Welcome to Louisiana Lefty, a podcast about politics and community in Louisiana, where we make the case that the health of the state requires a strong progressive movement fueled by the critical work of organizing on the ground. Our goal is to democratize information, demystify party politics, and empower you to join the mission because victory for Louisiana requires you. I'm your host Lynda Woolard. On this episode, I speak with Shreveport native D'Seanté Parks about her civic engagement app 1000 MORE. The story of how she came up with the idea and the name is really interesting, but I'll let her do all the telling. I hope you'll check it out as a possible tool to use today in your national advocacy so you'll already know how it works when it becomes available at the state level. Check out our Episode Notes for all the links. D'Seanté Parks, thanks so much for joining me on Louisiana Lefty.
Thanks for having me. So excited to see you again and have this chat.
It's really good to see you. You worked for the Democratic Party, which is I think how I met you. When was that?
Oh my god, that must have been... So maybe the first time we met was on Mary Landrieu's campaign, I think, and that was the 2014 election. And then I went and worked on Kamala's campaign and Jason Kander's in Missouri. And then I came back to Louisiana. So that was in, like... right after the 2016 election is when I moved back and I did that job for a couple of years.
Gotcha. And I should specify the Louisiana Democratic Party. You are the comms director for the Louisiana Democratic Party.
Yeah, when I came on, I changed the title to public affairs director because I really wanted to do political stuff too. Like, I wanted to play the role of political director and comms director so we did these really cool trainings all across the state that I just, you know... I wanted to make sure that we were, like, actually doing things to build up potential candidates in the future. Like, across Louisiana, up and down the ballot. So I call that public affairs director. But yes, I was doing the comms.
That's really important stuff to do. Well, what first got you interested in politics, D'Seanté?
Yeah, so I have been interested in politics for what feels like my whole life. I remember being a little girl, talking about it. My family's from Shreveport, Louisiana. I was raised in Fort Worth, Texas, and I really split my time between the two. So I was in Shreveport all the time, my grandmother lived on an acre of land with a small poultry farm. And then we also owned a hog farm down the road. And then in Fort Worth, I was, like, in the city and in a predominantly black and Latino community. And either way, between both worlds, it seemed like the government had a lot of impact on our lives. Like when, you know, I was living in Fort Worth, a lot of the times we were in Section Eight housing or on food stamps. And I understood that the government provided these things, controled these things. And I thought, "Well, if I run for president, then I can decide what kind of food you can buy on food stamps." Because, you know, like, there were, at times, certain, like, snacks that you can get. And I remember when I was in college, whether you could get crawfish with food stamps was a policy issue we were very much interested in. And so you know, it's like those little, very tangible things that I understood, you know, government impacted our lives and I thought, you know, if I or the people from where I'm from ran for office and held these positions, then we would have power over our own lives. And so I knew I wanted to do civic engagement, wasn't quite sure what that looked like. I think when I was little, I would have said I was going to run for president. But when I started getting a little older, I think I wanted to be on the news. I wanted to have, like, a political news show that wasn't traditional news. I wanted to find a way, sort of like a spoonful of sugar approach, to getting people from disengaged and disenfranchised communities the information that they needed. So I studied media at LSU, got a degree in Political Communications and actually produced a public affairs show at LSU for Tiger TV and then ended up going on to work in public affairs. That was the beginning.
Was Mary Landrieu your first campaign?
So that was my first campaign that I was, like, full-time on staff. But when I... My actual first campaign is a little controversial. For the Louisiana listeners, they'll know, my first campaign actually was in New Orleans, Louisiana. I worked on Robert Myers mayoral race when I was still in college. And then I went to work at a Public Affairs firm in DC for two years and before I decided to go out on the campaign trail and came back home to work on Mary Landrieu's campaign,
And what was the work you were doing for her and Kamala and Jason?
So on Mary Landrieu's campaign, I was the deputy research director. So working on the comms team on the research side. That was a lot of fun, great times. And really was what I wanted to do getting back... I wanted to get back into the south and I really wanted to work full-time on one campaign because when I was in DC, I was, like, consulting different firms. So did that, enjoyed it very much. And then I went to work on Kamala Harris's campaign because we lost, which I didn't expect to happen, I thought I would go into constituent services from there. And, like, in the administration I thought for sure we would win. And then we lost. And so I ended up working on Kamala's campaign, where I was her director of civic engagement. And I was specifically on that campaign, it was on the political team, that I was specifically really working with the various, like, women's organizations and African American and black organizations across California. And then on Jason Kander's campaign, I was his political director.
Okay. Okay. And then from Louisiana Democratic Party, did you go back to school after that?
That's right. Yeah. So I... well, yeah. So I ended up... that's when I started my own firm. So I had a bunch of clients, Sewerage and Water Board in New Orleans, the Regional Transit Authority, had some national clients as well, and then decided to go back to school and got my master's in Public Policy at Harvard. And that is when the pandemic hit. When I was one year into that two-year program.
What was that like?
You know, being at Harvard during that time was a... it was something. So first of all, I was surrounded by really smart people who... at that point, I had been there for one year so I really understood, like, how smart many of the people I was around truly were. And you know, at Harvard, of course, there were many public health experts. In fact, one of my favorite teachers was a black woman, there were very few black professors at the Kennedy School, there was only one tenured black professor. And there was a woman, Professor Leary, who is from New Orleans. As a black woman, she had been a psychologist for years, either psychologists or psychiatrists, I don't remember, but then she went on to work in Obama's Public Health Administration. So I had just so happened to be taking her class when this happened, this was a woman who I had a great deal of respect for, who was very brilliant and smart. And... you know, just hearing from the public health experts, like, how serious they believed this was, before people back home were taking it seriously. It was really, like, you know, it was very anxiety-inducing because here I am, like... and this is why I work in communications, like, this is why I want to do this job because there needed to be a bridge between these people who were really smart experts, but maybe weren't able to communicate with communities who lacked trust in institutions. Especially institutions like Harvard, or the government or even media, you know, the lack of trust is very much warranted. But you know, it's like how... in that time, I really was like, really trying to convince people that this thing was serious and people could die and we're going to die. And there were people in my life who were very high risk. My niece had asthma, she was young, and like, had already been hospitalized with asthma before and had, like, a close friend who was a cancer survivor, and my mother is old and smoked cigarettes all her life. So just, you know, like, trying to convince people to like really wear masks or stay home or, you know, whatever the directive was, you know, on any given week because at the time the information was coming in fast and things were changing. But you know, I just I had access to so much good information. And I was just trying to figure out how to provide it to people in a way that landed. And sometimes it just didn't, and I think it took this much time... I remember actually... one person said that I was spreading fake news. I told them... I said, "Millions of people... this is going to kill millions of people." And he said, "You're spreading fake news." Which is hilarious because, fun fact about me, when I was at LSU, I worked on published works, including a book about the roots of propaganda in America. And when I was at Harvard, I worked on a handbook... I helped publish a handbook on how to combat myths and disinformation. I have spent a significant amount of my life trying to combat propaganda and disinformation.
Well, I'm very interested in the two things you've worked on, on disinformation and propaganda. So if you send me links to access either those things, I'd love to see them and link to them in the Podcast Notes. Right now you're working on a civic engagement app. And I think the roots of that came from your time at Harvard Kennedy School, is that correct?
Actually, I would say it came from my time out on the campaign trail. The app came to me in a dream. I saw the whole thing very vividly. Somebody was using it in the dream. And I was like, "What is this?" And I had the dream in New Orleans. So it... No, this was born in Louisiana, for sure. I had the idea when I went to Harvard. And so I had an idea maybe right after I got accepted or maybe even right before I got accepted or whatever the case, it lined up so that I already knew I was going to Harvard and I thought, you know, I'll build it there. I'll start building it there. Yeah.
Well, tell me about it. What is what is this app?
So it's called 1000 MORE, I named it after the quote that's often attributed to Harriet Tubman, "I freed 1000 slaves, I would have freed 1000 more, if only they had known they were slaves." Because the promise is that people don't know what they don't know. It actually turns out Harriet Tubman never said that, but I had already named an app that and people can find it at 1000more.org. So my family picked cotton in Shreveport since my grandmother was 10 years old. And when I asked my Grandma, "Why didn't we leave the plantation sooner?" Because slavery was over. She wasn't allowed to go to school, though, like, a lot of the same rules were in place. You know, it was like, if you continue to pick cotton on this land, you will essentially continue to live the same existence, which is, you know, no school, this family who own the land had complete rule over your life. And it wasn't until her brothers went off to World War Two that they were able to send home enough money for our family buy this acre of land where I spent a lot of time growing up. And so when I asked her, you know, why didn't we leave sooner, she said, "We didn't know any better." And as I was out on the campaign trail, including on Mary Landrieu's campaign, you know, you hear all the time from people, "Why do we only hear from these people when it's time to vote?" And I'd say you don't have to. And I started realizing that, you know, people just didn't know what they didn't know. And the only reason I knew was because I just was very interested and dedicated my education and my career to this. So I knew, for example, that like, if you're a leader of an organization that has influence over a lot of votes, you have direct access to your elected official all the time, this could be popular pastor, it could be the president of the local NAACP chapter. It could be, like, the president of LSU, for example, right? People who have influence over large swaths of the population, those people have access. Large donors have access. And then also, other people who dedicate their lives. Lobbyists have a lot of access to our elected officials. So... and by the way, like, for listeners, lobbyists aren't all bad. They're people who lobby, you know, legislation to make sure that children have the resources they need in school, like, the term lobbying itself isn't bad. But these are people who have an advantage in that they have dedicated their careers. And so they have more time. Like, those eight hours a day that you go to work, doing all the things that you do, it is their job to be in contact with our elected officials. And so as I was, you know, out on the campaign trail, really connecting with people, I would always say, you know, "Well, if we won this election, you'll be able to call me. Just call me. Like, now you know me and we'll stay in touch." And I just think I thought a lot about this. And like I said, the app came to me in a dream. And I saw the whole thing. This guy was like, "Oh, there's this bill happening. We're all gonna stop it. We're all using this app to stop it." And I was like, "What app?" And he showed it to me, I asked questions about it. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I promised God I would build it. And I've been building it. But what we do is... because of course, then I woke up and was like, "Okay, how can I realistically make this work?" So the number one most important thing was information, people needed to have trusted, nonpartisan information that they could understand. When the first things they teach you in any journalism program, including at LSU, where I got a wonderful education, is that, you know, in media, you're supposed to write things on a third grade level. Because you want people to be able to understand what you're saying, you don't want to overcomplicate issues that could be a barrier to people understanding the information that you're trying to communicate. So that's number one. So we write everything in the app at a third grade level. 54% of American adults read below a sixth grade level. So this, in itself, is a source of information for people who oftentimes have been left out of the political conversation. So there is the the feed of all of the legislation that's coming up in Congress. Right now we just have federal bills. And then right from the bills, if you click on it and you decide if you're for or against, either way, you get the same options: you can call, email, or tweet your elected official. There's little script in case you're nervous about what to say, their picture and phone number or email address, or however you chose to contact them, pops up for you. And then the other thing is, you can donate to an organization that's advocating for the bill in the way that you indicated was your position. And so essentially, what Robinhood did to Wall Street is what we're doing to the big lobby, like, giving just regular people just simply information in a centralized place where they can take all these different actions, including crowdfunding their dollars. That in itself shifts the power structure. So oftentimes, people were like, "Well, I don't have any money to donate." That's fine, even a phone call or an email, can change the perspective of your elected officials. If they know enough people in their district care about a bill and want them to vote a certain way, they will take that into consideration because it's our votes that keep them in office. Or if you're one of those people that's like, "I don't have time to do this. I really don't feel like I'm the expert, but I have $5 or $10 to give to an organization that hires the experts to go do it." That's fine too. And actually, you know, lobbyists spend about $3.5 billion in America each year, whereas we spend about $5 billion on GoFundMe every year. So we're outspending with our crowdfunding anyway. I've just created a way for us to crowdfund our dollars for advocacy on each piece of legislation that's moving through Congress right now.
Well, so two things. You did point out to me before we started recording that this is a nonpartisan app, that you're not pushing for any particular party or any particular elected official. But I think what's really important about what you're doing, besides each individual piece of legislation that you're asking people or giving people the opportunity to act on, is that people are in real time informing themselves about what's happening in Congress and what their congress people are doing, which will, at the end of the day, result in a more informed electorate when we go vote on elected officials.
That's right. And 1000 More is going to build out features for that by the 2024 election. So the more you use our platform, the more we'll be able to tell you how often your elected official voted in line with your interests and against your interests. And so we will be able to create hyper-personalized voter guides for all of our users. In the meantime, you're exactly right. The truth is, most people aren't actually single issue voters or even party line voters. I mean, they do vote that way. But when I say voting I mean, like, in the app. So if you actually use 1000 MORE, you will find that everyone is more so on a spectrum. We all have varying opinions on different things. And you know, I think me having roots in Louisiana and having worked in politics in Louisiana, helped really inform my conviction to make this nonpartisan because, for example, in Louisiana, we have a lot of pro-life Democrats. We have a pro-life Democratic governor right now. I worked for... at the time, Mary Landrieu was a pro-life Democrat US senator and as a black woman from a, you know, very southern... from Shreveport, my family's from Shreveport, like, I personally know people who are going to vote Democrat every time, but they really would prefer that there not be access to abortion. And so understanding that these people exist... I didn't want for them to feel silenced or put in a box because that's often what happens. Like, 1000 MORE is a place where you can truly get to consider every bill individually. For yourself. We don't even put... someone asked me... Wait so we have, in the summary of the bill, who the sponsor is, but it does not have their party affiliation, which is something we could easily put in and someone asked me, "Why don't you put their party affiliation in?" And I said, "Well, I don't think that matters." If our summaries of the bills are accurate summaries. I mean, like... this is a media tool, right? This is a journalistic tool at the end of the day, very fundamentally at least. Like, the basis of this tool. So yeah, as long as our summaries are accurate, then it shouldn't matter if the bill is being sponsored by a Republican or a Democrat.
And is this something that... you gave a website for folks to go to? Will that take them to like the App Store so they can download a mobile version of the app.
So you don't have to download anything. It's a web app. So 1000more.org will take you to the platform itself. Yes, there's a button there, it says, "Try it now." And it'll take you right into the platform itself. Now, we want it to be a web app because we want to integrate into the platforms that people are already have. So Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, that's where we meet our users. And you don't have to, like, download anything new. It's really easy, you can either follow us on one of those or you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. I think, like, people are really enjoying that we use gifs every Friday to tell people what's going on on the Hill. So we'll tell you kind of like what happened last week and what we think is going to happen this coming week. We'll tell you which bills are coming up for a vote. And you can take action right from the email. And the email really is always 10 minutes or less to read. So if you just took a look at that email, and again, we really tried to keep it light and as fun as possible. And then you took action on one or two bills, truly it would be it would be 10 minutes of your time each week.
And of course, we'll put in Episode notes all the links to all your social media, where you're talking about the app. And you talk on your social media about the issues you're talking about. You mostly really show how to use the app, it seems like to me.
Yeah, we've been doing that. So we were doing a lot of issues stuff. And we're gonna get back into that, but we kind of took a step back because I realized that people didn't realize how easy it was to use the app. Like even when, you know, a video about a bill would go viral, we weren't necessarily seeing that people were less intimidated to go into the app. So we decided to spend some time just really focusing on, like, what the app is, how easy it is to use, the fact that it is nonpartisan and the fact that, you know, the people who write it are, you know, were all like trained professionals. I do have a degree in journalism. Like, it is trusted information. It's, you know, nonpartisan, it's accurate. Yeah. So we just needed to focus on that for a while.
And is it every piece of legislation? Or are you selecting certain ones?
It's everything that makes it out of committee because if we had all of the committee bills, there would be like 1000s of bills and many of them would be a waste of people's time because we all know they're never gonna make it out of committee. So anything that makes it out of committee is in the app. Except for... there are very few exceptions, for example, oftentimes, there will be a federal bill about renaming a post office. There are times when there are, like, 15 of those bills. They just clog the app and we don't really think people care, if anyone does care, they should let us know. So things like that sometimes get filtered out. And then the other exception is, if there's a bill that stuck in committee that's getting a lot of public support, we will put it in the app, because I do believe that public support can help things get out of committee. So we do that on a case-by-case basis as well.
And folks can still do this on a laptop or a desktop computer also, right?
Oh, yeah, for sure. You can do it on your computer, you can do it on the phone, you can do it anywhere that has the internet.
And who should be using this app?
Everybody. Yeah. No, really, everybody. I mean, people ask me all the time, like, what's the target audience? You know, in the future, the idea is that, you know, like, 10 years from now, an 18 year old will register to vote and he'll sign in for 1000 MORE so we can follow along with the person that he just voted for to see what they're doing over the next couple years. And I'll ask his mom, like, "What did we do before 1000 MORE? How did you... after you voted, how did you follow along?" And his mom's gonna be like, "We didn't." And that's gonna be so crazy to him. And so in the future, everyone will use us, especially people who have traditionally been left out of political conversation. But realistically, I understand that our first users are people who are already interested, already following news. "This is just a better way to do it," is the feedback that I get from the email. Every time I send an email out, the people who email me back are typically people who are already like engaged and they're, like, "This is the best newsletter I get." So yeah, everybody though, for sure. And it can be anyone. So I'll say a couple of people who think maybe that they don't belong, but they absolutely do and we design the app for you, young people. So one of my theories of change here was, you know, a 16 year old can work, they can have a job and they pay taxes at that job, but they're not able to vote. So I encourage 16 year olds to get on this app. Another group of people, you know, people who are here, people who don't have paperwork, are not able to vote or who are not citizens are not able to vote, but they're very much a part of our communities. They absolutely pay taxes. And so they can use this app to pull the levers that they can so they can still... you know, I think a lot of people don't realize, like, elected officials care about their constituents who are not citizens too. Like, they matter too. They are important parts of our community, the different communities within our larger community are all important, all play different roles. And so, you know, it's one of the things I learned about when I was on on the campaign trail. Like, it didn't matter, we... you know, like, in Kansas City, there's a large Mexican population, immigrant population. And it reminds me very much of like in Fort Worth growing up, you know, people who are our friends, our neighbors, our coworkers. And so, you know, even if you're not a citizen, you're still encouraged to use the app. Anyone who lives here in America or who is a citizen who doesn't live here anymore.
And what's your wildest dreams for the future of 1000 MORE?
Yeah, my wildest dreams for 1000 MORE are that we, in the next five years, scale to every state in every local government. So you would be able to go into 1000 MORE and see all federal legislation, all state legislation and all local legislation, which will include like school board. That's going to be a lot of work, but I want to do it. And then I want to go global, any country that has a democracy can have 1000 MORE.
I love it. As I said, I'll put links in the Episode Notes so folks can plug into that, is there anything else you want us to know about 1000 MORE before we pivot?
No, I just really want people to use it. I want people to remember that it is a small team so if you message us you, there's a place for feedback on the app. If you send us feedback or if you ever respond to the weekly newsletter for the email, we see it and we appreciate the feedback. So yeah, I just encourage folks to let us know what they're liking, what they're not liking. The really cool thing about building this is I get to do it with a lot of input, especially from people who have not been traditionally involved in politics. So I just encourage people to give feedback
And you said it's a small team? How many folks are working on it?
Yeah. Right now, there only there's four of us. At one point, there was like six and I'm hiring right now. I'm hiring a new software developer and a new social media person.
That's very cool. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. And I mentioned, we'll have to have you back on for, like, Instagram or something at some point or TikTok and get you to show the app. Or you can send us a video maybe of how the app works that we can post to our channel. So folks can see it a little bit in real time. But I encourage people to go to the website, give them the website one more time.
1000more.org
Folks can go there and see it for themselves, which is the best thing to do. So let's go to our last three questions, D’Seanté. What do you think the biggest hurdle is for getting reliable, trustworthy information out to the public in our country right now?
That's easy. Local media is dying. Yeah, local media, it's important. And we have fewer and fewer journalists who are able to ask the tough questions on the ground and do the necessary investigative work at the local level. So yeah, I would say just like investment in local media and I think, it's a little bit tricky, but I would say, like, new new media... The tricky part about it, though, is that misinformation is so rampant, it is very difficult to decipher who is a, like, an accredited journalist and who is just a person with a large following on social media. So yeah, I would just say investment in local journalism, for sure. And I think America really has to have a reset there and think about, like, what we are going to do to preserve the integrity of journalism because I think we're seeing it crumble.
Well, I love that we're interweaving a lot of themes that we've talked about on Lefty this season. I did do a debrief of Mary Landrieu's 2014 campaign with Joel Emerson a couple episodes ago, but also... He's back in Louisiana. But um, I also had from the Media and Democracy Project, they've put together a local journalism directory for every state. Like, they have a map and you can click on your state, you can find the local media in your state. So those are a couple of things we've talked about this season. And I'll be sure to add the local journalism directory to the Episode Notes this week also, but that'd be something worth for you to check out. What's the biggest opportunity for making sure people get trustworthy and reliable information?
Yeah and, you know, I think I kind of had started to talk about it, which is, you know, new media. Social media does provide an opportunity for people to get information quickly. The tricky thing is, where are the sort of reinforcements to just ensure that the people who we look to our trusted sources? But yeah, like, you know, when I was working at the party, in fact, one thing that I really appreciated was the local reporters, sometimes they would just like retweet our press release. So if I had a press release, I would tweet it out and they would just retweet it, they didn't have to spend a ton of time writing a story about something, they're just like, look, here it is, from the source and you know who the source is, you know, it's coming from a party. So you know it is left-leaning and, like... But that's the information. And so I think, you know, of course, the internet age provides a huge opportunity. I mean, what we're doing with 1000 MORE is a new way to do media. And we couldn't do this without the internet, you know, something like 1000 MORE... and actually, like, in the future, when I can have the team, the budget to hire the team, I would actually have like a journalist embedded on the Hill that can say who is lobbying on these bills, for and against, who's up there advocating? You know, what's really coming up for a vote next week? That's really hard to tell. There's always a lot of chatter about what votes actually have a chance and which ones are going to die in committee. And so, you know, this is a way, this is an opportunity to sort of reimagine media and the way people get information and the way people interact with information as well.
And there's a lot of great nonprofit media happening now. Are y'all operating as a nonprofit?
We're not a nonprofit. No. It's something I've considered... it just... it just not...
So you're not running on donations, in other words?
no, no, no, no. No, we take 5% of every donation that people make on the app. Otherwise, it's free to constituent users. And then another way that we make money is elected officials can pay to see how their constituents are telling them to vote in real time. They have a separate interface where every vote that they have coming up, they can literally see how many of their constituents are for and against each bill.
That's very cool. That's a very cool model. I like that. D’Seanté, who's your favorite superhero?
Oh, yeah, you know... So all I can think of... I never... I didn't, like, watch a lot of cartoons growing up, all I could think I was Harriet Tubman. I know she's a real person, but she really is my superhero. That's why I named the app after a quote that I believed was hers. I mean, look, a woman who freed herself and then came back, to free more people and did it a couple times? That's incredible to me, like, so courageous. So she was so strong and so courageous. And also, obviously, so kind and loving. I cannot imagine the amount of love that it must take to put yourself in harm's way to that extent, to come back and free other people because you want them to experience the freedom that you now have.
She is a legitimate, real life superhero. So I think that's a great one. D’Seanté, thank you so much for coming on Louisiana,Lefty and joining me to talk about 1000 MORE and I'm excited. I already follow you on social media and I get your email with the gifs or gifs or however you say it. But I'm excited to go dig in a little deeper now that I've talked to you more about it.
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's just so good to see you again.
Likewise. Thank you for listening to Louisiana Lefty. Please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you to Ben Collinsworth for producing Louisiana Lefty, Jen Pack of Black Cat Studios for our Super Lefty artwork, and Thousand $ Car for allowing us to use their swamp pop classic "Security Guard" as our Louisiana Lefty theme song.
