politics4thepeople

On Wednesday, May 13th, Cathy Stewart interviewed Katie Fahey, Executive Director of The People and author David Daley in a special Facebook Live event on The People’s Facebook page. They discussed Daley’s new book, UNRIGGED: How Americans are Battling Back to Save Democracy. Chapter 5 is devoted to Katie Fahey and “Michigan’s Redistricting Revolution”. You can watch the full interview in the video above.

During the interview, Cathy posed the following question:

Cathy: I wanted to ask you both to speak about the importance of these stories and the book in the midst of this moment here in the United States and across the world. Obviously, we’re in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic and in the middle of an economic crisis spurred by that. Why do you each think…why do you think this is an important moment for these stories to be told and for the American people to be reading UNRIGGED?

Katie: I think this moment’s really interesting and intense. I run an organization called The People where we have members from across the country, we’re talking to people across the country, and there’s just this weight in people’s voices when it comes to trust, I think, especially. When there’s a worldwide pandemic, having to trust your elected officials – who you normally don’t trust anyways, whether it’s local or federal or whatever – and not knowing whether they’re making decisions that actually are in your best interest or whether they’re part of a political agenda, that’s just heavy. It’s hard, it’s very real, and I think in this moment too, it’s kind of like “Well, what can I do about it?” So I think this book – and in general, reminding people that we actually have much more power than we think, and that actually, unless we, as the people who are impacted by having these dysfunctional systems and a system where somehow, that is one of the first questions that would be in your mind during a worldwide pandemic – we are the ones who have to be at the center of changing this, of rewriting these rules. It’s hard, I don’t think that we should have to do it, but that is the reality. It’s that we are in a world and in a country right now where unless we do, anybody else who’s working on it is going to have some kind of other agenda that’s going to keep the system broken.

David: I hope that the book provides people with some hope and with a road map of what they can do, and an understanding that when individuals stand up, when they put their hands on what Dr. King called “the long moral arc of the universe”, that they can bend it towards justice, that individuals can do this. I know that these are dark days and difficult days, really challenging. We look at the pictures from Wisconsin of voters standing in line and voting in person during a pandemic, we see all of the political fight being invested in vote by mail, in trying to ensure that we have safe and secure elections this fall, and I think what’s so important for people to realize is that we are not as polarized as we think. We’re not as divided as we think. Whenever these issues are put to the people, it doesn’t matter where it is. 60, 70, 75 percent of voters come along. Your fellow Americans, your citizens, your neighbors, they believe in elections, they believe in fairness. Even if we cannot, perhaps, always trust in our political leaders and their agendas, I think we need to understand that we can, perhaps, trust each other more than we realize.

You can listen to the full interview above and then join us on May 31st for an hour of conversation with David Daley on zoom.

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Politics for the People Zoom Call

with Author David Daley

Sunday, May 31st

7 PM EST

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