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, you just get a whole lot of me this week, because, yes, it's the end of an era. This is the last official episode of Louisiana Lefty. We signaled that we were winding down on the podcast a year ago because I was planning to move out of state for family reasons over the course of 2024 we released bonus episodes as needed, or to loop back around a guest I'd been working on booking, truth be told, there remain a couple of guests I wanted to interview, and I was working on booking them as recently as last month, but we just couldn't work out the schedules. And Well, time has run out, perhaps I will be able to steer them to one of the new local podcasts starting up now, while I had hoped to more clearly pass the baton, currently, none of the new ones are replacements for this one, but there are a handful of up and coming, progressive and democratic podcast focused on Louisiana that will be worth checking out. I'll link to my own personal social media accounts in the Episode Notes, and we'll be happy to introduce you to as many of them as I can, as they emerge as always, our episodes will remain archived on our website and podcast apps. We'll keep Louisiana Lefty's YouTube page up so that we can post there if need be. We may do some repackaging of important info and bite sized pieces, but that's something we're still figuring out. I'll definitely be shuttering Louisiana lefties old Twitter account. I'll keep the Facebook and Instagram accounts open as an archive, but will cease to post to them very soon. So follow your host, Lynda Woolard, instead for news and updates. This is a time of extreme transition for social media. As of this recording, we don't know what will become of Tiktok, the owner of X, formerly Twitter, has bought himself a president and controls information on his site. The owner of the many meta properties, seems to have sold his soul to Trump post election, and obviously he controls information on his suite of sites. If you stay on any of the Musk or Zuckerberg apps, I highly recommend you set your profiles to private and change your passwords frequently. Wherever we end up online, I suggest we all become experts in media literacy, because misinformation and disinformation are now part of our landscape. For now, I recommend blue sky is a safe place to gather and connect. It's still rolling out features, but a few that I like are the starter packs, so you can follow a bunch of people who write on a particular topic in one fell swoop. You can also customize your feeds so that you can have one where you only see posts from people you follow, aka no algorithms, and they don't devalue links, meaning if you post a link that takes readers to a different site, they don't penalize you and hide your post like other social media sites do. I'm still deciding on where else I'll be. I suspect I'll share some information on sub stack. They've rejected Musk's offer to buy them before. So I'm hoping they'll hold strong. And you can follow me there. I plan to share the same kind of info I did on Louisiana lefty on my accounts with less of a Louisiana focus, since I no longer live there, in the same way that we experienced a digital diaspora when Musk bought Twitter, the potential Tiktok ban is spawning several new options, like black owner based fan base that's available now, and woman owner based Neptune that should roll out soon, and already existing Chinese apps like red note, Another billionaire Mark Cuban, is broadcasting that he's willing to fund a Tiktok style app based on blue skies open protocol. If someone will step up to build it, it's hard to know what will shake out with all of those yet the reason I personally won't be downloading apps that require you to sign terms of service agreements with the Chinese. Government is less about the data that I assume they already have on all of us than it is that I simply don't know enough about their legal system to want to sign away my rights to them as we continue to prepare for what's next, I recommend the signal app for safe, private, individual or group messaging, chats for organizing in groups, Slack and discord are still good options with discord having the better security safeguards, as I understand it, if you choose to stay on Facebook for your groups, I'll post a link in the Episode Notes on some setting changes you should make to protect yourself. There are other apps and sites that I've been exploring, and I'll post more about them on my Lynda Woolard blue sky or sub stack as I have more info. I just can't make predictions or judgments on most of them yet, but I love all the citizen backlash we've been seeing to American social media owners trying to possess everything and everyone. They want to control us. They want to make more money. But I also think the bigger powers that be Don't mind us scattering to the winds. Some in our ranks have expressed concern that they're dividing us to conquer us. The thing is, we were never really all in one place because of their damn algorithms and multiple congresses have failed to protect us and to protect our data, the most valuable resource there is, and ultimately, they failed to protect our democracy. In the same vein, the question has to be asked about some of these billionaires who got control of legacy media outlets like Bezos buying the Washington Post. Did they want to simply control information, or was their plan to kill it or destroy trust in a shared truth through all of these upheavals we're experiencing, we have to keep finding each other, and we have to keep finding accurate information. I've given up on corporate media, and I'm interested in the growing movement of journalists launching individual and nonprofit models of disseminating information. I'm working on a list that I'm happy to share in the Episode Notes, but it's still a work in progress, and will likely, by its nature, need to be ever changing. Early favorites for me, though, have been the nonprofit ProPublica, which has been doing consistently high quality work, and day magazine, which is a woman owned and operated digital magazine. They're worth sending a small donation to if you have the means. The Media and Democracy Project put together a list of local publications for the entire country. And local news is never not important as big changes can be made in the darkest of times in your own backyard. I'll link to that resource in the notes for TV. One of my first donations was to PBS, which I'm sure will be targeted. I have found their news programs from foreign press to be more condensed and yet higher quality information. I've also returned to watching proceedings in real time on C span, which is available through cable TV, internet or their app.
Frankly, we're at such a strange place with all our social media, journalistic media and politics, I'm still working out what the appropriate response to this moment is. From my perspective, in 2017 the beginning of the Trump turn was so chaotic, but our call to action was simple and direct, resist because we had so many new activists coming online, my personal response was to begin a weekly convening call where we invited the leadership of any resistance group or allied group across the state we could find, which came to about 70 at the time, to come together, coordinate their actions and share information on how to accomplish our shared goals, we featured longtime activists who could train new people on everything from staging a sit in at a senator's office to planning a legal march down Main Street to lobbying state level elected officials in the legislature. The hope was that the leadership would share this information with other members of their groups, and in that way, our knowledge base would spread while these conference calls were beneficial in getting our actions organized in the moment, what I found is that often, for whatever reason, that last link in the chain sharing this knowledge with other members who weren't on the call got dropped. So I started thinking that a podcast that was accessible to everyone in their own free time was a preferable option. This podcast grew out of those conference calls, but Louisiana lefty lived entirely within the four years of the Biden administration. Book ended by the January 6 insurrection Yes. We know what we witnessed. Do not let them rewrite history and a second Trump inauguration, which is occurring the day this episode drops. For the last four years, we had the luxury of looking more at the big picture, able to make plans without daily emergencies. We also responded to Democratic Party politics going on in the state at the same time, part of our plan was to better inform interested progressives on how the Democratic Party operates, so that they could better know how to navigate it. For much of the podcast, we were really focused on how to make progress when an effective democratic party doesn't exist through community and advocacy groups. We interviewed leadership from some of the best, and hope that it helped people within the state connect, whether you were an individual looking for a new advocacy home, or a member of a group looking to connect with other similarly focused groups, or even someone who didn't have pre existing advocacy organizations in your area, and we're looking to see how you might start something up yourself. Over four years, we were proud to introduce you to wonderful organizers who are working in all kinds of organizing spaces across the state. Through our organizer of the month awards that we posted across social media platforms, to date, 48 Louisiana organizers have been honored publicly and received a framed certificate recognizing their work. I couldn't be happier to share that step up. Louisiana will be continuing this project so that even more organizers can be given their flowers for their day in, day out work on the ground that is so important for building people power. I'll post links to all their social media in the Episode notes so that you can follow them too. Louisiana, Lefty has tried to center organizers in everything we've done first, because that's my own personal background, but also because I've seen time and time again that organizing when done correctly, with proper data strategy and resources, but also with persistence, integrity and love for community is what actually moves the ball forward. Organizing is the key to progress for the people. We also know that our advocacy groups are limited in what they can accomplish unless they have some kindred spirits and caring souls in elected office to work with them in passing legislation. So Louisiana lefty also tried to educate candidates on how to run better campaigns. We're about to get a true lesson on what happens when Democrats hold none of the reigns of state and federal power. And it's going to be harsh. This is where we see that elections have consequences and winning truly matters. If we want to help the people of our state and our country, we have got to get more organized and much better at running winning campaigns, and that means that we also still need that functioning democratic party that we've talked about so often. A lot of people worked really hard to get new leadership last year, and we have some phenomenal new folks, combined with experienced folks who've stepped up to do the work the Louisiana Democratic Party has a history of dysfunction, with a few bright spots along the way. My current worry is that some of the old impediments may still be stopping the new changes that we know need to be made, especially in a state like Louisiana, we're a big tent party, which will necessarily lead to some tensions. However, internal fighting and personal grudges should not be dictating the larger agenda. One thing I had to learn in Louisiana is that no one in the political space ever goes completely away. So I needed to learn to work with whomever was willing to work with me, because I was going to keep running into them over and over again no matter what. And frankly, I didn't have the luxury of turning away allies. We win elections by bringing more people in, not by putting up barriers and keeping people out. As to the coalitions that we have the opportunity to build, there's just not that many places to go to find folks who are willing to do the hard work. So we should be learning how to work together, whether someone is your personal cup of tea or not, there's no time to wait to get the perfect set of people you want to work with. You do the work with who's willing to show up, because at the end of the day, this isn't about us as individuals. It's about the people of the state. The Democratic Party should be the party that represents Louisiana, families, women, workers, children, vulnerable communities, the middle class. How do we protect them, make their lives better, provide them with a brighter future? If that is at the beginning, middle and end of every conversation about what needs to be done, we're failing and we'll continue to lose we. Rather than jockey for personal power or wage petty internal political battles, we must always center our communities. First, leaders have to lead to keep spaces clear of the negative, to keep the troops on the right path and to keep the agenda moving forward swiftly, you have to be able to blunt chaos and disharmony from within our own party, and we all have to be willing to call out bad actors in our midst. If we're afraid to do that, how will we find the courage to stand up to the Republicans who are launching daily assaults on the rights and well being of our people? If you are in a position of leadership, your strength should come in every moment from remembering who you champion. Remember why you're there in the first place. Turn the conversation back to that if there are interminable wars within the party, we're not turning our metaphorical fire on those who are causing actual harm. At the end of the day, the party's main job is to win elections. We cannot enact meaningful change for the people unless we win. The people of Louisiana deserve better than what they have today, and to give them that requires a lot of work, raising money, building coalitions, recruiting and training candidates, bringing in volunteers and giving them meaningful assignments, registering and engaging voters. These are all year round efforts every year, and things we've been talking about on Louisiana lefty for the last four years, even if what we're most interested in is getting a more progressive party, the first step is to get more Democrats elected. One of my best friends and mentors would say it this way, first you elect more Democrats, then you elect better Democrats. The simple truth is that the party needs to get some wins under its belt to prove that there's still hope in the state. And if we can't recruit progressive candidates and run winning campaigns in progressive pockets of the state, why would we think that's even remotely possible? Statewide rebuilding will also require some deeper relationship building, though, where folks from our more progressive areas actually sit in community with folks from our more moderate and conservative areas. And then there has to be some arithmetic done. How do you build a winning coalition around any issue you care about? Do you have the numbers to achieve victory? If not, what are the changes and compromises you can make to get your numbers up? Doing the work should allow you to find pathways to success, so that you, your volunteers and your donors aren't just quixotically banging up against brick walls to no effect beyond collective frustration, we're waiting to see what the new leadership at this party can do. The clock is surely ticking. And look, whenever you have a party that isn't serving you, one of the tools Louisiana lefty gave to you is the blueprint for changing it. If this attempted change fails, prepare to try try again. Just remember the forces that want to keep things the way they are, or even take them backwards, are watching the same developments that you and I are, and they could just as easily be the ones to take control of the party at the next opportunity.
Right now, we're watching elections for DNC leadership to see what is next for the National Party, and I'm eager to see what comes of that too. We need our democratic electeds to stand up and defend democracy right now. I'm also really aware that accomplishing that defending democracy will require more than party or partisanship. In 2020 we built the coalition of the decent, to quote, unquote, save the soul of America. In 2025 the landscape is so different. I'm not sure what the new coalition will need to be, but I believe we've seen the seeds of it in the public response to Luigi mangiones rebellion against the United Healthcare CEO and the youth uprising against the forces behind the Tiktok ban as well as the Bannon Musk split in Maga world, where the brolidox are trying to overtly muscle out the populist base, the billionaires were always a strong, if less forward facing feature of Trump's support, but now it's out in the open, and I believe that will create some opportunities for workers to become more united. That is if we can keep a focus on the class war and off the culture wars. There's so much more to all these issues, but it's time for me to finish up my closing monolog. I'll say again, I'm still piecing together how I want to respond to the second Trump administration. I know I want to do things differently this time, partly because I'm older and tireder, but also we need younger generations to step in and change things up for all of us, we have to recognize now that what we saw as a resistance. To get us through some four year glitch in the system in 2017 was not a temporary thing. There will be no return to normal. Permanent battle lines have been drawn for the foreseeable future, and I know a lot of folks are tuning out altogether, but that's not the answer either. It's going to take me some time to learn how to be more sustainably engaged in a way that doesn't destroy my peace or take away any semblance of a normal life. I'd like to find a way for us to stay safe through these times and to, as they say, work smarter, not harder. I'll let you know when I figure that out. Lol, another thing I learned in Louisiana is that when you're out of political favor, sometimes the best you can do is work to get small but significant wins. This is something we can all be looking for locally. Why we try to win the big elections is because it allows us to make big, sweeping changes for the greatest number of people when that isn't an option, some of the local elections or initiatives can make immediate, substantive changes for your community and every person or group of people that we can bring a better life to matters. My last thoughts are around this. My big word for 2025 is analog. I'm going to try to do things more hands on, more organic, more old school, think record albums over Spotify. I feel like the more personal and in person we can be emphasis on in person, the better chance we'll have to survive the hidden forces working against us. And then ironically, I'll share more about that in all the spaces. You can find me online, through rough seas ahead in all these converging aspects of our lives that are so important to our country, let's keep finding each other wherever we can. 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.
