Original artwork by the amazing Shauna Dixon, a high school student in Las Vegas, Nevada.
When I left a job with colleagues, bosses and members that I admired and loved, I was determined to do two things: 1) Write creatively, politically and unapologetically regularly, and 2) Take consulting work only from clients that I deeply admire and see as truly Good Influences on our community. Anthony Thigpenn of California Calls is one of those clients. He is refreshingly candid and both intriguing and mysterious. He has designed and led campaigns to get progressive candidates elected (Former Mayor Antonio Villaragoisa, Congresswoman Karen Bass and Former State Senator Kevin de Leon to name a few) and several progressive issues on the ballot, including Schools and Communities First.
He's also deeply private and very clear that his work is about empowering a progressive movement, not building another political empire. He has been a machinist, a Black Panther, a campaign strategist, a nonprofit founder and leader. Anthony once told me that he aspires to one day stop fighting for justice and start enjoying a just world as a wildlife park ranger. (His remark reminded me that the prize is not to win the political battle, but to enjoy a free and fair society). Anthony’s leadership is a backlash against an outdated and pretty paternalistic theory of political change where the driving force for a movement or cause is a single, charismatic (and often male) leader. This is probably why California is more familiar with Anthony's work than with Anthony the man. (Okay, if it’s not already obvious, I’m a pretty big fan).
Since September, I’ve worked with Anthony and his hardworking team at California Calls on an initiative to oversee Black outreach for the 2020 census in California. The Black Census and Redistricting Hub is a project involving 32 Black-led and Black-serving organizations seeking to engage hundreds of thousands of Californians through canvassing, phone banking and digital outreach. I love everything about this Black-is-Beautiful project--the cause, team, partners, even the ever-changing political and policy landscape surrounding census and redistricting. This is one of the most important efforts happening in our state. But, I also love my regular check-ins with Anthony where I like to sneak in more probing questions about the “why” behind his thinking and leadership. Naturally, I was eager to ask Anthony how he thought the COVID-19 pandemic--which required us to completely overhaul and re-engineer our census outreach strategy--would change how we approach political and civic engagement, particularly leading up to a defining 2020 election and census.
Here’s what Anthony Thigpenn shared
It’s too soon to know the extent of how this pandemic will change political and civic life because once this is under control there will be another wave and then hopefully a vaccine. But right now, it’s fundamentally altered the way people meet and organize themselves. We’re having to create gatherings to learn and connect virtually. We are organizing ourselves digitally. Our philosophy of civic engagement is about having integrated and meaningful conversations with the community about the issues affecting our lives, families, health, education, and so forth. It's about talking to our neighbors about their hopes, concerns and power as voters.
Now, everybody is trying to recover from the shock and trying to figure out the “new normal” in terms of how we can engage people civically and politically moving forward. There will be some cultural residue--if not something more--where people feel different about being physically close. We will worry about shaking that person’s hand, opening our doors, working election polls, and so forth. That could be a longer-term shift or just cultural residue.
But, as traditional models of doing door-to-door outreach have been challenged, we are also accelerating the exploration of social media and the digital domain, which was always moving fast, but now it is taking center stage as the strategic vehicle for engagement. This will be a permanent paradigm shift.
In terms of the issues, certainly by Nov 1, I don’t know that the residue of fear will have worn off, and that will have implications on the 2020 election. We have been pushing big time for vote-by-mail because one impact could be a decline in civic participation of the folks we have worked to increase. At the same time, we want to ensure that we have multiple vehicles for people to cast their vote. The hope--really more than hope but something we have to actively work toward--is a more expansive democracy, where people can vote by mail, vote much earlier, or still cast their polling in-person. Although California is ahead of most states in terms of making voting easier, there is still much work to be done.
One thing is for sure, the aftermath is going to be dramatic in shaping all of this--a recession will hit our low-income folks of color the hardest. We’re already seeing our Black and Brown communities get hit hardest from a health and economic perspective. One of the challenges in civic engagement is the other stress and pulls on people’s minds and time and that will be exaggerated in this recession. So if we know that’s going to come, how do we mitigate that by removing any and all barriers between people and voting?
This moment reminds me of the shock of Trump’s election, where everybody was sending different versions of the same petition instead of working in greater coordination. As we are getting past the shock of this moment and contending with new realities, people have started digging into their immediate response to help right now--that is shifting how nonprofits balance advocacy with direct services and how philanthropy balances investing in immediate needs and investing in fixing structural problems that have created and will perpetuate income inequality, healthcare inaccessibility and educational inequity.
I hope we learn that this moment--which is spotlighting inequities that have always existed--is an opportunity to invest in and advance the longer-term goals of a progressive movement. I hope we don’t lose sight of that. This is our chance to truly accelerate change that has been long overdue.