The Battles We Pick David Shorr

After Tyre Nichols was killed by Memphis Police officers who had pulled him over for a trivial traffic infraction, City Councilwoman Michalyn Easter-Thomas "had never seen so many CNN cars and trucks and people in my life trying to see what was the next step for Memphis." With all that interest and scrutiny, colleagues on the Council assembled a package of police reforms. For Councilwoman Easter-Thomas, most notable was a big gap in the proposed ordinance: no reforms of the types of pretextual traffic stops that led to Nichols' death at police hands.

Finding herself cut off from the normal support she would usually get in crafting legislation, the councilwoman turned to Local Progress, an advocacy group that connects local elected officials with a network of peers around the country.  As Michalyn details in our conversation, Local Progress linked her with Philadelphia City Councilman Isaiah Thomas (no relation), who successfully sponsored a new ordinance keeping police there from using traffic stops for minor infractions like broken tail lights.  Actually, I met Michalyn through a Local Progress webinar last winter to highlight their new resources on Driving Equality Ordinances. 

Beyond Councilwoman Easter-Thomas' fascinating story of receiving legal advice from a city council a thousand miles away, what I found most interesting was her handling of the politics. First off, her decision to briefly step back when the police reform package went through without driving equality. Her instinct was that the omission would only become more of a glaring injustice. Next was her careful drafting of the driving equality ordinance. The core of any such legislation is a list of minor infractions that police are not supposed to stop drivers for. The councilwoman knew it was necessary to leave some natural items off the list (tinted windows or the smell of marijuana) or lose the support of others on the Council. Her assessment proved shrewd, given that her proposal ultimately was approved unanimously. We also talked about a topic I always find interesting: dealing with opponents spreading misinformation. 

One interesting angle on advocacy are the effort some people  devote to prodding certain key players to get more involved. In sectors like philanthropy, there can be a reluctance because it seems too political. As founder of the Center for Community Foundation Policy Leadership, longtime criminal justice reform advocate Stephen Saloom has been focused on encouraging and supporting community foundations to advocate on their issues.

As Stephen shared on the podcast, the strongest case for doing so traces back to these organizations' stated missions. Community foundations' missions typically commit them to the well-being of the local populace in the broadest terms—as broadly as any governmental body or public official. So it's only logical, Stephen argues, that community foundations should get engaged in questions of policy that affect the local community.

We talked about one of the deterrents that make organizations hesitant about taking up advocacy: tax laws prohibiting lobbying. But we also gave an immediate disclaimer that we are not tax lawyers offering counsel. For excellent info on such questions, we both recommend the Alliance For Justice's Bolder Advocacy program.  Next was a really interesting conversation about what constitutes politics in a democracy (something more basic than just partisan competition). 

And because of Stephen's extensive experience with criminal justice reform, we made sure to discuss his view of what progress has or hasn't been achieved since the advent of Black Lives Matter. While the horrific series of high-profile police killings of Black Americans has sparked some new awareness, Stephen pointed out how deeply entrenched the racial injustices of the system are—and how powerful are the politics of racist fear-stoking. 

First episode back after a hiatus of several months, so I needed a great guest.  Sarah Stachowiak is CEO of the Seattle-based evaluation consulting firm ORS Impact and has been an important role model for me and helped steer me toward becoming an evaluation consultant. Sarah's firm not only does great work for clients, but they provide vital thought leadership through the excellent resources they publish. Sarah and her colleagues advise some of philanthropy's most influential foundations, giving them a broad overview of the work of making change. In our conversation, For instance, Sarah offered an update on foundation attitudes toward supporting advocacy, a realm that some donors have approached with trepidation.

This episode was a chance to speak with someone who relates to advocacy as a social scientist and analyst, a great perspective to bring onto the podcast. Sarah and I talked about the challenges entailed in trying to change the deep-rooted narratives and assumptions that underlie the debates on so many issues. We talked about the trade-offs between seeking small incremental progress versus transformation of an unjust society. We talked about the problems of having a professional class of advocates, and why marginalized communities should have a greater agenda-setting role. We talked about “defensive advocacy” and what organizers do during political tough times. And we concluded with a discussion of clearly defining terms in our field, and why that’s important.  

This episode is a special holiday edition featuring a conversation with my daughter when they were home for Thanksgiving. Sadie Bender Shorr is in the early phase of a career in social work, currently working in the University of Arizona's counseling center and planning to begin studies next fall for an MSW.

Social workers talk about the micro and macro levels—which translate, respectively, as service provision versus advocacy—and that's where we started our discussion. For instance health care reform makes a huge difference in opening possibilities for the uninsured through new programs, rules, and resources. But it takes additional on-the-ground work to help people actually receive medical care. 

Sadie explained that much of their own work is a matter of helping University of Arizona students navigate the paperwork and hoops the students encounter as obstacles. With Sadie's special interest in transgender and other LGBTQ people, there is often an issue with students' reliance on parents' health insurance. Many of them haven't yet come out to their parents. 

As another challenge of prodding bureaucracies to truly serve the populations they're supposed to help, Sadie talked about their earlier job as a case manager for unaccompanied minor migrants. That position with a nonprofit family services agency entailed facilitating family unification for kids with relatives in the United States as well as advocating for kids in a group home who didn't have that option.

This episode's guest is a journalist rather than an advocate, the author of one of the best books focused on advocacy work. Political reporter Sasha Issenberg's The Engagement tells the story of the 25-year fight for same-sex marriage, documenting the various efforts, strategies, course-adjustments, and outcomes from the perspectives of proponents and opponents alike. 

Sasha says he was drawn to the subject particularly because of the way same-sex marriage burst onto the agenda quite suddenly in the early-1990s—then coming to the fore as a hot-button topic in national politics. It was fascinating to hear Sasha talk about the complexity of a struggle playing out in Washington as well as state capitals, while also alternating between the judicial and political arenas. Sasha said when he started this project, he assumed proponents would have "this big national plan, but there wasn't one." He said it was a fight where both sides were simultaneously on offense and defense on different fronts.

Sasha recounted a key messaging shift by marriage proponents going from a fairly dry and clinical argument for legal protections and eventually opting for an emotionally resonant case for recognizing two people's commitment to each other. In our discussion of the differences between litigation and political battles, Sasha stressed the higher stakes of losing in court and being stuck with a negative legal precedent. 

One thing that enriches Issenberg's account in The Engagement is the way personalities play into advocacy and strategy. Sasha begins the book by focusing on a Hawaiian LGBTQ activist who decided it would be dramatic to hold a mass wedding to celebrate gay pride. Bill Woods' impulsive gadfly style won him few fans or allies among methodical litigators, but he played a crucial role as an originator—though he's often left out of other accounts of the struggle. As Issenberg told me, "We would not have had the Obergefell Supreme Court decision in 2015 if it hadn't been for Woods starting this ball in motion in 1990."

The podcast ends with the same question as Issenberg's book: the rights of trans people that were left aside by the marriage equality struggle. Sasha predicted that the fight for trans rights will gain momentum as the public takes the cue from science that gender is an innate part of identity just as sexual orientation is. 

Election law attorney Yael Bromberg is principal of her own firm and litigation practice.  With a specialty in student voting rights, she serves as outside counsel to the Andrew Goodman Foundation—which works on college campuses around the country to promote student voting and is legacy of one of the activists murdered in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964. Yael teaches election law at Rutgers University Law School and works with the Harvard Kennedy School’s William Trotter Collaborative on a multi-campus voting rights course drawing students from three historically black colleges and universities.   
The episode features a great discussion of the Republicans' voter fraud myth and how their voting suppression efforts resemble the multi-headed Hydra monster from Greek mythology. Yael said we have to confront that monster with the full range of tools—a mixture of legal and political tactics—and she gave examples from her work. I especially liked Yael’s idea of redefining public confidence in elections as a matter of maximum participation and the most inclusive electorate possible.

Yael also talked about her scholarship to highlight student voters as a protected class under the Constitution’s 26th Amendment, which recently led to the introduction of the Youth Voting Rights Act by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Nikema Williams.