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. When this episode drops, there will be only six weeks left until the 2024 presidential election. So I invited my friend Steven Handwerk, our democratic professor, back to help me break down the state of the race and ways for folks to engage in the closing days. As always, while we talk about how to get involved this year, we frame our conversation so the information will be useful beyond this cycle. As I've talked to people, I've mentioned two big pathways to participate. One is for the presidential campaign specifically, and the other is organizing in Louisiana on our congressional races. As Professor Handwerk and I were discussing both these options, the Louisiana Democratic Party dropped a brand new 'do something' tool on louisianadems.org that allows you to jump in anytime and phone bank for their endorsed candidates. Whether you want to work directly with the Harris-Walz campaign or organize on local elections, I've created an engagement resource guide that gives links to volunteer and donate. I suspect you'll find something there that works for you if you're not already volunteering or donating somewhere. The easiest way to find my link is in our Episode Notes. But if you're familiar with bit.ly links, it's bit.ly/KreweOfKamala, with the first letter of each word in Krewe of Kamala capitalized. Stephen Handwerk, thank you for joining me again on Louisiana Lefty
Lynda Woolard, it's always such a pleasure. I mean, even for us Louisiana Dems in exile, it is great to be able to reconnect
Well, and to that point, my last episode was in June, so I've missed a couple of months, but that is because I've been relocating and still getting settled in, but we really wanted to have a conversation in advance of this upcoming huge election. And honestly, before I left Louisiana, I was going to do an episode when Joe Biden was still the nominee, or the presumptive nominee, and so many things were happening so quickly, literally the day before we were going to record that there was the first assassination attempt on Trump, and then Joe Biden dropped out. And so I just kept postponing recording an episode... and then cut to here we are today. Here we are. This will drop with only six weeks left in the election so my big push for people is I've been wanting people to refocus on the thing that Louisiana Lefty was really created to do, which was to strategize in the how we win elections, and focus on that big thing that I think is so important for Democrats and progressives in particular, is field organizing, which we just don't focus on enough.
Yeah, this is the time, right? I mean, this is when we are in full on execute mode. This is no time to waste. This is we've got to find every minute in the day to do something positive that's going to help this election, right?
So the Sturm and Drang on social media is not particularly helpful at this point. There's some benefit to continuing enthusiasm and showing enthusiasm publicly, so that I will encourage, but direct voter contact at this point is the key to winning this election for Kamala Harris, and it's the key to winning our down ballot races as well. And I just did a Facebook post about this couple days ago, and I've created a resource guide for people who want to know how to engage with the campaign, so I'll post that in the Episode Notes. But if folks don't want to go there, I can tell you the link is a bi.tly link, B, i, t, dot, l, y, slash. So it's Bit.ly/KreweOfKamala, and the first letter of each word is capitalized. It is case sensitive. But you can look for that link in the Episode Notes, or you can go to Bit.ly/KreweOfKamala and find ways to engage. So one of the conversations, Stephen, that we've had a lot of is... well, before I go there, I want to talk a little bit about why this work that we're asking people to do matters. We've seen how Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have really re-energized our base. The Democratic Party has gotten really excited, and we love that. But one of the things some of the Democratic pollsters was warning about early on was not to get irrationally exuberant. And while the polls look better for us than they did before Biden left the race, this is still incredibly close.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we are still in a paper thin polling. Now, would I rather be us than I would be them? Of course, we are definitely seeing that trajectory. But again, these polls don't matter until your vote is banked. You and I talk about that so frequently, about, you know, until that vote is cast, we still have so much more work to do. Too many things can get involved in people's lives to get them to forget. If they're out celebrating a victory lap two weeks before this election is out on election day. The problem with that is, is that we're losing sight of the fact that this is going to be a squeaker everywhere. We don't know what sort of court challenges are going to be thrown at us. We don't know the type of shenanigans that are going to be going on at drop boxes across the nation, at polling locations across the nation, at early voting locations. We don't know about those things. We don't know about the police presence that's going to probably push people and make them feel some kind of way for voting. We have to do everything in our power to make sure that this election isn't close, and the only way we do that is by direct voter contact and making sure we get everyone everyone to the polls.
And one of the reasons I honestly believe Joe Biden was hesitant to drop out of the race is because... I mean, the fact that this is close is shocking to folks like you and me and most folks I know. How is this a close election? But one of the things Joe Biden knew is that he knew that if he wasn't running, the successor needed to be Kamala Harris. He also knows that to elect Kamala Harris, we're trying to elect the first woman president, which we failed at doing before. Not only is this a woman, this is a black woman. So while there are some advantages to that there are built in disadvantages. And we see that today because we just saw the Teamsters who had endorsed Joe Biden are failing to endorse Kamala Harris. Now, a lot of the local Teamster unions are saying, 'screw national, we're endorsing Kamala Harris', but the national Teamsters have refused to endorse Kamala Harris, and I think that is got to be the thing we think about is that we need to worry about still being up against those traditional hurdles that we have of misogyny and racism that are built into the infrastructure of this country. We've got to surmount those challenges by turning out our voters.
That's exactly right, and that's why we frequently call the pundits and the people that talk about 'blue waves.' You know, the 'blue wave' is, yes, a successful thing when we can actually pick up all of these seats, and we certainly hope that we generate that way. But no, we need to think about the 'blue wave' as is just what you said. We got to surmount, we got to overcome all of these other obstacles that are being thrown in our way. Of these individuals who do have sexist mindsets, of these people who do still have glimmers of racism or overt racism in their minds. We have to overcome those things. And I am heartened by, you made a really good point that a lot of the locals for the Teamsters have come out in support, being so many of the battleground states Teamsters, they're locals. They're for those states, Michigan being one of them in my new adoptive state. Happy to see those things. But this is still very real. It is very real, and to think that this, in any way, some sort of a cakewalk, that we're polling two or three points ahead in some of these battleground states that the work is done... the work just began! We only started this race just a few months ago when our president decided, for the good of the nation, that he was going to stand back. This is still a lot of work that we got to get done. So yes.
And look to your point, Trump, one of the things that Trump signaled, he told the Republican National Committee to pull all of their money out of the ground game and put it all into legal so that they can focus on legal challenges. Now I am aware that some PACs, including Elon Musk's, have come in behind and put some money into ground game for them, and I don't know enough about them, I don't think anyone does know what they're really doing, if there's any good work being done there or not, but there is a ground game. But Trump's signal was, 'I'm not going to worry about the ground game, I'm going to worry about winning this in court.' So again, gotta overwhelm the polls. We've also seen some of the changes they've made within states, some of these states we need to win. Since January 6, 2021, they've put some people in positions where they can really gum up the works. And I'm not trying to be alarmist. I am in no way saying these folks are going to succeed. I'm simply saying our job right now is to make sure we overwhelm the polls with our people.
Yeah, that's just it. We've got one job. We've got one job, and preciously few more days to be able to do that job. Look, none of us want to wake up on Wednesday or Thursday after the polls have closed and think, man, I could have given that other weekend. I could have made a few more phone calls. I could have knocked a few more doors. Hey, yeah, I could have gone over to Atlanta to knock some doors for a weekend. Those things, we've got to leave it all on the ground right now, as coach Wlaz would probably say, and probably already has, we need to make sure that we're calling these places and that we need to have those real, live conversations. Remember, this election, to me, is feeling a lot like 2008, but remember what worked so well for us in 2008. It was having those personal conversations, relaying your story as to why you're called, to make these phone calls, to make these door knocks. This is your story. Convey that story. Hear what their story is, and help them make a plan to get to the polls.
That's right, you don't have to be a policy expert, and you don't have to know everything about Kamala and Tim. You don't even have to know everything about Trump or project 2025, you can know a little bit about those things, but the main thing is telling your story. That's correct.
That's absolutely right.
I do want to pivot. There's a big conversation about Kamala Harris, because there was so much excitement. Will Kamala Harris and Tim Walz be able to win Louisiana electoral votes? So two things about that, there are, well, first of all, there's nobody who counts votes and looks at the Electoral College who believes that Louisiana's going to go for Kamala Harris. But secondly, if you're trying to put together an electoral college win and you're trying to decide where to put resources, you also have to get to the number that you need, and our eight electoral votes are not figured into the math in a way that's helpful. So we aren't a state that is being looked at by the campaign for a couple of reasons, and that's not an insult. And I... you know the the thing is, like every campaign, what are the three resources every campaign has, Stephen?
They are time, money and people
And what can you not get more of?
You certainly can't get more time. Time is finite.
You can get more money and you can get more people, but what you have on hand you have to make rational decisions about where you should best put those resources to get the win. Why does that matter to Louisiana? Because there's perhaps no state in the Union where having federal protections matters more. Part of the reason I got involved in politics in the first place was after Hurricane Katrina and seeing that we needed an ally in the White House. And there's never been a time when that has not been clear to me, that Louisiana needs an ally in the White House. We also very much need the Senate if we care about the Supreme Court at all, and we should care about the Supreme Court, and we also know that the best way to remove Mike Johnson from power right now is to flip the house and get speaker Hakeem Jeffries.
That's exactly right. That is exactly right. And Lynda right before we recorded this, right before we gathered today, we found out that speaker Mike Johnson, who was, what, the seventh choice for speaker, couldn't even get a budget bill done. So it looks like our government may shut down. Now, hopefully we've gotten this cleaned up and Democrats have been able to cause some sanity to hit the house. But imagine this going into a national election with the Congress being shut down because the House Republicans can't get anything done. I mean, we really have to change the control of the House, and getting Mike Johnson out of that position is incredible, and Louisiana can play a role there.
That's right. So, yeah, let's pivot to that. Because while if you look at my resource guide, you're going to see that if your goal this year is to help Kamala Harris win, which is a noble goal, you should be focusing on direct voter contact in swing states. If you can go knock doors, great. If you can't make calls, send texts, people have done a lot of postcards, but we're running out of time to do postcards and and of all the things that you can do to help turn out voters, canvassing is the most effective. Phone calls comes next, texts after that, postcards is the least effective. It has impact, but it is not your highest impact voter contact. So just bear that in mind. You have to send a lot of postcards, and still, you're probably going to make about a 1% impact, 1-1.5% percent impact on voter turnout. Canvassing can get you a much higher impact. Phone calls can get you a significantly higher impact. So just bear that in mind. But I'm fully aware that not not everybody wants to speak to voters. We have introverts in the world, and I understand that. And so I get why people enjoy postcards, so I'm not denigrating them whatsoever. They do have impact. I i have some of the most respect in the world for one of my volunteers on the Hillary Clinton campaign, who was an extreme introvert, very shy woman, very anxious woman, but so wanted Hillary to win, that she'd come in every day and make phone calls for her, and I just, I always say, I'd see her white knuckling it, because she'd just grab onto the desk. She'd make her calls, but she'd be grabbing onto the desk out of her anxiety. But I had extreme respect for her for just powering through and doing it, because she cared that much. I also understand if folks just can't do it, if you can do it, you should talk to voters, one-on-one. It is actually really quite energizing. Yes, every now and then get an asshole, but you also speak to a lot of people who are so happy to hear from you.
That's exactly right. Now, if I could, you know... There's also more fun ways to do this, right? So there's a whole bunch of different ways that you can make phone calls. You can do it from the comfort of your lazy boy at home with your iPad and your phone. That's fine, but there's also more fun ways. There are usually call parties where people get together, if you learn and you are making calls, as Lynda is expertly saying and pointing you to these battleground states that need these extra calls being made, live calls, by the way, not robocalls, these live calls with real people. There are dialers too. Dialers are a lot of fun to participate in, because you don't got to dial numbers. You don't got to do any of that. It just happens. And it's so much more fun when you can do this in a group of a room and then maybe have a bell to ring when you get someone or try and have some fun stuff happening together with folks. Make this more of a fun thing. I know we used to do Drinking Liberally, where we would start making phone calls and then it would just lean more towards drinking at the end, but it was still a lot of fun to be able to deliver some of these phone calls to where they're needed the most. And right now, state parties across the nation, especially in our eight battleground states, are working incredibly hard every single day at refreshing their lists to make sure that there are great folks loaded up in there that desperately need to have that touch from you or someone like you.
And we've talked about this on lefty before, you want to layer contact. So the campaign has got ads going on in those states, and they've got mail going out in those states. But you also want to have texts and phone calls and door knocks. You want to have several different methods of reaching out to people in order to be impactful and get folks out to vote. Postcard is one of those layers too, right? Like that's another layer. So all of this stuff has to build, and once you start building, you want to keep that build going all the way to election day. You don't want someone to hear from you and then stop hearing from you. You want folks to continue to hear from you more and more and more.
That's exactly right. And because we have so many great things right at our fingertips to be able to make this job a little bit easier, we are layering those things, like Lynda was just pointing out, we're sending those digital ads in advance of making the phone calls to say, 'Hey, you're going to get a phone call from one of your neighbors that really wants to talk to you about the importance the election, answer!' You know, we're doing things to layer that messaging in, to make sure that this connection is made a little bit more solid, right? That it's not just a fly-by night. It's not just that one touch and, 'oh, I've got a new voter.' No, it has to be all of this. We have to keep this going. And I just want to point out one little thing, campaigns have to have the resources in order to be able to keep those things going. And again, to what Lynda said, we can't make any more time. We know when Election Day is right, but they can get more people, which is us, and they can also get more money. So guess what? If you miss a call shift, then I beg you to donate $10, you know, I can't make it tonight. Life got in the way. I'm not going to be able to make calls, but you know what? I'm going to send them $10 or I'm going to buy something cool on their merch store, something to be able to say that you're in this and you're not giving up. That helps the campaign so much.
So I've given options on this resource guide at bit.ly/KreweOfKamala, (with each of the first letters capitalized in Krew Of Kamala.) You've got resources for how to engage on the Kamala campaign, but and to pivot back to what you were talking about with Louisiana playing a key role this year. We've had people in our state and people in the legal community from all across the country, diligently working to get us a second majority-minority district in the state, giving us a rare opportunity to have impact nationally by adding a second Democrat in the state. So the state party will be working candidates, or, obviously, all the congressional candidates are working. And you can, if you want to work with a candidate directly, you can go find them and work with their campaign. But you can also work with the Louisiana Democratic Party, the New Women's Caucus of the Louisiana Democratic Party is doing a lot of work on this. So they'll be doing work on trying to make sure we get a second Democrat elected from Louisiana, so that we can help bring speaker Hakeem Jeffries, speak that into being, right? So I've also got links for you to participate in that, if you want to engage there and get involved in that and look both of these things matter and either way, if you work on Kamala's campaign in Louisiana to help win swing states, or you work in Louisiana to help win a second congressional district for Democrats, you are helping build the long term infrastructure for our state. How? Why is that? Because if you're working, if you're volunteering for a presidential campaign, you are learning transferable skills that you can take and use for local candidates in the future. If you're doing what Stephen was talking about and getting little call parties together, you're building a team of people who you can call on again in the future for local campaigns, and if you're working with the Democratic Party, you're doing both of those things, plus you're helping us get the data, we need to start learning more about where our pockets of voters are in the state and where we can start putting more resources, and we're building those relationships with voters by having direct voter contact in in the state, building relationships that we need to make permanent, frankly, in Louisiana. So there are ways that you're helping Louisiana, no matter what you choose to do this year, if you want to work on Kamala's campaign, or you want to work building within Louisiana, either way, you are helping Louisiana.
And the thing that you're so right about is, and I'm going to take it just that one step further, what you're also doing is you're building a community that is used to volunteering in the political space, and that is what we desperately need. I hear so many folks saying that Louisiana could be the next Georgia, if only we had a Stacey Abrams. Well, guess what? Stacey Abrams wasn't Stacey Abrams before she became Stacey Abrams, okay? It took work. It took time. And it took those call parties, it took those block parties, it took those precinct captains. It took all of those folks coming together and building over a decade to get there. And look Louisiana, this is why I'm hopeful for you guys, since our seventh congressional district evaporated post Katrina, we have not had an opportunity to be able to have a voice in winning and actually passing the gavel to somebody else in the House of Representatives until this opportunity right now. So there is an opportunity I was not lucky enough to have a time where congressional control pass through the Louisiana Democratic Party when I was its executive director. This is the chance now. So if you are inclined to want to work on that, because, again, yes, we absolutely need to have Kamala and Tim in office, but we also need to give her and him a Congress they can work with. So I think that that's very vital to put in, but build the culture of volunteerism. But political volunteerism.
Really important, Stephen. And I've heard a lot of people saying this year, and there's, there's a few memes going around about this, that Louisiana is not a red state, it's a non voting state. And look, I don't disagree with that. Right now we are a red state because we're voting red. The Complete quote, it comes from the Poor People's Campaign from reverend Dr William Barber, where the full quote is that southern states are not red states, they're voter suppression states, they're gerrymandered states, they're low voting states, and they're oppressed states. But just saying that out loud doesn't fix the problem. It's just identifying the problem and then saying, 'what are we going to do about it?' So to your point, we have to build that infrastructure, that culture of volunteerism, that culture of donating, donating to the party, donating to community groups, donating to candidates, all of those things form the coalition you need. And that's what they've done in Georgia. That's what they've done in Michigan. That's what they're doing in Pennsylvania. There were all these things happening in those states that are now swing states North Carolina, like we're seeing that happen there. So these states are doing that work that we can absolutely do in Louisiana. There is no reason we can't do this work in Louisiana. Another thing people like to say is that the Democratic Party is written off the south. They've left the south well, but it's not true. The Democratic Party is in Georgia. The Democratic Party is in North Carolina and South Carolina because they're doing the work, and they see them doing the work. So that's what we have to do, is show that we can stand ourselves up enough that their investment is worth making.
That's right. And, you know, I frequently have to remind people and push back when people say, 'well, the DNC is not investing in Louisiana.' That's absolutely not true. The DNC has never given up on Louisiana. As a matter of fact, they're making more investments now, even though, when I was the executive director, so that's the good thing. The question is the leadership of the party, and now we have good leaders in the party that are doing the right things with those investments. And right now, we're actually taking the fight in the Louisiana Democratic Party to the Republicans, whereas the last administration seemed more engaged on fighting with Democrats. This administration is actually doing that work. And it's valuable for you to not only see that, recognize that, and then put your feet into action to reward them for doing that and aiming the party in the direction that we need to be useful.
How do we get national attention? How do we get national money? What does it take from us for them to start saying... and side note, let me just say they are already paying attention, because they did see a change of leadership at the party, but were they... They're paying attention. They're having conversations with us, but they haven't started the big investments. What does that take? What is getting to that point take, Stephen?
So the big thing about that is right now, and you and I have been on many of these calls from these big organizations that do want to roll up their sleeves and help out Louisiana, they need to see that groundswell. They need to see these numbers being reported. Every time you do a phone bank, guess what? Your little tick goes into a check mark that there's another person making phone calls in Louisiana. We need to see those numbers. We need to see that groundswell. We need to see that community action that build that we're seeing, and we're starting to see that right? We can look at, you know, Commissioner Lewis and the work that he did on building the community and building that out. We're seeing that in New Orleans, with a lot of the work, some of our great leaders in New Orleans are working on right now, from Helena Moreno to JP Morrell, they're doing a lot of work with engaging and those numbers are starting to make sense. They're starting to build. We're seeing work that's being done even in central Louisiana with our good friend Liz Lege, who is doing great work up there in bringing people together. That is what we need to see. We need to see more of that, for sure, but that is what folks are looking at. And right now we have several organizations that are actively talking about making significant investments in Louisiana, especially if this trajectory continues.
And look, you mentioned change of leadership at the party. That doesn't just mean the DSCC and the Executive Committee and the chair, there have been a lot of the local DPECs, the Democratic Parish Executive Committees, who've changed their leadership and are now actively looking to to be more engaged in their communities. So there is this community effort and this organic, not all organic, some of it was, was hard won, but there, but there is a grassroots effort to make change at the party. Because people... look, once we got Governor Landry, people started seeing the need for actually doing this work, and how important the Democratic Party really is and as I always say, and as we have talked about on a few different podcasts that we've done together, Stephen, there are funding mechanisms that the Louisiana Democratic Party, any state party, that no other entity has access to. So you do not want to let go of your party. You do not want to just forget about it or to work around it. You want to be able to have it high functioning and collaborative, so that those funds and those funding mechanisms can be used to their highest good for the people,
that's exactly right. The State party is the only legal entity, hear this for just a quick second, the state party is the only legal entity that can directly coordinate for every single candidate, from President to Governor to Mayor to garbage collector. It is the only legal entity that can coordinate with all of those individuals. PACs cannot do that. It is illegal for them to do that. And so that's why it's so important to never cede that control of a state party to do that. And so take this as your clarion call to actually get involved. Find those local DPECs, show up, come to their meetings. I'm telling you what, they'll be blown away when you start seeing people showing up and volunteering and pay attention to the Louisiana Lefty podcast, because there is a step by step process on how to get engaged, What time in the cycle it's time to register voters, what time is it in the campaign to actually make voter contact calls? What time in the campaign is it time to actually rebuild and refocus? So we've given you a step by step... Lynda Woolard has given you a step by step guide in Louisiana Lefty that will help you with through all of those time points, those plot points in the election. Right now, it's about executing and getting voters to the polls. That's what it is right now, because voters are already starting to vote across the nation.
That's right. And so we're going to try to archive some Louisiana Lefty stuff too. We've tried to do every podcast, even though it might be in the context of its time, we've really tried to create evergreen content so that people can really learn these lessons about how progressive candidates and Democratic campaigns can run and win. Yeah, and so that's what we'll continue to do to a point. You know, we're slowing down a little bit, and I'm hoping for someone else to take the reins at some point, which we'll talk about some other day. But in the meantime, now is the time to start doing direct voter contact. The other thing in the resource guide that I will mention that's a little different than either working for the National Campaign or the state campaigns, there is the ability, if you have legal experience to do election protection, there's also, if you speak a second language, for the Voter Protection hotline, they need folks who speak other languages. So there are links for you to sign up for those things if those are ways you'd like to be involved. I did want to talk a little bit about well, future. You know, every two years we have these federal elections. Every four years we have the presidential elections. This is a one of those rare years where we don't have a Senate campaign. So that's the thing we'll be looking for in four years, because that's another way... if we're building our capacity between now and the next presidential election, and we get a good Senate candidate on the ballot, the up ballot, top of the ticket might help that Senate candidate, but also that Senate candidate could help top of the ticket in Louisiana. So that's really kind of the pre-planning, the forward looking stuff we need to be thinking about. And of course, we'll have our state elections soon enough as well. So what we're building this year and what we build when we have a completely off year next year, next year will be the year you want to register tons of voters, and you want to be, you know, collecting all of those volunteers to get them talking to Democrats across the state who never hear from the Democratic Party like you want to start doing that kind of outreach next year and start building up for the next great congressional candidate and the next great senatorial candidate and and who we're going to run for governor against Landry so that we can make him a one term governor. Those things are all in our sights if we focus. For this year, folks in Louisiana have said things like, 'Well, then why does my vote count if we aren't going to have any impact on the Electoral College?.' And besides the down ballot races, which should be reason enough to go vote, I would like to say that the popular vote does matter. And why? Why do I say that? Well, we need to let people know that the popular vote matters, because the greater numbers we can turn out, the more we prove that we are the strong majority in the country, that we reject the kind of hate and division that Trump has been pushing and that we do not want Project 2025 ruling our government. So that's really important. But also, again, your vote matters. I alluded to this earlier, when we can see where our voters are in the state, we can see where our support is strongest, and we can start to develop out those areas. So we already know where our big cities are, and we have democratic pockets, but there are other democratic pockets in the state that we can't identify until people turn up to vote.
Yeah, well, and it's the folks like us, you and I, that spend time, so much time on spreadsheets that are looking at where the other opportunities are. And I think right now that's the great thing about this is, is that counting your vote, getting your vote counted, making sure that you show up, making sure that you show out, still means that you need to get your community and your neighborhood out there and voting. Then you need to get back on the phones, for sure. But it's incredibly important to do that, because, again, if you're talking about creating this movement, you want to be able to go into your folks and be able to say, 'look, we're getting better, we are improving over the last year's turnout, we are making these differences here, but it's because we're building a community.' Building will last. And remember, what is the statistic here? If you get someone in the habit of voting three times in a row, they will be a voter. Yeah, it'll they'll be a voter for the rest of their life. That's what we have to do now. We have to get more people involved. And while I agree with what Lynda said earlier about you know, yes, we do have a problem with people just not turning out and voting, but the way we fix that is much deeper and much bigger of a problem, but you do that by actually creating a habit. Make voting a habit.
Yes, that's the long term building that we're talking about in the state. And one of the lovely things I've seen, that I do want to give props to, Stephen, is there have been folks who have been so energized by Kamala Harris that they've done a lot of what we call visibility events in the business, we call visibility events, where they get folks together and they wear their chucks and their pearls, and they, you know, they different things like that, right? Look, we did that with the Krewe of Hillary, right? We would get the banners together and go out and, you know, have lunches or cocktails together and part of the reason we started doing that that year was because so many people were afraid to acknowledge their excitement about the candidate, and we wanted to build the permission structure to say, you know, 'come on!' Because, look, I still have it now. I will go out in a Kamala Harris t-shirt. I'm in a blue state today, and I'll go out in a Kamala Harris t-shirt, and people will still whisper to me, I love that shirt, and I'm just like, 'why are we whispering about it?' Like, wear a shirt, like, whatever it's like. So, I mean, I joke, I know, I know in Louisiana why there are people who are nervous about, I mean, I've talked to enough people in Louisiana to know they're worried about putting a sign in front of their yard, because they're worried someone's going to hurt their dog, or they're worried they're going to stop visiting their business or just in general. Look, I took all the bumper stickers off of my car after Joe Biden won, because I started people trying to run me off the road on the highway, right? The one I kept was a Kamala Harris sticker that didn't seem to tick people off so much. But the Joe Biden ones, I actually took off when I was traveling around the state. I would, I would get problems with it. So I get all of that. So I appreciate people doing those visibility events, where they allow people to be excited and with other people in in the public eye saying, 'we are here, we're Democrats, we're out in public, and we're supporting this candidate.' I think it's awesome. What I'll say is, now is the time to take the people you've gathered at those events and turn them into volunteers. And that's why every time you do an event like that, bring your clipboard and a sign up sheet so that you can get back in touch with those people easily. I know some folks organize through Facebook groups, and that's fine, too. But just like direct voter contact, direct volunteer contact, it's also important. If you can call a volunteer, rather than just put something on Facebook that they might miss. If you can call them and say, 'Hey, can you come over and start making calls with us?' Or we'll do a virtual zoom phone bank, join the ones the campaign has, create your own, either way, there are ways to engage people, and the more you can be personal and build that personal relationship with these folks, the more likely you're going to get them to come out and do the work.
That's exactly right. I couldn't have said it better.
Well, thank you. So is there anything else, Stephen? I will let folks know that I'm going to continue to update the resource guide if as things change. For instance, the people love texting so much that often the text bank team hits capacity and they take it offline for a while because they have too many people texting. So I try to keep things like that updated. I try to add things like right now I've got a generic sign up for the party, but as as they have specific things that they're asking people to do for congressional races, I'll update that too. People should go check out the merch on the Louisiana Democratic Party site, because they've got new merch. They've got some Louisiana specific Kamala merch, which is pretty cool. So I'm going to recommend that anything else.
Yeah, look for those of you who do work with weird shifts. You know, if you are a nurse and you're working 12 on, 12 off, and you've got time, but it's at three o'clock in the morning, there are still ways that you can participate. Do this, when you see offensive things pop up on your screen and they are not right fact check them gently, politely, but send them in the right direction. Correct your family and friends when there's crap going around out there right now, that is still important as well. Now, does it get us a lot of votes? Maybe not, but it at least get people triggered to think in a more positive and reasonable way. So there are hundreds of different ways to still participate. You can still sign up for those different shifts, and the big thing is make a plan to volunteer. Okay, set a goal. I'm going to volunteer four hours this week. I'm going to find four hours in my calendar that I'm going to volunteer, and I'm going to do the things that I enjoy doing. I'm going to try and do it in a social environment. Set yourself some reasonable goals, I would argue, ramp them up as we get closer to election day. But please do that. Make a plan to do it so that it actually happens.
I love that, Stephen, and that's a really good advice. And the other thing I'll say, because you triggered this for me, one of the things the campaign has they had a Joe Biden app four years ago, a Hillary Clinton app before that, so they don't have a Kamala Harris app. Not surprising, right? Because it's a very truncated campaign time, but they are using the reach app in the same way, and they're doing nice training on how you can use the reach app. So you can go to Kamalaharris.com and look up all the different ways in the menu if you if you look up how to volunteer, yeah, you can go find that out. But. There are nice trainings for the reach app. And once you get in the reach app, it gives you some other ways to connect with people and share positive information.
I think that great. And I would also flag too for folks that you can also look at Mobilize. Mobilize will have a lot of different events that are in your community. And I would say, if you're doing a phone bank and you're doing it at a local coffee shop that's staying open for you a little bit later to do this and that they want to make a little money right put it on mobilize. You can sign up right now through Kamala harris.com and be able to put your events up on there. It's a great way of being able to build that community a little bit more, stretch out a little bit more, and for those of you that are on these little, small oases that you are trying to find other like minded individuals, utilize tools like that to be able to help you connect with other folks. Sometimes it's just nice to be able to sit down with someone who wears the same colored Jersey as you do
That's right. And let me underscore what you're talking about. Mobilize.us. is the website, and you can personally sign up to be a host for events. We did that. Stephen and I co hosted a watch party for the debate, which was a gas we had a great time. We kept the chat open so we could chat with each with with the folks who signed up, but we put that on, mobilize. Mobilize.us. We, anyone who hosted a debate watch party anywhere in the country, on the Democratic side, could put their event up on mobilize, so that anybody who was in the area or or knew you could sign up and join you, and so you can do that for phone banks or any kind of event you want to host, for Kamala or local causes, local issues, local candidates. Mobilize is an awesome tool. I appreciate you bringing it up.
Absolutely, it was a blast, and I was surprised at the several individuals that hopped on to our zoom, because we kind of marketed as Louisiana expats, being able to get together and kind of reconnect with each other. And we had folks that we had never met before, but had found us through mobilize and through other links that were shared. And it was great to talk with folks who maybe hadn't lived in Louisiana for 20 years, but care. So it was a lot of fun.
So many tools that we have to use that if we engage with them, and we have a state party now that we'll be doing that more, I think, I think there's a lot of opportunity, and I hope people see that and feel that, and we'll put that energy into building a Louisiana that, first of all, helping Kamala Harris win and getting a Democratic Congress, but also building Louisiana, long term, Louisiana will always be my home. It is the only home I've ever known. It will always be my home. So wherever I am, I'm going to be fighting for Louisiana, and I hope people still in Louisiana feel that and know that Louisiana is worth fighting for, and the work can be done, and it can be done successfully, we can win.
Completely agree, my friend, I think that's a perfect place to end it.
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.
