This is the 21st episode of “Talk It OUT: LGBTQ Voices In A Queer Election Year,” and we are now just two weeks away from Election Day, when America renders a defining verdict on the kind of country we want to be.
In the final two episodes of this podcast, I will look back on the most compelling insights that my guests have offered about the state of our nation, what’s happening on the ground in critical battleground contests, and what each of us can do to ensure good outcomes for our society and our politics.
In the first episode of this podcast, I talked about a book from 2020 I had just read by Eitan Hersh, a political scientist at Tufts University. The book, “Politics is for Power,” has as its subtitle “How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change.”
In that book, Hersh noted that among American voters in 2016 who were alarmed by the rise of Donald Trump and who followed the news closely every single day, less than five percent of them did anything beyond voting to ensure a good outcome that year.
That insight forms the core of this podcast’s philosophy.
Guests we are looking back on this week include Oath.Vote’s Brian Derrick; Pennsylvania State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta; Shannon Powell from Indivisible Westchester; Boston Ward 5 Democratic Committee chair Bob Binney; Emme Zanotti from Equality Michigan; Nadine Smith of Equality Florida; longtime progressive organizer Dave Fleischer; Adam Barbanel-Fried of Philadelphia’s Changing the Conversation Together; Abigail Swetz and Sean O’Brien of Fair Wisconsin; André Wade of Silver State Equality; Cathy Renna from the National LGBTQ Task Force; Rebecca DeHart of Georgia’s Fair Count; Leo Murrieta from Make the Road Action — Nevada; Denzel McCampbell from Progress Michigan; Marques Thompson from Democracy North Carolina; Raymond Greene, Jr., from Akron’s Freedom BLOC, the Black Led Organizing Collaborative; and Eliazar Posada from Equality North Carolina.
“Talk It OUT: LGBTQ Voices In A Queer Election Year” is presented by Gay City News.
(Music courtesy of IMG via uppbeat.io.)