← Future Hindsight
Future Hindsight
Turning Hope Into Action: Michael Ansara
00:44:53
We discuss the basics of organizing and the fruits of that work. Michael reminds us that “organizers organize organizations.” Michael’s civic action toolkit recommendations are: 1) Gather 4-5 friends to talk about what’s happening...
Loading summary
Transcript29 lines
- [00:00]
A
Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com hopeful all lowercase and if you want to support Future Hindsight, sign up for our newsletter. It's easy and free and a great way to build your civic action toolkit. And every week, sign up@futurehindsight.com Civic engagement doesn't just happen during elections. Issue Voter breaks down legislation into straightforward, easy to read summaries. Follow the issues you care about, send your opinions to your representatives, and track how your representatives vote. Visit issuevoter.org to get started. Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast on a mission to spark civic action. I'm your host, Mila Atmos. I'm a global citizen based in New York City, and I'm deeply curious about the way our society works. So each week I bring you conversations to cut through the confusion around today's most important civic issues and share clear, actionable ways for us to build a brighter future together. After all, democracy is not a spectator sport. Tomorrow starts right now. Democracy is a practice, and one of the best ways to practice is through activism. Our guest, Michael Ansera, has been doing exactly that for over five decades, starting with civil rights in the 1960s, he organized with Students for Democratic Society, or SDS, and spent a decade fighting the Vietnam War. He was also a community organizer for 15 years, including as executive director of Mass Fair Share. He has worked on political campaigns, coordinated voter registration efforts, and trained many organizers. His memoir, the Hard Work of Hope, is out now. Welcome Michael. Thank you for joining us.
- [02:11]
B
Well, thank you so much for having me.
- [02:15]
A
Let's start with the timing of the publication of your book. You wrote it well before the 2024 election, and you added a note in the beginning of the book that speaks directly to the current state of our society and our democracy. The so I think it's appropriate to start by asking you about the status quo. How would you describe the status quo and what's wrong with it?
- [02:39]
B
So on the one hand, we have the biggest threat to American democracy, the Constitution, and I would say just basic human decency that we've had in this country since the Civil War. And that's a product of of a very failed status quo. And so one of the dilemmas those of us working to save American democracy encounter now is on the one hand, we have Trump the Destroyer, and he is destroying valuable institutions. He's destroying the federal government and so many of our critical institutions, higher education, medicine, on and on. And so we naturally have to resist him. But the dilemma for us is if in resisting him, we become defenders of a failed and flawed status quo, we will not succeed. And so the challenge for all of us who care about democracy is both to resist the destruction that's going on, but to offer a better alternative to make our institutions and our economy work for the vast majority of Americans rather than the elite few.
- [03:52]
A
Right, right. Well, that's so succinctly put. People are indeed looking for solutions to address the vast income inequality in our society, the increased cost of living, especially for working families, and, of course, the toxic media ecosystem that only serves to divide us more. And so, of course, it's no surprise that we have both a rise in appeal by the far right and also the far left. And you've been an activist to change the system for a long time, and you've seen many iterations of efforts to make lasting change. What is the movement that we need right now?
- [04:29]
B
So I think we need a movement, first and foremost to defend democracy, but then, as I say, to reform it and to make it work in a progressive way. What I'm most worried about right now, when looking at all the organizing and activism and protests that are going on, which are absolutely necessary, the wonderful no Kings events, there'll be another on October 18th, what I worry about is that those are mobilizations. They're not organizing. Years and years ago, a good friend of mine, Richie Rothstein, summed up for me, organizing in three words. Organizers organize organizations. And as simplistic as it is, it's really true. And so what we need now is not just to build a profound opposite opposition to Trump, but we need to organize it so that people are in teams, people are in groups, in their communities, in their workplaces, by the affinity that they have. And only by building an organized opposition can we build the political power necessary to resist Trump. We have no idea what he's going to do, how he'll behave around the 26 elections. We're already seeing him put his thumb on those scales and redistricting, and who knows what he'll do with the National Guard and urban centers. We can't predict that. So what we have to do is to really engage in a deep organizing effort that can sustain the opposition throughout these next three and a half years, can win the 26 elections so decisively that they can't block the new Congress from being seated and build forward from there. That's Our challenge.
- [06:12]
A
Yeah, it is indeed a challenge. I feel like there are some pockets right now for elections that are in 2025, like the new York City mayoral elections, where they're attempting to do both of those things that you point out. But you actually ran a progressive populist organization, Mass Fair Share. So you were an organizer who organized an organization, and it feels like it was at that time addressing the problems that continue to plague us. You know, for example, utility costs have skyrocketed in the past few months, not because of opec, but because there's so much demand from AI centers, for example. And also we continue to have real unfairness when it comes to property taxes that are still skewed in favor of big business, like in my hometown, Madison Square Garden, which hasn't paid taxes since the 80s. So tell us about the economic populism work of Mass Fair Share and what in your mind can and should be replicated today. For example, let's say on property taxes, because I thought your campaign there was really, I mean, eye opening. I didn't know that this even happened.
- [07:26]
B
So we set out to organize Mass Fair share in 1973, 74, and gave birth to it in 1975. And our goal was to build a citizens organization rooted in communities that would fight for economic justice and to do that at a statewide level. So to have deep neighborhood organizing and statewide campaigns around economic justice. So that meant taxes, that meant electricity, that meant insurance, it meant the full range of affordability issues that once again face most people. You know, we were experiencing a dramatic spike in the cost of energy, as you say, driven by OPEC and a number of other factors. And for many blue collar families, they were experiencing the first economic decline since the Second World War. And that decline, as we all know, has only continued for these last 40 or 50 years. So now most working people are struggling to make ends meet. I mean, they're the elites. There's the top 15, 20% that's getting by. But for the rest of the country, it's paycheck to paycheck. It's can we possibly afford a home for young people? Can we get four or five of us into an apartment? And so the kind of organizing we did was to figure out very carefully. We invested a lot in research and strategy and so understand both what was the cause of the increased prices and then what we could do about it, particularly finding regulators who weren't used to doing that kind of regulation and surprising them and demanding them with, you know, large, large numbers of people. So we won Victories on auto insurance, we won victories on property tax. We started by demanding that cities release the names of the large delinquents, those who weren't paying property tax, which just outraged people who were seeing their property taxes either as homeowners or in their rents skyrocketing, and then mobilized to insist that there be changes in tax policy. You know, today you mentioned electricity. If I was a young organizer, I'd absolutely be organizing around electricity right now. And I'd be going into those swing congressional districts where the Republicans narrowly won and I'd be talking to people about why is your electric prices jumped 10 and 12% and are going up even higher in the future. And it's because, as you said, billionaires want to build AI and other data centers and the states are letting them fold the cost of that into the general rate structure. And so consumers are subsidizing billionaires once again. And on top of that, Trump is insisting that old fashioned, outdated and expensive coal and gas fired power plants be maintained even though they were scheduled to be decommissioned and not by cheaper sources of power. And you wouldn't have to do that by going in and saying, hey, you voted for Trump and now you're getting what you deserve. In fact, I wouldn't do that at all. I'd be going in and saying, hey, how do you feel about the cost of living? How do you feel about this spike in electricity? And do you know why it's happening? And there are things that we can do about it, both at the state level and the national level. Let's hammer the state that regulates the utility companies. And let's also go to our congressional representative and saying, what are you doing about it? Why aren't you making sure that we get the cheapest source of electricity possible? It's that kind of populist economic organizing that I feel we really need. And it's what we did to great success in the 1970s and early 80s with mass fair share.
- [11:24]
A
Yeah. You know, what really struck me when I read your book was how time consuming real organizing is and solidarity building and building community and making a real grassroots movement. And what you're talking about, you know, talking to people, how you feel about this. And I feel like we don't really have room for that right now in a sense that we can't even agree, you know, on really basic things about the news, for example. And so have you gone door to door recently? And. Or how do you think about going door to door today? Because I feel like people don't want to do that. They just want to text you and say, send me $5, you know?
- [12:05]
B
Right, right. And those texts and emails are so debilitating. Give me money. Newest tragedy. Give me money. No, the answer is, I have not spent a lot of my time going door to door. Part of it is, you know, I'm closing in on 80. And I think organizing can be a young person's profession more than an old person. But I have faith that if there was a new wave of organizers, and I think there will be. I think there is. I think you're seeing a new generation of leaders and a new generation of organizers starting and building new and different community organizations. Take the most recent election in your hometown in New York. What everybody talks about with Mamdami is what a brilliant candidate he was. True. What a great message he had. True. How agile and intelligent he was about using social media. True. But what they don't talk enough about was the 50,000 volunteers who went door to door and knocked on over a million doors. And most of those volunteers were young and they were doing organizing. They were building a field organization that completely transformed the New York electorate. For the first time in the history of New York elections, those voting who were under 45 equaled those who were over 45. So they changed the electorate. And that was through organizing. And I think gives us an example of what can be done with a new generation of leaders, a populist message and a commitment to go talk to people.
- [13:50]
A
Yeah. Does it surprise you that we are in this place right now? You know, because you actually yourself describe yourself in the book as a democratic socialist, which is how Zoran Mamdani identifies. And it looks in this moment that he is poised to become the new mayor of New York City. Are you surprised that we have evolved to this point after your efforts with Mass Fair Share, which is now decades ago, that we have come full circle?
- [14:17]
B
Well, I mean, I also think that what has happened in the decades since Mass Fair Share has been the total abandonment by America's elites of both parties of the real concerns of working people and low income people. The catastrophic abandonment of the country by elites and their determination to enrich themselves beyond any imagination just has been staggering. If you have a billion dollars, why do you resist passionately? Paying 1% of that more in taxes? Makes no sense. Makes no sense to me. Honestly, I am stunned by what's happened to this country. I've seen it happening in slow motion over these decades. I'm like everybody else. I never thought we would have fascists in the white House. And there's no other word for the occupants of the White House today.
- [15:17]
A
Right, right. In terms of paying more in taxes, you know, in New York, people are freaking out. Well, not everybody, but, you know, if you read the New York Post or the New York Times or in the Hamptons about how he's going to be the next mayor and he's going to increase taxes and he wants to have free buses, and I saw that it was maybe something like a few million dollars to have free buses. But in the meantime, Madison Square Garden, not taxes, has cost the city of New York probably approximately a billion dollars. So it's the kind of thing where people are not really talking about the things that actually make the city work, for example, when it comes to taxes or how the taxes are then redeployed in the community. And I wonder how you think about communicating that, because also you ran a publication, you had. I mean, you ran a publication, you had a newsletter that everybody read and everybody could be well informed. And I think we just don't have that.
- [16:17]
B
No, it's a. It's a completely different media environment, which makes it really hard. I mean, on the one hand, we have more access to information than at any time in human history, and at the same time we have huge amounts of misinformation flooding through that ecosystem. And it's also a completely fragmented and tribal ecosystem. So it's very different. You know, when we were doing Mass Fair share, there were still three networks, maybe a fourth if you counted public television, and everybody watched only those. And so if you got on the news and you got on the news on all three networks, which we often did in Massachusetts, the vast majority of people were watching the same thing and seeing the same thing. And so there was an ability to set the narrative that now is excruciatingly hard. And I have to admit, I'm not a social media expert, and so I don't know how to get us through the mess that we're in on social media. And also, I'm old enough that I still believe as great as the technology is and the fact that you can text a thousand people in an instant, I still believe that there's no substitute for face to face organizing, for knocking on people's doors, coming and sitting at their kitchen table and having a conversation with them about what they're thinking, about what their hopes are, what their fears are, what keeps them up at one o' clock in the morning. And I believe that when you do that kind of connecting and outreach and engagement, you find that you can start to persuade people that the problems that they face are not theirs alone, but are shared and are rooted in the massive inequality that plagues the country. And that working together, we can start to do something about it. And that's the basis of organizing. That's the basis of bringing people together for collective action. Not just one protest, but building organizations that last and sustain and can fight and fight and fight.
- [18:30]
A
Yeah. So how do we get there? Like, right now, it feels like we are really in a hurry. To organize and build a real grassroots movement is time consuming. Like you said, you have to sit with them, you have to have a relationship, and you have these conversations at the kitchen table. And right now it feels like we need to move fast and get people to take civic action now. So how do we. I mean, we can't speed run. No, we can't think about this.
- [18:59]
B
There is extreme urgency. I mean, this moment is an urgent, urgent crisis. And so we have to work quickly. But here's the way I think about it. Let's start with the people who are against Trump and what's happening, which is a clear majority of the country. Let's start with the people who are on the sidelines and who are really upset but aren't yet in the protests, in the actions. So the way we do it is October 18th. There's a new no Kings Day coming. It's critical. But what I would urge all of us to do is form a group. If you're not already in a group, form a group that could be with four or five friends and decide that not only are you going to attend the no Kings Day, but that you're going to spend some time between now and October 18th talking to people that you know who are on the sidelines and talking with them about how urgent it is that we all get into this fight to save democracy. So on the one hand, it's just that basic. Go out, talk to the people that you know, see if they can join you. So that October 18th is huge. But also think about forming a group that keeps meeting and keeps talking. And there's so much that we have to do. So when we talk about organizing right now, and we talk about a strategy of non cooperation and resistance that has to be through all of our institutions. So if you're a college graduate, you're an alumnus of a college, reach out to the other alumni and say to them, write to the college president and the college leadership and say you've got to stand up in solidarity with the colleges that are being attacked. You have to resist what the Trump administration is doing in higher education. If you're in research, scientific or medical research, reach out to all the people that you know and work with, form a team and say, we're going to barnstorm. We're going to go to four or five public libraries and put on a program explaining to people the intense damage that's being done to our scientific infrastructure and what that means for ordinary Americans and all the things that we're about to lose and that we need to hold our elected officials accountable. If you're in Virginia and New Jersey, it's critical that you make those elections a clear referendum on Trump and what's being done and a huge victory. I could go on and on. If you're in a place where the electric rates are spiking, think about forming a group and starting to say to your neighbors, let's do something about this. Let's go and confront our elected official and let's go and confront the agency that regulates utilities in our state. So, yes, it's urgent, but here's the thing. As urgent as our situation is, we've got at a minimum, at a minimum, three and a half more years of this and it's going to get worse before it gets better. So we have no choice but to build deep, real political power. And that means organizing. And that means more unions, more community groups, more social solidarity, and more and more organized. I'm a broken record. Everywhere I speak, I say organize. Organized, organized, organized, organized. Yes, yes.
- [22:44]
A
We'll be back with Michael in just a moment, so don't go anywhere you wouldn't want to miss this episode's civic spark. One small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. But first, when I started Future Hindsight eight years ago, I had to figure it all out on my own. I'm talking episode recordings, guest booking, editing audio, and all that pesky social media stuff you see when you're starting something new. Every day seems to introduce another question that needs an answer, and quick. I speak from experience when I say that's an overwhelming feeling. It's like your to do list just grows and grows with new tasks every day. And that list can pretty easily take over your life if you're not careful. So how can you find the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything? Because that can be such a game changer for millions of businesses out there. That tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. And 10% of all E commerce in the United States, from household names like Heinz and Mattel to fresh brands that are just getting started. So if you want to get started, take the first step with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand's style. And maybe you want to accelerate your content creation. Great. Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. With so many great tools at your fingertips, you can get the word out as if you have an entire marketing team behind you in just a few quick minutes. You can easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. So if you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. What I love about Shopify is that no matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Turn your big business idea into Cha Ching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com hopefully go to shopify.com hopeful shopify.com hopeful and now let's return to my conversation with Michael and Sarah. Well, you have done so much organizing and you were involved in so so many demonstrations, marches, protests, including at Harvard. So when the protests and encampments sprung up on college campuses across the country in 2324, what struck you? What's your analysis?
- [26:05]
B
So I was very moved by the protesters. They seemed to me very much a reminder of my younger self and unfortunately I thought they were making some of the mistakes that I made as a young activist and protester, particularly against the Vietnam War. And then I also thought college administrators don't seem to learn anything. The idea that young people pitching tents in a quad is somehow disruption or violence was just absurd. And their overreaction to the tent encampments just seemed to me, wait a minute. In all these years you've learned nothing about how to respond to student protests. But I thought two things. I thought first and foremost, what we really needed was an anti war movement. I know this is not going to be popular with some of your listeners. Rather than a Palestinian triumphalist movement, what would help the people in Gaza more than anything else would be a massive movement that said end the war. And to the degree that you just focused on that, you had a chance of building a broader movement than if you adopted the righteous Palestinian cause and started saying things like from the river to the sea. The second thing is that I'll go back to my own experience. In 1968, we had the closest election, closer even than this most recent 1 in 24 presidential election, in which we had the lame, pathetic, sad Hubert Humphrey, a shadow of his former self who refused to really break decisively with the war. He, in the end, said some critical things versus an insecure Nixon who had no regard for the Constitution and had plans to maintain and prolong and expand and escalate the war in Vietnam. As a young person then organizing and leading thousands. I didn't register to vote. The voting age was 21. So many of our folks couldn't have voted. But I was 21. I didn't register to vote. I said, the lesser of two evils is still evil. And I said, vote with your feet, vote in the street. And the result is that when we could have swung that election to Humphreys, we didn't. And it wasn't that we were wrong about Humphrey. It's that we lacked the political imagination to understand how much damage Nixon and Kissinger would do for the country. And, you know, they started the Southern Strategy, they started the Republican Party down the path of white grievance and to become the party of Trump. They also ended up with policies in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos that meant the death of another 2 million people. Do I think we could have pressured Humphrey into ending that war? And would we have had to fight like hell to get him to end the war? But I think we had a much better chance of doing that with Humphrey in the White House than with Nixon and Kissinger. And so we lacked a clear strategic vision. Coming back to the Gaza protesters, as much as I admire them and agree with them, I think all too often they were willing to say, biden, Harris, you're arming the Israelis. True. You have not used everything you could to stop them. True. And they failed to think about what would happen if we got Trump instead. And so now I think the Gazans are in far worse shape again. If Harris had won, we'd have had to fight about ending funding for the Israeli military. I'm not saying that they would have done it willingly, but we had a better chance. And so being rigidly, acutely strategic and understanding how do we get to where we need to get to? And sometimes we have to do things that are not our first choice but will help us get to where we need to get, you know, that was my response, but a great wave of sympathy and support and humility. I don't want to be in a position of trying to tell young people what to do. We need a new generation of young people to emerge as leaders and organizers and activists, and they will find their own way to do that, and it will be different than the way we did it, and they'll probably be different than what I would advise. But all I can do is share the mistakes and whatever small shreds of wisdom we've cleaned from all these years of organizing.
- [31:02]
A
Well, what you said there about the election between Nixon and Humphrey in 1968, I just was thinking how frustrating it must have been for you to see 2024 unfold, because a lot of the same dynamics basically were repeated. And I cannot tell you how many times I have told my friends to vote. And they said, no, we don't want to vote for the genocider. And I said, yes, I understand, but it's going to be worse. And somebody said to me with a straight face, well, you, there's nothing worse than genocide. Even Trump. And I said, no, no, trust me, it will be worse. But she didn't vote, which is incredibly frustrating.
- [31:42]
B
The hidden story of the 24 election, at least in the mainstream media, is that there were somewhere over 15 million people who had cast a pallet for Biden in 2020 who chose not to vote at all in 2024. And there's been a recent poll that showed most of those would not have voted for Trump had they voted. They would have made the difference in all the swing states. All of them. We'd have had a Harris clear sweep. And, you know, they didn't vote. In some cases it was gossip, but in more cases it was because they wanted a change. And they didn't see Harris as a change agent. They saw her as a defender of the status quo. They saw the gerontocracy of the Democratic Party as defenders of the status quo. And even though Biden actually did more for working class Americans than probably any president in the last 30 years, the Democratic Party seemed the party of the status quo. And that whole global shift of, you know, we've gone through Covid, we've experienced the lockdowns, we've experienced the post Covid inflation, we want to change, throw the incumbents out, swept over, and many of those 15 million who really cared about economic issues, cared about affordability, just chose not to vote. And that was a tragedy. And some of that, by the way, is on Harris, who refused to break and say Really a meaningful. This is what I will do significantly differently. And part of that is on the Democratic Party for the last decades, which has just so frequently ignored the plight of working and low income folks and been beholden to elites. Of course the Democratic elites include university presidents and actors and so on, but also hedge fund managers and bankers. But some of it was also our failure to have built an educated, organized left that is politically engaged, sophisticated and strategic. And that's the tragedy of our time.
- [34:00]
A
It is indeed. I want to shift to boycotts because protesting can also take the shape of boycotts. And there has been, there continues to be a massive boycott against Starbucks, which actually has hit their bottom line pretty hard. But Starbucks is unmoved to meet the demands from their union or to change their stance vis a vis Gaza. And I was really struck by the Wonder Bread boycott that you took part in because it was so effective and like, what do you do there that was different than what's happening today?
- [34:33]
B
So again, it's old fashioned organizing. Let me take you back to Boston, 1962, a really racist city. And a city in which there was not a single bank that had a senior manager that was black. There was not a single law firm that had a senior partner who was black. There was one black dean in all of the colleges and universities and that dean got to manage Boston University's Marsh Chapel. But there were no academic deans who were black. And black construction workers were shut out of the Building Trades Union. And so the group that I was part of, the Boston Action Group, it was led by this wonderful group of creative organizers, particularly Noel Day and Reverend James Breeden. And I have no idea why they let me. I was 14, 15, and they let me join their ranks as an organizer and they taught me organizing. So we did a survey of the black community. We went door to door and did a survey in which we talked to people about what did they spend money on. And in the course of that discussion, we talked about how we should use our dollars to shop at places that hired us. Notice I'm saying the we. Of course I was a little acne faced white boy, but because I was part of the Boston Action Group, everybody accepted me in a way that was just marvelous. And we identified that, that people bought Wonder Bread, that ubiquitous white bread. And the Continental Baking Company, which is the maker of white bread, had a factory in the middle of Roxbury, in the middle of the black community in Boston. And they refused to hire any black people except for the most menial and the most low Paid jobs. And so we sent a delegation to meet with them and they refused. You know, it was a modest demand, seven or eight well paying jobs. And we launched the boycott. And we built the boycott by developing block captains on every block who would stay in touch with all the residents of that block and encourage them and make sure they didn't slip up and buy Wonder Bread. We made sure that all of the African American churches every Sunday preached the boycott. And the result was that the sales of Wonder Bread in the black community dropped dramatically to nothing. And we kept it up week after week. It wasn't instantaneous, but over time the Continental Baking company realized that it would be better to give in. And so we got those seven or eight good paying jobs. And then the threat of boycott meant that banks and lots of other companies would say, okay, we have a hiring policy now. We're going to fast track hiring and training senior blacks into our companies before we even get boycotted. So it was old fashioned organizing where you had thousands of people in teams on their blocks with a block leader and that block leader was making sure to let everybody know what was happening and to keep up the boycott, which was complete. So, you know, now Starbucks is a way bigger company, international, huge company. And to have an impact on its bottom line, you just have to organize more and more. I mean, it's just a simple cost benefit relationship for them. They won't do it until they're forced to do it. And it's got to be that they are losing so much revenue that it's a better choice for them to exceed. And the Tesla boycotts have been enormously successful and also target, they haven't produced the victories yet, but they're important and you have to do them for the long haul. And you have to get to where you really impact that bottom line of these companies since that is the only thing that they care about.
- [38:47]
A
Yeah, you have to be in it for the long haul. So every week on future hindsight, I ask my guests to share civic spark. One small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. What's a good way to turn the insights that you've shared with us into action? Can you recommend a startup pack for organizing? You know, organizing 101?
- [39:10]
B
Yeah, I'll give just a couple of simple steps. So the first is find four or five friends who agree with you and say let's meet once a week, once a month. You know, we can do it over drinks, we can do it over articles, but let's meet and Talk about what's happening and talk about how afraid we are and let's talk about what we can do about it and let's share ideas and let's all go to the next march together. And then let's make that four or five people, 10. And let's think. Can we go and support immigrant families? Can we do a witness outside of an ICE facility? Can we participate in the next big protest together? Can we start to put pressure on colleges and universities to stand up and resist the attacks and cuts of the Trump administration? Can we figure out how we're being impacted by Trump and what we can do to resist? So it's just as simple as that. It's beginning a group. And you can affiliate with Indivisible. You can affiliate with, with Sunrise. If you're old, you can affiliate with the third act. If you used to be a Republican and now can't be, you can affiliate with the union. There are dozens of organizations that you can join or you can just have your own small group that is getting larger and larger with each passing month.
- [40:51]
A
Terrific. Thank you. Last question. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
- [40:58]
B
So let's talk a little bit about hope. I think sometimes people think of hope as kind of naive. But hope isn't naive. Hope is not a prediction. Hope doesn't think, oh, everything's just going to be fine. Hope is a decision, and it's a decision to fight for what is good and right, even when things are not going well. And things are not going well. But hope is essential because without the determination and without the belief that the future is not preordained, we start to become passive, we start to obey. And that's the worst thing that can happen now. And the future is not set. What will happen next year is not determined yet. It will be determined by the actions of all of us. We have agency. We have the ability to change things. Not easily, not quickly, but if we get organized, there is a clear anti maga majority in the country. It's clear in every poll. The question is, can it get organized? Can it get powerful enough? And it's in a race with the fascists in the White House. So what gives me hope is the belief that our future is up in the air. We can make it different. And that's doing the hard work of hope and the hard work of hope. That changes hope from aspiration into reality. That's organizing.
- [42:44]
A
Wow. That's incredibly profound and hopeful. Thank you very much. It was really a pleasure to have you on future hindsight.
- [42:51]
B
Well, thank you so much. It was great talking to you. I really appreciate the opportunity.
- [42:56]
A
Michael Ansara is the author of the Hard Work of A Memoir. Remember, civic action doesn't have to be complicated. It's about small steps that spark progress, like sharing this episode with a friend. Let's recap this week's Civic Spark and fire up our collective power. If you're looking for an organizing starter pack, here's a great way to kick off your journey. Just find four or five friends that agree with you and schedule some time to meet. Talk about the problem in front of you, and start laying the groundwork with conversation. Then turn that four to five people into 10 and come up with a strategy. Before you know it, the ball will be rolling and rolling fast. Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Miranda Spivak. She's a veteran reporter and editor who specializes in stories about government accountability and secrecy. Her most recent book is Backroom Deals in Our How Government Secrecy Harms Our Communities and the Local Heroes Fighting Back. That's next time on Future Hindsight. Now. Be sure to follow us on your podcast app so you'll never miss an episode. We're here to build your civic action toolkit every week, so follow Future Hindsight now and we'll come right to you. And if you want to support Future Hindsight and all the work we do as an independent pro democracy podcast, join the Civics Club on patreon. Head to patreon.com futurehiinsight now to join. Thanks for tuning in. And until next time, see clearly, act boldly and spark the change you want to see. This episode was produced by Zach Travis and me. This podcast is part of the Democracy group.