Vote! (with John Legend and Stacey Abrams)

an important, timely critical subject, voting. Now you might guess I would be pretty focused on voting, but I would be I think even if I'd never run for office or held it, because when you get right down to it, it is a power that every one of us has, no matter who we are, where we live, how much money we make, and if we don't exercise it, we leave the field to people that don't agree with us.

So protecting the right to vote is an issue that gets to the heart of every their issue that I care about and all of the progress that we need to make together. Today I'm talking to two guests who really understand the power of voting. Stacy Abrahams, who you just heard, the woman who should be governor of Georgia, because let's not kid ourselves her election against Brian Kemp was marred by blatant voter suppression, so she founded an organization called Fair Fight to protect the right to vote

in Georgia and around the country. But first I'm talking with John Legend. You know, if you watch the Democratic National Convention in August, the Virtual Convention, you'll remember this incredible performance. One day one look alicaus you will be as you'll be. Oh. John wrote that song Glory with

the rapper Common for the movie Selma's. It won the Best Original Song at the Academy Awards in John has also won multiple Grammy Awards for his music to mention an Emmy and Tony, making him the fifteen of only sixteen people who have an EGOT and the only black man who has achieved that Emmy, Grammy, Oscar Tony distinction. He's also a very proud dad. He and his amazing wife Chrissy Teagan have two wonderful kids, Luna and Miles,

and another on the way. But the reason I'm talking to him today is because he's also a really strong voice on issues of justice and voting. Last week, he launched Free the Vote to raise money to pay the fees and finds preventing over one million former felons in Florida from sting their balance. I'm thrilled to be talking with John Heve, my friend. Always a joy to see you. I'm still smiling about the dinner we had at your house pre covid um and and pre your latest news.

So give me give me a quick check in on the whole family. Well, of course, Chrisy is pregnant with our third child. She's having definitely her roughest pregnancy yet. It's been a bit of a physical challenge for her. Our doctor has her on bed rest right now, and uh, we're just you know, taking good care of her. And I'm trying to be home as much as possible and help her as much as possible so she doesn't have to move around and she can take good care of

that that little growing baby inside of her. Well, give her a big virtual hug. You have been a staunch supporter of not only candidates but causes. Where does that come from, John? I mean, when you were young, did you have some experiences that you really felt prepared you or motivated you or was this something that you came

to later in life. Well, when I was young, my parents first of all impressed on us that success wasn't defined by how much you do for yourself, but it was defined by how much you do for other people. Part of that was kind of a Christian ethos, but also just being good human beings. No religion has a monopoly on that concept of being philanthropic, being generous, being humble, caring about people who are struggling and and need your help,

but it came to us through a Christian ethos. They also homeschooled us when we were kids for some of our grade school years, and one of the things that we would do as a family was we would go to the county Public Library and we would kind of be let loose on the library and we would go and find whatever books interested us. And for me, from a very young age, I always was interested in politics, leadership,

people who fought for justice. I particularly was interested in act civil rights leaders and abolitionists who looks like me and also were people who put their lives on the

line to fight for the rights of others. So I've always had that conception, that ideal that those kinds of people are the people we should look up to and treasure in our society, and that if I had any sort of success in life, I would try to use it to be one of those kinds of people who spoke out when I saw something, jus who tried to

fight for people whose voices are often overlooked. I wrote an essay when I was fifteen years old in high school that said exactly that that I I planned to make Black history by becoming a successful musician and using my success as an artist to get back and fight for equality and justice in this world. And That's what I've been doing since you were fifteen. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Springfield, Ohio, a small

city between Dayton and Columbus. One. Wow, I love I love that story about your parents dedication and determination to you know, really set you on the right path. Did you start being musical and singing in church as so many people have, Yeah? Absolutely so. I grew up in a Pentecostal church and my grandmother was the church organists, my grandfather was our pastor, my mother was the choir director.

My dad was a deacon and taught Sunday school and also saying in the choir and played the drums sometimes. And so I grew up around a lot of music and a lot of church, and that was my musical foundation and remains a huge part of the story of who I am as a musician. Well, let's talk about your life as an activist, and certainly as someone who's been involved in and supportive of political campaigns and causes.

I know that you've been particularly involved over the years in protecting voting rights, making sure anybody eligible can actually vote in practice, not just on paper. And you combined your deep concern about incarceration and the injustices in the criminal and penal systems with a real commitment to something called the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, and your initiative Free

America launched something called free the Vote. And maybe you could describe for our listeners you know how all of this fit together for you. So let's start with how I got interested in this issue. First of all, Um, like many black and brown people in this country, I had relatives and neighbors and community members who had gotten caught up in the criminal justice system, including people as close to me as my mother, but also good friends that I went to high school with. Some of them

were in prison for a significant period of time. And when you're a kid. I think your parents rightfully teach you if you just don't get in trouble, then you won't have to worry about those kinds of things. But as you start to understand the system a little better, you understand that it's not as cut and dry as that,

and it's not as fair as that sounds. For far too many people, there's a different criminal justice system depending on your poverty or lack thereof, depending on the color of your skin, and how you're perceived by police and by judges and by juries. All those things affect so much, and we've come to think that these sentences that are prescribed by law are just the way they are. They're almost like their biblical or so so fixed that we

can't imagine an alternative. But what we have to realize is those were all political choices that were made, and they don't have to be this way. We're the most incarcerated country in the world, so we've made policy decisions that have been inhumane, and the consequences of that have

been felt throughout our society. And not only that. Every time we've made the choice to spend more on policing, more on jails, more on prisons, there's an oper tunity costs because we're spending less on all the things that would help prevent crime, help make people feel more safe, help people live healthier, more productive lives in every other way.

And so Free America was born out of me kind of discovering how big this issue was and how unjust it was, through reading, through listening, through talking to folks, and through there just the gut feeling of what I've seen my family and neighbors go through, and then starting to organize around listening to other people and trying to find out where we could get involved to help. So we went around and visited jails and prisons and immigration

detention centers and juvenile facilities. We also sat with district attorneys, We sat with corrections officers, we sat with all kinds of folks who had a stake in the system, and everybody told us that it wasn't working, it wasn't humane,

it wasn't right, and we needed to change it. And so, coordinating with organizations like the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and other grassroots organizing efforts, a lot of them lad by formally incarcerated people, we started to figure out initiatives that we wanted to get behind initiatives. We wanted to uplift, amplify,

get out there in the public conversation. I know, for example, you went to um A court hearing in Miami back in the fall, like last year, I think November, to watch former felons have their right to vote restored, which must have been incredibly Oh. I was crying a lot of that day because just think about how many people take voting for granted, how many people just can't be bothered or or you know, there's all kinds of reasons people don't vote, and some of them are are because

of voter suppression by the state. But you could just tell that these people wanted to be part of society again. They had made a mistake most of them. Most of them were a lot older, and if anybody knows anything about crime, most people's period of being prone to crime is pretty much over by the time there. But too often our society punishes them for so long, well after the mistakes that they've made, and when they're completely new

people by that point. So some of these people were forty five, fifty fifty five and hadn't been able to vote for decades. The founder of f R R C. Desma Meat. He is a returning citizen himself and had committed a felony when he was young, and he hadn't voted for thirty years. And these people want to be a part of society again. They want to contribute. Desmond's doing all these amazing things in this community, one of the most exemplary citizens we could possibly imagine, but he

wasn't able to vote until this year. Voting is not a privilege, it's a right, and it's a part of being a citizen of this country because all of us are affected by the laws that are written by our representatives. All of us are affected by the decisions of our executives, and all of us should have a say and who those people are. Even if we've made mistakes in our lives, even if we've harmed people in our lives, it's not

a right that should be taken away. You know. It's interesting because after the amendment passed in Florida, the Republican legislature tried to, you know, basically obstructed, didn't they. I Mean, they said, okay, fine, you've served your time in prison, that's okay. But some of you may have fines or other kinds of restitution. So you're not going to be able to vote until you pay all of that out.

How did that make you feel? Well, it's so enraging and frustrating that there's an entire political party that has built their entire political program on trying to discourage voting. So anytime there's an expansion of the vote, anytime there's an attempt to expand the vote, Republicans have decided that it's against their interests for those things to happen, so they fight it at every turn. In this particular instance,

the public voted sixty to thirty five. We're not talking about a close margin here, and those those were voters from everywhere, all everybody did that. The people of Florida

overwhelmingly voted for an expansion of voting rights. But because some of these institutions, like our state legislatures, aren't as accountable, arnest, transparent, aren't as small d democratic in their response to what people want, the state legislators wanted to maintain their hold on power in Florida, and so they tried to devise any tactics they could to reverse the will of the people, and they found basically a loophole that if they determined

that you hadn't paid certain court fees and fines, that you hadn't actually served your sentence. So essentially they're saying, pay up or you can't vote. And we know poll taxes are unconstitutional in America, but this was their way of essentially charging people to vote. Some of them can't afford it, and so what we've been trying to do is pay those fees and fines so these folks could actually realize the gains in a suffrage that we fought for.

And so we've raised about million dollars with the help of them really high net worth folks, but also tens of thousands of ordinary people, individuals who have given what little they can to help support these folks and extend the vote to as many people as possible. We'll be back right after this quick break. You know, there are a lot of people who don't vote for many different reasons, and people who don't think it will make a difference,

people who don't believe that anything will change. They just are at a stage in their life where it seems like such a low priority. I'd love to hear you really speak to people who may not yet be convinced or may still be on the fence about whether they're going to vote or not as to what they should be considering that might encourage them to get out and

actually exercise that vote. Well, I think first of all, we need to realize that this choice is not even close when it comes to thinking about who would be a better leader for this country, who would restore our moral authority in the world, who would restore our credibility in the world, that our word actually means something, that we actually believe in science, that we can be trusted as a partner to get major things done in the world, as we think about climate change, as we think about

this pandemic. All of the solutions to these major problems that the world faces require America to be a respected, trusted partner in the world, and we are the opposite of that right now. We're the laughing stock of the world.

I think climate change is the most pressing, most urgent issue that we face in this country and in the globe, and there's no way we make any progress on that if Donald Trump is reelected, and it is guaranteed that if Joe Biden is reelected and we have a democratic Senate, that we will pass some version of the Green New Deal. Joe put his plan up on his site, which I think is robust and has been seen by a lot of activists as a really strong plan that is critical.

And if we don't elect Joe Biden, I don't know if we will ever be able to reverse the damage that Donald Trump is doing and has done. That's enough reason for me. Yeah, well, I know, I mean, that's what you know. I think it's fair to say everything that anybody cares about is on the ballot, and that is on the ballot. Yeah, healthcare is on the ballot. You know, better jobs for the future, you know, dealing with the COVID vaccine issue. I mean, everything you care

about is on the ballot. And let's let's focus on COVID for one second. Just look at what's happened in other countries when it comes to death rates, when it comes to overall spread of the disease. We have just been terrible at it. And it makes perfect sense. We have a terrible leader. He has no capability of thinking long term about anything. He has no capability of thinking

about anyone outside of himself. He is a liar, He is a conspiracy theorist, and he particularly doesn't care about certain people, and a lot of those people are the people who are being most affected by this, black and brown people. So all of the things that would combine to make him bad for COVID nineteen are present in Donald Trump. There's nothing about him that says he would

do a good job handling this. And now that there's a possibility of a vaccine, we can't even trust him as the president to uh to lead an administration and f d A as c d C that's going to handle it properly in a way that all Americans can trust. So in every single way, he is exactly the wrong person to be in charge in a crisis, particular crisis of this magnitude and of this complexity. You've seen this utter failure of a president. It's obvious that Joe Biden

is a better choice. And if you want to see what his policies are, because I I kind of got frustrated on Twitter one day and I was like, just go to his website, because because Joe Biden's actually very yes, he's actually worked with a lot of policy people on the left to really formulate some really great ideas, and the choice between his plans and Donald Trump's plan that he keeps saying he has. I don't even understand what

that means. It just means it doesn't happen when. But it's kind of amazing that he would even say that with a straight face. It's so obvious that Donald Trump should never lead anything that is of concern to anyone, like any CEO, anyone who's in charge of hiring people. He has all of the characteristics that you would red flag and say this kind of person could never work for me. I would never let him run anything, not the dog pound, not the local fire department, Like, there's

nothing you would trust him to run. He has no plans. But everybody needs a plan to vote, right, So people to vote, you've got to have a plan to vote. If you can vote early, vote early. If you are going to vote by mail, get it in the you know, the mail, as soon as you can. And then, no matter how long they make you wait, if you're going to vote on election day, don't go anywhere. Stay there,

bring a lunch, whatever it takes, you know. My advice to folks is if you can vote early in person, that's probably the That's what I'm gonna do you know. John Lewis said that democracy is not a state, it's an act. Exactly exactly we have to act for us to maintain our democracy, and it is in peril right now,

is it is? Amen. I'm so grateful that you joined me today because you have such a perspective and understanding about what's at stake, and the life you've lived and the way you've used your talents speak louder than words ever could. So thank you so much, John. Give big hugs to Chrissie and Luna and Miles. Okay, absolutely, I love to build to Chelsea and all the grandkids, and we love your family and want to send all of

our best team. Take care, Take care. If you want to learn more about Free to Vote, the fund John Legend created to help returning citizens exercise their right to vote, please visit his website Let's Free America dot com. I'm devastated to share with you that two days after we published this episode, John and Chrissie lost their baby. I'm sending them my love and my prayers, and I know that you all join me in doing that. I first met Stacy Abrams when she was a leader in the

Georgia Legislature. You know, from that very first meeting, I could just tell that she was someone who had a big future ahead. She ran a heroic campaign for governor of Georgia. In her opponent, the Secretary of State at the time, Brian kemp rewrote the rules on voter registration, purged more than three hundred thousand people from the voter rolls, and closed more than two hundred polling places across the state.

After that election, Stacy started a new organization called Fair Fight, dedicated to making sure everyone can vote and have their vote counted. It wasn't just that election that motivated Stacy. She was also spurred on by the work of her parents and grandparents to get started. I asked Stacy to share a story from her book, Our Time Is Now. That story is about a conversation she had during a visit with her grandmother in the middle of Stacy's campaign

for governor. We were just talking about the election and what was happening, and she was chiding me about, you know, whether I was taking care of myself. But we started talking about voting and and spontaneously I didn't know to ask about the story. She grabs my hand and she

tells me about the first time she voted. And she tells me that she was sitting in her bedroom in November of nineteen sixty three years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and you still had all of the ignominies of Jim Crow, all of the challenges of white folks who did not want this new thing to

be true, especially in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And so my grandfather and his brother were in the front room getting ready to go, and they called from my grandmother, and she tells me about sitting frozen on the bed and she just could not move. She was paralyzed. And she said that she just kept thinking about the dogs and the batons and the hoses, and just those mean men who had made their lives work denying her agency. And she did not believe that it was really different. And so,

you know, my grandfather, you know, calls for her. Finally comes back, and it's like, you know, he calls her, sugar honey. He's like, sugar, honey, come on, we've got to go vote. And my grandmother's like, I don't want to. And my grandfather reminds her that her son, at the age of fourteen my dad got arrested registering people to vote, that she and he had paid bail for their kids to get them out of jail, when they would do things because of their commitment to civil rights. Why would

you not now hold this power? And fundamentally, what she was telling me was that the power scared her. And what I think about every time I fight the fight for voter suppression. Why I pushed so hard for the senses to be completed by the communities who've been told to be afraid of it. It's the power is terrifying, the power to vote, the power to be seen. But fundamentally,

the power of citizenship is terrifying. And a woman who had raised her children to want it, who had done her part to make it so, I just didn't believe it was true. It's not enough to tell some when they have power. We've got to make that power real, and we've got to make sure people are prepared to wield it. You know, reading that story in your book,

I thought back to when I moved to Arkansas. I moved in late summer of ur and my then boyfriend was running for Congress, and I was teaching at the law school there and on weekends, I'd go out and knock on doors and ask people to vote for him. And I kept running into black women who said they hadn't paid their poll tax, and I said, well, there is no more poll tax, because oh yeah, there is. And I said, well, you know it's been struck down, it's been eliminated that you know, you can't be charged

a poll tax. And they look at me like, you know, what planet are you from. Of course they're going to stop us from voting. The other thing that would happen often with white women is I would knock on the door and I'd maybe be with a young volunteer, and I'd say I was, you know, here campaigning for you know, Bill Clinton or somebody else that I was campaigning for, and the women would say, my husband does the voting

in our house. You know, those two real world experiences, to me, really are in line with your experience and your understanding that the reason we are having this very intense and deep struggle over voting is because, at the end of the day, it is the single power that every citizen and has. So if people can be discouraged, can be frightened, can be intimidated, can have their votes stolen, not counted. You know, it does create a lot of

dissonance in people. They get scared, they get worried that maybe there's going to be some kind of terrible consequence for them trying to vote. So, how do you now see where we are here at this point in our history? And are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic? Are you both? What? What do you think? I described myself as an ameliorist. I've always loved the world amiliorg you to mitigate the harm. And I believe in shorthand that the glass is half full.

It's just probably poisoned. And so my job is to try to find the antidote. Our job is to try to find that antidote. Whether that antidote is justice, that antidote is mercy, if that antidote is investment. We've got to find a way to fix what's broken. But we can never believe that it won't be broken again. And I think that's why I'm not an optimist. Optimism presumes there's going to be some end state where good triumphs.

I've lived too long a life for that. But what I do know to be true is that it gets better. I mean, you you reference those women black and white. And I think about being in South Georgia having a conversation about folks going to vote and being told, well, we don't vote early because if you want to vote early, you've got to go to jail. And I was like, what do you mean. The only place to early vote was in the justice complex, which meant you had to

go to jail. And if you had a child who had a warrant, if somebody had been pulled aside, and in parts of Georgia where you were more likely to be arrested just because of your race, why would you risk your freedom to exercise your citizenship. And so my clare and call about voter suppression was in part to live out what you did in the election. With all the other instrumentalities that were arrayed against Americans in that election, you were the avatar. And I want us to be

really clear, you me any candidate. We are avatars for people's dreams, for their beliefs, for their values, for their demands for their life. And when voter suppression hits, it is not to deny me a job, you a job. It's not about the title. It's about the work that we were going to do for those people, and the righteous indignation that comes with suppression is because yeah, I

didn't get the title. Okay, what I'm angry about it those black women, those brown women, those white women, those young people who for the first time screwed their courage up and went inside that jail to cast their vote only to be told their vote wasn't going to be counted. And so I am an amelioris because I never believe that power will ever say you can have me, and that shared power is ever going to be permanent. But I believe in the permanence of trying. I do too.

I believe in the permanence of trying. That's my job. We'll be back right after this quick break. You know, That's exactly how I am. And you know, sometimes people get frustrated with folks like us because, you know, they think, well, you know, can't you just see we just waive the magic one, we run certain people for office and then everything changes. And I said, well, no, I don't know. I've read a lot of history, I've read the Bible, I've experienced a lot. I don't think that's how it works.

And I love your your phrase, ameliorist. You know, When some of us saw what happened in the Georgia primary this past spring, we worried that it was a dry run for the upcoming November election, not just in Georgia, but in a lot of other states where the Trump administration and the Republicans know that if there's a fair election and people are given the right to vote and that right is protected, they're not likely to get reelected. So what do you think about where we are now

in all the lawsuits were bringing. I'm supporting lawsuits through my group Onward Together and the Democracy Docket, the advocacy, You're doing everything that we are all so focused on. What worries you about the upcoming November election? What worries me is that Republicans know that their time is nigh, and when cornered, they are willing to do whatever they can to stave off the inevitable. And so we know that they have agreed to spend twenty million dollars fighting

these lawsuits. We know they're going to raise an army of fifty thou pull monitors to intimidate voters in ways they haven't been permitted to do since. But back to the amiliarist know fair fight exists, fair count exists, the Sawyer's Committee, the Leadership Council, the a c P. These exist because we know that we can fight back in ways that we had never organized around before, and we have to talk about this. You cannot solve a problem. You will not call out and call by name and

give people roadmap to understanding what it is. But the second part is you have to have some solutions. Litigation is a solution because the Lawyer's Committee, in the a c L you are winning these suits, they are getting changes made. The worst thing that can happen is that we get surprised by what they intend to do. I don't believe that every Republican is bad. I don't believe

every Democrat is good. But I do believe that the party that calls itself the GOP has thrown its lot in with fevery and suppression as opposed to running a fair race and letting the chips fall where they may. When the President of the United States says he can't win an election if every eligible citizen votes, we should take him at his word and test his theory. Sounds

like a plan to me, my friend. Thank you so much, Stacy, and keep going we're gonna be ameliorating in every way we know and hopefully taking our country back come November. It has been a delight. Thank you so much to Madame Secretary. Make sure to check out Stacy's new book called Our Time Is Now, Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America about how we can create a more equal country. This year, we lost two people who really understood how fundamental the right to vote is in

our democracy if we're going to keep a democracy. One was my friend John Lewis, and what a loss in the middle of a pandemic and at a time and we need heroes like John more than ever. There wasn't anybody who put his life on the line more often to stand up for the right to vote than John Lewis. The other loss was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I think about Ruth a lot because she changed the law. She

got constitutional interpretation that literally changed my life. You know, when I was a young woman, I couldn't even get a credit card in my own name. But she knocked down barriers and obstacles to make sure that equality meant something, and not just for women, but for all people. She was famous for her descents and I've been thinking a lot about the descent she made to a Supreme Court

decision in a case called Shelby. The holder back in that case struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, and Justice gins knew the decision would make it much more difficult for people to vote, especially people of color and young people, low income people, the elderly. And she said so in her descent. But she left us with a rallying cry that sums up so much of her philosophy on life. Here she is reading from that descent

from the bench. The great man who led the march from Selma to Montgomery, and they are called for the passage of the Voting Rights Act foresaw progress even in Alabama. The ak of the moral universe is long, he said, but it bends toward justice if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion. If there is a steadfast commitment to seeing the task through to completion, that a s and sums up Ruth Bader Ginsburg's life and work, and it gives the rest of us our

marching orders. There is no better way to pay tribute to Justice Ginsburg than to get out and vote and work as hard as you can to protect that right for everyone. This election could come down to the slimmest margin, take it from me, and the best way to win is to turn out in overwhelming numbers. So happy voting and onward we go. You and Me Both is brought

to you by I Heart Radio. We're produced by Julie Subran and Kathleen Russo, with help from Huma Aberdeen, Nikki etur Oscar Flores, Brianna Johnson, Nick Merrill, Lauren Peterson, Rob Russo, and Lona Valmorrow. Our engineer is Zack McNeice. Original music is by Forest Gray. If you like You and Me Both, don't keep it to yourself. Tell a friend. You can subscribe to You and Me Both on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

While you're there, leave us a review. I'd really appreciate it. We'd love to hear from you, so send us your questions, comments, or ideas for future shows at You and Me Both pod at gmail dot com. Come back next week when we're talking to some amazing women leaders, including the one and only Gloria Steinhum