Fight for Democracy: Steve Pierson
September 15th, 2022
“It is up to us. We are the ones that will make change.”
Steve Pierson is the host of the How We Win podcast. He’s an activist, community organizer, and trainer, who started as a “class of 2016” volunteer. He’s currently an elected California Democratic Party Delegate and chairs their Organizing Committee. We discuss the nitty gritty of Get Out the Vote, phone banking, and a whole host of other boots on the ground politics as we head toward the midterms.
According to a recent NBC poll, threats against democracy are perceived to be the number one issue facing voters. Help fight for our democracy! Before the midterms, check your voter registration status, be an influencer in your circle about voting, and–if possible–volunteer to knock on doors. And finally: VOTE on election day!
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Steve Pierson
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis and Sara Burningham
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Steve Pierson Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for big business. For a free 14-day trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features, go to Shopify.com/hopeful.
Mila Atmos: [00:00:25] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos. As we slide into fall and the real downhill run into the midterms, I've been reflecting on the kind of democracy reform journey we've been on on the show over the past few months. As you've probably noticed, we've stepped away from organizing our episodes into themed seasons. But nonetheless, I see a definite theme threaded through a lot of our episodes. In 2022, we've been turning our civic action energies toward reforming American democracy, focusing on things like open primaries, ranked choice voting, ballot measures, which are independent, nonpartisan efforts to invigorate democracy. But we're now really approaching the ninth inning of the midterms. So we're going to pivot and talk shoe leather, political organizing, get out the vote efforts, and what the landscape's looking like. Steve Pierson is a musician turned serious progressive operative. He's co-host of the How We Win Podcast, California Democratic Committee Organizing Committee chair, and formerly of Swing Left. And it's my hope that all our listeners, whatever your political persuasion, come away with some tools from this conversation. Because while this show is increasingly wearing its progressive heart on its sleeve, I truly believe our democracy is stronger when everyone participates. Steve, welcome to Future Hindsight. Thank you for joining us.
Steve Pierson: [00:02:06] I'm so happy to be here and thrilled that you led with former musician. I don't get to talk about music enough, but we won't do that now. But anyway.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:15] That's all good. You can you can weave it in if you want to. There are some things that you do in political organizing that is informed by your experience as a musician.
Steve Pierson: [00:02:25] Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, when I jumped in as a volunteer organizing a house parties for swing left and training seminars and meetings, for sure
my experience being up on stage and talking to people and as a musician and as a coach and all of my life experience, you know, put me in a unique position to really do important work organizing communities. And that's something that I didn't know I could do before. I just jumped in and did it. So everyone has some special skills that they can apply to their activism.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:58] Yeah, that's right. That's right. We say that all the time. The needs are vast, as we have all learned, and everybody can do something depending on what their backgrounds are. Right. So as I kind of hinted at just now, I'm going to preface this conversation with a disclaimer because we are about civic engagement and we very consciously avoid horse race politics. But I want to ask you about the political landscape right now. There are a couple of narratives that seem to be emerging. One is the usual midterm story where the party in power gets smacked, because generally that's just what happens in midterms. And Joe Biden has these kind of low approval ratings and inflation is really hitting people in the pocketbook. But then there's also this other emergent story about Democratic momentum. If I think back to say May, there was basically the infrastructure bill to point to and not much else. But in the last weeks of summer, we had some big legislative wins and also Democrats, or maybe just women across the political spectrum, seemingly mobilized by the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe versus Wade. What's your read on this? Are you persuaded by either of those stories or do you have another one?
Steve Pierson: [00:04:12] Yeah, well, Roerage is absolutely real. And we are seeing, as you mentioned, record numbers of young women registering to vote for the first time. We saw the results of the Kansas referendum on abortion rights, which brought Democrats out to the polls in a very red state. We just saw a New York special election that a Democrat won, which was a great bellwether. You mentioned historical precedent in the midterms. We are living in unprecedented times, and I've always thought that this was a very different midterm than what we've seen in the past. We've never seen these kind of outright attacks on our democracy that we're seeing. We've never seen a president, you know, stealing top secret documents and keeping them at his home slash resort slash beach club. I mean, there's so much going on that's different. So I really do see a lot of momentum. You mentioned low approval ratings for Biden. They have gone up a lot in the recent weeks and last month. Inflation is going down. The job market is strong. And we've had so many wins as Democrats that we can point to. It's
pretty rare, actually, that we enter an election cycle with such a clear, honest narrative of what we stand for, what we've already achieved as Democrats, what we are giving the American people, and also the basic threat to our democracy that Republicans, sadly, have been jumping on the MAGA Republican bandwagon and seemed to continue to support Donald Trump. So, you know, for every good story, you need a hero, you need your successes and you need your villains, the people that you're fighting against. That might be oversimplifying this, but in my lifetime, I haven't really seen a clearer narrative going into an election.
Mila Atmos: [00:06:04] Right. And I agree, actually, there are some really clear talking points here, especially about the legislative wins. Out of those this summer, which one is your favorite that you think is really going to help people turn out?
Steve Pierson: [00:06:16] Wow, that's a great question. I'm looking forward to interviewing on our podcast, a young man named Santiago Mayer, who is one of the executive directors of Voters of Tomorrow, and I'm really interested in how younger voters are going to be showing up and what issues are continue to be important to them. So to to your question, I know that the environment is incredibly important to younger voters, as it should be to all of us. And common sense gun law reform is very, very important. And we've seen wins on both of those fronts. You know, we had the Inflation Reduction Act, which had the largest investment in climate in our history. I mean, just a massive investment that really is going to position us once again as a leader in the world for fighting climate change and protecting our environment and giving us the resources to really make meaningful change there. So that's very, very powerful. I'm very excited about that. And then the gun reform that was passed is not what we all want. I believe it was just recently, Biden made a statement that he is going to pass a assault weapons ban as well, that he's done that before and he intends to do that again. A couple of senators have been blocking the ability to pass the kind of more common sense gun laws that 80, 90% of Americans favor. But at the slimmest of majorities, we were able to actually close some gun loopholes and pass some gun safety laws, which are going to save a lot of lives. And these are issues that unfortunately affect our children and young people on on a very, very real day-to-day basis. So I'm interested to talk to Santiago and see how young people are responding to these new laws.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:04] Yeah, that'll be really interesting. I look forward to listening to that when it comes out. So also, since we're talking about messaging, I'm thinking a lot about one of our previous guest, Anat Shenker-Osorio, who really.
Steve Pierson: [00:08:16] Oooh, I love her.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:17] stressed the idea. Right. She really stressed the need really to bring positive messages to voters and tell people what you're for. And you mentioned Trump and the various legal cases he's facing and of course, the January 6th committee's ongoing investigation. We know that the former president was an incredibly animating figure, and we keep hearing that we can't keep running against Trump. Do you agree, like if you talk about messaging here?
Steve Pierson: [00:08:44] Well, Anat for sure is my messaging guru. She's brilliant. And I was really happy to hear Biden really incorporating some of what her suggestions were in recent campaign stops. He was railing against the MAGA Republicans, which is an important distinction to make. And this is what Anat says. It's like don't rail against Republicans writ large, but, you know, categorize the MAGA Republicans strategically. There's a lot of Republicans who don't like what's happening to their party. And just to cast that aspersion over the entire Republican Party closes the door on bringing some people over who may not be supporters of Donald Trump. And so Biden has started to incorporate that into his rhetoric. He called the MAGA Republicans semi-fascists, which was a little bit of a hedge, but at least he he did call out fascism where it's so clear. And then, you know, like you said, he's going on his peacock tour touting the accomplishments that he rightfully should be touting because, you know, honestly, he was not my first choice for president. He was not my second, third, or fourth choice. But he has done more than really any president in my lifetime with the slimmest of majorities. There's been some transformative legislation that's passed. So we should be talking about what we're for. Then the last part of your question, should we be talking about Trump and, you know, bringing that up instead of just focusing on the positive achievements? Absolutely. 100% we have to, because the criming that has gone on, the criminality that we are seeing, the extent to which he has with complete impunity and no expectations for any repercussions, just trashed our laws. We have to call it out. We have to keep him accountable. It's the only thing that we can do to preserve our democracy, to preserve the rule of law, and to preserve justice. Because if we don't,
then we are setting up a very, very dangerous precedent. So I believe all of those things can exist at the same time.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:56] I do think it's tricky right, this line between holding him accountable and letting this drama hijack the narrative. In everyday use, I think we're getting better at it, you know, meaning the mainstream media. But that's really been a challenge for Democrats and for American democracy ever since he walked down the gold escalator at Trump Tower. It's just so hard to break free. What do you think is the effect on the investigations and the legal troubles that the former president is facing in terms of campaigns and voters?
Steve Pierson: [00:11:30] Yeah, well, you're right about the mainstream media. They are drawn like bees to honey, to any kind of controversy. And the Inflation Reduction Act passed and Mar-A-Lago was searched. And all we saw was, you know, overhead shots of Mar-a-Lago. And so that just reinforces what we can do as a citizens, as as activists, is to get that narrative out there, make sure people know what is in the Inflation Reduction Act and what Democrats have done. Because you and I both know that when these communities start seeing the positive effects of this legislation, Republicans are going to be there, saying, you know, look what you're getting in your community under my watch. And not a single Republican voted for this legislation, but they will take credit for it. So in terms of what this does to the electorate, these investigations, there was a recent NBC poll that showed the number one issues that are resonating with voters, which used to always be the economy. Like James Carville says, "it's the economy, stupid." In this poll, it was threats against our democracy. Democracy was the number one issue facing voters, followed by the economy. So I guess "it's democracy, stupid." That's what, you know, people are really waking up to. The January 6th committee hearings have done an amazing job of laying out exactly what happened for the American people. They've been watched by millions and millions of citizens and this is what is on the ballot come November.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:03] Well, I think that's very encouraging, right. That democracy in and of itself is having this resurgence in I don't want to say popularity, because that sounds wrong. But in terms of being a priority for people, right? I mean.
Steve Pierson: [00:13:16] Democracy is back, Baby!
Mila Atmos: [00:13:19] That's it. Democracy or bust. That's it. But this kind of brings me to an ongoing theme in political circles. There's a plea from the left to stop focusing so much energy on flipping centrists, right, or to stop courting anti-Trump Republicans so hard. Where do you stand on that one? Is it just about getting out your base? So in which case, running against Trump is maybe kind of working? Or are you trying to expand the tent?
Steve Pierson: [00:13:43] Well, Democrats always have been a, quote unquote big tent party. And, you know, it's interesting when you ask that question, I'm thinking about Marjorie Taylor Greene's recent comments that she doesn't think Republicans should be courting centrists and independents. So I guess there's a little bit of that on on both sides. I tend to think that we run on the issues that resonate with the wide swath of voters. Also, when candidates are campaigning in their districts, they're very different. You know, we have a very diverse country with a lot of different issues. And depending on where you live, you have different priorities. So representatives who are running, especially in these House races, in their own districts, really need to listen to their voters, to their constituents, and they know the issues better than we do. So I live in Los Angeles in what I call my blue double bubble. You know, the kind of progressives that we are here, you know, may not be the same as some of these kind of purple districts where they really have to run with a broader coalition of voters. So there's not one message that we can point to nationally, especially when it comes to these congressional races, that is going to really resonate. Tactically, as we get closer and closer to the election, the persuasion conversations become less effective, I would say, because people have pretty much made up their minds and the turnout conversations are the ones that we really need to focus on. We do have a lot of what used to be called low propensity voters, which I like to call high potential voters, people that don't get reached out to a lot by campaigns. And when we have more people volunteering, more people knocking on doors and making phone calls and reaching out, then we have the capacity to reach out to these voters who often get left behind. But they're Democrats. The issues that are important to us are the issues that are important to them, and they just need a little bit more contact and persuasion to come out to the polls. So we're getting down to the wire. We've got, you know, only a couple of months before the election. So we're really kind of starting to veer into where it's harder to reach out to
undecided voters. And we really need to turn out not just our base, but these higher potential voters.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:04] We are taking a quick break from the conversation to thank our sponsors. When we come back, Steve Pierson has more on the secret to successful campaigning. What's the difference between a winning and a losing campaign? And what's the most effective thing you or I, everyday citizens, can do to influence the outcome of an election?
Mila Atmos: [00:16:26] But first... That sound makes me smile. That's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the all in one commerce platform to start, run, and grow your business. Supercharge your knowledge, your sales, and your success. For a free 14-day trial, go to shopify.com/hopeful, all lowercase. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving you the resources once reserved for big business customized for you with a great looking online store that brings your idea to life and tools to manage and drive sales. Making your idea real opens endless possibilities. I love how Shopify makes it easy for anyone to successfully run your own business. Shopify powers millions of entrepreneurs from first sale to full scale, and every 28 seconds, a small business owner makes their first sale on Shopify. Get started by building and customizing your online store with no coding or design experience. Access powerful tools to help you find customers, drive sales and manage your day to day. Gain knowledge and confidence with resources to help you succeed. Plus, with 24/7 support, you're never alone. More than a store, Shopify grows with you. This is possibility powered by Shopify. Go to shopify.com/hopeful, all lowercase, for a free 14 day trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Start selling on Shopify today. Go to Shopify.com/hopeful right now. Now let's return to my conversation with Steve Pierson.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:16] Well, here's a question about the things that work and don't work. All politics is local, right? But what are the campaigns that you're watching and learning from, the ones that offer lessons that can be applied elsewhere?
Steve Pierson: [00:18:29] Well, I can talk about a couple of campaigns here in Southern California, because we have some really important races to flip, which will be instrumental in holding on to the House. One is Christy Smith's campaign against
Republican Mike Garcia up in the Santa Clarita, Palmdale area just above Los Angeles. And it's been a purple district that was held by Republicans for a long time, even though it went for Hillary and for Biden. And the former representative, Katie Hill, flipped that district in our 2018 wave. And that was a really exciting change for that district. And when she had to resign, Christy Smith has been running, and Mike Garcia slipped in there by 333 votes, a very small margin. So Christy is running a very strong campaign focusing on the issues that are important to that community. As I said, there is a lot of law enforcement up there, a lot of military, there's Boeing. And so you have industry and they can be more centered and sometimes conservative, some of the voters up there. So she addresses those issues, too. At the same time, she doesn't shy away from what's important to her: abortion rights, women's autonomy, health care, education. She has a strong education background. And so she she runs on on her strengths. She runs on her progressive issues that she believes in. But she also understands the needs of that community way better than Mike Garcia, who, by the way, has, you know, voted alongside Trump and has, you know, voted alongside the insurrectionists as well. That's one example of how we do it down in Orange County. You have, again, an entire area that we flipped for the first time. It used to be called the orange curtain, and we turned it blue and then it's kind of turned purple again. And we need to do the same thing down there.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:25] So let's take another run at that same question. What are the biggest mistakes in the last couple of cycles? Which are the campaign missteps that we should all learn from?
Steve Pierson: [00:20:36] That's a great question. I don't know if it's a mistake. I'll tell you the difference in Christy Smith's campaign. I mentioned that she lost by 333 votes during a global pandemic when all of our organizing was online, because we didn't want to put voters and our volunteers health at risk by knocking on doors and doing that kind of traditional campaign work. Republicans didn't feel the same way. Mike Garcia's campaign didn't feel the same way. So they went out and they knocked on doors. They knocked on a lot of doors during this global health crisis. And as a result, they won by 333 votes. Well, that's really one weekend at the doors if we have a bunch of volunteers knocking on doors. So really the huge difference in that campaign was our capacity to reach out to voters and in a, you know, sort of not real fair playing field because we actually respect people's health. And the Mike Garcia campaign did not. You know,
we've had a lot of redistricting. That's a thing all over the country. We have new districts. Congressional campaigns are trying to make themselves known. Incumbents are trying to make themselves known to new voters who hadn't voted for them in the past. And that's always a challenge, especially when those voters may have been voting for Republican in the past. That's not really a mistake. That's just a comment. Other than that, we're perfect. So I don't, I can't point to any mistakes.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:00] I love it. I love it. And yes, it's all perfect. I have a question here about deep canvassing. You know, you're talking about knocking on doors, door to door. So talk to us about what deep canvassing is and where and how can it work?
Steve Pierson: [00:22:15] So that's a really interesting question. Again, I will bring up our mutual friend Anat Shenker-Osorio, who has done some incredible work with deep canvassing and had really good results there. When I started organizing in 2017, I helped swing left with a deep canvassing pilot program in Simi Valley, which is a very conservative area above Los Angeles here. And the purpose of deep canvassing is to have longer conversations with voters. So generally a campaign's going to look for quantity, reaching a lot of people. So you go and you ID them, you ask a few questions, you give them information about the candidate, and then you move on to the next house, right? You want to hit as many people as possible. With deep canvassing, you're actually looking to have much longer conversations with people and build that connection. And you may start out with an ID question like, would you support a Democrat in this district? And then they say no, because you're sometimes reaching out to a Republican in this in this case, and then in this pilot program, we were bringing up shared values as opposed to shared issues, because what the research shows is it is very hard to have fact-based, issue-based conversations with people that don't agree with you, because our tribal instincts just keep our heels dug in, even when we're confronted with facts, maybe even especially when we're confronted with facts, because if we change our opinions or we go away from what our community believes, what our tribe believes, then we are isolated, right? We are out on our own.
Steve Pierson: [00:23:55] And that's a scary place for any of us to be. But when we talk about shared values like freedom and work hard and make a good life and family and stuff like that, stuff that ties us all together, then we can build that connection. So with deep canvassing, the idea in political deep canvassing is to share what, like, ask, what
resonates with you? Does freedom resonate with you? Does family resonate with you? Then share a personal story that relates to that for yourself. Try to create that common thread with somebody. So that's a long winded explanation. I'll say that I have a lot of hope for that work that deep canvassing can do in the long term to bridge this incredible gulf that is between us as political parties and as citizens, as humans, here right now, because all of the work that we've done that I've done with it has shown that what started out as maybe a contentious, nice way to put it, contentious conversation ended up with both sides saying, hey, you're not so bad and you're not so bad either. And we have a lot in common. But what didn't happen, at least with this pilot program, was any persuasion. At the end of the conversation, they would ask the question again, Would you vote for a Democrat? And they were like, No, I would never vote for a Democrat, but I like you and we have a lot in common and you're okay, you know?
Mila Atmos: [00:25:22] So it's a good starting point, right? Because then suddenly you can have conversation. Whereas before you couldn't.
Steve Pierson: [00:25:27] Yeah, that's right. That's right. So I believe that we need to keep doing that work. But as I said earlier, as we get closer to the election, it's really not a good place to put our resources because we need to focus on turning out the voters who we know are going to vote for us. And and we only have so many volunteers. Look, if we can get everyone not just to vote, but to volunteer and to go out there and do the important and really fun and gratifying work of knocking on doors. Believe it or not, it's really fun and gratifying work. It really is. If we can get more people doing that, then we have the capacity to really have these great, important conversations. But so often we just don't have enough volunteers to do that.
Mila Atmos: [00:26:10] Well, let's talk about voter turnout, then. Yeah. Turnout in 2020 and the middle of a pandemic was truly historic. What did you learn from that election? Was that a blip and what are your predictions for this November? You just mentioned we don't have enough volunteers.
Steve Pierson: [00:26:24] I mentioned that we don't have enough volunteers to do full on deep canvassing programs, in my opinion. But what I am seeing now is volunteers coming together in a big way. There was a lot of burnout after the 2020 election and then the Georgia special election. As you mentioned, we had historic turnout. We got
very creative. We all of a sudden were organizing digitally. And I was working with Swing Left at the time, and we did phone banks where we had literally thousands of people on a Zoom meeting, phone banking together. It was insane. It was great. You know, we literally broke phone banks in Florida and in Texas and these places that we were calling.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:05] Wait, wait. I have to ask you, what does that mean to break the phone bank?
Steve Pierson: [00:27:09] We had so many people coming on to the dialers that the dialers just you know, we blew up the capacity. They had to increase the capacity for the phone calls because we had so many volunteers calling. It was really, really wonderful. It was a temporary blip. It was frustrating for, you know, about half an hour until we got the dollar back up and running. But, you know, the attendance exceeded our expectations. I saw a big lull in that after the election, and I'm not going to lie. It was discouraging. Like at first it's like, yes, please rest. It's been a lot of organizing for a lot of years. This is the work of being a citizen, right? This isn't something that we just do every now and then or on elections. But this is our work as citizens is to be involved in our communities, to be involved in campaigns and to help fight for our democracy, which, as I said, we know is is everyone's first priority right now. But it's a marathon, right? It's not a sprint. You have to pace yourself.
Steve Pierson: [00:28:04] What I saw after the Dobbs decision and the repeal of Roe v Wade was another resurgence in volunteer activity that always precedes the elections. And so that's really the bellwether I look at, because I'm in those zoom rooms where the phone banks are happening. I'm in campaign offices helping launch canvasses so I can see the volunteer enthusiasm and I'm seeing it now. I'm seeing it in a big way. And those results, as I said, we saw them in New York's special election with Pat Ryan and in Kansas and and all over the country in these primary elections. So I am encouraged. I'm very encouraged coming into the midterms that we are ramping up and we are seeing the kind of volunteer enthusiasm we need to see. But I'm never going to tell somebody that we're okay and that we're comfy and that we don't need you because we need everybody. We need to make sure we protect our democracy. We need to make sure, I'll say fascists, Biden might say semi fascists, do not win. So please do step up and volunteer.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:06] That's good advice. So we are dropping this episode before National Voter Registration Day. And so if you have not registered, you should most definitely register to vote. And in terms of volunteering, you said that it's fun to knock on doors, that phone banking has broken the platform, there are so many people...
Steve Pierson: [00:29:30] We fixed the platform. Mila Atmos: [00:29:31] You fixed the platform... Steve Pierson: [00:29:31] It's okay, now.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:32] But what is, what is maybe the like let's say if you are, if you've never volunteered before, what is the most fun way, or what is the easiest way to get engaged?
Steve Pierson: [00:29:41] Great question. There's a lot of great ways to get engaged and there's a lot of easy ways to do it. You mentioned voter registration. That's the first thing you should do is check your voter registration. Recently, Fair Fight sent out an alert that voters were being purged off the rolls in Georgia. And this is happening in a lot of Republican states. So you may have friends and family who think they are registered and they've been kicked off of the rolls and they need to reregister. So reaching out to your friends and family, you are an influencer. You are the most powerful influencer in your own circle. So don't be shy about talking to your friends and family. That's first and foremost. Secondly, there's a lot of voter contact methods that are very effective. There's something for everyone we work with. Vote Forward, which writes letters to voters. And that's like if you're shy about knocking on doors or or you don't live close to a swing district where knocking on doors is going to be effective, you can write letters to voters from the comfort of your own home. They're really easy. They're really, really effective. They are second only to knocking on doors in effectiveness.
Mila Atmos: [00:30:44] I have a question about that. How do you know that letter writing is effective?
Steve Pierson: [00:30:49] Great question. They've done a lot of research around the letters that they write, Vote Forward has. In partnership with the Analyst Institute, which is a great research group that does a lot of testing around voter contact methods. And what they found is that this... Vote Forward letters are a combination of like social pressure language that's already written into the letter. And then you write in your own personal "why voting is important to you" message on there and you hand write the address on the outside of the envelope too, and they strategically send them at the time when they're going to be the most effective, too. So we're seeing off the top of my head, it's around a 1.6, 1.7 point swing for voters. That might not seem like a lot, but that is an incredibly large field margin. When you talk about a toss up race or a race that's just, you know, one point difference between the Republican and the Democrat. So in terms of effectiveness, it's canvassing, it's letter writing, the relational organizing where you're, as I mentioned earlier, reaching out to your own friend and family, getting three people to come to the polls with you, something called vote tripling. That's very effective. Texting is still effective, although I will say in terms of volunteers, people like to text because it's a pretty easy thing to do. So typically campaigns get a lot of volunteers texting. They don't have enough people knocking on doors. So if you have the capacity to knock on doors, it's a really great thing to do. And then phone banking, of course, we're seeing diminishing return on phone banking, but what phone banking really does do still that's very, very important is clean the lists up for the other kind of voter contact methods like canvassing. So they make the canvassing more effective because you're seeing people through phone banking and finding out where your canvassing targets are going to be. So there's something.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:47] That's terrific.
Steve Pierson: [00:32:47] Yeah, there's something for everyone.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:49] A lot of, a lot of ideas. We always ask our guests, what are two things that you could be doing? And you've just given us five things so that every every day citizens can do.
Steve Pierson: [00:32:59] I've got more! But I'll say on our show on How We Win every week, we give you a to-do list. So every week we have a couple of things for people to do. So the idea of the show is to get people involved and to action and then, you know,
they can listen and be inspired by our guests and then get a couple of practical things to do every week.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:17] That's great. We're aiming for the same things here. We want people to be engaged, both you and I. Let's talk about how you fit into this story. You talked a little bit about it, starting with Swing Left house parties, but how did you get involved with politics? What drew you in?
Steve Pierson: [00:33:32] I was peripherally involved and did like volunteering, phone banking, stuff like that. I'd never knocked on a door really until Donald Trump was elected. I grew up in D.C. in a political family. My father was counsel to President Johnson and I grew up around politics but came out to California and as you said, was a musician, worked in the film industry and entertainment, and that was my gig. But Donald Trump got elected and just like so many other people, I consider myself class of November 2016. You know, it was devastating and devastating for my wife and my young daughter. And I knew I had to do something mostly for my own sanity. Honestly, I say this on our show all the time. Action is the best antidote for anxiety. I had to get into action and swing left. It just launched. It really resonated with me because it was an opportunity for a regular person who hadn't really been involved in politics to really have agency and start organizing on their own. I started a house party that simply because I didn't see the little box where you could limit the number of attendees became the biggest house party in the country. When Swing Left launched, I had to move it to...
Mila Atmos: [00:34:44] Congratulations.
Steve Pierson: [00:34:45] Thanks. Thanks. I was like, Oh, okay, maybe we'll move it outside. Okay, we need to find another venue. I ended up putting it in a church hall down the street. We had about 200 people show up to this event and I just kind of like took that and ran with it. I didn't really even mean to, honestly. People started calling me up because my phone number was attached to that and saying, "Hey, I understand you're swing, you're organizing swing left groups in Los Angeles. You know, will you come speak at this meeting?" And I was like, okay, sure. I guess I'm doing that now. Right. But what, you know what I didn't realize for so many years when I would watch the news and I would see what was happening in politics. To see what is happening in our country and be so upset about it and think, well, what can I do? You know, I'm just
like, I'm not involved in that. How can I make an impact? I didn't think, I really didn't think that I had a voice or an impact and I was so wrong because all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other, be willing to step in to the organizing pool just a little bit, and you'll find that you really have a lot to share, a lot to give, and you can make a really, really big impact. And that has been so richly rewarding and important to me. It's changed my life forever that I just couldn't go back. And that's why I started getting involved. And, and now, as you mentioned, I, I chair our organizing committee for the California Democratic Party and get to be on the front lines with all of these amazing activists, this incredible community, being in this community with people who are doing this work, it is painful but joyful at the same time. It is invigorating and demoralizing at the same time, you get all the feels, but I wouldn't trade it in for anything because it's just the best community, the best people that I've ever known, and I'm proud to be a member of it.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:37] Oh, that's so inspiring. I think really the main takeaway here for me in the things that you just said is that our voices have power and that we can exercise our voice, our power, in our democracy. And I think that a lot of people just, they don't know that we have the capacity to influence our elections, to shape the kind of government that we want to elect, the kind of leaders that reflect our values... All that is at our fingertips. And we need to just get in there.
Steve Pierson: [00:37:09] Yeah, not only do we have that capacity, but it is up to us. We are the ones that will make change. We are the ones that change the narrative. And so, you know, that's exactly why I started the How We Win podcast, because I just wanted people to know that. I wanted people to know what I experienced, that if they, you know, step out of their comfort zone a little bit, they really have the power to affect change.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:36] Hear, hear. So as we are rounding out our conversation here today, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Steve Pierson: [00:37:43] I love that question. I am incredibly hopeful right now as as we talked about what we have going into the midterms, I feel honest momentum, this blue wind, blue wave. There's a lot of blue stuff at our backs right now and it's really exciting. My heart breaks for the assault on on the rights of our citizens, on the rights of
women's autonomy, on the oppression that our black and brown citizens continue to face at the hands of Republicans who are literally making it harder for them to vote. And we have a lot to overcome. It's sometimes hard to be hopeful when you see literal fascism coming into power in our country and you think we would know better. We think that we could learn from our history. But I'm inspired by the work that people are doing. I am incredibly grateful for the work Democrats have done with the slimmest of majorities in power. And I'm excited for what happens if we can get a couple more senators and get rid of the filibuster. Hold on to the House. Imagine the kind of transformative legislation, the real change that we can have over the next couple of years. We can pass the voting rights legislation that we weren't able to pass. We can pass stronger gun regulations that 80 to 90% of Americans, including Republicans, believe in. We can solidify women's autonomy, their right to make their own health care choices, which just seems crazy that that we have to do that, but we can do all of those things, and so much more. So that gives me a lot of hope and excitement. Genuine excitement for our future.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:28] Yeah. Thank you. That is very exciting. Thank you very much for being on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Steve Pierson: [00:39:35] Always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much for having me.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:38] Steve Pierson is a co-host of the How We Win podcast and California Democratic Committee Organizing Committee Chair. Next week on Future Hindsight. We are talking to Jason Stanley. He's the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale and the author of five books, including How Propaganda Works and most recently, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.
Jason Stanley: [00:40:06] You can't think of a fascist social and political movement as a made up just of people who are fascists. It's rather that there's the business community who supports it. There's the social conservatives. The group that supports a fascist social and political movement is made up of lots of people who themselves are not fascistic in their ideology. It's just they see the fascists as getting things done for them.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:30] That's next time on Future Hindsight.
ours,
The Democracy Group: [00:41:06] This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.
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