The Transactional Nature of American Politics with Mondale Robinson 40:58

Hey everyone, it's Reed. Before we get started, I just want you to understand that what we're fighting is multi-front battle.

There will be the airwaves. There will be the internet. There will be neighborhoods and town hall meetings. But all of it matters. It all ladders up to making sure that if we've done our part in our cities, in our counties, in our states, that we will be victorious in November. I thank you so much for listening. I hope you share this podcast with your friends, your families, and your colleagues, and anybody who wants to know more about this fight. Thanks, everybody, for listening. And now, on with the show.

Welcome back to The Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Galen. Today, I'm joined by Mondale Robinson, Mayor of Enfield, North Carolina, and founder of the Black Male Voter Project, an organization dedicated to increasing the number of black men that are super voters.

Mondale has worked on more than 160 campaigns, local, statewide, federal, and international, and has also led All Action, an online organizing group specializing in tech community organizing and training for successful civil disobedience actions and strategic advocacy planning.

He's a regular voice on major television news outlets and has become a leading voice in what moves black men. Today, he's joining us from Las Vegas, Nevada. All right, Mondale, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Reed. How are you doing? I hope all is well in the desert. Listen, so I was going through your website and I want to start here because you said something that actually started rattling around my brain a couple of weeks ago. And you noted the transactional nature of

of American politics. And that really struck me, you know, and I think about this in the context of generalized voters, but I want to hear about it from your perspective too, is that the political system spends so little time listening to voters, talking with voters, understanding really, not just listening, but hearing, I should say, right? Voters. And then every 22 months,

you know, come Labor Day in an even year, we say, now you got to give me your vote. Give me your vote. Give me your vote. Give me your vote. And it's not surprising when you put it in that context, why so few people comparatively participate. Yeah. I mean, and especially for the demographic that I'm concerned with, Reed, black men, when you consider the fact that

Out of the nine point six million black men that are registered to vote in this country, nearly 60 percent of them have not voted in the last full federal election or only one. It's a critique not of black men. It's a critique of these tactics used by parties where they are absent in these people's lives. And when they show up, they're only talking to a certain segment of them.

So what we know about the parties is they'll claim credit for super voters, people who vote all the time. But if you're responsible for them, then you're also responsible for the people who never vote. Your tactics are not reaching them. Your efforts are fruitless. So I think when you consider black men, especially the history of what it means to be American and black man, it is unique in that we are the first guinea pigs for voter suppression. If you consider the 15th Amendment and what happened to black men who try to exercise democracy.

their vote from then and continue to now. So I think when you couple that with the fact that black men make up the lowest marker of all social markers in this country, whether it's the shortest lives, most over-sentenced, most over-policed, over-convicted, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, more likely to be suspended as young boys, more likely to be expelled, more likely to be put in special needs classes, where the only demographic in this country that could be born rich or middle-class

and still are likely to experience poverty. So when you consider all of these issues, which are political issues, it's ahistorical and also asinine to believe that Black men are apolitical or don't have a political stance. It's just that they don't have faith in these tactics. Like you said, people showing up at the Labor Day with proverbial church flaying and fried chicken, telling people it's the most important election and this candidate is the most

important candidate and he can save your life. It doesn't ring true. So a demographic that's living without their basic needs met cannot see themselves, you know, spending time missing work or standing in lines to go vote for a system that is consistently failing them. And I think that's what we have in America right now with black men. You know, I had a meeting a couple of years ago now with a leader of black churches in a major city.

And it was before the 22 midterms. And what he said to us was, look, the people in my community are going to do one of two things. They're going to vote for the Democrat or they're going to stay home. They know what they get with the Republican. They don't want that. But they look out the window year in and year out and their lives don't change.

And that makes it awfully difficult for me to convince them that they got to go participate when, you know, participate, don't participate. Nothing changes. Yeah. Listen, and no knock on preachers and legacy organizations, but let's be clear. Let's be clear. We are living in a time where there are more black people on this planet than ever before. More black people in America than ever before, because we know the generations that came out to me. I'm an exercer, so that's millennials and the Zers are the most.

diverse generations ever. And they're also two of the largest generations ever. So what we have in our mind as the archetype black voter, it's no longer the majority voter, right? These new voters cannot be covering with preachers. And this is, like I said, no knock on preachers. The preacher you're quoting is absolutely correct.

The problem is what we see is most of the programs going directly to preachers or these legacy organizations. But these people don't even speak to the majority of black voters. 90% of black men in this country don't attend church. So this is the problem. We build these big programs for black churches and they have a role, but I don't think that's the majority way.

of reaching these voters anymore. And I think what happens is we see people, we see politicians in black churches. And I think what happened, these churches lost their salt, meaning think about the black preachers of the past. And I'm not even talking about King. I'm talking about Nat Turner.

Denmark Vesey. The black church as an institution was where most of the protests happened in our community. And the work to get us free was a lot of it was led by black preachers. And we don't see or we didn't see that for a while. And there's been a drop off in what we call the importance of the black church on the social psyche of the black people. So what we know now is when we see these programs where people are talking about, we eliminated college debt for this many people. And it's like, that ain't the black people that are not participating.

The black people that are not participating, specifically the black men, don't have college degrees. These are people living on the margins. There are more black men in street tribes with the world called gangs than there are in divine nines in this country. Right. So we see more effort to entice omegas and Q's and alphas. And we're not talking to the brothers with the majority of brothers will sit down elections and they are represented in a different type of organization, equally important and still not never targeted.

And when we when we get serious about this, then we can really have a role. The Democrats seem to believe that there's no option against them. Right. Black men are not becoming more conservative. Their couch is just becoming a better option, like you said. So we see black men sit on elections and people are acting as if the protest vote, meaning not voting, is not a statement. It is a statement. It's a statement about democracy.

how transactional we've become, how donors who support supposedly grassroots organizations are allowing political parties to drive how they invest in this work as if this would be cyclical work and not year round. To address what's plaguing our community, you have to be both providing services and also building trust with these organizations. And when donors show up in a way that make us show up like political parties, then we as trusted messengers are losing our

our ability to say we speak on behalf of, in my case, black men. Let me ask you this and forgive my ignorance of which I have a lot. If the church, which again, you mentioned historically was a place of both gathering of activism of protest is not the place where younger black men are going, what is replacing that social construct? Oh, let's be clear. And people don't want to acknowledge this, but even older black men, less

lesser than 90%, but even all the black men are not attending church like they used to. So the place to meet brothers is varied because we have a digital life now. So what we do is we reach out to brothers everywhere. We have a nightclub ambassador program. We have

our street legacy program where we're training people that are coming home from prison how to be end of life doulas, basically where they're actually going to stay with people who are in hospice, black men who are in hospice, who don't have family members or friends visiting them to go take their story and sit with them until they pass so that these people can transition with dignity. And that's part of our program. We also have our Brothers Be Voting conversations, which is a room full of black men, what people call low performing or sporadic voters

And we overpopulate. We try to have 5,000 of these rooms every year where we just listen. We're just listening to these brothers. And that seems to be enough to get them to talk. And this is how we found out there are no apolitical Black men. We're also in community. We're always in community.

year round, whether we're doing something around voting or just engaging brothers around helping them get housing, helping them get furniture for housing when they come home from prison, helping them get clothes when they come home from prison and helping them be prepared to do interviews and find work so that they are not a part of those who return back into the criminal justice system. So there's plenty of ways to find brothers. What happens though, is finding them and then getting them to trust you are two different mechanisms. And

Once you find them, how do you get them to trust you basically is to be there beyond election cycles. Again, as I said, if you're only going to talk to them eight weeks out of every two years and you're only asking them for something, you're not offering something. Again, if it's community, something tangible, you know, fellowship, whatever the case is, they're going to be. Why? I mean, why would anybody listen to you? I guess.

Yeah, that's a fact. And also we got to acknowledge, man, a lot of the times, especially for Black men, these issues that people keep saying are the most important issues. Let me give you a great example. People keep talking about when we mention rural America or the real American vote outside of the D.C. bubble, we're generally talking about this white rural voter in the heartland.

But to be honest, if we're talking about rural voters, the most rural people in this country are Native Americans, right? And then if you go to the South, Black people are overrepresented in rural spaces. But we don't think about that, that the rural Black man is almost...

never a super voter. And simply because he's not anyone's target, they're not targeting him in a way about issues that's important to them. I'm a mayor of a small rural town in North Carolina and people are running around, even our county bragging about this 5.1% unemployment rate. And that's not the reality. Rural black men, especially in my county are 18% unemployment rate. So this idea, this idea that the economy is great and you keep hearing people sing about it

You exclude people and you put people in a bubble. Can you imagine, Reed, what the world would say if 18.1% was the unemployment rate for white men in this country? Well, it'd be the Great Depression. It'd be the Great Depression. Support for the Lincoln Project podcast comes from Odoo. If you feel like you're wasting time and money with your current business software or just want to know what you could be missing, then you need to join the millions of other users who've switched to Odoo.

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So tell me a little bit about Enfield. Where in North Carolina is it? Enfield is on the eastern part of the state in Halifax County, 45 minutes northeast of Raleigh and an hour and 10 minutes south

of Richmond, Virginia. It's in the, I call it the black belt of North Carolina. We have five counties that are majority black right there in that little bubble where, where a lot of plantations were, you may have heard of this bank called BB and T now it's true. The plantation that made them that money is from infield. The branch family is from infield. They started BB and T in Wilson, North Carolina, but that money came from plantations and infield. You know, I think that your role as mayor and your leadership is,

in the Black Male Voter Project are really one in the same because, as you know, there's no more personal job in a community than mayor, right? You're responsible for everything. And everybody sees you that way, right? Because, you know, you talk about presidents, you talk about senators, you talk about members of Congress, even governors. But the mayor is the one who's responsible for how people's day-to-day lives operate in the context of when they leave their house. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Absolutely.

So what are you seeing in Enfield, right? You're talking about you've got 18% unemployment. What are the issues facing your city, your town, and that black belt in North Carolina? I mean, you mentioned unemployment, so that's a big one. That is an issue. I think the biggest issue for that part of North Carolina and also this entire country is the majority or the status quo's comfort with black suffering.

We live in, and for the lack of better words, and also I'm going to use this word to shock the conscience of folk, we live in third world America. If you saw the housing marketing infield, if you saw what people were forced to live with and through, you would believe that it was not in this country. But it is. I mean, I'm from a space where in my neighborhood, because infield is my hometown, the last houses in the black community did not get

plumbing until 1997 people still had outhouses in 1997 in this country and i know these people people currently are living in houses that are killing them i just spoke with miss cliff who actually has mold in her house and it won't be fixed and she has no money to move anywhere no family member to help her and she is confined to one room the only room without mold anywhere else in there would kill her

So I think we have this real, real problem where people are comfortable in this country with folk living like this. We're 45 minutes from the capital of North Carolina, Raleigh, which is considered one of the thriving metropolitan areas in this country. Yet and still, we're, like I said, 45 minutes away and people, our average annual income in Enfield for a household is $25,000, which equate to once you take away rent.

the average rent and also light bill, people are living off less than $3 a meal. Well, I'll tell you, Mondale, I think it's worse than comfort. I think it's ignorance. I think that, I mean, until you told me that, I got to be honest with you, I didn't know that, right? I did not have any idea of that. And of course, it does shock the conscience and shock the soul, candidly. And so let me ask you this then. As you're going out and you're talking to Black men of all ages, young, middle-aged, older,

What is it? You know, I wrote this down. I was on a call just before we did this. And, you know, we were talking about younger voters generally, but I think this could really be for anybody. You have to sing their tune. You have to, you know, show them their people and you have to meet them in their place. And so for your community, let's just make it the microcosm of Enfield for your community.

How is it that you build trust in a time of ignorance and not just like the idea of being left behind, but being left behind? And I'm not trying to make this saccharine. I'm not trying to sugarcoat it. I'm trying to figure out how it is that any of us, right? Because, you know, look, I have a mission in life, right? But like when this mission is over, like it's got to be better for everybody, right? Because the American dream is bullshit if somebody doesn't have the chance to

But I can say that. But Mondale, why would anybody in your town believe me if I said it right? Yeah, I think part of them believing you would have to be in which you are introduced and also how much you show up. I think for me, I think what happened was I was able to beat an incumbent by 50 percentage points.

without running ads, without doing any of the traditional thing because I was in community for so long doing so much as it pertains to what folk needed from me. So I was able to hear people. I had all of these listening sessions all the time about what was going on with black people in this town that's 90 plus percent black and just listen to people and listen to people. Plus I'm from there and I just

spent time building out a plan about what we could do, what could be done to address some of the issues that were plaguing us. People bought into that program by buying into me one well before I started or decided I was going to run to address the gentrification that was happening. I also was

solving problems for people, right? Helping people get work, helping people find employment, connecting people from infield with campaigns all over the country so that they can have some type of some level income, even if it was temporary. And then I also was making sure that I was available to help people map out or map through or walk through their problems. So I think being present is the main thing. Also not assuming that you know what's the number one issue for people and spend a lot of time listening. We do that both

with my campaign, now my administration, but also with Black Male Voter Project. A lot of our work is listening to people and just listening without listening to provide feedback sometimes and or acting as if you have the solutions. Sometimes just listening is enough. And we do a lot of that. I think beyond that, in the immediacy, the best thing to do for these, like if you're a political organization trying to engage people, you cannot, you cannot,

Be trusted. Like you're not going to build trust in this election cycle. It's the nature of this monster we call billion dollar elections. Right. What you can do, though, is if you have resources, you can pin them in organizations that are trusted messengers and let them do that. And then outside of an election cycle, you can start trying to build relationship with these folk that which, like you said, helping them on ramp into this idea of American dream.

I'm friendly with an organization that does similar work to what you do called Mi Vacino down in Florida. That means my neighbor in Spanish.

And they have a very similar outlook, which I was so simple and so straightforward. It sort of surprised me that I hadn't that no one is doing this like you all are is, you know, I mean, there's what a dozen, maybe more different Latino ethnicities in South Florida. They don't send a Cuban person into a Venezuelan neighborhood. Right. Because that person's not from there. And it's even a different, you know, syntax of Spanish. But.

But the other thing that they did that you mentioned too, is that when they hire someone

They hire them. It's a job. It's not for an election cycle. This is their job. It's a living wage. And the other thing that I found that is disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising, is that in some of these cases, and I've seen this all over the country, not just in Florida, but everywhere, is that groups like yours often punch far above their weight, do far more work than anybody could ever expect. They're underfunded, understaffed. And the better they do, the more the establishment gets mad at them for doing it. Yeah.

And not only do they get mad, the more we are considered problems, right? And part of it in my community is there are Black men that are preachers of the party. Either they grew up in the DNC or they...

actually are consultant class and they have access to all of the people in D.C. So they get their programs, which is nothing as it pertains to engage in the demographic I'm talking about. Their programs are always fully funded, even though their work is not responsible. Consider this. We still are getting emails every day from James Carville.

Why in the hell is the Democratic Party sending emails with James Carville as if that's the demographic you're going to reach? I am confused out of my mind why every day I have an email from James Carville.

He is not speaking to or going to bring in anybody new. His ideas are tainted and distracted. He has no clue. He said something about black men the other day and I'm like, damn, James Carver really is out of touch with the world. And also, when did you become the voice for black men? But what happens is in the ecosystem, because of his past, he becomes whatever he said, the party's going to act on it. Him and then also the black men that are part of the party, these creatures of the party,

are willing to go along because of their proximity to whiteness, the establishment. So yes, the status quo isolates us and donors go along with it some kind of way. Subliminally, when they fund more in election seasons, like this idea that Joe Biden has raised more than any presidential candidate right now, when there's no way my demographic is going to vote for Joe Biden. Listen to what I'm saying, because this is going to get spit and twisted.

Joe Biden will not be the reason black men vote for Joe Biden. We increased black men's participation in 2020 for Joe Biden, but it wasn't because of Joe Biden. You understand what I'm saying? It's what's possible on that administration versus this other thing he's running against. So the idea that you're willing to give that much resource, those many resources to, to the campaign and not these organizations that can show people what's possible on this administration. When we see a lack of,

trust in both parties higher than ever right now. And you still, the model is broken. The model is completely broken. If we look at retail politics, like we do any other business model, then every consultant should be fired because if 60% of my built-in base is not buying my product, then your marketing scheme ain't working my friend, right? So the party needs to acknowledge that all of their friends should remain their friends

But they shouldn't be who you're hiring to do this work because they can't do it. They don't know how to do it. And they've never been in this work. And I mean that. And I'm not being coy. We have a system that is that's rewarding relationship and not workers. And that's problematic.

And you hit on something right there at the end, which is, as you know, again, either in your organizing role or your role as mayor, this is real work, right? This is all day, every day, on the phone, texting, email, at the doors, whatever. And we've gotten... I don't know if I'm still a consultant or not, Mondale, but the consultant class got fat and happy on the internet and TV ads, right? Like,

Why do all this other stuff? Why can't I just, you know, shoot an ad straight to your phone? And to your point, in my experience, you know, I can't speak for the Democrats, but as a former Republican, right, we rated voters on a scale of one to four.

right? Four, they show up all the time. Three, they're going to show up most of the time. Two and one is, you know, they barely ever show up. Maybe, you know, one time out of every, you know, they'll show up once every four years and that's just for president. That's the only time in a past life that I would have targeted that person because it wasn't worth it. And I have a pretty good idea who's going to vote, what the turnout's going to be, what the percentage I need of, you know, this neighborhood versus that neighborhood.

But I want to get to something you said about President Biden's campaign, because I think this is against conventional wisdom. And I'm always happy to break conventional wisdom on there, which is if your constituency, if your cohort, if the black men you're talking to are not going to vote for Joe Biden because of Joe Biden, what do you believe they need to hear?

To get out to the polls because you inferred something there that I implied. I would never always get those mixed up was that it's not going to be because of Trump, that the Biden campaign is going to have to make the case for Biden, not against Trump.

That is absolutely correct. And I think Trump is not a big enough boogie monster to scare black men, right? We live in America where we've been made boogie monsters ourselves. So that idea that, you know, this is going to worse. The democracy means nothing to this demographic. Not that we don't care about the issues. It's just that it's so far-fetched. It's almost talking about like the way we talk about the climate with black men. It's not reaching them. So here's what has to happen. Action. We watched this administration.

squander two years not fighting for what they told us they were going to fight for. Let me let me say what in Georgia, this administration told us if we give them two senators and the White House that Joe Biden said this, I swear on my last name that I'm going to make black issues my top priority. So for two years, we didn't see any action on the George Floyd Act or the Voting Rights Act until the midterms.

That is a slap in the face to the black man that I turned out in Georgia who didn't vote for Barack Obama, but they were eligible, who didn't vote in 2014, 16 or 18. So that mean they didn't vote in 2012 through 18. They didn't vote for Barack Obama or Stacey Abrams. Right. Georgia has more black men registered to vote than any state in this country. One point three million black men are registered to vote. Of the ones that was eligible to vote in 2012, four hundred and seventy thousand sat out.

470,000 black men already registered to set out the election. They didn't vote for Barack Obama and anything in between, including Stacey Abrams. But we got them to vote in 2020. 144,000 of that 470,000, we add to the vote. Now, you know what Joe Biden's win number was in Georgia. It was not 144,000. No, it was 11,000 and change. It was 11,000. Right, exactly. Exactly.

So we were able to turn these brothers out. And it wasn't because of Joe Biden. We know that because they voted in the primary and in the primary in 2020, in June, Joe Biden was already the Democratic nominee. So they weren't voting for that. And they weren't voting for a black guy to be Senate because Warnock was not in the primary. He was in a special election. So we we got these brothers to go vote and then come back out again in the general election. And then for two years, we didn't see fight.

Black men are not expecting you to win everything for them. Hell, we are in America. We've seen what America is willing to do to black men. So the idea that you need to win on everything you said is not what we need. What we need, though, is for you to stand on what you said. You got to stand on business.

You have to fight on our behalf. We've not seen that fight materialize. And people can say, well, you did this. We did the tax credit. We did this. That's not realistic for these brothers I'm talking about who are what the world calls sporadic or low information voters. Even though they're not low information, they have their own platform and you're not speaking to them or fighting for it. So there has to be some kind of fight there.

put up on behalf of black men between now and the November election. And I think part of that can be an executive action to do something powerful and big that would benefit black men in a way that the world has never done before. And this president has the ability to do that. He just needs to stop, you know, pussyfooting around the issue and get to it.

Well, you know, look, I'm not a Democrat now. I'm an independent now. But I've, you know, worked alongside Democrats for four and a half years. And what I found interesting

as an observer, Mondale, is that the Democratic Party doesn't tend to really get its act together until panic sets in. But also that my experience, and again, this is self-serving, so take it for what it is, is like Democratic voters love fighters. They love people who will actually fight on their behalf. To your point, even if you're not going to win the fight,

Right. Because entering the fight, being willing to go in there with your dukes up and say, I may get knocked out, but you know what? I'm going to put everything I have into it is an indication of willingness and belief. And I think to me, that's the thing that is missing from so much of this is that.

When you come talk to me, do you believe what you're saying? Right. Because I can tell I can tell whether or not you believe it. Right. It's just like I used to travel the country. Right. I was an advanced man. Right. I went all over the country. And like, you know, you show up in a town if it's North Carolina or Iowa, like everybody in town knows you don't live there. Right. Everybody in town knows you don't live there. If you're nice to them, they'll welcome you.

And if you're trying to sell them something like they know that, too. And so that's my question is like, how is it that we've gone so long without just core beliefs? Because I think that's a little bit of my concern, candidly, is I can figure out the number of voters, Mondale, that Joe Biden needs to win in every state. Right. To be president again, like the math is easy. The work is hard. And that's what I worry about.

Yeah. And I think the problem is the work and not to be coreed, the work isn't impossible. It is hard. The reason it's hard is because the way we've built this political system, if political parties were service organizations throughout the year, like if they were around, if they actually took those resources and fed their parties throughout the year so people could read and be a part of community, this work would be easy. It

It would be extremely easy because it would be well-funded and it would be year-round work. But what makes it hard is the way we do it, the transactional nature of it. And you're right. The numbers are, for me, it's easy. We participate in

in counties where there are at least 2,000 men or more. All over the country this year, we're in seven states, right? And so that means that's about a little less than 200 counties where we could change the election outcome if Black men participate in those counties. And what states are those, if you don't mind me asking? Yeah, so that's Michigan, Wisconsin. We're in eastern Texas. We're in part of Mississippi, the Triangle part. We're also in all over North Carolina, of course, all over Georgia.

and Pennsylvania as well. Wow. Okay. So like you're in the place, a lot of places that matter. And obviously, you know, look, I mean, I went to high school and college in Texas, Mississippi, right? I mean, like the gerrymandering there. And even now in North Carolina is beyond anything. I mean, I'll tell you this. I mean,

I'm a small D Democrat, right? Monday, I'm a small L liberal. But when the court gutted the Civil Rights Act, and so is someone who grew up in Texas, right? What's college in Texas? It was 30 years ago, admittedly, but still, like, I was like, what were you thinking? Like, what? What? Are you kidding me?

Like, I mean, this was just and you see now, I mean, you're having to live with it. So tell us a little bit about living in North Carolina where you've got basically this tyranny of the legislature there where they're going to do whatever they have to do. And it's all for power. There's no there's no public service here.

Right. We should be extremely clear that the idea that we sit in this space where state legislatures have so much power, Republican, it's also the Democrat, big D fault, right? They forced the world to focus on these federal elections and they've sacrificed states. The states weren't important. And I think we see what happens right now. So many people, if you look throughout the South, I think North Carolina is the only place where women can actually probably have

an abortion safely now. And I think that is scary. So for me, the tactics of Republicans are real and they need to be challenged in court. And I'm glad their organization is doing that. But the number one cause of voter suppression in this country is

poverty. Poverty is the biggest driver to people not participating, coupled with the transactional nature of how these parties show up, right? So you take poor people living on the margins with their backs against the wall, the razor edge of the wall, and then you have these people coming in talking about saving their lives. It makes no sense. It doesn't ring true. And you have these people on North Carolina and all over this country, really, where you

where you have a certain segment of people who have just tapped out on politics altogether. And that's sad for our democracy. As we see, you get people like Trump, you get people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, you get people like Lauren Boebert, where you don't even have to think and just be elected. And it's beyond scary because all these institutions that make this country, I believe the greatest country on the planet, we still got tons of work to do, but I stand by what America, the idea of America can be. And I continue to see us

uh adding more people uh where we were for a while adding more people into the protections of the constitution and also state constitutions but now we see this make america great again for what it really was it's make america work for a certain segment of the population and that's it right and we see that when i'm stripping away rights they tell us it's about parents right to choose but in tennessee right now they just passed a bill about to go to the governor's desk that is mandating

children to learn how to use a gun, even as early as preschool. So parents can opt out. That amendment was shot down. So it's not about parent control. We hear them talk about state rights. And what we find out is they really just trying to ban abortion all over this country, even though that's not what they're for, right?

So we keep seeing this. And part of that is because not just the failure of Republicans to hold their people accountable, but also for the Democrats to really be present in the lives of voters that could be or would be a part of their so-called big tent if they took themselves and invested in community in a way that wasn't as

Self-serving as it is. Okay, so let's put the rubber and the road here together. So tell me how the Black Male Voter Project works and what it is that our listeners can do to make sure that you've got what you need to do the work that you need to do this fall.

We are a multimodal program. We created our own approach. It's called BME-P, Additory Approach. And what we do is we're actually different than most organizations in that our political program is not political. It's based off of psychology, two forms of psychology.

The first one is I know you heard of Candy Crush. Sure. Yeah. Habit loops that was formed by MIT. Candy Crush is so addicting because they use that habit loop that MIT created. It is probably the most downloaded game ever. So we are using that habit loop for two things. The first thing we're using it for is to break this idea to rethink, form a new habit around voting for black men.

Then the second one is to make it a muscle that they use often, right? So we're breaking a habit and also forming a habit using a habit loop. We also use the lessons from Maslow hierarchy of need. People that don't have their basic needs met can't think about things that are self-actualization. So we're figuring out a way, how do we take black men idea of the vote being something that's self-actualized and make them see it not as the end all be all, but as a tool that can address things that are plaguing them. And we do that by

by, like I said, a multimodal program, by showing up with our nightclub ambassadors. That's our own ramp. We meet brothers in nightclubs through our party promoters, DJs, and club owners, club managers,

And then we on ramp them to our brothers be voting, which is our focus groups, which are just for these so-called low information or sporadic voters. Who probably know a heck of a lot more than low information would indicate. Right. They absolutely do. Right. And we get them there. And this is where we found out that black men have political point of views on all of the issues. But the ones that matter to the most aren't being highlighted by people. So they see themselves as sitting out there, the outside of political space.

And we take them from the blackmail. Once they show up to our Brothers Be Voting, then we activate, animate them in other ways, get them to participate in other things that look and seem more political. From there, we start canvassing, we start texting and doing what traditional campaigns do. But in the mix of all of that, we're always in community, inviting people to spaces, finding out what's ailing them and then see if we have access to something that can address them. This is why we're trying to build a coding school.

Right. This is why we're trying to build trades, the new trades, preparing black men to one. How do you install solar panels? How do you maintain and offer service to solar panels and all of these others? What I call the new trades. So we're doing that so that.

When we're having conversations about voting, it becomes second nature because we've already addressed the issues that are keeping you from the poll. The lack of work, the lack of any insight on where you should be looking for work or how do you prepare yourself for this new economy? And we're doing all of that work.

And knowing that civic engagement becomes a byproduct of relationships that people already have trust in. So we spend a lot of time building trust through our multimodal program, using the habit loop, the lessons from Maslow, and then also the traditional like direct voter engagement. You see very little ads from Black Male Voter Project.

It's a waste of money because we don't reach the brothers we need to reach aren't watching TV. They're mostly influenced by podcasters and not the ones that are on New York Times bestseller. I'm talking like Macy Cameron, Gilly and those guys and battle rappers, which is why we're having a conference in a couple of weeks in Atlanta where we're just having black male podcasters and also battle rappers come together.

And we're training them how to protect their platforms from misinformation, disinformation, teaching them the history of the vote from the 15th Amendment to now and what it means to be politically active in a black man body and not lose yourself and feel like you're being played, how you can stand on business and still have a voice and use your platform for it and not be a sellout for either party. Right. And then the last thing we're trying to teach them is how to prepare themselves for political ad dollars, like how to monetize their platforms.

Well, I will tell you this. In the five minutes you were just speaking, you laid out a more thoughtful and sophisticated political program than almost anybody I've heard literally in years. I got to be honest with you. Like you guys have got to figure it out and thank God for it. All right. And where can everybody find out more about you online? Where can we find out more about the project and how can they get involved? Yeah. So I do. I do a few things online. I use Facebook a lot for Facebook live.

That's like a lot of infield specific work for my town. I'm on Twitter talking about national politics all the time at Mundell Robinson. I also create content for TYT on Rebel HQ. Of course, again, Mundell Robinson. So in all platforms, you can find me at Mundell Robinson. Blackmailvoterproject.org is our website.

And yeah, that's what we are. Well, absolutely incredible. As always, gang, you can find me on Twitter and TikTok at Reed Galen on threads and Instagram at Reed underscore Galen USA and over at Substack, the home front Mondale Robinson. Thank you so much for joining me today and for everything you're doing. Thank you so much for having me, man. Peace. And everybody else. We'll see you next time. Thanks again to everyone for listening.

Be sure to follow and subscribe to The Lincoln Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or however you listen. Don't forget to leave a five-star review. To connect with us, follow us on Twitter, at Project Lincoln. And for more information on our movement, to join our mailing list, subscribe to our newsletter, or make a contribution to our efforts, visit LincolnProject.us.

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