An Oakland Ballot Initiative That Could Inspire The Nation

This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.

Welcome to another episode of the podcast, Another Way. This is Adam Meikin, the executive Director of Equal Citizens. Election day is almost upon us and there are so many races that I'm watching, and I'm sure you are too, races that will have major consequences for the future of our democracy. I'm thinking of course of races for the US Senate, the House governor, state legislature, and of course Secretary of State. But we don't often include local elections in our calculus of the midterms. And, and that is a big, big problem. And so I want to change that perspective a bit for today's episode. And I've invited two guests that will talk about a local ballot initiative in Oakland, California that I believe, and so

does Larry Lessig, that could have major

ramifications for democracy across the country. And if that sounds like hyperbole, I'm hoping by the end of this podcast episode you will actually agree with me. And so my two guests today are Jonathan Meta Stein and Vernetta Woods. Jonathan is a civil rights attorney and longtime democracy reform advocate. He became the Executive Director of Common cause California in 2020 following 10 years on the organization's board of directors. And before he became Executive director of Common Cause California, he served as the head of the voting rights and Census program at the civil rights organization Asian Law Caucus. And he was also a voting rights staff attorney for the ACLU of California. He's also the former chair of the Oakland Public Ethics Commission. Vernetta woods, on the other hand, is the I've team leader for Oakland Rising, a community led political organization focused on supporting candidates and issues that drive a progressive agenda for Oakland's working class, immigrant and communities of color living in the flatlands of Oakland. She joined Oakland Rising four years ago, first as a canvasser and then she transitioned to the door fundraising team after a break to focus on school and raising her son. She's back with the organization to oversee the day to day with the outreach team. With that, let's turn to the episode.

All right, it's so great to have you both here. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks for the invitation. This is going to be great.

And Vernetta, it's so wonderful to have you here. I know you're in your car, so thank you so much for making time to join with us today.

Thank you. I'm great to be here as well.

Let's hop right into it and you know, before we get into the ballot measure that we're going to talk about, measure W. Can you both give us a little bit of a sense of what your respective organizations do? So, Vernetta, can we start with you and let's talk about what you do with Oakland Rising.

Yes. I'm the Daily team lead, and I organize a team of around 10 outreach workers right now, the Daily Team. And we have eight canvassers in District 6 and District 7 giving our information to the community around measure W T and measure V right now. And then we have three phone bankers that is calling, and they're also organizing around the same measures.

Excellent. And you do most of your work in Oakland, right? Primarily our work.

All of my work is in Oakland.

That's great. And Jonathan, let's throw it to you. What does your organization do? I mean, we're. We're very familiar with Common Cause here, but. But I'll throw it to you and. And give me a sense of specifically what you do and what your. Your state chapter does.

Yeah. So California Common Cause is the California state organization of the national organization Common Cause. I'm the executive director at the California organization. We use voting rights reform, redistricting reform, money and politics, reform government transparency, ethics laws, and so on to try to address historic inequities in our state and local governments and to build governments that are actually responsive to and reflective of all of our communities, instead of just powerful special interests, wealthy campaign donors, and the like. The way I like to summarize it is to say we are trying to build a California democracy that finally includes everyone.

That's fantastic, and I couldn't agree more. And I really respect the work that both of you do, and I'm really excited to hop right into it. And so let's talk about this ballot measure that I set up in my introduction here, the ballot initiative that could inspire the nation. Jonathan, maybe I can throw it to you to say, what is this ballot initiative? What is the Oakland Fair Election act, and why did the coalition decide to put it on the ballot this November?

Well, Oakland is a city that has replicated deep income inequality with political inequality. Oakland, maybe more so than most cities, has wildly wealthy parts of the town. And it has working class communities of color that aren't sharing in that prosperity. We have parts of the city that are gorgeous and safe, have great schools, and we have parts of the town that have been under resourced, underserved, are struggling daily with a lack of public safety, a lack of clean parks, a lack of good schools. As you would probably guess that wealth inequality bleeds into our political system of the money raised by Oakland candidates from Oakland residents. Well, more than 80% comes from less than 1% of the Oakland population. That 1% of the Oakland population lives disproportionately in the Oakland hills. And in the parts of Oakland that are disproportionately wealthier, better educated, older and whiter. You have these huge Oakland flatlands, which are predominantly working class communities of color that have close to no influence in the campaign contribution game in our elections. So we, with a number of partners, including Oakland Rising, community based partners, democracy reform organizations, civil rights groups, many years ago, we decided that we wanted to try to build a more equitable democracy in the city of Oakland. So the Oakland Fair Elections act is the product of four years worth of work. It does a number of things. The first is that it lowers the campaign contribution limit so candidates are less reliant on major donors and are forced to fundraise in smaller amounts for more people. It increases transparency in political advertising, requiring more of major donors to be disclosed on political ads. It extends the revolving door ban so that city officials can't turn into lobbyists right after they leave government service. And most importantly for many of us, it creates the nation's second Democracy Dollars program. And I'm sure we'll get into it more, Adam, in a second, so I won't belabor it now, but, but we hope that the Democracy Dollars program is a way of fundamentally shifting power to the people in the city of Oakland.

Yeah, I definitely will want to focus on the democracy voucher program. We're big, big fans of it at Equal Citizens and our listeners know that we, you know, we've talked about it many times on this podcast, so. But Vernada, I want to throw it to you and, and get your response to the same question about, you know, not, not just why, I guess, why this, the Oakland Fair Elections act is so important to Oakland Rising. And then also to get your take on why Oakland. You know, many of our listeners don't live in Oakland, so why is it that this is so important for the city of Oakland?

It's important because like you said, a lot of us is not aware that this is going on. And what better way to put out the information, especially like a platform like yours, you know, and oaklandrizing.org you know, those are places where people can go and they can get this information. And we're out in the community, so we're building relationships with the, with the community. See, that's the thing. You got to have a trust, you know, and that's what the People of Oakland is not really feeling there's no trust that's there. And so, you know, that's what we're building more than anything. And Measure W can get people like me and even other people from the community to be in those places, to be sitting at those tables, right? And so that's like everything. Because, you know, a person like where I come from in District 7 and District 6 is not that we're not aware. We're aware of everything that's going on because we live there, right? So it's nothing new to us. Right. It's new to others. And so it's just time for us to start doing like we're doing, speaking up, taking a stance, and making sure that we get this Measure W passed so the community can be in those places. Who better to say what one needs than someone who's there, right?

So I want to. I want to kind of ask you a follow up here, Veneta, which is, you know, you go door to door, right?

You.

You are incredibly on the ground doing the hard work of community organizing, which is essential to if we're going to push our democracy forward. And so I'm wondering if, you know, you know, very similar to what Jonathan said is, do you. Do you see the kind of the way in which economic inequality in Oakland translates to political inequality? Like, when you're talking to people, do people in Oakland that you're, you know, you're talking to about Measure seven to are people. Do people feel like they're not a part of the political process, that they don't have money? Like, do people feel as if they don't have political power and that this potentially is an antidote to it?

I feel that they don't feel that they don't. I feel that they know they have people power.

Right.

Again, this is Oakland, home of the Black Panthers, right? They know that they have the power is to trust. Like you said in the beginning, that's where the problem comes in at, Right, Right, right, right.

And so what has the reception been like on the ground, Vernetta?

The reception been amazing. Folks are feeling w. They're feeling about how, you know, the vouchers, right. That they'll be able to receive and then they can endorse a candidate that they choose to endorse. Right? Being a part of the political process, it's important. And when you feel like you're a part of something, then it actually moves you to, you know, even get involved more. Right. Because once doing one thing, it leads and open up doors to others.

Yeah, that's totally right.

Feeling a part of the team, you know, a part of the movement.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, Jonathan, I want to throw it to you and we'll get more into the policy specifics, but I want to keep it at the kind of 30,000 foot level here of kind of trying to get, you know, the listeners today. Again, I really have no idea how many people who are listening to this, this episode right now are from Oakland. If you are, please shoot me an email at adamaqualcitizens us. And I'd love to connect you with the campaign, but why should people care about this? This is a local ballot initiative in a large California municipality. But if I'm listening in Massachusetts, where I am right now, why is this important to the broader democracy movement? Like, okay, great, you win, but how does this affect me? Because I think it does, and I think you agree. And I actually have a really good quote from you about this, but I'll throw it to you to answer first and I'll match it to your quote that I found online.

Okay, cool. I wonder what my quote is. The first thing I'll say is that our democracy at the federal level is a gridlocked circus. Nothing meaningful is getting done to improve our lives, improve our own communities, or to defend our democracy. And so Measure W is a way that local leaders and local organizations like California Common Cause and Oakland Rising can begin to show people leadership begins at the grassroots level. We are going to build a better democracy in our city and we're going to build from there. And we don't care if our national government can't do the right thing. The other thing is that the Democracy Dollars program has seen incredibly powerful, transformative results in the city of Seattle, the only city where it's been implemented. It was passed in 2015. In Seattle. It's been used in three election cycles. They've seen dramatic increases in the number of small donors and the diversity of donors, increases in the number of candidates and the diversity of candidates, and increases in first time voter participation because of the Democracy Dollars program. These are amazing results. And yet, since 2015, no other city has implemented a Democracy Dollars program. And so the reason why I think Measure W is important nationally is because we are going to provide greater proof of concept behind what I think is the single most innovative democracy reform idea out there. And if we can begin to build momentum by passing this in Oakland, we can move to other California cities in 2024. There's interest from advocates and coalitions in San Jose, San Diego and other places. And if we can really get that snowball moving downhill, we can pass in Oakland in 2022. We can pass in San Jose and San Diego potentially in 2024. We could build towards statewide reform later in the decade. And we're building momentum towards actually making real progress on money in politics, where I think the national reform space feels incredibly stuck at the current time.

Yeah, I mean, you echoed the sentiment that I found online from you where you wrote, oakland is a launching pad. It's the first step in this effort to build a more representative democracy across the state of California and as you said, also across the nation. I completely agree. It's proof of concept. If we can show that these democracy vouchers work, because we'll get more data and then we can, it'll make it easier for more places to implement it. And just for our listeners, as a reminder of Democracy Dollars, this measure, Measure W, would mimic Seattle in giving every registered voter who four $25 vouchers that they could give to any eligible local candidate for office. And so it would diversify fundraising. You wouldn't need to give money up front to become a political donor. It would revolutionize the kind of the intersection of economics and politics. It would make it so that anybody can help support a candidate that they like to run for office.

And Adam, can I offer a friendly amendment which is just that the Democracy Dollars vouchers go to not just eligible voters, but in order under the program as we've written it, you don't have to be a registered voter, you don't have to be an eligible voter, you don't even have to be a U.S. citizen. As long as you are legally allowed to donate to candidates under federal law, you are eligible to receive the Democracy Dollars vouchers in the city of Oakland, which includes a number of non citizens, because we want to build as inclusive a democracy as possible.

Oh, interesting. That's actually a very helpful amendment and goes further than Seattle. So that's great to hear. Power should be dispersed across the people living in jurisdictions. So, Vernon, I want to throw it to you and I'm really curious about. Right. So democracy reform has long been kind of a little bit of a wonky subject. Even if what you said is true, that that people, that this is about political power, this is about making people have trust in institutions and making it easier for people to come together and demonstrate people power. So what tactics are you using on the ground to get people excited about this? Because I think that people do support this when they're Told. But that's why it's essential for grassroots organizers like yourself to have those conversations, to use community to get into communities and to educate, but also empower people to then educate others. And so I would love to hear about what you're doing and what you're seeing on the ground, what tactics you're using to get this measure passed on election day.

So for one, we're being honest. We giving accurate information and we build in people power, right, in our communities. That's the most important thing, right? Again, it goes back to the trust. People know me in the streets. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but they do. And so District 6 and District 7 is my playground. I love that district. I've been raised in them districts. So this is fun. This is exciting for me. I'm giving back to my community places where I done playing as a kid. So I'm, you know, it's just, it just. And this is what I pass off to my team, right, who lives in these areas as well. Having people on the team that's calling and walking, that's from the community and have been for years, that makes it even more exciting. So that makes it easy for people to be welcoming to anything that we telling them. So that's why it's important for us to have the real honest information, because they trusted in us. They know that when they see Ms. Woods is going to be what it is. Right? And so another thing that I also want to come across is that we never want to come into these areas. Like if we're telling the community something, that's where the problem get a little twisted too. They need to know that we're here having a conversation. We're learning together, right? We're learning together because even the more that I speak about it and speak with others about it and they shine in, right? We're still receiving information from one another, you know, having them conversations. And then my whole thing is just to have them take them conversations back with the household, family and friends, right. Other community people to where this buzz just keep going around and then next thing you know, we gonna have measure double. You passed. That's what it's about.

Honestly, that's one of the most insightful things I think that's ever been said on this podcast. And I mean that sincerely. And I promise you, I'm not just saying that just because we're looking at each other on zoom right now, but that, that, that right there is how we win. That's how we win. Not just and this is important in terms of. It's not just how we win Measure W. It's also how we carry it through to make sure that it's not rolled back and then once it's not rolled back, to make sure that people know about the program and use the program once it's passed and once it's implemented.

Right.

That, that one of the kind of the. The roadblocks to successful implementation of Democracy Dollars in Seattle has been that not enough people know about the vouchers. How do you get people to know about the vouchers and use the vouchers? Exactly what you just said. Bring people in at the table in the beginning. Have relational organizing. Have people you trust start those conversations and keep the ball going. Right? And that is just so inspirational. And I mean that sincerely, like, incredibly inspirational, because that's how we win this fight. And I would just love to hear a little bit more about how those conversations are going, you know, in terms of this kind of back and forth with folks that, you know, you know, in your district about kind of. Is it resonating, like the idea of, of having democracy dollars and also the other parts of the, of the initiative of kind of cleaning up democracy and putting anti corruption initiatives in place. Is this something that resonates with people?

People are actually just shocked, you know, that something like this could possibly get past, you know, and they're actually ready for something like this to get past. I mean, you know, Oakland has changed just dramatically and, you know, it's like a blink of an eye and you wake up and now something is going on. And so people want to be involved. They definitely want to be involved. They love their city, they want to stay. They want to see change. They want these things. No one wants to sit around and live like that. What makes you think that people want to sit around and live like that? Like it's no difference. It's no difference. But this is what it is. And so we're ready to fight for, you know, getting those things for our children, our elders, you know, like. Like who's looking out for them. And so, you know, we're ready to fight and we know how to fight now because people like Oakland Rising is in these communities and we're having those conversations like, hey, you. You want to fight? I'm ready to fight. Let's. Let's get together and fight together. Yeah, let's do it.

Yeah. And you can't manufacture that either. You can't manufacture those relationships.

Right?

I mean, Vernetta, you once told me I am democracy dollars. And that like made my heart grow three sizes. Do you want to share what you meant by that?

Well, I would never run for anything for one. Let me just say that, right? If I decided to, I, you know, I could. Eligible candidate. That means you have to have certain court requirements, right. That you meet and then you will be an eligible candidate. And if the city supported that, they could fund me with the vouchers to help support in my campaign to where now, you know, me and my team is making big major moves in District 7 that has never been done before. District 7 is not really like this sought after district.

Right.

And so it would change the incentives,

it would change your incentives and the community's incentives. And that's the beauty of the voucher program is it turns everybody into donors. And they could support, they could support candidates like you potentially. I'm not, we're not announcing anything here, but could support.

We're running Vernetta for council.

I can see why. But the idea that everybody becomes a candidate and you know, you can run for office without the old white boys network of, you know, million dollars. Right. That you can be a candidate by having a radical idea here. Community support.

Yeah. The good old days are over, huh?

So, Jonathan, I want to throw it to you and say, or ask you what it's like to organize this campaign or kind of message this campaign in the middle of a nationally focused midterm election. Is it hard to keep people focused on a local initiative? Or is California its own breed, where you get the ballots and you have 15 pages of ballot initiatives. Everyone is just used to having ballot measures. Or is it genuinely difficult to try and get media attention while the national and state news is just so saturated with stories that are further removed than this specific measure?

I think it's a combination. I think that it is harder to get attention for local candidate races and local ballot measures when people are really obsessed with who's going to control the Congress. And Californians have a habit of assuming there's nothing to worry about in their local politics. And they're going to, if they're going to donate or they're going to phone banks, they're going to do it for senate races in Georgia or in Nevada or in Arizona or whatever the case may be. My parents phone bank, my parents door knock and they're California residents, Bay area residents, they do all that stuff in other states, like their phone making into Nevada. And so. And we had a democracy dollars house party yesterday. We had an unbelievably lovely Woman who was on and had already voted for Measure W and had convinced three of her friends to vote for Measure W and she was phone banking and text banking, letter writing into Texas. So, yes, it is harder, I think, to get Californians to pay attention to these local measures. That said, the ideas here, Vernetta, sort of reflected some of this already. Like the ideas in measure W, the Open Fair Elections act, they kind of sell themselves. If you can talk to somebody for 30 seconds about this, people get it.

And

it helps that the measure has these transparency measures in them and lowering the campaign contribution limit. Things that make intuitive sense to people. And you take one second to say, hey, we're going to make massive special interests that are spending millions in our campaign, put their name on their ads and make clear to everyone who's spending what in our politics. And people are like, yeah, of course, that's a good thing. So we have some pieces in the measure other than the Democracy Dollars piece that really speak to people. And we are counting on the power of these ideas. We're counting on face to Face organizing by Oakland Rising and others. And we're counting on endorsements. We don't have a ton of money. We don't have a ton of like airtime or TV ads, anything like that. But we have an incredible coalition behind the measure with organizations that people know and trust strongly in support, like Oakland Rising, like Common Cause, but also like Sierra Club, aclu, League of Women Voters, local housing organizations, environmental justice organizations, local labor and so on. So in the absence of having big money, in the absence of being able to pierce through that national conversation, I think it really helps that we have an incredibly strong list of organizations behind trusted messengers, so to speak, validators who are behind the measure.

Yeah, Fernetta, I want to throw it to you and just ask kind of what the actual experience is. Like when you're talking to somebody that you don't know, you don't, you don't already know, or you're going door to door. You know, what, what is the pitch here? Like when you're, when you're, when you and your team are going and, you know, talking to, you know, a group of people or one on one with someone at the door, I mean, what, what is the pitch here? How do you, how do you get them not to shut the door on you?

So you just be polite, you know, and you be respectful because you are coming to somebody's house. You know, I treat people homes and I teach the team. Treat people homes as you treat yours. You know, don't really come knocking at my door. Lady, who are you? You see what I'm saying? We want to be, you know, mindful. Like, if, you know, I'll be honest, you know, if you. If you don't want nobody knocking at your door, right. Even though this is your line of work, right. Then you have to go with that. That same, you know, concept. But the people are, again, they're very receptive. Like, they believe in the. The ideal, you know, that change can be done. And then they never heard of it. Right. So it's interesting, you know, so a lot of them haven't heard of it. And then a lot of. Because, you know, we just really start, like, we've been pushing it, but it just. We hit the ground running. So folks is like, what, Are you serious? They, of course, they want to know where the money comes from and, you know, and the logistics part. Right. But as far as, like, just that realness, right. And catching them in a moment to where they're, like, in their nightgowns and things like that, that's a different story. Because people not really trying to talk about, you know, like, if they're out in the work day, you know, in his daytime, we'd be out there tonight time, it'd be dark.

Right.

You know, people is, like, in their beds eating dinner and already had dinner. So, you know, to catch someone in that state and they still, like, interested in hearing what Measure W is about. Like, it's just powerful, Right. And it just makes me want to go harder because it's letting us know that it's working, you know?

Yeah.

And the team excited about it. You know, they come in, they showing up, and they ready to hit those doors. I do want to just give a shout out to the daily team again. Our canvassers and our phone bankers, they are amazingly, they doing a great job. You know, we be tired. It's a lot of crime going on in them areas, A lot of police activity, dogs. Right. So, you know, I just really want to give a shout out to the daily team. You know, give it up. Whoop, whoop.

We're giving virtual claps here. I completely agree. It sounds like you're, you know, both of your respective teams are working their butts off right now, and that's what it takes. That's what it takes. I mean, this is a. You know, and actually, you know, this was going to be the way that I wrapped up the conversation, but I'll insert this question now. You know, one of the things on this podcast that I'M trying to, to integrate more is to move a little bit away from exclusive focus on policy and to actually talk a little bit about the emotions that come from doing this work. Because there's a lot of things when we're doing this work. You know, we like to think that we're just professionals, that we're always in a good mood, we're always ready to go to work. But in previous episodes, I've talked about fear, about loss when we lose a fight. And so I want to ask you both, and I'll ask you both, respectively, how do you deal with fatigue? How do you deal with tiredness? You guys are, this is hit the ground running. You've been at this, you know, certainly, you know, Jonathan, you said this has been in the running for kind of four years, in development for four years. But I mean, really, it's been a sprint for the last, I don't know, couple months here. And so, you know, Fernet, I'll throw it to you. You know, you are operating a team of volunteers. You're going out, walking around, engaging in conversations, right? As, as an introvert. It just makes my skin crawl that you're, you're having conversations from, from morning till night. I mean, half jest, I love to do that, but how do you not get tired? Or rather, that's the bad, that's the bad way to say it. Of course you get tired. How do you cope with being tired? How do you keep yourself going but also make room for the fact that we're about like two weeks away from election day and you are certainly tired. That doesn't mean you're giving up, but there's no question you're fatigued.

How about days before the. Two days before election? Yeah, well, you know, we, I've been in the game for a minute now, so it's sort of like anyone that does a lot of practicing, right, and doing things over and over, you get, you get kind of used to it, you know, so I'm definitely fit for the challenge. You know, I've been doing it for a while, a lot of water,

water,

coffee and just staying grounded. My family, they inspire me the most. My co workers, we all are like, you know, have challenges on a daily. At the same time, we're still getting up and where, you know, coming up, showing up for work. And that's what it's about, just, you know, being around others as well. That's productive and active. That also keeps you, you know, moving and going. So definitely my family, my co workers and staff and the daily team, you know, them coming and showing up. They have families. We have a lot of mothers on the. On the team, fathers. And so, you know, it's a family thing. And so all of us are showing up with our babies that work. You know, we bring in children and. And, you know, that's what Oakland Rising is about. It's family. And that's why, you know, I really love being in a part of this type of organization because, you know, sometimes my son has to come to work with me. You know, everybody knows him and, you know, he, you know, support and things like that. So that's what keep me going. And when I say that I want to just end off with this. When we do have the family environment around you, then our young children that are there watching their parents, they become our future leaders. And so that definitely keeps me moving, keeps me grounded and just. Just being, like, ready to see this future happen. And so we don't take no losses. We only learn. So, you know, I'm ready for it.

That's.

That's.

That's great advice. Yeah, that's really, really good advice. And I appreciate that you didn't avoid the answer of being tired, but you pointed to your community as a way of persevering. And I think that's what I do. I think that's what a lot of us do. What keeps us going in the good fight is the people who are along there fighting with us. So that's really, really great advice. Jonathan, I'll throw it to you. How do you cope with fatigue?

Well, I'm really driven by the fact that we're so close to this thing. We've been working on this for so years. And my interest in this goes well back past four years. I mean, we've been working on Oakland Measure W for four years, but I've been trying to figure out solutions at the intersection of democracy and racial equity for my entire professional life. And the fact that we're two weeks away from potentially passing this thing is just like. It's. I don't know, it's like 10 shots of espresso. I mean, I'm just incredibly excited about the possibility of it. And Vernetta pointed to her family as something that lifts her up. I mean, that's true for me as well. You know, I have. My partner and my extended family have just gotten super into Democracy Dollars. And we'll just like, we'll walk around the house yelling, democracy dollars. Which sounds like the dorkiest thing of all time, but it's actually like really buoying to be around other people who should share my passion and have been infected by my enthusiasm for this and are now enthusiastic themselves.

Great answer. Really, really appreciate it. So I want to be respectful both of your times. You are in the middle of a campaign. Fernetta's in her car right now on her way to work on her way to doing more democracy saving activities. So the last thing I'll throw to you both is how can our listeners find your organization and anything else that you guys want to say about how you're feeling or about measure W. So I'll throw it to both of you. Jonathan, I'll throw it back to you.

Fair electionsoakland.org to find out more about the campaign, to find opportunities to phone bank with us in the closing weeks of the election and to donate if you're interested. And if you're interested in a Common Cause specifically and the work we're doing on not just money and politics but, but other areas and trying to build a better democracy through a variety of policy reforms, you can find us@commoncause.org California I think probably more important than any of that though is that let's see if this passes in two weeks and then let's try to spread this idea. Right. So if you are interested in what you've heard today, reach out to Common Cause and we'll see if we can begin a plan to bring democracy dollars and other democratic reforms to your city, your county, your school board, or whatever the case may be.

And Equal Citizens is going to be 100% behind all of those efforts. We want to see this expand far and wide. All right, Vernetta, I'll throw it to you. How can people find out about Oakland Rising and anything else you want to say to end the episode?

So you can definitely go to oaklandridesinaction.org and you can get in contact with any of our you can find out who our staffs are. You can also right now we have our voter guide up, which is major. Please go to the website and go check out our voter guy. District 6 and District 7 is loving those voter guides. It actually gives families the opportunity to kind of look at the choices that, you know, we as a whole are kind of like voting yes on. Right. And again, I just want to end off with thanking my family. That does push me the most. They're young leaders in the making. My daughters are working on state initiatives as I speak as well. And so, you know, I have my son who's 10 and I just can't wait to see him become, you know, a leader as well. So, again, this is what this is about. Building our young future leaders to help support in this fight and supporting our elders.

I couldn't have said it better myself. You both are such an inspiration. I have my fingers crossed. You guys are really doing the necessary work to push our democracy forward. Thank you for giving me hope. And I hope. And on behalf of my listeners, I guess, as well, thank you for giving them hope as well. Really appreciate it. And best of luck to both of you.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Bye. Bye.

Bye. This has been another episode of Another Way. We'll see you next time.

Sam.