Folks. I am so excited to welcome to wok F Daily for the very first time Lauren bare who is a managing partner at Arena, which is an organization that is working to train a pipeline of Democrats in order to be able to run for office, to run campaigns, to do all of the things that we need them to do in order to battle against Republicans. You know, I feel like Republicans do a much better job of building a pipeline. And let me be clear, their candidates
are crap. So it's amazing to me that they have such an incredible infrastructure that their folks can rely on churning out candidates after candidates. Talk to us about Arena and why you think that it was important to get to this place. Why is it important for us to have this kind of organization and infrastructure. We have a few what is it that makes this one different? Well, well, first of all, Danielle, thank you so much for having me here today to talk about these really important issues.
So arenas an organization and whose mission is to convene, train and support the next generation of Democratic candidates and campaign staff, and we were born out of the twenty sixteen election, but also out of a realization of precisely what you're pointing out, which is that Republicans for decades have invested in infrastructure, in im party infrastructure, in organizing infrastructure, and infrastructure that is enduring year over year, cycle over cycle,
and Democrats simply have not. On our side. In some ways, we focused on candidates running really care asmatic people for office. But candidates don't win elections on their own. They require really strong, robust, well trained teams around them, and teams who represent the diversity of the country and the communities that they are running to represent. And so Arena exists really to try to fill that gap on the Democratic side, and we do it through four different ways. We do
it by running training programs. We have a flagship program called Arena Academy, which trains individuals how to be campaign staff, how to run campaigns, everything from being a campaign manager to doing data, digital communications, fundraising. We have a careers team that works to place everyone we've trained on a campaign or working with a Democratic or progressive organization and then make sure that those people stay in the business
cycle over cycle, year over year. We've got a suite of free downloadable tools our Arena toolbox so that candidates and campaign staff can have the knowledge that for so long was held by an exclusive handful of people, to be honest, you know, mostly white men who had worked in politics for some time. And then on top of all of that infrastructure building work, we also support candidates
financially and by providing them with staff. And the kind of candidates that Arena supports are those who are bringing new, fresh voices to the party, new perspectives, who are really running on a premise of generational change and making our party and our politics more reflective of the country as a whole. I love all the all of the different parts that Arena brings to the table, and I will want to talk for a minute, you know, particularly about
campaign staff and why that's important. I think for too long we rely on passion right to get people in stid and wanting to work on campaigns. It's usually younger folks, right that have the passion, have the energy, you know, are going to live on the road pre covid that was you know, that was the case. In terms of campaigning, how do you get people interested? How do you draw people in to say we need you? Because when folks think about You know, I get asked the question all
the time, Danielle, what can I do? Right? Like we're losing? What can I do? And I tell them volunteer, I say donate. You know, it depends on your capacity. So for those people that say what can I do, and they want to do more than just volunteer, they want to do more than just write a check, how do you connect those folks to these campaigns? Yeah, well, what you're saying, Danielle is so right, because, like I said before, campaigns don't just run themselves. And I know this firsthand.
I was a candidate for Congress in twenty eighteen, and I entered that race with with a ton of passion, a ton of desire to serve my community, but no understanding of the mechanics of running a campaign, and really relied on the team that I was able to build around me. But it was hard to recruit that staff.
And it was doubly hard to recruit a staff that I wanted to be diverse, that I wanted to be gender balanced, that I wanted to have BIPOC representation, that I wanted to have LGBTQ representation, Because the simple fact
is it's been really hard to break into politics. You know, you mentioned that you've encouraged people to volunteer, and I think that's part of the problem is that, you know, political engagement working in politics has been thought up as a volunteer job for so long, and then by definition, that makes it a job for those individuals who can
afford to work for free. YEP. At Arena, we're trying to up end that because we make politics actually needs to be a professional career and it needs to be accessible to everyone that the Democratic Party is trying to serve, which means it needs to recruit more people of color, We need to recruit more working class individuals. We need to make politics a career in which you can earn a living wage to draw the kind of talent that you want to bring to the table in order to win.
And so what I would encourage, you know, anyone who's motivated, who wants to do something really substantive, you know, think about going to an Arena academy, spending five days and
learning what it really takes to run a campaign. We make a point of making sure that scholarships are available to everyone who needs them, so you're going to not be paying a dime if you can't afford to pay that tuition for training, and then we work very hard with every person we've trained to help place them after words, because it can be an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling experience to find that candidate who you find inspiring, whether it's
someone who's running for a school board or mayor, to investident and then put in the work to get them elected and then bring that talent to the next race, and the next one and the next one. So you know, if there are people out there listening and that sounds inspiring to you, I really encourage you to start thinking about this not just as a volunteer opportunity, but as a way to make a career path, and we will do everything we can to help make that possible for folks.
You know, I'm so happy that you brought up, you know, the pay because I think, you know to one of the issues and I feel maybe this is changing in Washington, DC, But you know, when I was there as a very as a very young person, you know, internships who are unpaid.
Working on the hill was unpaid, and you know, and I love the fact that your organization is making the connection between well if you're going to have something that is not paid or paid poorly, right, then you're carving out a certain group of people that can engage right, and that may not be the best people, but to understand that for young people in particular, or people that are looking for a career change frankly right, that want the opportunity to engage in a way that makes them
feel like they are living and working on purpose. Not being able to having to make a decision between a low paying job putting food on your table and then wanting to do something of purpose. Shouldn't be a decision that people have to be forced to choose between. Right And So for those BIPOC people in particular and LGBTQ people, how do you talk to them about why it's so important to have campaigns that look like the country as opposed to just looking like the candidate you know that
they may like, But why is it's so important you think? Look, at the end of the day, campaigns are really about forming a human connection with voters. They are successful when that candidate connects with a voter, but they're also successful when that team connects with potential voters. And on any campaign, your campaign staff is really an extension of the candidate. They are representing that individual out in the community. They're
making the case for why to elect them. And the fact of the matter is people are more engaged in politics, more trusting of people running for office when they can see themselves and in some way reflected in the process. So if you're going into BIPOC communities, if you've got BIPOC staff who can go into those communities, who can speak to the issues from a point of having experienced themselves in a way that has authenticity, gains trust, that's
going to take you farther. As a member of the LGBTQ community, I can say that the number of folks who stepped into my campaign office when I was running because they knew I was an openly gay candidate and because I had openly gay members of my team and said, I've never done anything political. I don't often vote, but in you, I see someone for the first time who's representing me in politics, and that's what's drawing me in.
And so I think that's the case to be made, is that so many times marginalized communities don't see this work as their work because they've been left out of the process. But we really have an opportunity to open up whole new swots of the electorate and bring people in if we have staff and folks on campaigns who are more broadly reflective of the community. And you know, the one thing I would add to that is he said that arena. You know, we have a toolbox which
teaches you how to build a campaign. But our tools aren't just the nuts and bolts of this is how you make a finance plan, this is how you buy your digital ads. We also have tools in there like how to build a racially just an equitable campaign, how to think about unionization issues on campaigns, how to think
about wage issues and health insurance. Because what needs to change is the entire mindset that campaigns could somehow be run in a way that's different than any other employment environment would be run and they still expect to recruit top notch, diverse talent. We as a party have to live up to our own values in the way that we run our campaigns as well as in the way that we deliver on policy once we're in office. You know, Lauren, many people or the last four plus years have gotten
such a terrible taste in their mouth with regard to politics. Right, we saw through the Trump administration just how vile, how cruel our politics can get. What do you say to those people that you know because of COVID, Because we're all in our homes, we are all paying attention to the same thing at the same time, which hasn't happened
since the advent of social media. Frankly, right, what do you say to those people that have a newly recognized appreciation for the importance of politics in their lives, but are also disgusted by it, are also like this is too toxic and and I don't want any part of it. What do you say to those folks? Yeah, well, I mean the first thing I do is acknowledge that those
feelings are very real. The last four plus years have been a very challenging time to turn on the television, to look at the new paper, to ingest what's going on, and that that vitriol in that hate, and then feel like that's something you want to jump into. I mean, it's it's not unnatural that the instinct is to in some ways want to pull back and pull away from that. But at a basic level, I think politics can be driven by one of two things. It can be driven
by hope or it can be driven by fear. And Donald Trump and the Republican Party have very much leaned into this fear based politics, hate mongering, appealing to our basis instincts, trying to make people turn against their neighbors and think of them as somehow other. And if that's not appealing to you, it's only going to change if you lean into the alternative, which is a hope based politics.
Politics you know of the nature of an Obama or Biden or any number of the inspiring individuals who run for House or Senate or city city council in the past four years, and you offer an alternative vision that is truer to the values on which our country is founded and truer to the direction that we hope our country will will go. So, you know, that's what I try to say is to you know, lean into that hope.
And then the other thing that I would say to folks is, you know, in a previous life, back during the Obama administration, I spent six years working as a foreign policy official at the State Department, and I focused on democracy in human rights, and part of what my job was was looking at democratic backsliding in other countries around the world, pointing out to our own government when there were red flags being raised that countries that were
democratic were actually headed in the direction because we know democracy is in a one way street. Just because you got there doesn't mean you stay there, and it doesn't mean you're becoming democrat more democratic every single day. And it was terrifying to me post twenty sixteen to start to see those same red flags that I'd seen in other countries in my own country. I never imagined I
would be confronted with that. And I think, you know, we saved ourselves from the brink with the twenty twenty election in getting Trump out of office, but the work is not over yet. Our democracy is still incredibly unstable, and you just need to look at voter suppression laws, restrictions on civil rights, environmental black sliding to know that
what we have right now is very fragile. And so what I would also say to people is that if you care about our country and care about it living up to its best ideals, then in some way, engagement is not a choice. It's a necessity. I love them that you have to do to save the vision of the country that you believe in. You know, I love that you said that engagement is not a choice. I think that we too often pose it right post politics, as in something that you can choose to opt in
or opt out of. And I hope you know one I have said on WOKA for the longest time that I do believe that all we did was hit pause on our sliding into authoritarianism. I do not think that
the election hit stop. But what I am hopeful of is that the historic turnout that we saw in twenty twenty, the historic turnout that brought us the Biden Harris administration, will again folks recognize that if I stay home right, those Trumpers, those people that are working over time to gas slide us into believing the exceptionalism of this country without the analysis that are trying to take away every single right that women, LGBTQ people, black folks and brown
folks have fought for since the beginning of time. That without their engagement right, we will remain on the brink and there may not be an opportunity for us to be pulled back right. And what happens then, And I don't you know, I am not a fearmongerer at all, But I believe myself to be a realist, which is all you have to do is see the news. One of the questions, one of the last questions I want
to ask you, Lauren, is this. You know you ran in twenty eighteen in Florida, which is an incredibly complicated and place of great contradictions. What are some of the things that you learned in that run that has informed the work that you're doing now and can inform others that are interested in either throwing their hat in to be candidate or deciding that they want to run campaigns.
The first thing that I learned is that if you are an individual who feels the inclination to get involved in politics, whether that's putting your own name on the ballot or joining a campaign as a member of staff, don't wait for an invitation because people might not invite you. It takes gut, it takes will, But if you've got that fire in your belly, go on and put yourself
out there. Deciding to run was one of the most frightening things that I've ever done, and ultimately probably the most deeply rewarding and impactful things I have ever done, and no one was asking me to do it. I decided to run for office when I was home with a tiny, infant baby girl and struggling with the realization that she was born into a very different world than the one I wanted her to be born into. And I ultimately decided, what am I going to do to
make my daughter proud? How am I going to answer her ten or fifteen years ago when she asks me what I was doing at that dark low point in our country's history. And I had to take the leap on my own and decide that putting myself in the arena was the right thing to do. So the first big lesson is, if you want to get involved, just do it. Just go for it. And if you don't know how, come to arena. We will help you out,
you know. The second thing I would say that I learned is that it is still incredibly, incredibly challenging to run for office if you are in some way different than the majority of people that we have elected throughout the history of the United States, and let's be honest,
they are almost exclusively white, straight, sysgendered men. Yep, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but what it also means is that we collectively as a democratic community need to think really hard about what are the structural barriers that have prevented us from running and electing more individuals who are representative of our country as a whole. Are those economic and class based barriers? Because it actually costs a great deal of money to run for the office,
It's a full time job. You can't be working. Are there other forms of discrimination that are affecting BIPOC candidates or LGBT two candidates or female candidates from fundraising and bringing in as much money as others? And so one of the lessons I took away was that is very fortunate to be able to do what I did, but that also involved a responsibility to in turn break down barriers to other individuals who ought to be running so that our politics could be more inclusive as a whole.
And the final thing I would say I learned is that you know, as important as the candidate is, the team they build around them is equally as important. And that is why I'm so happy to have found a post candidacy home in Arena, which is a community that I think in an organization that is really working to break down those barriers to running for office, to break down those barriers for being a member of campaign staff, and to make our politics as a whole more equitable,
more inclusive, more representative of this country. Lauren, I love it, and you're providing this very cynical political with some hope that there are folks that are putting together the teams that are necessary for us to win. Tell everyone how they can follow you, find Arena, get more information so that they can opt in instead of opting out. Wonderful well.
You can find Arena on Twitter at Arena Summit. You can find me at Lauren there and if you were interested in attending one of our programs, go to Arena dot run Slash Academy. Applications are actually open now for our next Arena Academy in September, and we would love anyone and everyone who is interested about finding their way into politics as a profession to fill out that application form, join us for five days and start their political journey.
I love it, Lauren. Thank you so much for making the time to join woke f and I hope that you will come back to us in the fall with some of some of your folks, some of your new cohort to discuss what they are learning and how we're preparing to head into midterms. I would love nothing more. Thank you so much for having me. That is it for Today's Woke, a f daily podcast. To hear more from me, including five full hour long shows every single week,
exclusive guest interviews, and more. Support me on Patreon at Patreon dot com. Slash Woke a F Power to the people and to all the people power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.