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I'm with Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green

0:43

Money. Deschante

0:45

Parks is founder and CEO at one

0:47

thousand More and that that makes

0:50

it easier for people from underrepresented

0:52

communities like the one she's from, to

0:54

engage in politics the top of

0:56

that is super important to everyone's well

0:58

being in growth, but often difficult

1:00

to participate in.

1:02

Her approvised, digestible, nonpartisan

1:05

Summer Reason legislation coming up for a

1:07

vote written in a way that doesn't require

1:09

a law degree to understand. You

1:12

can also find the popular arguments for and

1:14

against bills, and it also helps you connect

1:16

with elected officials and participating in

1:18

crowdfunding campaigns for organizations

1:21

you care about. Her

1:23

mission of civic empowerment started at Louisiana

1:25

State University and she worked on the Senate

1:27

campaign for now Vice President Kamala

1:30

Harris, and she has a Master of Public Policy

1:32

degree from Harvard Kennedy School. And

1:35

preparing to talk with her, my mind immediately

1:37

went to lobbying and how the voice that

1:39

people can be suppressed by big money.

1:42

So I asked Deschante to break down how this

1:44

happens time and time and again, both

1:46

negatively and positively for

1:48

the issues that might matter most to you.

1:51

So I think we're actually kind of not

1:53

even ever taught about lobbyists

1:55

and lobbying. I think what happens is we hear

1:57

it in the context of the big

1:59

life has all this influence, and

2:01

so we think we're separate from it. We

2:04

think they're the enemy because they have all this

2:06

influence and they have a lot of money, and maybe we

2:08

feel like we don't have any right. The

2:10

term lobbying comes from the

2:13

men who used to stand in the

2:15

lobby of the hotels where the elected officials

2:17

who would stay when they came to DC

2:20

to vote, because they would live in their districts

2:22

most of the time, all over the country, and then

2:24

they would come into DC to vote as a

2:26

legislative body, and there would be men who

2:29

literally hung out in the lobby of these

2:31

hotels and would buy them

2:33

drinks and would talk to them and would

2:35

therefore have an influence on

2:39

whatever they were voting on. That was

2:41

a lobbyist. So

2:44

the way that they still have influence

2:46

really, I tell people all the time. The money is

2:49

part of it, but what's even more important

2:51

is lobbyists full time jobs are

2:54

to talk to your elected officials. So

2:56

while you're working nine to five, and

2:58

then you get home from work and you got to cook for

3:00

the kids, and you gotta exercise, and

3:02

you're tired, and then you got to even make time

3:05

to watch the news. Then you got to digest the news, form

3:07

an opinion, then call. They're

3:09

not even at the office to answer the phone at that point.

3:11

Whereas lobbyists, this is all they do.

3:13

This is our job, and by the way, it's not a bad job, right there.

3:15

I have friends that are lobbyists. There are people who

3:18

lobby for children's rights, you know, there

3:20

are people who lobby for

3:22

education and lobby for health care. You can lobby

3:24

for all kinds of things, and so lobbyists are not bad

3:27

people. What is potentially

3:30

bad is this system that we've created in

3:32

which it does create an imbalance

3:35

and power when it's when organizations

3:38

with a lot of money can afford

3:41

to have people full time

3:44

staying engaged with your elected officials

3:46

when you don't have time to talk to them at all. So what happens

3:48

is your elected official hasn't heard from you since

3:50

the last time you voted, and

3:53

they hear from lobbyists every single day.

3:55

So that's just who has their attention.

3:57

So that is that's

4:00

what lobbying is. That's our relationship to lobbing

4:02

as people. I created an app

4:04

that completely dismantles that. So

4:07

with one thousand more, you see every

4:09

bill coming up for a vote, So actually

4:11

coming up for a vote. There's a lot of bills that get caught up

4:13

in in committee

4:17

and those are honestly

4:19

kind of a waste of our time because they're never

4:21

going to get an actual vote. I

4:23

put in every bill that's coming up for a vote. I

4:25

write everything at a third grade level, because fifty

4:28

four percent of Americans read below a sixth

4:30

grade level. And also it shouldn't take

4:32

you an hour to digest what a bill is. I

4:35

spend an hour figuring out what the bill is. I

4:37

write the summary at a third grade level, so you can

4:39

spend a couple of minutes know what the bill

4:41

is. You can see the arguments for and against. We're nonpartisan,

4:44

and then you can take action on it, including calling,

4:46

email and tweeting. There's a little scripts in case you're nervous

4:48

about what to say, so the script is different if you're for

4:51

or against. And then you also can donate

4:53

to an organization that's advocating for the bill. Because

4:56

when we crowdfund our dollars, we actually

4:58

outspend the lobby here in America. So

5:00

the lobby spends about three point five billion

5:02

dollars a year. Americans

5:04

spend five billion dollars a year

5:07

crowdfunding philanthropy. So

5:09

we're talking about things like GoFundMe, So

5:11

we quite literally are bigger than

5:13

the big lobby with our voices and

5:15

with our dollars. But before one thousand

5:18

more, there was no mechanism for us

5:20

to crowdfund our dollars

5:22

on policy, on every single piece

5:24

of legislation. So people have already figured

5:26

out that small dollar donations

5:29

make a huge difference in politics. You

5:32

know, when I talk about small dollar donations,

5:34

we're talking about donations that are two hundred dollars or

5:37

less. Those sorts of donations

5:40

power campaigns. Campaigns

5:42

can't win without millions

5:45

in small dollar donations. We already

5:47

know that. But before one thousand more, there

5:49

was no mechanism to make a small

5:51

dollar donation between election

5:54

seasons. So you shouldn't only be participating

5:57

during an election cycle. You should

5:59

be anticipating between election cycles. Because

6:01

that's how we hold our elected officials accountable.

6:04

That's how we stay informed, so

6:06

that number one, we can tell

6:08

them what we want them to do, and number two, when they don't

6:10

do it, we can hold them accountable when it's time

6:13

to vote for them again.

6:14

So you said something that I found really interesting,

6:17

and perhaps it's you know, provides you an

6:19

opportunity to build this technology, and

6:21

that it takes hours and hours to digest

6:23

what these legislative you know, documents

6:26

say, and the conspiracy

6:28

theorist in me says, that's probably

6:30

intentional. I don't know if it's intentional, but I

6:33

wonder what you think, Like, is it intentional that we

6:35

can't understand this language?

6:38

Yeah? I mean, look, I didn't go to law school for a

6:40

reason. I people who go to law school,

6:43

I don't get it. I ended

6:46

up getting my master's in public policy because I was like,

6:48

y'all are learning how to work within a system that's broken.

6:51

I don't want to learn how to work within the system. I want

6:53

to learn how to change the system

6:55

on a systemic level. And so I

6:58

went and got my master's in public policy. But

7:01

that said, yeah, I do

7:03

think it's intentional. I think we

7:06

have an education system in this country

7:09

that rewards people that

7:11

have money and punishes people who don't. So you

7:14

are assigned a public school based

7:17

on your zip code, and your

7:19

zip code is assigned a tax bracket

7:22

based on the cost of housing

7:24

in that zip code, and based

7:27

on that tax bracket, your school is allocated

7:29

resources. So schools in

7:32

the neighborhoods that have expensive

7:34

houses get more resources than schools

7:37

that have inexpensive

7:40

housing. And so, you

7:43

know, if we have an entire part

7:46

of our society who's already

7:49

not getting the funding that they

7:51

need, maybe in their personal lives, so you know, their parents

7:53

don't make a lot of money, people don't

7:56

make a lot of money. Then in school, they're

7:58

not getting the kind of education that

8:00

would help them move in status

8:03

at all. Help them help themselves,

8:05

if you will, And then the people

8:07

who are already in power get to stay in power. So the people

8:09

who have money, they get a good education, they learn

8:11

how to make more money, and those

8:13

people tend to be people who have more access

8:16

to politics.

8:19

Even you know, when I was out on the campaign trail, and

8:21

so my family's from Streetport, Louisiana. I was raised

8:23

in Fort Worth, Texas, and people would tell

8:25

me all the time, like, you

8:27

know, it doesn't matter what I say, It doesn't matter

8:29

what I'm thinking. You think rich people think that rich

8:32

people don't think that they know it matters what they say

8:34

and what they think. Part of this is a mindset

8:36

too, So

8:39

yes, I think the way our education system

8:41

is set up is the foundation for

8:44

disenfranchisement. I think it is

8:47

directly tied to civic engagement. And

8:49

I think that the entire system was

8:51

built in a way that protected the interests

8:53

of at the time slave owners. That

8:57

was that's when our country was founded, and it was

8:59

founded with those

9:01

ideals. It the

9:03

way that laws were structured protected

9:07

the people who already had power

9:09

because the people in power were making the

9:11

laws. And of course, over time,

9:14

thank god, there have been revolutions

9:18

and movements, but

9:20

at its core, the way the system

9:22

works still does reward people

9:24

who already have money, who already

9:27

have power, and it takes disruptive

9:31

It takes disruptive movements

9:33

or tools, in this case with one thousand more technologies

9:36

to really flip things on its head. So, you

9:39

know, I hear people all the time say,

9:41

you know, we can't

9:44

keep working within the same systems. Okay,

9:46

fine, here's the deal. We're not going to see

9:48

the lobby going anywhere in our lifetime, you

9:50

know. And I say all the time, if I could go back in time

9:52

and talk to the Native Americans, what

9:56

I have been like, you should really start a yoga

9:58

practice because there's some serious about.

9:59

To you know.

10:01

No, I'd be like, we need to get y'all some guns.

10:03

Where are the guns? Where are the bombs?

10:07

You know, so we can bring water balloons

10:09

to a gunfight, and I build

10:11

one thousand more so we could have the same tools

10:13

and flip this system on its head. That's the best

10:15

I think we can do right now.

10:17

Yeah, So I wonder if there

10:19

are more Deshonnete's out there. So I was doing

10:21

some research before this, and I was reading

10:23

this article from the

10:25

National It's Toue of Health,

10:27

and it was talking about how the

10:30

more we have issues

10:32

in the country, the more people feel disenfranchised

10:34

and equality exists, people feel victimized,

10:36

et cetera. The more they engage civically.

10:39

And we're I guess post COVID.

10:42

I think the I

10:44

think they say we're post COVID. I mean we are post COVID,

10:46

but we're out of the pandemic era. Do

10:49

people still feel that level

10:51

of engagement as we felt after

10:53

George Floyd? Immediately after George Floyd in

10:55

the pandemic?

10:57

So what's interesting is it always is just

10:59

ship, is the way I see it. So those

11:02

people who are like politics doesn't impact

11:05

my life, Okay, Well

11:07

it's impacting somebody's life right now. I guarantee

11:09

you. In fact, this dude told me a

11:12

couple months ago. This dude was like, I don't vote.

11:15

I just kind of do what's in front of me, And

11:17

I was like, do you have running

11:19

water at your house? Do you have trash

11:21

pickup? Do you have women

11:24

in your life? Do you ever

11:26

get sick? Like you like, what do

11:28

you? I don't know what that means. If

11:30

you think politics doesn't affect you, you might be

11:33

very rich, or

11:36

you might be willfully

11:38

ignorant. You want to believe it doesn't affect

11:40

you because it is so psychologically

11:42

difficult for you to confront that

11:45

there are people that have a lot of power over your

11:47

life. And that is really scary, and

11:49

I know it's hard. I think a lot about

11:52

civic engagement is tied to our

11:56

willingness to confront

11:59

some very difficult things about the way

12:01

the world works that we live in. But no, I think

12:04

I agree. I

12:06

have not seen the stat that you're talking about. I agree

12:08

that when people are personally impacted

12:11

by a policy, there

12:14

is outrage, and it tends

12:16

to happen in communities. And

12:19

what's important is, you know, as people try

12:21

to build coalitions, they try to build coalitions

12:23

across communities because we're bigger together.

12:27

But also what I want to talk about is how

12:30

even when we think we're seeing

12:32

civic engagement, Like, what is civic

12:35

engagement? Yeah, if you post

12:37

something on Twitter, sure

12:39

it's civic engagement. Even if you just watch the news,

12:41

that is in theory civic engagement because you're

12:43

engaging with what's going on. You're engaging

12:45

with the news in your own home. But

12:48

when we talk about civic engagement, that translates

12:50

into action, and specifically

12:53

legislative action. What sorts of things

12:55

move the needle on that, and it's not talking

12:57

on social media. I built this so

13:00

that it integrates into social media. We built

13:02

a web app and not a mobile app because I didn't

13:04

think people would want to download a new app. I

13:07

was trying to create something that could integrate into

13:09

Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter,

13:12

So wherever people were, we met them

13:14

where they were. And you don't even have to leave the

13:16

social media platform you're on. You and your friends

13:18

are talking about a bill. You drop a

13:20

link to one thousand more to the bill in one

13:22

thousand more. They click, They read a little

13:24

a bit about it, they read the arguments for and against.

13:27

They choose, if therefore against, they can call, email,

13:29

tweet, or donate, go right back

13:31

to scrolling very quick so

13:34

that translates into actually

13:37

letting your elected official know and believe it or not

13:39

that matters. People think that

13:41

it doesn't matter if you call your elect official, and it absolutely

13:44

matters. These people want to be re

13:46

elected and they

13:48

know that it's only your votes that can do

13:51

that. Now, the

13:54

money that they get from some of these big donors, they will

13:56

use it in like TV ads or digital

13:58

ads on social media when your vote.

14:00

But if you are already knowledgeable

14:04

about their track record, if you've already been

14:06

paying attention, it's going to be very difficult to

14:08

get your vote. And they know that. So when you're

14:11

talking online, they do see that. When you're calling

14:13

their office, they see that it doesn't take

14:15

long and they're just telling, you know, how many

14:18

calls did we get today about

14:21

that infrastructure bill or about that education

14:24

bill, about that healthcare bill? How many

14:26

calls did we get today? And then they're like, Okay,

14:28

people really care about this. It moves to the top of

14:30

the agenda because when you're not saying anything,

14:33

then they don't even know

14:35

how much the people in their district care about

14:37

this. And again, those lobbyists

14:40

are talking to them every day.

14:41

Yeah, so I'm gonna throw two things at

14:43

you, And I hate to do that because you should just give one

14:46

question, but you give me so much there

14:48

and so one, I've heard less people

14:50

say that it

14:52

doesn't matter to them, and more people say that their

14:55

one vote won't make a difference. So I want

14:57

you to speak to that. And then on top

14:59

of that is i've heard this

15:01

phrase of all politics is local, and

15:03

so if the

15:06

important things that actually may

15:08

make a bigger difference to me are my local elections

15:10

versus the federal ones, even though the federal ones do

15:13

have impact, but the ones to your point,

15:15

you know, is your street, are the

15:17

potholes you know covered

15:19

up? You know, are the women in my life able to go get

15:21

healthcare, etc? Can you talk about how

15:24

it's important, how that one vote does make a

15:26

difference, and the other things you should do beyond

15:28

just that one vote, and how local

15:31

politics matters to

15:33

your everyday life.

15:35

Yeah. So, first of all, people aren't wrong.

15:38

So bring your friend, you know, bring

15:40

your whole family, bring your

15:43

friends, you bring whoever,

15:45

because I mean, you're not wrong. One

15:48

vote is one thing. But when we talk

15:50

about anything in life,

15:52

right like, especially when we're talking

15:54

about public policy, when we're talking about

15:56

a democracy. How do you think

15:58

we get to those millions of votes? Those are all

16:00

people, those are all individual people, those

16:03

thousands of votes. There have been elections that were

16:05

decided on one vote. There

16:07

was one in Louisiana recently. So

16:11

this stuff is real. Like that person

16:13

who thought my vote doesn't matter,

16:15

that would have tied it, and if they had brought their friend, it would

16:17

have been two votes, and then maybe the other person would have won.

16:20

This stuff is consequential. Also,

16:23

you're not wrong bring more than one person.

16:25

That's why people are out here building coalitions.

16:29

So I think that the

16:31

intuition there is right in

16:34

that you want to

16:36

try to advocate

16:38

for your position so that you have more people

16:40

on your side. And honestly, most of

16:43

us are hanging out with people and spending time with

16:45

people who agree with us anyway,

16:47

and so you just need to get them to

16:49

the poll or to the phone or whatever it is.

16:53

So there's that.

16:55

And so to your point of hanging out people

16:57

who are like you, So if you're one vote, if you're

16:59

one person with think to your vote doesn't matter, you probably

17:01

got ten friends who think that same thing. So that's actually

17:03

ten votes and not.

17:04

One exactly exactly, which

17:07

is amounting to millions of votes. And

17:10

then you know, also so in this election,

17:12

you know, we didn't even have a Democratic primary. People

17:14

didn't even get a choice for

17:16

who the Democratic presidential candidate was going

17:19

to be. People are very upset about that. So people

17:21

think, you know, I don't

17:23

like either of the candidates. I don't want to vote

17:25

at all. And I'm saying

17:27

you need to vote at least independent,

17:30

vote for someone else, because they need

17:32

to know that you matter. They need to know that you're

17:34

paying attention because then next time they will

17:37

be actually vying for your vote. If

17:39

you just don't show up at all, they think

17:41

that person's not even going to get off the couch. I don't

17:43

have to listen to them at all. And you can

17:46

see it is public record who

17:48

is a voter. It doesn't tell you who

17:50

they voted for, but you can see every time a

17:52

person has voted. So if

17:55

you're if you are calling your elected officials

17:58

office, you are in

18:00

theory, more likely to be listened to if they know

18:02

you're a voter, if they know that you vote every single

18:04

time, So go out and vote for somebody, vote

18:06

for something, because it really

18:09

just signals to them that you

18:12

have some kind of value

18:15

in what they want, which is to get

18:17

re elected. And also, by the way, that's not

18:20

the only thing. There's all types of civic engagement, you

18:22

know I mentioned earlier. So also not publicly

18:24

shaming them on social media. That's a

18:26

way to get their attention. All like

18:28

any kind of civil disobedience. There's a reason

18:30

why people shut down interstates

18:33

because money moves on interstates.

18:35

If people can't get to work, if shipments can't

18:37

get where they're trying to go, that disrupts the

18:39

economy. There's power in that too. So there's all sorts

18:41

of power in civic engagement. And

18:44

you know, we can signal to elected

18:46

officials in all kinds of ways. Voting is one of them,

18:50

calling is one, emailing,

18:52

social media stuff like that, and

18:55

then your other question.

18:57

Local that's right

19:00

involvement here.

19:00

Okay, So people talk about

19:02

that because you are

19:06

I mean, it's fractions or so, like

19:09

out of one hundred people. If it's if you're one in one

19:11

hundred, then you have a lot more impacts

19:14

there. Then if you're

19:16

one in a million, you just have more impacts.

19:20

There's more of a chance that

19:22

you know, your vote could be the

19:24

change could be sort of the tipping point.

19:28

Uh, And yes, local politics

19:30

is really important, and a thousand more of course wants

19:32

to do local politics eventually. Right now we only do

19:34

federal We've only been doing this for a short

19:36

amount of time. But you

19:41

know, I would say that these things

19:43

all work together. So America has a very

19:45

decentralized democracy, which means

19:47

that it's not one central government that makes

19:50

all the decisions. It's decentralized. We have

19:52

the federal government, then we have our state governments, then we have

19:54

our local governments, and they all work together

19:56

in different ways. So if y'all will remember like

19:58

when California made marijuana ly, but then

20:00

the federal governments that marijuana was not legal.

20:02

Remember that, and that caused a lot of confusion

20:05

and they were like, well, you could still be

20:07

arrested if you're driving with it

20:09

whatever. You know, it like depended on the

20:13

circumstances of an arrest. Well,

20:16

that's that's sort of how our government

20:18

works together. The government also, the

20:22

federal government can protect you

20:24

from in just laws

20:26

locally. So a historical example

20:29

of this is, you know, the

20:31

federal government. Oh, the Supreme

20:33

Court ruled that schools had to be integrated,

20:36

and states still didn't do it. You

20:38

know, again, my family's from Louisiana. My dad was

20:40

in the first integrated class of his high school.

20:43

My dad's not that old, he's like fifty

20:45

something. So

20:49

the federal government had to step in because

20:51

state governments were violating people's rights.

20:55

And we see sort of the same thing, the

20:58

same concept when we talk about like

21:01

access to abortion. You know, when

21:04

that thing happened in Alabama where

21:07

the court there ruled

21:09

against the IVF clinic and everyone

21:11

with this was just a few weeks ago, and everyone was like, IVF

21:14

is going to be legal. The federal

21:17

government tried to put in place protections

21:19

for IVF so that it would then say

21:22

that your local government

21:25

could not take that right from you. So

21:27

they all work together because there are going to be times

21:29

that you agree more with your local government.

21:31

There are going to be times when you agree with more

21:33

with your federal government. And you

21:36

know, people talk about states

21:39

rights versus federal rights. There's a lot of Southern

21:41

states that are like, we want the federal government

21:43

to stay out of it. You know, we want states to

21:45

be able to make these decisions, and the decisions

21:47

tend to be decisions that are infringing

21:50

on other on individual rights.

21:55

So yes, politics

21:57

is local. The more local

21:59

some thing is. I By the way, I love working in municipal

22:02

government. It's my favorite place to work because you can move,

22:04

you can change something so quickly, you

22:06

can get that whole filled. You can you know,

22:08

if there's a water issue, you know what happened

22:10

in Flint, for example. You can very

22:13

quickly put policies in place to protect

22:15

people if you're working in

22:17

an efficient municipal government. So I love municipal

22:20

government. It's just I want people

22:22

to understand how all these things work together.

22:24

It's important to vote on every level totally.

22:28

So from a tech CEO perspective,

22:30

you know, when people think about and I don't know if what

22:32

your goals are personally in building a technology,

22:35

but I'm imagining there's you know,

22:37

a part of it is you know, benevolent,

22:40

and part of it is also there's an opportunity there.

22:42

I'm imagining you can you can correct

22:44

me if I'm wrong. And so community

22:47

work is not something necessarily people think about

22:49

when they are trying to find a lot

22:51

of wealth, but I wonder

22:54

I believe first that you can do well while

22:56

doing well? So can you speak

22:58

to how you find find wealth

23:01

you know, unicorn opportunity

23:04

with your one thousand more company

23:07

working in community, I want you to speak to that

23:09

the motivations here well.

23:11

First of all, I never wanted to build

23:13

a tech startup at

23:15

all. I grew up very poor.

23:17

We did not even when everyone else got

23:19

the Internet, we didn't get the Internet right away. So I was very

23:22

much behind the curve. Like I missed AOI

23:25

ao whatever that was called that in semester.

23:27

I missed all that like MySpace, like I missed

23:29

it like I used to have to. When I

23:32

was at my friend's house, I was like, ooh, y'all got the Internet. Let

23:34

me, how do you do this? Like I

23:36

So, I never considered myself tech savvy

23:38

at all. What happened was I was working

23:41

in politics. What I always did want to do with civic

23:43

engagement. What I really wanted to

23:45

do was have a political talk

23:47

show that was funny and entertaining

23:49

for black people. I wanted it to come on right

23:51

after one o six in Park because I knew no

23:54

one was going to tune into my show on purpose.

23:56

I thought maybe they would, you know, still be

23:58

finishing their snack as one of the park was ending,

24:00

and maybe they would just hang around. Maybe I would

24:02

be funny enough that maybe

24:04

people would stick around and get the news of the

24:06

day. That's what I wanted

24:09

to do. So I got a degree in political communications

24:11

from LSU, which was the journalism school. I

24:13

produced the first public affairs show

24:15

on Tiger TV, and

24:21

then I ended up needing a job. In my life took a different

24:23

direction. I you know, I graduated, I

24:26

got a job offer, I took it. I was

24:28

working in politics, and I was very

24:31

obsessed about how do

24:33

we get people to pay attention, how

24:35

do we get people to absorb information,

24:38

how do we get people to take action, and

24:40

especially people like the people where

24:42

I'm from. So I knew that that

24:44

had something to do with like the intersection

24:47

of pop culture. You know, like

24:49

if some celebrity was talking about a thousand more, I would have a

24:51

lot more weight than

24:53

me talking about one thousand more, a girl who just spent

24:55

a lot of time working in politics. And that's what I was

24:57

doing. I was working in politics all over the country.

25:00

I worked on Kamala Harris's usn and campaign

25:03

in California. I was on Jason Candor's usn

25:05

A campaign in Missouri, mary landrews

25:07

USNA campaign in Louisiana.

25:10

All over the country working in politics, I end up

25:12

and down the ballot as well. There were lots of other races.

25:15

But I would always

25:17

hear people say, why do we only hear from these people

25:19

when it's time to vote, And I'd be like, no, you don't have to.

25:22

And I would say, like, just call me, just text

25:25

me. And I just was very obsessed

25:27

about this. And one night, I

25:30

and this was at a time in my life when I was just feeling

25:35

very hopeless about the state of politics.

25:38

I was like, I've dedicated my whole life to this. I don't

25:40

think I'm making any difference. I'm

25:43

not even doing the job I originally wanted

25:45

to do. I don't know that I'm helping people. I

25:47

don't even know that these people that I've worked

25:49

for are really upholding the values

25:52

that I wanted them to or hope that they

25:54

would. And I

25:56

was just I was, you

25:58

know, I was feeling very frush and

26:00

very hopeless about what

26:02

I was doing. And one night I had a dream

26:06

and I saw one thousand more in the dream. So

26:08

in the dream, there I was taking a nap.

26:11

There was like a ruckus outside. I walked outside

26:13

and was like, why are y'all being so loud? I'm trying to take a nap.

26:15

And this man was like, we're about

26:17

to stop this bill. And I was like, yeah,

26:19

right, how are you going to do that? Because I'm

26:21

thinking I dedicated my whole career to this and I don't even

26:24

know how to tell you to do that, So how you think you're going to

26:26

do it? And he was like, we use this

26:28

app? And I was like, what app? Show me?

26:30

And he showed me the whole thing. And I woke up in the

26:32

middle of the night and promised God I would build it. And

26:35

I've been building it ever since. So

26:39

it wasn't even about it wasn't about money. But

26:41

that said, this is a billion dollar idea, right,

26:43

This is the GoFundMe of politics. What the Robin

26:45

Hood app did to Wall Street is what we're

26:48

doing in politics. This is absolutely a billion dollar

26:50

business. And I am so grateful and can't

26:52

wait for that moment. But

26:55

yeah, I think you can do good while doing good, and

26:57

I think, really

27:00

my only advice about that is I think there was

27:02

so long that I was like, why am I doing this? Like

27:04

why am I out on the campaign trail this, I'm not

27:06

on TV, I'm not doing what I want to do at all. I didn't know

27:09

why I was doing what I was doing, and it made me really sad.

27:11

And then I think one day God just showed me a

27:13

very clearer vision of what I would be doing,

27:16

and stuff started making sense, Like A thousand

27:19

more would not be what it is if

27:21

I hadn't spent all that time

27:24

on the campaign trail talking to tens

27:26

of thousands of voters, hundreds

27:28

of donors, you know, thousands

27:31

of politicians and community

27:33

leaders and things like that. It

27:36

took all those perspectives and it took all of that

27:38

experience for me to build what I did.

27:41

I love that. I was reading

27:44

an article about how there's so many

27:46

more black people, young black people specifically

27:48

investing in the stock market, and

27:51

while the title, I'm like, yes, we should

27:53

be doing that. Then I read the article and

27:55

they were like, what the problem is? Where

27:58

we get our education about what socks to

28:00

invest in comes from mostly social

28:02

media, and

28:04

I'm like, yeah, that's probably not great because

28:06

we invest in stuff that we don't have

28:08

education about. And I wonder

28:11

what your thoughts are on are

28:13

we doing that same thing for the things that we

28:16

vote for.

28:18

I think that is such an important question,

28:23

so I think

28:25

we do. I think all people get a lot of information

28:27

from social media. I think that is a

28:29

symptom of people not trusting

28:32

mainstream media, as they have in for

28:34

a very long time, and for good reason.

28:38

People don't trust media. Oftentimes people

28:40

don't trust their governments. So

28:43

that's all fair, and I think what's important

28:45

is people finding sources who they can trust.

28:47

And I built one thousand more of the way that

28:50

I did because education is the foundation

28:52

of it. Journalism is the foundation of it. Again,

28:54

my degree is in journalism, so I

28:58

built it so that it's

29:01

all these summaries, all these bill summaries are read

29:04

by me. I make

29:06

sure that I have a team of people, of course, but I

29:08

make sure that they are a

29:11

fair representation of what's in the bill. I make

29:13

sure that they're written in a way that does not require

29:15

a law degree to understand. And

29:17

I made sure that it was easily shareable

29:20

because I did want this to first

29:22

and foremost be a source of information

29:25

that in itself breaks barriers.

29:27

It gives people a trusted source of information

29:30

so that they can even just verify what they're saying on

29:32

social media. If you hear it first from a friend, that's fine,

29:34

but you need a place to verify the

29:36

information. And I yeah,

29:40

I think people get a lot of their news

29:42

from social media. I don't think it's always

29:44

a bad thing, but I think that there needs to be a real

29:46

education on media literacy.

29:49

You know, how do you know if

29:51

something is factual? You should If you hear from

29:53

a friend, that's fine, but you should check it. You should check the

29:55

source. A lot of times people don't even ask the source. I

29:58

always will say where did you get information

30:00

from?

30:01

Yeah? Yeah, I know, I'm a witness.

30:03

You do ask that. I

30:07

love it. I want to talk about how

30:10

like when you get an idea like this, you said it can't he in

30:12

his dream, which I love that. And

30:15

you said you were not dreaming to be a tech entrepreneur

30:17

growing up, So like what is this step?

30:19

Like, how do you had this dream? I had this idea,

30:22

now I'm going to go build it. How

30:25

you do that?

30:27

Yeah? So again I think God

30:30

had put everything already

30:32

in place and I didn't even know it. So I again,

30:34

I want to Lsu. I'm in an aka who wants lsu.

30:36

So my profile it was just a couple of lines

30:38

before me. It's a Vitral Wilson who

30:41

built Resilia, and

30:43

so she's like, my friend, that's my sister,

30:45

Like you know, so I asked her. She was the first

30:47

person. I was like, I had this crazy dream and no,

30:49

I had already bought the domain at this point, but I was

30:52

like, what do you think about this? And she was like,

30:54

I think it's brilliant. And the advice

30:56

that she gave me is tell anyone who

30:58

will listen. Most people want

31:01

to hold their ideas close to the vest

31:03

because they think that someone's going to steal their idea.

31:05

She was like, most people can't even execute their own

31:07

visions, much less yours, So

31:10

tell anyone who listened. I had already

31:12

been accepted to Harvard at the time, so I started

31:14

my master's in public policy at Harvard, and

31:16

I was just telling anyone who listen. Now

31:18

again, I know that's a huge opportunity

31:20

that most people don't have. Was Harvard is just throwing

31:23

money. If you get into Harvard, they're

31:25

throwing money everywhere. So yeah,

31:27

there was like, you know, a couple thousand

31:29

dollars here and they're a pitch competition.

31:32

There was a class I took at the Business School at HBS

31:34

where they give you two thousand dollars to

31:37

execute a business plan. And I took the

31:39

class twice, like

31:43

you know, and I ended up

31:45

meeting. So the first step was I ended up

31:47

meeting a dude in my class who he

31:49

was a lot of people are in transition at Harvard, going

31:51

from one career to another. His first

31:54

career had been in projects

31:57

like product management, product tech, products

32:00

management. So he was like, do you have a product roadmap?

32:02

I was like, I don't even know what that is. And he was like, look,

32:04

you should make a prototype.

32:07

I'm like, what's a prototype? He's

32:09

like, hire a graphic designer

32:11

to draw a picture of what's in your head. Wow,

32:14

that makes so much sense. I literally asked

32:16

my girls back in Louisiana do we know any graphic

32:18

designers? Hired Morgan Hilliard, who

32:21

is a black woman graphic designer who happened

32:23

to I didn't even know. I hired her because I thought she was a good

32:25

graphic designer. Her husband owned a tech startup.

32:27

Wow, so she was like, I know how to make a clickable

32:29

prototype. I said, oh, we next level with it.

32:32

I gave her the money Harvard had given me, because

32:34

at the time I think I'd gotten like maybe twelve hundred

32:37

dollars or something. So she made a clickable prototype

32:39

for me, and then I gave that

32:41

to a software developer. The software developer

32:43

built it. I mean we built it together. Obviously.

32:45

We even had to create our own language because I didn't speak

32:47

any of his coding language. He didn't know anything about

32:50

politics. So we started talking about it like we

32:52

were building a house. Like we'd be like, Okay, we're in the living

32:54

room. There's three different doors. This is like the user experience,

32:57

and yeah, we just truly I

32:59

think just being solutions

33:01

oriented got me through this. There was I knew

33:03

there was always an answer, so

33:06

I just would talk to anyone who listen. I asked

33:08

a lot of questions, and

33:10

I did what people told me to do,

33:12

and I, you know, got some of the money.

33:14

I went for the money and was able to

33:16

pay people who could help me build this thing.

33:19

So in my view, you've

33:21

got like two challenges. One is to

33:23

get people to use it. Too is you got

33:26

to convince people that getting engaged

33:28

is worth their time, and so can

33:30

you give your pitch for why

33:33

you should really be engaged. This

33:35

is your platform.

33:38

It's life or death. It's literally

33:40

life or death. I mean it might not be life or

33:42

death for you the moment, but it

33:44

could be. I had an uber driver who told me

33:46

he wasn't politically involved, and I was like, okay, fine,

33:49

we start talking. Turns out his daughter's on insulin.

33:51

I'm like, did you know there's a bill right now moving

33:53

on insulin? And he's like, no, I didn't

33:55

even know that. He did not even know that his

33:57

daughter's life depended on him being

34:00

politically aware. And

34:02

you know, there's a there's a lot of people like him, a million

34:04

people like him, And when those people come

34:07

together and make it clear that this is a

34:09

priority for the community

34:12

that these elected officials represent, then things

34:14

get done.

34:17

And in so many ways, right like the war

34:19

on drugs, people being imprisoned

34:22

wrongly, these are these are people's

34:24

lives, uh, And some people are

34:26

impacted more than others. But I'm sure you can,

34:28

when you really think about it, think of a way

34:30

that politics or policy has

34:33

impacted you, or your family, or

34:35

your community. So what I would say

34:37

is, don't be afraid of that. Don't run from

34:39

that confront why it's scary, and

34:42

know that there are people who you

34:44

can trust, and that I've

34:46

created a way for you to engage

34:48

from the comfort of your own home, so

34:51

you can in a very safe environment.

34:53

Just start tinkering with this, Start reading

34:55

about you know, a couple of bills. Try to call.

34:58

You're alone in your home. If you call and

35:00

hang up one time, no one's gonna know, you

35:03

know, Just call again. Read the script

35:05

verbatim. If they ask a follow up question, I don't

35:07

have anything to say. Just try. Just

35:10

try. And the first time you do it, it's going to be scaring. The

35:12

tenth time you do it, it's not. And that's like

35:14

anything in life. You

35:19

are a person who matters

35:21

in this democracy, even if,

35:23

by the way, even if you're not a citizen,

35:25

if you live in this community, if you live in this country,

35:28

you are important to this democracy. And

35:30

you just need to believe that. The thing is

35:32

is I know it, Your elected officials know

35:34

it. The media knows that everyone knows it, and

35:37

they are banking on you to believe. People

35:39

who are currently in power are banking

35:42

on you believing that you have no power that's

35:44

the easiest way for them to take your power

35:47

is to convince you that you have no power. So if

35:49

you think you have no power, ask yourself who told

35:51

you that, why do you think that? And

35:53

then know that it's not true and

35:56

take your power back. Get on one thousand

35:58

more.

36:14

Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity

36:16

Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast

36:18

Network in iHeartMedia. It's produced

36:21

by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas,

36:23

with additional production support by Sarah

36:25

Ergan and Love Beach. Special

36:28

thank you to Michael Davis and Kate McDonald. Learn

36:30

more about my guests and other tech this weepons and innovators

36:33

at afrotech dot com. Enjoying

36:35

Black Tech, Green Money, share

36:38

up to somebody go get

36:40

your money, peace and love. Check

36:50

me out at the annual Black Effect Podcast

36:52

Festival, happening Saturday, April twenty seventh

36:54

in Atlanta. Live podcasts are on deck

36:56

from some of your favorite shows, including this

36:58

one, Black Tech, Green Money, and also some

37:00

of the best podcasts in the game, like Deeply

37:02

Well with Debbie Brown and Carefully Reckless.

37:05

Atlanta is one of my favorite cities in the world.

37:07

I lived there for two years. Actually, in my worldview,

37:10

seeing us successful in every industry

37:12

and not having any limits on our potential largely

37:14

was shaved by Atlanta. So to be there with you

37:17

doing this podcast talking about how we build

37:19

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37:21

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