now I just wanna talk to you for three hours. It's a real problem. Last thing I'll say, I have to do it as a candidate.

If you're interested in learning, learning about my race, go to willieforsommerville.com. Yes. That's W-I-L-L-I-E-F-O-R Somerville, S-O-M-E-R-V-I-L-L-E.com. And yeah, get involved. We have phone banks every week in the Boston area. We have canvases as well, uh, and we got 27 days, uh, to try to change the world. Yeah. I'm with you, man. That's awesome. I'm down in Virginia, and it's basically everything is at stake here in 27 days. So I hear you. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much for moving to Somerville and then having to leave and then saying you're gonna come back, and then coming back and doing the thing. That is fucking awesome, and I hope people take not just these policy things away from it, but this point of I can't in good conscience not do something about this thing that has affected me, that is affecting so many other people. It is really meaningful. And not to diminish it, it's easier than people think. Yeah.

You know, it's the idea of there's a variety of quotes from JFK, whoever it is, about, you know, doing nothing is just as much of an issue often- Wow... than contributing negatively, and just stepping up and simply supporting your race, you know? Working with allies, finding them, moving other people on the city council towards just giving tenants the list of their rights and their resources when they move in- Wow...

can start to chip away at this thing that consumes everything. So, uh, really appreciate it, Willie. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. [upbeat music] For the second part of our conversation today, we've got Kelsey Bond. Kelsey is a renter, community organizer, former education policy worker, union member, amazing, running for the Atlanta City Council down in District 2 in Georgia, America.

You are working with our friends at Run for Something. Kelsey, welcome to The Thunderdome. Welcome to the show.Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Let's get the business side of this out of the way first. How'd you get hooked up with our friends from Run for Something? Well, I have known about Run for Something for a long time. I actually managed a state house campaign last year for Gabriel Sanchez, who was also endorsed by Run for Something. Awesome.

And so I knew as soon as I launched, that's an organization I t- should apply to as a first time candidate. That is fantastic. I hope Amanda just cuts that into an advertisement. That's perfect. All right, so again, people can go to your website, I'm sure your socials, all these things to talk about who you are and why you're doing this. Tell me why you're running, because Atlanta City Council's no joke.

It's no joke. It's no joke. And you know, Atlanta's growing a lot. You know, we are a really culturally and economically important city right now. Mm-hmm. And so I'm running for this seat because I have lived in Atlanta City Council District 2 for 10 years. Okay. I'm a renter. I moved back to Atlanta straight after college, and during these last 10 years, my rent has essentially doubled, and this is not a story that's unique to me. Mm-hmm. This district is about half renter.

It's relatively very young. It's very dense because of all the apartment complexes that have gone up over the last several years. And, you know, rent is through the roof, and this is something that is deeply felt by so many people within District 2 and across the city.

And Atlanta is only bound to grow in the coming decades, so this is a problem that we need to begin to tackle now, and also make sure that our new housing is paired with public transit, 'cause Atlanta is also a very sprawling city. Sure. Which makes it hard to get around if you can't afford a car. And so pairing public transit and affordable housing to tackle both the affordability crisis as well as the climate crisis are central to my campaign.

I love that. I had on a gentleman on the show last year. I... Kelsey, time means, like, nothing anymore. [laughs] Who can know? And I believe... I'm forgetting his name. I'm such a monster. The book is over there somewhere. I think it's called The Great American Transit Disaster. Yeah. It is... If someone said, "We're gonna do a whole book on how we got here," that is what this book is.

There's nothing left out, and there's a lot about Atlanta in it, and how we got here. Perfect. And it's, it's really fantastic. So if you're a nerd, I think you'd appreciate it. You have organized for Nabisco workers, Starbucks Workers United, UPS Teamsters, Amazon workers, Delta ramp workers. You worked on public sector bargaining rights with the state legislature.

You've worked on LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights. But it always comes back to rent, man. Why are you so focused on housing and rent? [upbeat music] I'm gonna tell you a little story here. When the iPhone first came out 2007, one of the first apps I tried to convince a coworker to help me develop was what I was calling, and people were calling, a read it later app.

And that's 'cause we worked all day at ESPN, and we used to print up all the old ESPN Page 2 columns we loved, and then we would go and hide and read them on the company toilet. Wouldn't it have been great, though, is what I said, if we could just do that on our new touchscreen phones instead of printing them up? Anyways, 150 years later, I have tried every read it later app. All of them.

Migrating my archives over and over. But a couple years ago, I found Reader from the creators of Readwise and never looked back. It's so good. It's so fast. It's so smart. It works in my browser to save articles and read them and highlight them. It works on my phone and my iPad. I put it on my phone on my home screen instead of social media stuff. It's great. Reader can save it all.

And because they also built Readwise, all the highlighting and syncing is flawless. Text-to-speech? Sure. Ghostreader GPT so you can ask questions of your stuff? Sure. Here's how you can try it for free, and Readwise too. Right now they're offering you guys, my listeners, two free months of Readwise and Reader when you sign up instead of just one month.

So when you sign up, you get them both. The link to sign up and get that extra month is in the show notes, of course, and it's right here. It's readwise.io/quinn, Q-U-I-N-N. That's readwise.io/quinn. Again, it's right there in your show notes. It really is the future of reading. I can't recommend it enough. Probably the most essential thing I use every day. Check out Reader today. [upbeat music] Yes.

So as you said, I've spent the last several years organizing alongside union members and organizing workers in Metro Atlanta, also fighting for reproductive justice and LGBTQ rights. And Atlanta is in a very unique position because we are a blue city in a red state where many laws are preempted at the state level. Mm-hmm. We have very few workers' rights in the state of Georgia. We have very few tenant protections. We cannot cap the rent.

And so as a progressive running for a municipal seat in this climate, you can often feel very restricted in terms of policies that you would wanna pass that are maybe things that are normalized in cities like Seattle or New York.

And so coming from my experience organizing alongside service workers that are maybe only making $15 an hour or less, and thinking about a part of town like Midtown Atlanta, which is, you know, full of buildings that have exorbitant costs, rent is extremely expensive and only going up in this part of Atlanta. And I think about, you know, Starbucks workers that I've organized with who live in Midtown who can only afford to live here because they've been here the last several years. Sure.

And if they were to move in now, they wouldn't be able to afford it. Sure. And so starting with housing as a human right and thinking about how that ties in with economic justice, how, you know, trans and LGBTQ youth are so much more likely to be housing insecure.

Housing is so central to my campaign because it lies at the intersection of all of these other issues, economic justice, queer rights, that I care about so much, and it is something that the city actually has the ability to move forward on.I love it. It touches everything. It's fortunately and unfortunately just like climate change or public health, where you go, it's like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. You know? It's like I'll- Yeah...

connect housing or the jet stream to anything, which is a fun game and also a bummer at parties, but I don't get invited to it very often anymore, so it's totally fine. Talk to me about... 'Cause you're right, Atlanta is a relatively progressive city with both its own history and complications around everything from transit to housing to everything. But at the same time, there are some lessons, some examples, some transferable tactics and strategies that hopefully in 2025,

you, a future member of the city council, can pick up from even some of these either more blue cities or blue cities that are another ones, which by the way, are also a disaster on housing. Basically like- I got it... where are you looking and going, "Oh, we could take a piece of that," or, "We could learn from this," or, "This might work in our city"? Like, what are you trying to bring there?

Well- Talk to me about how that intersects with your platform. Yeah. So given the limited scope of our city in a red state, there's a few ways that I would like to see our next city council tackle the housing crisis. So for starters, a huge majority of the city of Atlanta is zoned for just single family homes. As a renter, I cannot afford to live in a McMansion.

So it's really essential that we up zone a lot of these neighborhoods which have historically only served single family homes so that we can build more diverse housing types like duplexes, town homes, apartment buildings, mixed use complexes to make sure that we have a more diverse array of housing, particularly in District 2. Also, you know, Atlanta has some parts of it have inclusionary zoning where developers are supposed to set aside a certain percentage of units as affordable.

But the problem with that is that our definition of affordability is not really that affordable. Affordable is a relative word. Mm-hmm. So typically, Atlanta uses 80% of area median income to determine affordability, which is closer to a $70,000 a year income, which is still relatively comfortable. Sure. So have a lot of people who are being left out of that equation, so I'm looking to redefine affordability to target folks who are making more like 60% median income, 30% median income.

Also, long-term, you know, these inclusionary zoning residences are only temporarily affordable. Sure. Which, you know, means people's future is up in the air once that affordability expires. So I think that our city should lean more into models like social housing, community land trusts. I know that Seattle just passed a referendum to initiate this social housing project and create a social housing developer for the city.

So these are options that Atlanta can look towards as a model, and hopefully we see some investment in that in the coming years. What about... And, you know, if folks are new to this, then well, they, this is probably their first time listening, but you know, looking at places like Texas where we're talking about wind power or solar power or housing, maybe less so transit, and have had

enormous successes in the past f- you know, three to five to seven years building more housing, building more affordable housing, building more wind power in part because, one, they got a lot of people coming in from a lot of these other places where people can't afford them, but also because there just simply aren't the same regulations. And again, I'm as progressive as it gets.

Like you're saying, the word affordable means nothing. It's kinda like when you see natural on like a package of granola, you're like it, it mean- True... it means nothing. There are some things we do need to define and regulate better, and there's other things that we have just run into the ground, and we can't do anything anywhere.

What can you learn or have you learned, or are you eager to learn from places like that? What can you learn from Austin, Texas? Oh, Austin, Texas. I mean, honestly, that's a city that I should look more into.

I know that Austin has been innovative in terms of housing solutions for their houseless community- Mm-hmm... converting like old hotels into housing, and that's something where Atlanta has been doing a bit is leveraging publicly owned land and abandoned vacant buildings for affordable housing initiatives. These have gone very slow in recent years, but I think that's exactly what we should be doing is leveraging land that's underutilized to fund affordable housing.

Yeah, I think that's where people are really starting to focus on land taxes, land trusts, like you said, focusing on parking minimums and all these different things.

So again, housing, climate, whatever, there's no one policy that's gonna unlock anything, but whether it's single stair or again, uh, parking minimums or whatever it might be- Right... renters rights, you can start to make progress and empower renters and also, you know, empower communities, whether you're looking at these 15-minute communities like the Barcelona idea or whatever it might be.

I don't think folks realize how many cities are like yours, where it is flat out illegal to build anything but s- single family housing. Yes. We have to start there. It's unreal. Yeah, it's unreal, and I mean, this is really what contributes to our traffic in Atlanta as well is our city is so sprawling, and it was planned this way- Mm-hmm... which makes it impossible to get anywhere without a car.

And so, you know, another huge issue we're running on is transit expansion, which has been a big fight in Atlanta in recent years because 10 years ago we passed this referendum to expand our transit line, MARTA, and basically- Mm-hmm... none of these projects have moved forward over the last decade even though we've been collecting a half penny sales tax.

And something people don't really understand or that I've been trying to reinforce through our campaign is that in order to have successful transit expansion, we also need that housing density 'cause without that you don't have- Sure... the ridership. You don't have the ability to justify transit expansion. So these dense, affordable housing and transit really do need to go hand-in-hand. 100%. You said you've been there for 10 years.

Again, obviously you've organized with-Apparently everyone. Who are some of the allies on the ground in this particular area that you're already working with or looking forward to working with once you're elected? Yeah. So I'm really proud that our campaign has assembled a very broad, diverse coalition of labor unions and progressive organizations that are backing our campaign.

And so, you know, we're supported by the Democratic Socialists of America, Working Families Party, several labor unions, including the North Georgia Labor Council, the Painters Union, Workers United, Georgia Conservation Voters, and other progressive LGBTQ groups, environmental groups. And I think this speaks a lot to the values that we're platforming throughout this campaign and the priorities that I'll have on Atlanta City Council.

And something I'm really excited about is, again, I've done labor organizing these last several years, and many of these anti-labor laws come from the state level. But there is still an avenue for the city to uplift workers, educate them on their rights. And so the city owns the Atlanta airport, which has been a major organizing hub in recent years.

The Delta Union Drive has been the largest organizing drive in the country, organizing flight attendants, ramp workers, and that's with the Flight Attendants Union and the Machinists Union, and then janitors and other workers are organizing with SEIU.

And so I'm really hopeful to work with SEIU to pass a airport workers' bill of rights similar- Love it... to what was passed in New Orleans to kind of reaffirm that these workers should be earning living wages, that they deserve healthcare benefits. And the way it works right now at the airport is all these workers are under multiple different disparate contracts.

And so the goal is to bring them under a single contract so it's easier for the city to actually step in and say, "These workers deserve XYZ wages."

I love what a diverse group of, of allies you've already put together and that you hope to work with more once you are elected. This idea that's so simple, and I do not remember where I heard it, but it's that any kind of conversation we're having, and this is the same as, you know, what I learned when I first started knocking on doors and stuff, is let the people tell you what their concerns are.

There's the what of a conversation, like what are we talking about? Renters' rights, right? Paychecks, contracts at an airport, flight attendants, whatever it might be. But then there's the how are we talking about it and the why are we talking about it? And again, we talked about it a, a little bit a moment ago, but we are now at the point where, and Georgia isn't necessarily a blue state, but Atlanta's big enough to count, right?

Now, again, I'm in Virginia, where we keep going back and forth. Yeah. And I was in Los Angeles for 15 years. The sum of it is anybody you just talked about at some point is gonna have to leave. They cannot afford it. It doesn't really matter what the job is. It doesn't- Yep... matter. They just can't afford it, and that is gonna be a drain on one of the world's biggest, busiest airports and cities. Yeah.

And all these services and, you know, we've seen what's happened with, you know, Florida's oranges and Georgia's peaches and all the heat where... You know, it's not a maybe in the future. Mm-hmm. It's these things have to happen, and I think that's, besides, you know, the credit that is due to you personally and your experience and folks you've worked with, this is why and how you can start to bring so many diverse groups together, like the Machinists Union, right?

Is to go, "None of them can afford it. It doesn't matter." And so many of these workers rely on public transit to get to and from work every day, and so, you know, their biggest issues are my biggest issues. Yeah. Housing and transit. Yeah. That's not a coincidence. Yeah. As we like to say, you know, for a long time, our tagline in its, uh, version of this was science for people who give a shit.

And fortunately and unfortunately at some point during COVID and fires everywhere, there were many more people who gave a shit for a lot of different reasons than ever before, and it's like nobody's unscathed. Many people have it much worse than others, and often we've designed the system that way, but we're all in it at this point. So you get elected.

What is the first obstacle you're running into besides just identifying, wait, I mean, the state really does control so much of this. What else are you running into? So we are having election, you know, for all city council seats this November. Mm-hmm. And there are other progressives running for office who I really hope win.

And so we have the potential to elect a good number of progressives to Atlanta City Council in November if people come out and actually vote. But either way, you know, I will be a political minority on council.

I'll be the most progressive council member, and, you know, that comes with challenges, and I think that requires me knowing where there's overlap in terms of priorities and values with my colleagues on city council and figuring out a route to move forward and, of course, understanding that, you know, this is a long haul.

Mm-hmm. You know, I plan to be in the seat for a very long time if I win because I want to be able to say that I accomplished things and passed reforms that helped people's lives. And so I think the biggest obstacle is being a minority, but understanding where to find overlap with other council members, even if we don't agree on everything. Sure.

I think that's a healthy respect for what you're going into. I don't wanna say up against. Again, you know- Mm-hmm. Agreed... the goal is if we can to work together on some of these things. It won't be everything by any stretch. It never has been, but especially these days. But what you're going into and knowing that, you know, the makeup of the council itself could change.

Talk me for a minute about it, it seems like you're like me, someone who's actually been to city council meetings before, which most people have not been unless they're- Absolutely... old and wealthy and have the time to, and they don't want- Exactly... idiots in the yard. So dealing with your own council members is one thing. How do you get more folks to show up to Atlanta City Council meetings to support the arguments you're making to your fellow city council members? Yeah.

So what I'm so excited about when it comes to potentially winning is that I will have this broad coalition backing me up when I'm in there, all the organizations I mentioned previously, but also pro-housing organizations like Housing Justice League, which fights for tenants' rights on the state and city levels in Georgia and Atlanta.And so, you know, we have people who can mobilize and come out to city hall, and this will be the first time in Atlanta where, like, a real community organizer gets elected to the- Mm-hmm...

Atlanta City Council. And I think we will get to really experiment with what it looks like to have an inside/outside strategy where I'm really working with organizers on the ground to push for whatever it is, maybe public transit, maybe some affordable housing initiative. But, you know, I think that collaboration is gonna be key, and already talking to folks about what our first priority should be when we get in there- Mm-hmm... and what we wanna make that look like.

Where does that, and you can reveal it if you'd like, where does that priority fit within the intersection of what you're most excited about, what Atlanta needs the most, and District 2 constituents need the most, and what is most, you know, honestly measurably doable, however- Sure... incremental it may need to be, knowing that some of these things take God knows how many votes and how much time? Sure.

So I think that my first and top priority when I get elected will be moving forward on building light rail on the Eastside BeltLine trail. So this will take a second to explain, but- Please... the Atlanta BeltLine is a walking trail that kind of circles the inner city neighborhoods in Atlanta, and it's built on an old rail line.

And so s- several decades ago, a Georgia Tech graduate student wrote a thesis laying out this plan to convert this old rail line into a walking trail and transit corridor with light rail. Mm-hmm. So in 2016, Atlanta voters on this referendum, the More MARTA referendum, to fund 17 projects to expand MARTA. One of the key projects on this list was light rail alongside- Mm-hmm... the trail. The east side of the trail runs through my district. It's just a couple blocks from where I live.

So the last decade, they have paved this trail, and there were many promises that the trail would be complete with affordable housing and really be this kind of public investment, but we have just seen so much gentrification around the trail, your typical breweries, brunch spots, you know, commercial activity really catering towards an upper middle class customer base. And can't really say anything about the current BeltLine is affordable.

And so in recent years, there's kind of been, even though we approved by referendum to build rail along the BeltLine, there has been a kinda corporate developer-backed propaganda initiative to stop BeltLine rail from being built. And so it is a, an election year right now, and certain decision makers have decided that building rail on the Eastside Trail is no longer a priority.

And transit advocates are, of course, very upset about this because we have invested about a decade of research and laying out the groundwork to really get tracks on the ground. Mm-hmm. It was supposed to happen this year. And, you know, people are tired of the broken promises.

And I believe that under the new council next year, we absolutely have a path to move forward on the original plan to make rail happen because the mayor's alternative would basically have us building rail 10 years out from now, and we don't have 10 years. We need to not kick the can down the road to a future administration. We made this promise to voters. We have the funding. We have the plans.

We shouldn't cave just because a few corporate interests are giving us pushback. So that would be my number one priority. I love it. I love it. That's awesome. These things can unlock other things. It's a helpful and frustrating experience to have a pretty great idea of what we need to do, and just, like, most of it is decisions people make to stand in the way for- Yeah... incentives.

Talk to me about the Office of the Tenant Advocate. That is inspired by s- a couple other places, right? Yes. Yes. What does that actually do? What could it actually- Yeah... be capable of doing? Yes. So I am a member of this organization, Housing Justice League. Mm-hmm. And they have drafted a really nice list of ordinances that they'd like to see passed on our next city council, and this is where I pulled a lot of my platform going into this race.

And so, you know, we collectively would like to create this Office of the Tenant Advocate because Georgia has such weak tenant protections, and evictions are a leading cause of homelessness, which is a crisis right now in Atlanta. And the World Cup will be in Atlanta next year, and we've seen vague promises that we will end homelessness by then, which absolutely will not happen.

In fact, this current administration killed a homeless man earlier this year during an encampment sweep, which was extremely tragic. His name was Cornelius Taylor. And so, you know, there's been a lot of movement on the ground to push for more humane policies around our houseless neighbors and actually, you know, housing first strategies to get them the resources they need. But to take a preventative approach to the homelessness epidemic, you know, tackling evictions is a great start there.

So this would be modeled after the Office of Tenant Advocates that they have in cities like New York and DC, which would provide legal resources to tenants, legal consultation, and of course educating tenants on their rights. So few people know their rights. It's the same whether you're talking about labor organizing or tenant organizing. If you are able to equip someone with their rights, that is so empowering- Mm-hmm... to know what is legal, what is not legal.

If your landlord is harassing you or illegally threatening eviction, there's tons of resources that can help people understand what their rights are in those circumstances, which can go a long way towards preventing evictions. We have to plug the hole in the boat here. It's great to bail it out, right? And we need to get people off the street. Yep. But we have to plug the hole in the boat.

And that's why I loved the first part of my conversation with this gentleman, Willie Burnley Jr., who's on the Summerville City Council, is running for mayor. One of the first things he got passed was tenants' rights, essentially a communication of tenants' rights, where I think it's, like, within five days of moving in, possibly, maybe getting the keys- Mm... moving in, whatever it might be, they have to either be emailed or handed by their landlord their tenants' rights. Oh.

Because it used to be, like he said, uponBeing threatened with eviction, and he's like, "It's too late for most people at that point, at the worst time in your life to get those things." We have to move. Sure, that's great, but they need to have that when they move in. They need to understand- Love that... what is available to them, and not just, "Hey, here's your rights."

Here's all the groups on the ground that can support you enforcing those rights from the start. And by the way- Yeah... that doesn't just empower the renters. That puts those landlords on notice a little bit, 'cause every time they hand it over, they know that they're giving somebody this information- Yes... to stand up to them. Yes. And again, is that gonna solve it?

Of course not. But is that gonna go a long way? It helps. It helps when people have the information that is due to them. I love that. That's awesome. Okay, last thing. If you had any time in the world, what are you reading these days? Or what have you read in the past, I don't know, five years? There's no rules anymore, clearly. It doesn't matter. Sure.

I used to say, "What's affected you?" Nobody cares. It could be a coloring book. What is a book? Tell me the name of a book, 'cause we have a whole thing up on Bookshop and our listeners love it. Oh, cool. So I love reading and I love campaigning too. The one thing I don't like about campaigning is that I have no time to read.

[laughs] But I read a great book last year, which anybody interested in Atlanta politics should read, called Red Hot City, which is by Dan Immergluck, who I think was previously a Georgia State University professor. But it is about why Atlanta is experiencing a housing crisis and what policy decisions led to that. And it walks you through the construction of our highway that segregated and divided our neighborhoods and destroyed many Black neighborhoods.

It walks you through the Olympics, the big fight around this development called the Goldstown Town, and also the BeltLine, which I mentioned. And it's just this really interesting breakdown of Atlanta politics and errors that our leaders have made throughout recent history. I love that.

I love, again, like the Great Tr- American Transit Disaster, I love someone who's like, "Listen, I'm just gonna write, like, the opus on this." Yeah. "We're g- we're gonna do this." Like, how we got here. It matters. Even if 10 people read it, those 10 people could be really meaningful. Mm-hmm. What is one message you would send to future you in a year and a half who is, like, in it- Oof...

and is dealing with it and is like, "Oh, right, yes, now I've gotta do the thing"? In the whole campaigning's easier than governing world, what would you like to say to yourself there? That's a great question. I think I know that governing is super difficult because you're being pulled in all these directions. You have constituents that wanna talk with you.

You have, you know, your peers on council that are trying to pressure you to vote a certain way, institutions that are pressuring you this and that way. And I just wanna remind my future self to always stick with your principles, even when it's tough- Mm-hmm... even when, you know, you feel like there's a lot of pressure on you.

I'm running for office in the first place because of my principles- Mm-hmm... and I wanna make sure that I am actually acting on them in office, because that is the whole point. I love it. Where can people find your campaign on the internet? You can find my campaign at kelseabond.com. That's K-E-L-S-E-A B-O-N-D. And I'm also very active on social media @kelseabondatl. I love it. That's awesome.

Well, we will put it all in the show notes and all that jazz. Kelsey, thank you for your time. Thank you for your candor around all this and all your organizing efforts. And thanks for stepping up and saying, "Okay, fuck it, I'll do it." We need more of it. That's it for this week, and I hope you loved these conversations and people as much as I do.

Huge, huge, huge thanks to our partners at Run for Something for all of their hard work every day, but also to bring these conversations to life. As always, this conversation was produced and edited by Willow Beck. Reminder, you can find candidates who are endorsed by Run for Something and other awesome organizations we trust at whatcanido.earth.

If you or someone you love is under 40 and wants to run for something at the state or local level but doesn't know what's available, head on over to runforwhat.net. And if you wanna know more about our work, read our newsletters and essays, check out our other podcast, or even get some of our awesome T-shirts, hoodies, stickers, or coffee mugs, head to importantnotimportant.com. Thanks for listening, and thanks for giving a shit.