Listen Now

At this time in 2019, while many organizations across the country were gearing up to take one one of the most contentious and important presidential election cycles in history, no one could have imagined that they would also have to do all of this work while figuring out how to reach out to, engage, and mobilize volunteers and voters during a global pandemic that has devastated the country. Another change is that this year Arizona has become a battleground state. In this episode we talk to Alex Steele, a veteran in electoral campaigns and who served as the Campaign Director of Arizona Ready, a grassroots campaign with the goal to recruit and train thousands of volunteers in Arizona to take on the Trump/Pence campaign. We discuss what campaigning has been like in 2020, what has been more challenging, what has been easier, and what we can take away from all of it.

Sharhonda Bossier, the Deputy Director of Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC), talks to us about her experience with anti-blackness as she grew up and what it looks like now in her work where she is trying to create safe spaces for educators of color where they are vastly outnumbered.

This episode Luis talks to Luis Heredia, the current Executive Director for the Arizona Education Association, the largest labor union in Arizona. Through his experience in congressional offices, as a delegate to the DNC, and long history of working with a lot of the political talent in the country, he talks about how Republicans continue to implement tactics that assure they keep power squarely in their corner.

Mary Moran is the founder of Our Voice, Nuestra Voz, an organization based in NOLA that works with Black and Brown families to ensure quality education for their children. In this episode, Mary talks about her experience working with communities that both preserve and curate a deep history of Black People but also are seeing a new wave of immigrants displaced by violence in Central America.

Gabby Seay is the Director of Political Action at 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, one of the largest labor unions in the country, representing across five states and Washington, D.C. in the northeastern area of the country. She shares with us how the current pandemic has hit the most vital front-line workers and how unions that try to protect those workers have had to shift their work over the years. Gabby also shares how she navigates the struggle for power for the community that happens bot during and outside of election cycles.

Our host, Luis Avila has a candid conversation with Marisa Franco, co-founder and Director of Mijente, an online organizing tool for Latinx and Chicanx activists. Marisa is a Latinx rights advocate and community organizer who went from growing up in the small town of Guadalupe, AZ, to running national campaigns. In this episode she talks about what pushed her to become a leader and how she created an organization that manages to always make its supporters feel like they are a part of something much larger than themselves. Support this podcast