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- [00:08]
A
Welcome back to Firewall. I'm your host, Bradley Tusk. My guest today is Justin Cohen. Justin is the co founder of Dads for All organization. I've gotten to know a little bit, got to know Justin a little bit and love what he's doing and asked him to come on and he said yes. So, Justin, thanks for being here.
- [00:22]
B
Thank you for having me.
- [00:23]
A
So let's just get into your background real fast before we kind of go into what you're doing now. So you've done a lot of different things. You've run for office, you've written a book about school forum. You spent 20 years in social change. Kind of what prompted all that? What were the highlights of that? And then how did that get you to where you are right now?
- [00:39]
B
Yeah, I came by the social change stuff pretty honestly through the family. My mom was a teacher, started a career in Boston.
- [00:46]
A
Let me just drop real fast. Before the show started, Justin and Hugo and I were. Some Bruce Springsteen came up. And then Justin pulls out a photo of your mom with Bruce.
- [00:57]
B
Mom's known Bruce since early. Early pre. Pre fame.
- [01:01]
A
Did he, like, go to your bar mitzvah and stuff?
- [01:02]
B
No, but my dad sat next to Max Weinstein at the. Or Weinberg at the. At the reunion for high school. And so that's his calling card as he kept him entertained for most of the time. She was a teacher. Started during D Seg in Boston. Her father was a superintendent. I went into education policy as like a rebellion. Like she said, don't teach. This is impossible. You can never figure this out. It's a perfect way to get somebody.
- [01:26]
A
Yeah, of course.
- [01:27]
B
Get a child to do. Exactly.
- [01:27]
A
Do you think she was doing that delivery?
- [01:29]
B
I don't know. I don't think so. I think she was really frustrated because I, you know, I. And part of my motivation was do stuff that hasn't been done before. So try experimental stuff. Do innovation.
- [01:37]
A
Right.
- [01:37]
B
So I worked on the Race the Top program during the, you know, Obama primary, ran a nonprofit that worked in that got a lot of fun stuff done, but realized that there was a real challenge in the education reform ecosystem and that there wasn't like a concomitant movement or like, political base for this stuff. It was a lot of good ideas. Right.
- [01:57]
A
In fact, I felt like, because I worked at a bunch of it too, including a lot of round Race to the Top. There was a moment from, like, I don't know, 2010 to 2013 or something like that where you had winning for Superman. You had Michelle Rhee, you Had Race to the Top, all of these things were happening and then it all just kind of. It didn't fall apart completely. Cuz you have things like success, like incredible charter school network. So really good things have happened, but in terms of a political movement, it just kind of fell apart. Um, tell me why you think that is and I'm gonna give you my theory.
- [02:28]
B
So I think two things happen. One is everybody over indexed tests. And so when you over index the tests, if you don't nail the tests, you don't get to keep going. And so for 25 years people said, let's have tests. And then after 25 years, 11th grade scores were flat. The US actually went down relative to other countries. On NAEP, you have the emergence of developing countries who are performing now near where we do. So I think it was like one thing is like you pegged it all in this metric and you didn't nail the metric.
- [02:55]
A
Right.
- [02:55]
B
The second thing is you had like a real technocratic nonprofit movement emerge. You know, you mentioned some of the key players there and it was really smart people working on really hard problems who had almost no time for like the politics of this and the politics of education, like the politics of everything else are brutal. I would argue a little more brutal because you basically have a bunch of JV people running for school boards in these like 9,000 little fiefdoms around the country who want power, right? That's why they run for shit. And then they wanna run for city council and then state assemb and the education reform movement was like hostile to that, I think for good reasons. Cause it's not a productive setup, but it just caused kind of more tension over little stuff than was necessary. And so you couldn't do the big stuff.
- [03:41]
A
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, in my experience, with the exception of Eva Moskowitz, who was really good at this because she was a politician before she was a reformer, so she kind of gets it in a different way. The money was a lot of hedge fund guys who I think took a lot of shit unfairly because they were trying to do something. They weren't profiting from this stuff in any way. And a lot of people like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, like people who, Jeff Canada, are very, very smart and talented and mean very, very well, but not only don't know politics, but I would argue take it even a step further because they are exceptionally smart and well educated and praised. They fell into a little bit of that trap of not knowing what they didn't know. Right. And thinking, oh, well, if I get all this great press and I went to Yale, I must know everything about everything. And then they just didn'. Politics. And so there wasn't really, like you said, a movement to sustain it. Why do you think, though? It does seem to me that at least in blue cities and states, there is this existential fear of teachers unions as a political force that in my experience is in no way matched by the actual political performance or aptitude of the teachers unions.
- [04:51]
B
I think that's probably right. I mean, they've spent. You know, it's interesting. You know, you see, you compare teachers unions with sort of the emerging. The small, emerging tech unions, and, you know, there's a difference between defending work rules and organizing for workers rights.
- [05:06]
A
Yeah.
- [05:07]
B
And I think what's happened with the teachers unions is because you have this symbiotic dysfunction with the administration and the school boards, who, by the way, like, in a lot of these cases, you basically have PACs and political apparatus set up by the unions electing school boards. So you have like this. This reciprocal thing going on, and you end up defending work rules and contract, and it becomes about the contract, and it doesn't become about workers rights or about compensation or benefits. And so I think when you make it about work rules, you end up playing inside game all the time. You're not really playing outside game. Yeah, yeah.
- [05:40]
A
It's very hard to explain. Like lifo, Right?
- [05:43]
B
Exactly. So part of this, though, is why, you know, I stepped. I left the nonprofit I was running in 2014, and the Black Lives Matter movement was emerging. I was deeply affected by Trayvon Martin getting killed. I mean, he was 17. I mean, he looked like a child. And you. You could just see that, the progress that we thought we had made. I mean, I grew up in Jersey in the 80s. It was the peak of racial integration, and it's only gotten. This country's been more segregated since. So I saw there a movement that's a movement. And I spent a good amount of time for the last 15 years working with and alongside people in movement work on police violence in particular, not as a professional, but as an activist. And that's a movement that was a movement. It was not successful in all its aims. It had massive problems around message discipline and focus at times. And it was a movement. It was an authentic movement that was ground up. And you saw the contrast between that, which was like a movement without a technical apparatus for the most part, and the education world, which was like a lot of technical stuff without sport and So I started doing more and more organizing work to sort of learn that side of things and figure out how to complement what I've been doing. Politics my whole life. But how to do grassroots work.
- [06:50]
A
Right. In the kind of anti police movement, it seems like maybe in some ways. Amber, thoughts for it? There are some parallels to the ed reform movement in that it has sort of now become a vestige of relatively privileged white people who consider themselves ultra progressive, who tend to be the kind of most vocal on defunding the police. And ironically, people who tend to live in communities that are higher crime, which are often communities of color, now becoming people who are more saying, no, we actually need the cops. Yeah.
- [07:21]
B
If you make the question about safety and not about the criminal legal apparatus, you have a completely different conversation. When I talk about safety with neighbors, the conversation is dignified. It's responsive. People have real strong beliefs about what they want to see and what they don't want to see. When you talk about the police, everybody has a different experience. My next neighbor, Nessa, rest in peace, was a guard at Rikers. I'm a lefty activist. She would see my T shirts and we'd joke together. She passed away recently. I'm still friendly with her husband, but we would have long conversations about her experience as a corrections officer in a system that, like, dehumanized everybody on both sides. And I think everybody kind of sees that. And everybody knows the system's kind of wretched. When you get into the politics of it, the most extreme voices dominate, as is the case with every fucking thing.
- [08:08]
A
So you know that. I mean, that's the theme, do you think? I mean, you're old enough to sort of remember a world without social media, everything becoming just the craziest narrative on both sides, drowning everything else out. How much of that do you think is the product of social media?
- [08:25]
B
I stopped doing Twitter for that exact reason. Like, I got on Twitter heavy in like around Arab Spring, like 2008, because I was like, this is where information that is filters coming.
- [08:34]
A
That was one of the few positive use cases totally.
- [08:36]
B
And then, and then the Black Lives Matter movement emerges. And similarly, you have the sort of unearthing of voices that would not normally be covered in media. And then, you know, so I was like, into it. And then I just noticed, like, God, I just like, how did I become a headline writer? You know what I mean? Like, my whole everything I was doing was aimed towards capturing the simplest, stupidest, easiest take on something.
- [08:58]
A
Right when you had probably spent a career trying to be thoughtful about what you were doing so that it would actually matter. So how does all of this then lead to dad's for all? What's that like aha moment if there is one.
- [09:11]
B
Well, it's a little bit of a progression, right?
- [09:13]
A
Yeah.
- [09:14]
B
At 40, so you guys went and started doing podcasts during COVID I had two kids. So we have a two year old, two and a half year old, year old and a four and a half year old at home. And I had kids and I, you know, my, you know, everything else I do, I interview people, I get curious, I do a ton of research. So I, when I had kids, I did the same thing. I interviewed tons of professional dads and I just asked them like, how do you balance life, work, job, et cetera? And I found like everybody is living this private hell unless you're ultra wealthy or unless you like have come from off. Like you are. Both parents are working all the time, usually more than one job. Everybody's doing some amount of childcare, although dads are doing more than they did two generations ago, but less than their wives do still. Or if they're in a heteronormative like two parent couple. And everybody's negotiating this on a case by case basis in their miserable. So that was the first thing I realized, like, oh shit, I'm about to become a dad. And everybody sounds like they're kind of struggling on all this stuff and then having kids. I realized that there are a bunch of things that matter for family economic security that, that moms are totally briefed on that are leading the charge on from an advocacy standpoint. And dads are like nowhere to be found on the issues. And part of that is structural. Right. Like historically one parent went and worked and the other parent handled things that were, you know, quote unquote domestic. That's all jumbled now in a lot of families and, or most families actually. And so a lot of the, like the old model fell apart, but there's nothing to replace it. And so that was like sort of the background noise for me is like, what's going on with parenting generally. The second thing was I had done a bunch of org organizing since leaving the nonprofit sector in 2014 and you look around and it's women, it's women doing the blocking and tackling on politics in a lot of places. And again, structural reasons for that. Men had obligated 40 hour work weeks since they had a ton of time to go do activism or paint signs before the rally or whatever the thing was. And so it was like, okay, this to me felt like an uncrowded beach. Like men in their middle age doing real activism. And so what would you want them
- [11:16]
A
to do it on?
- [11:17]
B
And it's like, well, how about that shit that I help every parent complaining about? Which is like the unmanageability of the basic stuff in the house, the unaffordability of the mortgage and the health care and the childcare. And so the instinct was let's. And then third is this just thing that I was not super engaged in 10 years ago that I'm very engaged in now, which is this question of male isolation and social dislocation and the evaporation of the third spaces in America and this and the sort of drifting of men globally. Right.
- [11:46]
A
What do you attribute that to? I mean, I could throw out a bunch of potential causes, but you're in this. So like it hasn't been an always thing, right?
- [11:55]
B
No, I mean, part of it I think is the moving of the cheese, right? Like if you grew up and your grandfather worked at a place and your dad worked at a similar place, and then that place doesn't exist anymore and nobody is, you know, and then by the way, like at the same time you have the opioid epidemic and the hollowing out of a bunch of different social institutions that used to form the fabric of a community. Men are adrift. And then if you're a boy, God forbid, in this time, and I have a three year old boy, and I'm just every day thinking about how do I put on, give him a sense of how to navigate and move in this world. You're looking at a bunch of different information coming at you. And from the left you're getting orthodoxy. Right? Like I. I'll tell a quick story if you don't mind.
- [12:39]
A
Yeah, please.
- [12:40]
B
First, when I, like 15 years ago, I was working with a friend of mine who's a lovely woman, political genius in Rhode island, who was running in a primary against an establishment candidate. And I was helping her. She's a lesbian, she's married to a woman who used to be a nun. Their son is a, was a genius at 8 years old, like I could tell, like a political genius. And he was knocking doors with us. He was doing this campaign, he testified before the state senate when they were trying to pass marriage equality. Fast forward seven years and this kid went down like an alt right rabbit hole and was like flirting with some of the most horrifying shit in the Internet and I don't know why. And like, I think the orthodoxy of the Left is unhealthy. Right. And sort of it pushes people who might otherwise be allies into.
- [13:21]
A
I mean, I'll tell you this. I can speak to this. You know, my kids went to. My son still does, like, a very fancy but very progressive school, Quaker school. And the orthodoxy of the faculty is incredibly progressive. And it is having. If their goal is to alienate boys and turn them to the right, they're doing an amazing job. Because I remember my son came home one day and said, like, did our family do something wrong? And I said, why? You ask me that? He said, well, at school, they make me feel like that's the case. And I said, your family literally was surviving the Holocaust. So. No, but when you tell someone all the time that because you are white or straight or male that you're inherently bad, Trump picked up on that very well. And eventually their answer is, go fuck yourself, and they go the other way.
- [14:12]
B
And so when they go the other way, that side is extremely well organized.
- [14:18]
A
Yeah, I bring them in to bring them in.
- [14:19]
B
So everybody now, at this point understands the Charlie Kirk phenomena, at least at some level, which is really code for, or a proxy for a substantial national organizing apparatus that is in every city and community in this country that is partially, you know, fueled by the evangelical movement, but it's much bigger and more substantial than that. And it has infrastructure and it's permanent. And they. They're recruiting, like, actively. And so I think, you know, if you're a young man and you see on one side, it's like, I don't see any place for me. And the other side's like, come join us.
- [14:49]
A
Yeah, please.
- [14:50]
B
I think that that works. And then, you know, there, again, I think globally, if you look at, you know, I've said this to some folks, and if you look at birth rates, right, in places like South Korea, where, like, birth rates are almost like civilization collapsingly low, apparently, I think that story is going to play out in more places and that you can quibble with whether this is okay, but I think the psychological effect it has on men is a reduction in decision about your future and your ability to fit in in the world. And I think that there are positive ways to metabolize that, and there are really negative ones. And I think mostly the negative ones are winning.
- [15:26]
A
Right? And so there are all these different factors that arguably lead to this sort of feeling of alienation and isolation, right? So it's. It's economic change, it's technological change, it's various types of epidemics. It is sometimes actually a reaction to, you know, a side on the left that probably when you get down to the core, believes in things that are admirable in terms of equality, but yet, you know, when people taste power, they find ways to sort of make their issues sort of the mechanism to gain and maintain power. And that then becomes very unappealing to a lot of people. So all that then leads to this feeling of men adrift, which is a good segue into what you're doing now, which is, so how does that then kind of produce that dad's for all idea?
- [16:17]
B
So the idea, so then the idea is, okay, what would we do to combat that? That like what would you do on a, on a community by community basis? Or what would you, what would you put in place if you really wanted to put a backstop against this? And so a couple of things just felt like clear design features for me at the beginning. One was like, irl, it has to be in real life. There's too much digital communication happening. So much opportunity for miscommunication, so much opportunity for breaking relationships. We wanted to start with an in person premise to build those relationships. The second was no political speak, no partisanship, no parties, no electoral. Like people are allergic to that stuff. For the most part. The people who are the people who want to participate in that have found their way into it.
- [17:00]
A
What's called social media.
- [17:02]
B
Right? That's true. Social media is like a giant club of all the people that give a shit about this particular stuff. And we're trying to attract people that aren't already in the tent. So we can't use the language of the tent. We can't use the sort of the good guy, bad guy dynamics of the time.
- [17:14]
A
So as you're, you know, you've built out now eight chapters, seven states and so. And you're probably personally. Cause it's still young enough that you're actually getting to know individual members. Right. So what would you say you're sort of consistently hearing from people about both how they feel, why they feel that way and what they're looking for.
- [17:35]
B
People feel strapped by like the, the demands of modern life. I think the cost of stuff feels unmanageable. I think the number of hours we expect people to put into the different things in their life. And then you add kids and you add their activities. It just all feels like it doesn't fit in the container. I think that's too. I think dads are extremely proud of being parents and want to talk about that and want to engage on that topic and light up when they talk about that and kind of get work is that work can cut both ways for people, you know, family. But kids are sort of like a universal uniter on that.
- [18:15]
A
So norms, right. So, like, obviously, I think if people didn't find something value in being parents, this species was collapsed a long time ago.
- [18:26]
B
Right.
- [18:26]
A
So obviously it's not just women who emotionally find value in parenting. Obviously it's both sides. And yet men were conditioned for so many centuries to sort of not talk about it, almost act like it wasn't really something. My guess is you tell me, but that we're in a very stratified world where, you know, when we're sitting here in downtown Manhattan, Brooklyn, whatever it is, like, of course you talk about your feelings as a parent, your anxieties and your aspirations and everything else, But I would imagine there are still large parts of this country where, you know, men might feel that way, but it's still not as safe to express it.
- [19:04]
B
I think that's probably right. I mean, we are pretty focused on cross class organizing. So middle class, working class, poor guy. We're trying to bring everybody together, trying to create events and containers that do not put a class threshold on participation and trying to create dialogue and prompts and all that that give people space to talk wherever they come from. And yeah, I think there's a level of comfort with discussing parenting and participation in parenting. If you're upper middle, middle class, that may not be there. And like, you know, the working class dads are the ones who are most likely to be living in households where they're doing more of the childcare because working class men tend to be married to women who make more money than them.
- [19:45]
A
Right.
- [19:45]
B
So. Or at least both people are working, or both people are working, or both are incomparable amounts. So I think in those cases, like, you see a real necessity there and maybe a hesitancy to talk about it, but a real understanding that this is important. So creating these containers for people to get together, making them friendly, not alienating people, not putting a purity test on participation, not asking people to sign shit before they show up. Just come be a dad. Like Saturday night, our Cleveland chapter had an event at the professional soccer teams game and they had a kids versus dad shootout at halftime. And so I got B roll this morning of like kids and dads and telling. They set up this thing where they told dad jokes to the players from South America to see if they would get that. So it was fun. It was like. It was kind of. It was like a fun night. They did a bunch of dad themed shit and at the soccer game and you know what I keep hearing people is like, why don't we just do this? Like, why don't we just do this all the time? I'm like, yeah, exactly.
- [20:33]
A
Right, so, so let's just take Cleveland or whatever chapter you want, walk us through, like what actually happens, who, who were the types of members, what are your activities and then what are you working towards?
- [20:44]
B
Yeah. So when we want to go somewhere, you know, a chapter wants to start, we just really need two guys. You need two, ideally three, but really just two guys who say, who commit to like taking this on for a three to six month period. And we tried to make it bite size. So one of my big insights as somebody who had done nonprofit work and worked in the for profit sector and done organizing is like, we can't ask like middle aged guys with kids to spend 20 hours a week on this shit. Like we have to. Right. Size it. So we said basically, if you're going to stand up and be a chapter lead, you got to spend three to five hours a week for a few months. Not forever, but for a few months to stand this thing up. So if you can commit to that, we'll provide startup resources and basically give you the money to run events for a few months. And what do those events? We want you to do a few things during those three months. You know, my code word is like fun learning service. Pick two of the three for every event. Right. So each event has to have two components, like ideally that, you know, bring people together and get them do a little bit more than just drink beer. Not that much more, just a little bit more. And so, you know, and then over a three month period, I want to see growth. Right. Like we're not doing this so that you. I mean, I hate to say this, I love five guys at a diner booth talking. It's awesome. We need more of that. Like, I love that. I never say no to that. That's not what this is. I want, if there are five guys today, there should be 50 in three months. And you should have a growth mindset about building this base. Because you can do stuff with a base once you have one. So I think figuring out the kind of events that sort of help you steadily and incrementally build a base is really important to us. And then so at some point I want to see, you know, flourishing chapters all around this country continuously building, bringing people into the tent and then taking action and doing stuff.
- [22:21]
A
Right. So that's the thing, okay, so now we went from five to 50. It worked. What's the underlying purpose? Is it to give people a place to feel less isolated and alone, to help them make friends? Is it too organized ultimately for some sort of policy change? Like where do you see it?
- [22:39]
B
I mean, I see it in sort of three dimensions. So one is the self actualization and isolation piece. Like we ask the same few survey questions at every event. I try to do it, I have guys write it on their, like the answer's on a name tag and give it back to me. So it's not like go on the Google form. It's like three questions like, do you know where to take political action? Your community 1 to 5, are you part of a community of dads 1 to 5? And did participating in this make you more likely to do something like this in the future? And so we're just trying to see if like this work levels people up into doing stuff together.
- [23:08]
A
So yeah, keep going.
- [23:09]
B
So that's like one thing is the self actualization piece. The second piece is just pure base building and numbers. Like, you know, I'm sort of obsessed with this organizing gap between the right and the left. And like, we're not explicitly a part of any party or anything, but I do think that the current version of masculinity on the right is harmful to people. And so we.
- [23:26]
A
Tell me why.
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B
Well, because it's fundamentally misogynistic and it completely ignores families that don't live a trad life that they've imagined. And it asks dads to sort of occupy an extinct role in society that is impossible to do without harming people and without basically, you know, putting their wives and children at risk. So I think, and it's not, and it is uncurious about, you know, sexual assault and harm, it's at least uncurious about those things, if not actively encouraging those things. So, you know, so I think like having, having a response matters. I think having a size of base to, you know, the sort of coverage matters around the country and then the size of the base matters. That's another thing we look at. And the third thing is like the last thing you mentioned, which is like, how do you chat up people into activity? So on Monday, next, next week, I'm going with members of our Pittsburgh and Philly chapters to Harrisburg to talk to like moderate and right wing, like state representatives about parental leave.
- [24:28]
A
Right?
- [24:29]
B
And we're bringing, you know, guys in shirts and ties versus the normal activists on the other side to sort of make the case like this is not
- [24:36]
A
like Max and Cafe is. Yeah, yeah.
- [24:41]
B
Like, you know, we're. We're going to go in and have those conversations. And I think it hits different when it's like a handful of dads.
- [24:48]
A
So I could see maybe this isn't a tension that you've been thinking through, but if I put myself in your shoes, two different paths, right? One would be a. And I think it's sort of your instinct. My instinct based on our careers. How do I take this movement, this activity, and then channel it into tangible policy change? Because I think that's what you and I are almost just conditioned to see things as right. And that could lead to real value. Like, for example, it's interesting, you know, we have the same paternity leave as we have maternity leave at our company. And it has really changed in terms of the norms. All these young men who work for us take it. And I will say. Cause I have a weekly personnel meeting. Every time I'm told so and so's wife is pregnant and they'll be gone for a month, I'm like, ugh. And then I'm like, no, no, it's okay. But like I still haven't reacted.
- [25:41]
B
Thank you for acknowledging that.
- [25:43]
A
I still have that reaction, you know. And you could see a world where you're saying, okay, this needs to be the law and normalized and everything. Alex for so I'm sure sociologists can give us 100 good reasons as to why those four months have such a meaningful difference for the rest of the kid's life and the relationship between the dad and the kid. And you could see that and you could channel into a policy agenda. But I could also see a world where you go the other route and say, you know what? Everyone fucking hates politics. And we have this massive social problem of men feeling isolated and alone and unsupported. And there's so much good that we can do. And in some ways, the more apolitical we are, the more good we can do, the more people we can attract, the more help we can provide people. And then that creates normative change over time. And I could almost see how the two were. You could literally pick a path. And also if you're not, do you want worry at all that by having a mix you are actually potentially undermining it?
- [26:47]
B
Are you listening to our co founder discussions? Yes.
- [26:50]
A
We have a bug in your house.
- [26:51]
B
That's exactly the tension. I mean, I so like, I would go extinct if I couldn't push for the social change. Right. So you know, I think, like, you and I are wired that way. And especially, I mean, you know, I know you're focused a lot on problem solving and social change and enabling people to take on these through the work you're doing. Yeah, like, that's how I think of this is like, there's a lot of people who are like, on the precipice or the brink of being able to solve local problems. And if you could give them tools and you could give them a container to organize in, like, that's going to be so much easier. And especially on, you know, local and state issues where, you know, a few phone calls here or there can make the difference. I see this as like the, you know, the men can be the offensive line for, like, for policy change when, when stuff is afoot. And like, there. There are like. Like there are people who are going to be allergic to that always. And so the. I think for me, anyway, the way I swear this. I mean, we're young, right? And so fortunately, I haven't had to deal with this at scale or really confront somebody rebelling in any way. You know, we're going to build a base and then we're going to say, hey, here are some on ramps to some other stuff. Like, do you want. Nobody's going to force you. You know, like, the worst thing that happens in the. And the worst thing that happens with this kind of stuff is like somebody starts and they says it's not political. And then a month later, you know, their best friend, the candidate, shows up and is like, by the way, we're all, you know, we're all leading into this pack for the next six months.
- [28:10]
A
Right.
- [28:10]
B
That's not going to happen. And like, people will come and say, we're working on this aligned campaign. Nobody has to do it. But if five guys want to participate in this, we're going to run off and do this. And I think that's how a lot of them.
- [28:20]
A
How do you make sure that doesn't tend to only go in one political direction, which then risks sort of typecasting you guys and also then makes you kind of a target when you don't need to be.
- [28:31]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I haven't. I don't fully know the answer to that. I think my, my instinct there is wherever possible, like, finding independent or Republican voices that we can partner with. So, you know, I'm working with a guy in Nebraska right now who ran for a local seat who's working with Republican, you know, office holders around the country who are, you know, not necessarily bought into MAGA and who are thinking about bread and butter family stuff. You know, there are. There are Republican sponsors for this bill in Pennsylvania. You know, there are. There. There was a Republican ish, like, universal childcare bill that passed in New Mexico. The polling on childcare and paternity leave is like, close to 80, 20. Yeah. So if we can stay away from like, poisonous lefty messaging on it. Right. Yeah, we can, probably. So that my concern is more like, let's not poison these things that are kind of popular with everybody by making it too, too left.
- [29:24]
A
Yeah. I mean, so tell me if this is right. I got this stat from Scott or heard it on Scott Galley's podcast. I wasn't even in a conversation with Scott, but that in the democratic platform in 24, they literally list like, we are four, and then like, every conceivable demographic possible except men.
- [29:42]
B
Right.
- [29:43]
A
Which just seems, if politics is a business of addition seems so fucking stupid. Right. Do you think that the Democrats. I didn't read their autopsy. I don't know if you did. It just felt like I don't, you know. But do you think they understand that? Because it just seems like, why would you so actively choose to alienate 50% of the population?
- [30:09]
B
I have conversations with folks about this every day. And the disposition towards men on the left is toxic and it's strategically stupid. And so I've talked to people who say things like, well, we can't register more men to vote or engage more men because we might have an adverse effect on our outcomes.
- [30:30]
A
Yeah, I get that with mobile voting too. Like, oh, I don't want to make it easier to vote because then what if the people I don't want to vote choose to vote?
- [30:36]
B
Yeah. I mean, and I find that to be like, then just don't fucking do it.
- [30:39]
A
Right.
- [30:39]
B
Avoid politics and social change entirely.
- [30:42]
A
Because you don't get it. Right.
- [30:43]
B
Because the idea is you need to engage the unengaged if you're going to make sort of tectonic shifts on anything important. And so my hypothesis going into this is like, we need more is more like, I don't necessarily need a bunch of people who follow Andrew Tate coming to meetings and disrupting it.
- [30:58]
A
Right.
- [30:58]
B
That's one thing.
- [30:59]
A
Has he faded? It's. You know, it's funny, it's your kids. So my son was sort of at that age or his height, and I remember having to much more actively than normal say, like, this is bad. Here are all the reasons why. Because he had, you know, Kids at school that were like, super into it. Yeah. But, yeah, I don't know if he's faded. I don't know if he's faded or just that my son has sort of aged out maybe.
- [31:22]
B
I don't know. My kids are way too young. My sense is that he's still popular with young men in a lot of places. And you know that there are acolytes and there are people that follow that, and there's a lot of people sub Andrew Tate, people on the Internets who attract a lot of attention. So, you know, that's one thing. And, you know, there's active disruption from that. But for the most part, like, I think that. That we're trying to get people. I mean, we're just trying to talk to people who aren't already listening to the left. And so the left's allergy to men is gonna be a strategic problem for everything they want to do forever. And in the meantime, like, we will continue to talk to men and find them and bring them in with the understanding that, like, most of them aren't coming in with like a Andrew Tate disposition. They're coming in with some kind of neutrality and that if we come in and just start talking shit about that, they're also these. But if we come in and this is a fun place to be and there are good vibes and like, they like the guys and we're having good conversations and it feels social.
- [32:20]
A
Yeah. By the way, I mean, it's funny. I mean, because of the Knicks right now, it's sort of, you know, the whole city is sort of connected. Right. So I did a 15 mile walk on Saturday with a friend. We started 242nd and Broadway and then walked all the way to the Battery. He had a Knicks hat on. At least a dozen people on the street just stopped us to say, like, go Knicks. And, you know, we dap him up or whatever it was. And like. But I do think I've been thinking about this because, like, both with my dad and my son, sports has always been a super connective tissue. Right. And it creates a opening to sort of something just to talk about that sort of feels pretty riskless, if that's a word, and then might or might not lead to other conversations. Right. But it is, it is this. And, you know, you mentioned the soccer game. Like, it is, I think, for men, not all men, but for a lot of men, this is a very useful connective tissue. Have you found that?
- [33:14]
B
We did an event in Philly with our first pilot chapter where we went to a Phillies game. It was the week after the Trump administration had taken all the PBS money away, CPV money away. So I called the local Philadelphia where I knew an education reporter and a guy who worked on education stuff. We kicked around a couple of ideas we ended up doing is we went to a Phillies game, but we tailgated beforehand, and we airbrushed Elmo T shirts in the parking lot with, like, a stencil I'd made out of cardboard. And so 50 dudes go into this Philly game wearing these Elmo T shirts, and people are yelling it out from
- [33:49]
A
us, like, elmo, raise my kids.
- [33:51]
B
Like, yes. Like. And it was. And nobody said it. I didn't say a political word. I didn't explain why. Everybody just got it. And it was like, this is political, right? Like, I guess public broadcasting political. And it was popular and fun, and, like, people were into it, and it had the sports on it. And, like, you know, we did. We made it a little corny. Like, every three innings, we made people switch seats to sit. But, like, more is more on the sports stuff. I love sports.
- [34:15]
A
I don't know what else to say. It's like.
- [34:17]
B
And it's an interesting nexus for a bunch of other stuff that happens in a community. Like, moms have PTAs, dads are coaches, like sports leagues, like traveling sports. All of these are, like, organizations that men put a lot of time and volunteer work into. And so I think it's an interesting template to sort of figure out who's the. Who runs the fantasy league, who runs the. You know, the youth sports stuff here, right? That's a guy who has the capacity to.
- [34:40]
A
Right?
- [34:41]
B
He has. Right?
- [34:41]
A
By definition, you have organizing skills if you do that. One other thing that I did with my son that I think proved useful in ways I didn't realize at the time was from the age of, like, 8 to 14, we'd read the New York Post together every morning. Now, the Post itself's gotten a little too crazy, so that might not be the right one anymore, but here's what it ended up doing, which was every day there was a story about some guy doing something bad. Jeffrey Epstein, Hyve.
- [35:06]
B
Whoever.
- [35:06]
A
It was. More than one, right? In a way, it ended up being this. You know, I just did it because I was reading the paper anyway, and he just wanted to be with me. And, you know, it was like, I can tell you what it says while I'm reading it, right? But it ended up being this incredibly useful parenting tool, I think, because it just Sort of drilled into him like, here's what the people who behave in ways that are just not respectful of their human beings, regardless of any demographic, are, and you don't wanna be like them. And not that there were necessarily tons of counterexamples of people behaving well on the post, but still it did prove to be this thing where it. Like a ritual that we had. Rituals are good in general. And I think it did have this sort of inadvertent teaching effect that I didn't really think about at the time, but. But I did find helpful exactly what that publication would be today. I'm not sure because the post seems to have gone off the rails completely. But, you know, I did find that helpful. So. All right, so now let's play this out. Tell me where you want to be in five years and what it looks like and what's happening.
- [36:07]
B
Yeah, I mean, I would, I mean, first of all, I would love to see a Dads for all chapter in every state. There's nowhere in this country where this wouldn't be useful. There used to be Elks and Rotary clubs and places where people gathered to sort of solve civic problems. We just do not have that at this juncture. And so I would love to see that. I would love to see a cascading set of very purple, family friendly state policies move in the next few years. I mean, and one of our initial instincts, which I think was right, which I continue to think is true, is just to avoid federal shit entirely right now. And there's lots of good templates for. We talked about paid leave, we talked about childcare, we talked about, I mean, housing supply is another thing I think about. I've joked before that the Venn diagram of Ezra Klein style, abundant stuff and Bernie and AOC style for all stuff, like whatever's in the intersection of those two things is stuff we should go after because it's popular, it will involve supply side stuff and you can do it at a local and state level. So, you know, I think there's, I think I would love to see more of that happen. And then I, you know, culture change. I mean, you know, the isolation, the male isolation stuff is real. And like, I would love to see a few people being like, you know what, there's some bright spots here. Like, we're seeing some shift. People got the memo. Like, we are actually taking this seriously and we're thinking about it not just through the lens of like, what are men doing? Like, how are men modeling something different for boys?
- [37:32]
A
Yeah.
- [37:33]
B
And I have Been very resistant to sort of the role model aspect of this. Just, I think it's tricky. And you end up, you know, sort of setting yourself up for, you know, being.
- [37:42]
A
Yes. Because people are humans. And by people are humans, some member of apes do something horrible. Cause that's just statistically gonna happen.
- [37:47]
B
It's just gonna happen.
- [37:48]
A
Right. But then also the best people who try the hardest still fuck up all the time, because that's what being human is. Right. So.
- [37:56]
B
Right.
- [37:57]
A
So to set yourself up by claiming this mantle that ultimately is just going to be undermined by definition, because that's. Humanity is smart. To avoid that. It's smart.
- [38:07]
B
Let's avoid that. And let's just be cognizant of the fact that, like, as a group of men gathering and building, like, we are inevitably setting a tone for younger men. And we have to be mindful of that.
- [38:17]
A
Yeah.
- [38:17]
B
So I would. That's really important to me. So, I mean, and if those. So if we had those two things happen, I'd be pretty happy. I would love to. I think there's. I think there's really no ceiling for how many chapters we can have. Sure. It's not super expensive. It's, you know, like I said, it's rotating.
- [38:30]
A
I don't know what percentage of men are dads. Like a massive percentage. Right.
- [38:35]
B
It's like 40% of men over 35.
- [38:37]
A
Right. So, like, you know, by definition, we're talking like 100 million people.
- [38:42]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [38:43]
A
Great.
- [38:43]
B
That. That's my addressable market. So I gotta figure out.
- [38:46]
A
Yeah, exactly. The venture capitalist, and he comes out and starts working on the tam. How do people get involved?
- [38:52]
B
So three things. Like, one is if you are in a place, anywhere, literally anywhere in this country, and you want to do this, like, reach out. Justinads4all.com like, starting a chapter, like I said, requires you and one other guy basically stepping up. And so we're really excited to do that. The second thing is resources. Like, this is. Like I said, it's not terribly expensive. We're treating this like more of like a franchise model. Like, I'm not going out and trying to create a big infrastructure to run shit. Right. I'm trying to find awesome leaders, give them the resources they need to start up, and hopefully helping them pivot to raising all of their money locally. Because there's. There's family foundations and community foundations everywhere. We don't need to create some giant national infrastructure to do this. And the third thing is partners. Right. Like right before the. Right after the Democratic primary in New York City last year, Reshma Sao Joni from Moms first and I wrote an op ed basically saying like, whatever you feel about the leftist politics of our incoming mayor project, you know, presumptive incoming mayor at the time, like, universal childcare
- [39:46]
A
is a good idea, we should do that.
- [39:47]
B
And that ended up being, we helped set the tone for that a little bit.
- [39:50]
A
I mean all of that collectively led to, you know, one quick question on the local stuff then. So.
- [39:56]
B
Okay, well, let me say that partnership just in general, other groups doing aligned stuff. I want to talk, I want to figure out how we move.
- [40:01]
A
This generation's a perfect example. But one thing I will say I do worry about. I was thrilled to see Hochul's announcement of the money. I do think that there is this misconception, especially on the left, that spending money is the equivalent of solving a problem. And then the actual, like, it only matters if it then results in good, high quality subsidized childcare. I know that may not be a mission for the group, but how do you think about that kind of thing?
- [40:29]
B
I mean, I think about it a lot actually. I mean, we're working on an event with some other groups that we'll do after the primary season and probably before school comes back about a long term plan for quality childcare. And I think like for two reasons. One is like you can't sustain spending on shit if you don't do it well. I mean, you talked to Elliot about this, our mutual friend Elliot Regenstein, who wrote a great book about early childhood. You can't have.
- [40:50]
A
He's been on this podcast to talk about it.
- [40:52]
B
You can't have a quality allergic approach or a quality neutral approach. So you've got to have because, because you'll never go back. Like, you're not like if we're talking about 2002k seats this fall, like if you want to do 30,000 seats in the city and you know, tens of thousands elsewhere in the state, they better work. Like, you better not. Like, you know, these better be quality centers. We better have some objective measure. So I think that's one thing is like I really worry about, it's like getting the quality right and get and to sustain and to increase the funding. But the early childcare sectors, to their credit, they're not just embedding this within K12, which I think would have been risky as well because you have a sector's already sort of averse to accountability. It would add even more. So I don't know, I mean, I'm worried about that I am concerned that quality will be a problem. I'm concerned that they will not pay attention to sort of making this affordable for other place in the outcome. But, but for now I think like getting seats out there, running it not through the K12 system because I think that would hamper it in a lot of really important ways. And then, you know, thinking about it as you, I think universality is really important. You know, I think, you know, people always say to me like, oh well, you know, somebody said to me before the Mondanya was inaugurated, like, so you want to hire people for rich people's like, you want to pay for rich people's nannies basically, or replace rich people's nannies?
- [42:10]
A
No, they just want to pay for
- [42:11]
B
middle class people's nannies. Yeah, I just want to like, no, like it's like, no, I just want something that's available to everybody and that anybody could access and agree is of a, of a high enough quality that they could access it that we don't end up with like a multi tiered society that starts at 4 years old.
- [42:23]
A
Yep. Justin Cohen, thanks for joining us.
- [42:25]
B
Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.
- [42:28]
A
Firewalls recorded at my bookstore, PNT Netware, located at 180 Orchard street on the lower east side of Manhattan. We'd love to hear from you with questions, feedbacks or idea for a guest. Just email me at Bradley Firewall Media or, or find me on LinkedIn. And to keep up with what's on my mind and my latest writing, please follow my new substack@bradleytus.substack.com thanks again for listening.