← The Bulwark Podcast
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- [00:00]
Leah Greenberg
Foreign.
- [00:13]
Tim Miller
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Thursday. Usually the next level pod is on Wednesday, but Sarah was traveling so we did a late night episode that got pretty punchy. So if you're looking for politics and some bickering among friends, that is the place to go. That should be up by the time you hear this. Check out the next level feed on this show. We're getting earnest and activisty, which you all know is a little bit out of my comfort zone, so I'm excited for it. They are the co executive directors of Indivisible, the grassroots movement with thousands of local groups across the country. Its mission, to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy and defeat the Trump agenda. The individual protests were the hands off protests you saw a couple weeks ago. And coming up, the next big One is Saturday, June 14, where there will be no kings, rallies and marches. On the day that Trump is throwing himself a birthday military parade, it is Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin. Levin, which one are we doing? Is it like Mark Levin like the Great one, or Ezra Levin like Sandy Levin?
- [01:15]
Ezra Levin
You nailed it. First one. Levin.
- [01:18]
Tim Miller
Levin. I got it right. I am so excited to do this. You guys were in a room together. It was so cute. You're married and you started this together. And we're gonna do kind of like a kissing booth type podcast situation. But for sound purposes, we've had to separate you and I wanna start before we get into the very important work you're doing. Give people the background. How did this happen? What is it like to work with one's spouse in a high stress environment like running protests? Give us the origin story.
- [01:49]
Leah Greenberg
So our background is that we both got our start as congressional staffers in the early Obama years on the Hill. Ezra worked for a member from te. I worked for a member from a deep red district in Virginia. We both.
- [02:00]
Tim Miller
I saw that. I worked in that district back in the day. Oh yeah, that can age me. It was. I was a Republican then too. So we're not going to talk about it.
- [02:08]
Leah Greenberg
We could go into that at a different time. Yeah, no, anyways, it was an education in a lot of ways. But the big one was that we interacted a lot with the Tea Party in our jobs. We saw them organize. We disagreed enormously with their bigotry, their violence. But we also saw some very effective organizing tactics and each of us moved on. We went on to do other things in our lives. I worked on human trafficking. Ezra worked on poverty policy. But after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, we kind of like went back to that period in our lives and thought, hey, there's some lessons that we can learn from this. Right. We're in this moment where everything that we care about is under attack. And we've actually just seen a model of what it looks like to organize locally in a way that puts pressure on your local elected officials and significantly impedes the agenda of the other party. And so we basically took all the lessons that we had learned watching the Tea Party operate. We turned it into a how to guide to organizing locally to stop the Trump agenda, and we put it out on the Internet in December 2016. We thought our friends would read it. We thought they would, like, maybe share it with their families when they went home over Christmas. We were not prepared at all for what happened next, which was that thousands of people started reading it and sharing it and using it as the basis of forming local groups. The title of the guide that we had put out was called Indivisible. Suddenly, there were indivisible groups all over the country who were picking it up and gathering communities and starting to organize and hold their elected officials accountable. And we found ourselves catapulted into this incredible grassroots movement of regular people who were not waiting for Washington to resist, to actually start fighting back, and who were kicking both Democrats and Republicans into gear to push back against Trump.
- [03:48]
Tim Miller
So this is. We're Thanksgiving 2016, and you guys both have other jobs and you're married already, or are we just dating?
- [03:56]
Leah Greenberg
We are Marri.
- [03:56]
Tim Miller
We're married. Okay. And we create a Google Doc. That's it. That's how it started.
- [04:00]
Leah Greenberg
That's how it started. Yeah. We did not think we were starting an organization. We mostly thought we were going to get fired.
- [04:07]
Tim Miller
Fired from your. From the jobs that you're in? Yeah. What was in the Google Doc? What did it say?
- [04:13]
Ezra Levin
I mean, the Google Doc was 23 pages of. How do you organize that?
- [04:17]
Tim Miller
Is type A to start. I mean, you. You just did a 23 page Google Doc just for shits like that is not in my wheelhouse. I'm more of Twitter length writing.
- [04:26]
Ezra Levin
Tim, you got to remember at the time, in late 2016, this is Trump is coming in with a unified Republican Congress promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He had future appointees talking about the Japanese internment camps during World War II as a model for what to do with Muslims and immigrants and refugees. People were scared, and there was this organic energy already building. Right. And people were looking for, okay, how do we secure our devices? How do we. How do we push our elected officials? And Leah and I, being former congressional staffers and having, having seen the Tea Party in action, we thought, well, look, one thing you can do is get organized locally in a group, focus on your own elected officials and tell them to fight back if they're Democrats, and tell them to leave the MAGA coalition if they're Republicans and never give an inch. So the guide explicitly drew from the Tea Party. The first chapter is all about. Here are lessons from the Tea Party. Here's what we saw. We didn't agree with their bigotry, the racism, their violence, but damn it, they knew how to organize locally and they knew how to focus on their elected officials. And they didn't win everything, but they were able to st some things and defeat other things. So look, I mean, we put the Google Doc out, it took off that night. And I remember Leah and I, we were like, we did a good thing. It's it like people are reading it. This is cool. And then we started getting all these responses that all said the exact same thing, which is this guide that you put out is just absolutely chock full of typos because that's. It turns out when you, that's what you get. But then, as Leah said, what people started doing, they started picking it up and forming these groups. It was an incredible thing. And, and we, at the bottom of the very first page, at the end of his book guide, the original one, we said very explicitly, we're not selling T shirts. We're not forming an organization. Take this and run with it. Good luck to you. And then we formed an organization when there was this incredible operative of movement energy. There were all these groups getting started in Tallahassee or in Austin or in Albany. And they were telling us, hey, we just got a group together in our living room. What do we do next? And so we started by just pulling volunteers together and saying, well, we've got to respond to all these people. And then that turned in to the indivisible national organization.
- [06:24]
Tim Miller
So, I mean, I've got listeners that are asking that same question right now. So it's like you're forming groups, you're contacting members, you're showing up to town halls. Like, what else? What else was in there?
- [06:35]
Leah Greenberg
Well, the basic idea is, you know, we exist in a limited but still real representative democracy in some core ways, right? And so your elected officials care about certain things. They care about getting reelected. They care about their future position. That means they are responsive to some kinds of incentives and not to others, right? They like good attention in their district. They want to maintain that coalition of 50%, plus a little bit extra of people who will vote for them. They don't like surprises. They don't like bad press or bad attention. They don't like to waste their time. You can kind of use the incentives to make them either listen to you and do more of what you want, or you can use those same tools to make them pay a political price for not doing so. And that's really the core, right? And that's. Then you just take the tactics, right? You show up at town halls, you make them answer questions about the things that they don't necessarily want to talk about. You try to shift attention to the issues that you know your fellow constituents are going to care about and respond to. It's all just about how do you systematically move the pieces so that your elected officials have the incentives to do what you want and do less of what you don't want.
- [07:37]
Tim Miller
So talk about the parallels and differences between that moment and now, because it seems like in that moment, you're kind of like riding this tiger a little bit, where there's just all this outpouring and a lot of people that weren't even paying attention really to politics were wanting to protest, and it caught everybody off guard. So it's this natural kind of kinetic energy out there. Not for me. I was hiding under the covers, actually. But out there in the world, there are a lot of people that wanted to. I was reading sad fiction. I was like, I need to check out. But for a lot of other people, they wanted to get out. And this time, it does feel like there's been more of, like, a need to prod. Right? Like that there's. People felt a little bit more beaten down. At least that's my perception from the outside. Why don't you guys talk about it? Like, actually talking to the types of folks that are showing up at these sort of things.
- [08:20]
Leah Greenberg
What I would say is really interesting about this moment is from our experience as people who we're the place that you go when you want to do something. And we have been in hyperdrive since November because people have been flooding in and getting organized. We broke the record for new groups in November of 2024, and then broke it again in December. And then every month since then, we've broken it again. There has been a steady build of people organizing on the ground. Now, that hadn't manifested in big protests, the kinds of things that we traditionally associate with 2017. But from our perspective, you know, the early signs of that are someone puts up a Facebook invitation for a meeting, and they're expecting 20 people and they get 300. That stuff was happening as of January. So what we saw was, you know, there was definitely a popular reaction that was building and that was forming with. With some skepticism early on of kind of protest as the mechanism, but a lot of interest in organizing. What was really different about this time was the degree of elite, institutional, and actor collapse that happened immediately after the election. Right. Because regular people were sad, but they were pretty clear that they were going to push back. What changed, what was different was, you know, corporations did not put out the statement saying, we stand in solidarity with democracy. Oh, you'd act. You know, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos rush to kind of reach an accommodation with the regime.
- [09:40]
Tim Miller
Like, Zuckerberg had a struggle session in 2017. Right. Like, where the whole Facebook staff had to come and talk about their feelings and, like, they had a meet. You know what I mean? Like that. Compare that to giving a million dollars and sitting in the front row.
- [09:53]
Leah Greenberg
Right? Exactly. Well, and media institutions, a lot of the corporate media institutions kind of moved very quickly into how do we accommodate, how do we comply, how do we avoid what's coming at us? Personally, what we saw in general was regular people were pretty clear that they were going to push back. And it was actually the kinds of institutions that we think of as shaping meaning for society that folded very, very swiftly. And a lot of what we've been trying to do over the last couple of months is really dispute the foundations that led to that happening and push as much as we can, the rest of society back into that posture of opposition.
- [10:29]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I do wonder. Ezra, what do you think? Just. And add on to that. Anything but just on one specific point. Look, obviously, people that are really engaged activists, news consumers, people that listen to political podcasts, have been engaged in showing up to these things. To me, I do wonder, and it's kind of hard, you know, like, I don't know, you're at the events more than me, Right? It's hard. Unless I'm, like, interviewing strangers at the events and be like, what's your story? It does feel like maybe there was a little bit of a gap between, like, engaged people who are opposed and want to do something versus, like, casuals, if you will. But maybe that's wrong. I don't know. What do you think?
- [11:05]
Ezra Levin
That's always going to be true. That was true in 2016 too, Tim. There were a lot of people who were hyper focused on politics. Who immediately after election, were shocked, had wished they had done more. And so what they did, in some cases would form a local indivisible group, get their community together. Like Leah said, you know, days after the election, we left our kids with my mom and then went to a cabin in West Virginia to write the new indivisible guide and then put it out the following week. We had tens of thousands of people join that call to find out, what can I do in this moment? So there was a real gap between how the broader media was covering the reaction to Trump's reelection and how a lot of folks on the ground were responding to it. Like, look, we had more indivisible groups form in November than any month since 2017, when protest was the new brunch. We beat the November number in December. We beat the December number in January. We beat the combined number of new local, indivisible groups from November, December, and January in February, and then beat that number in March. So what we were witnessing as organizers on the ground were a lot of folks who were flipping out, but they weren't hiding. They were trying to grapple with the situation. And what they were doing was organizing on the ground. And they were responding to two things. One was the heinous Trump agenda and the promises that this administration and the Congress were making at the time and then proceeded to implement. But the other was the sense of fecklessness and leaderlessness at the national level from the Democratic Party, the sense that, wait a minute, we were campaigning against this guy's Mussolini for two years, and suddenly after the election, you switch over and act like he's just another Republican and we're gonna cut deals with him. What the hell is this? So we saw Democratic leadership pivot and rank and file. Democrats were like, absolutely not. We've got to organize against this guy. And I think those two features, which were somewhat similar to 2016, drove this wave of engagement that was largely behind the scenes up until February, because in February was Congressional recess. And then suddenly in February, all the headlines were about, where the hell did all these people come? They're in Republican districts, and they're in Democratic districts, and they're angry with Democrats for not fighting back, and they're angry with Republicans for backing up Mus and Trump. This is amazing. I guess the resistance isn't dead. But for the month, for November, December, and January, I can't tell you how many journalists I talked to were like, well, obviously the resistance is dead. There's not going to be any opposition. And y' all screwed this up.
- [13:29]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [13:30]
Ezra Levin
So it's been an interesting journey these last six months, but we're a hell of a lot better off right now than we were six months ago.
- [13:37]
Tim Miller
Yeah. This is usually a doomer pod, but I'm going to try to stay positive, we're going to say, because there are some positive things. Right. Like, and I'm curious what you guys see as successes. Right. So if you look back on 2018, like, obviously the Obamacare is a success. Right. Stopping the Obamacare appeal, the child separation, I think is one that stands up as one that they had to pull back on looking at now. And this is more modest because it's early, but just listening to you, like, Democratic politicians are getting more backbone now in response to hearing from people, hearing from their own voters and like realizing what they want. So that's in some ways a success. Right. Cause that's what you want. Want them to have more backbone. So what else are you seeing out there that is encouraging?
- [14:21]
Ezra Levin
Elon Musk is leaving the White House with his tail between his legs. We kicked his ass up and down Wisconsin in a Supreme Court race. Donald Trump's approval rating is at 40%. I mean, I don't know. What we see is the wheels are coming off of this administration and maybe not fast enough. We can be doomer. We are in a dire position right now. We are in a constitutional crisis. We're in a period of authoritarian breakthrough. We haven't won yet. But the big, bright silver lining out there is as institutions like media institutions or law firms or some universities are falling, we're seeing a historic level of pro democracy grassroots engagement. And when you listen to the experts in authoritarianism, what they tell you you need as a bulwark for democracy. Sorry.
- [15:10]
Tim Miller
So to speak.
- [15:11]
Ezra Levin
So to speak. You need people, normal, everyday people organizing a broad based, ideologically diverse, geographically distributed movement of pro democracy people organizing. That's what works, that's what saves democracy. There's no other silver bullet out there. So that's what should give us optimism. Not that Donald Trump is suddenly going to see the light of day or a lot of Republicans are going to join you, Tim. Sure. But that normal people are organizing against one of the most unpopular policy agendas and most aggressively anti democracy administrations in American history. That's pretty cool. And if we can build that, that's the solution.
- [15:46]
Tim Miller
Leah, you got anything to add to that?
- [15:47]
Leah Greenberg
Well, I think there's a direct relationship or there's a complex but very interactive relationship between kind of the mass opposition and these institutions. Right. So one thing that I've heard from multiple people who are a part of the Harvard organizing efforts, efforts to try to make sure that Harvard was standing up and pushing back against the Trump administration's efforts to functionally take it over, was the environment changed dramatically after hands off. Right. Big public shows of opposition help to reinforce so many people who are organizing in places that we don't, you know, we don't necessarily have eyes into. We can't run the campaign, but they are either helped or hurt by the overall environment that we create. And fundamentally, we're in this moment that we describe as authoritarian breakthrough. Right. It's a period where a regime tries to very rapidly push its powers to the max in order to consolidate and cow alternate sources of power into opposition. And every other alternate source of power, businesses, higher education, media, institutions, et cetera, they're making calculations based on whether they think this is the new normal or whether they think maybe this is a short term emergency and democracy will reassert itself. And it's our job to introduce into their minds the very clear possibility that democracy will reassert itself, that there is going to be a massive popular reaction to this regime that ensures that it cannot consolidate power, that it cannot become the new normal, and that they have to make decisions about how they're going, how they're going to go along with it, or how they're going to push back, that they have to live with in either situation, not just in the situation where Trump takes over, consolidates, and becomes the ultimate dictator.
- [17:27]
Tim Miller
For the longtime listeners, our adventure with Aretha, the neighborhood cat who's become my part time cat, continues thanks to our sponsor, Smalls. We were feeding the neighborhood cats some food. Then the snowstorm, the 100 year snowstorm in New Orleans happened and I was stuck in New York. My husband and child brought the cat inside, and the cat was inside a lot. And the cat must like summer, because summer happens now. The cat likes to be outside. Gotta tell you, I don't hate that. But you know the cat's still coming. Yesterday or two days ago, whenever it was during the Nuggets game, I was yelping. And it freaked out the cat so much that the only thing to get it to calm down was shaking the little bag of Smalls treats. And if you want that experience for your cat, I'd recommend turning to Smalls as well. This podcast is sponsored by Smalls. If you're a listener of the show, you know that my cat cannot live without smalls to get 35% off plus an additional 50% off your first order. Head to smalls.com and use our promo code TheVoolwerk. For a limited time only. Smalls cat food is protein packed recipes made with preservative free ingredients you'd find in your fridge and it's delivered right to your door. That's why cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. We also gave the Smalls food to another friend who has another neighborhood cat. I don't know what it says about New Orleans that there's so many neighborhood cats also also loving it. So we're just spreading the love all around uptown. The neighborhood cats have never been better fed here in New Orleans. Smalls has a bunch of amazing treats and snacks you can add to your order. And the team at Smalls is so confident your cat will love their product that you can try it risk free. That means they'll refund you if your cat won't eat their food. What are you waiting for? Give your cat the food they deserve for a limited time only. Because you are a Bulwark listener. You can get 35% off smalls plus an additional 50% off your first order by using my code, the Bulwark. That's an additional 50% off when you head to smalls.com and use promo code thebullwerk. Again, that's promo code the bulwark for an additional 50% off your first order plus free shipping@smalls.com I want to do one more positive on that front before I get to some of my concerns, because we saw some. So I'm in Louisiana. Leah and I were talking about why when we were making Ezra move to a different room, we had these like ballot initiatives that were on. I don't know if this was even on your radar because it's like very local. And it was. The governor here, who's a MAGA guy, was pushing these ballot initiatives that were kind of arcane really on, like what it was going to do. It was not like a easy to understand issue, like a minimum wage increase or something. It was like these changes with, you know, his control over the judiciary and the tax system. And what you saw was just like this grassroots outpouring against it. And you saw two things happening at the same time, which is massive turnout in big Democratic areas like New Orleans. Turnout was like 62% or something. And it was 27% the rest of the state. And you saw just a shout out to my people, like the people that did leave the Republican Party that came to this are all like hyper engaged types like the New Democratic Coalition. It includes people who like do show up to these off off off year elections, like random elections that folks aren't aware of unless you like are really paying close attention. And I do think that you're seeing like that that is something that can be, you know, catalyzed. Right. And you, and you have these sorts of like random elections in a lot of places. And I just wonder what you guys are doing to kind of play off of that.
- [20:52]
Leah Greenberg
Absolutely. We have got a coalition that we've got work to do for the general elections and also it is extre optimized to maximize gains in off year special elections, in midterms, et cetera, anytime when you're going to depend on a motivated voting base. So I think the big opportunity that's coming up is Virginia and New Jersey. Right. We're going to have these elections in the fall. They're going to be the first pretty decisive opportunities to further repudiate Trumpism, to demonstrate that this doesn't play across the board. That's especially important because, you know, New Jersey got closer than people would have liked to see in 2024. Right. And so these are two states that are, you know, where, where the margins are going to matter for demonstrating for people exactly how, how much of a political penalty they're going to pay for continuing to be, to be on board here. So we're working with our folks, we're organizing already. We tested in 2024 and are continuing to, to hone and roll out a technology that allows us to send folks to talk to their immediate neighbors low information or low turn who we think will vote with us if turned out literally within their neighborhood. We saw that. We've done that over a couple of cycles with some really exciting results. And so we're continuing to work on, you know, how do we make sure that we take the energy that we have from regular people and translate it into ways to reach people that break through the ads, that break through kind of the social media chaos and actually reach them as regular human beings through relationships.
- [22:24]
Tim Miller
Okay, so here's some things that to be concerned about. I'm interested how you guys are, what you're seeing, but there are so many things to be concerned about. That's all I could, I'm not covering them all with you because you're activists. So we're not going to go over all the policy. I have a lot of policy concerns. Do you have any thoughts on the tariffs? That much stuff, the economic collapse impending? We did that on Tuesday, the fear. So I was on a panel recently. I was getting questions. There's a woman raised her hand who says, my daughter is in college. I forgot where she's going. And her and her friends are kind of scared to protest, right? And like, they don't know, you know, if they got friends who are here on a foreign visa. They don't want to put their head up. They don't, you know, And I'm just wondering, like, how much of that are you kind of seeing out there?
- [23:08]
Ezra Levin
Unfortunately, that's understandable. This guy is not a normal Republican president. This administration is not leading like a normal conservative government. It's not just something that we disagree with ideologically on education and economic policy. There's an attack on the basic norms of liberal democracy right now. I would love to be able to tell everybody out there that, don't worry about it. It's not serious. You don't have to be concerned. But the whole idea of the authoritarian playbook is to attack dissent, is to marginalize. It is to make people fearful that if they speak up, there might be consequences. And there is no full proof plan to address that on our side, other than strengthen numbers, other than getting as many people out to accept some level of risk personally and to stand up for democracy. I think this is not to get too schmaltzy about it, but it's one of the inspiring things that we experience every week working with indivisible leaders. These are not hardened politicos. These aren't professional employed politicians. These are nurses and teachers and IT technicians. They're. They're normal everyday people out in blue, red and purple states and rural communities and urban communities. And they see what's going on and they're deciding to take on risk in order to stand up for their values. And because they are doing it, other people see them do it and get the courage to do it, too. The. The kind of. The bumper sticker. Courage is contagious is a bumper sticker, but it's also true. And it applies not just to individuals, it applies to institutions. As Leo was talking about. Universities are looking left and right, law firms are looking left and right, politicians are looking left and right and trying to think, well, how safe is it for me to show up? Is my neighbor showing up? Are my constituents showing up? Are my students showing up? Oh, okay, I guess I should show up. It's a classic collective action problem. You need a lot of people to act, and it's in everybody's individual interest to hide under the covers. And so our job is to try to make it as easy and as safe as we possibly can make it for more people to come up. Because if they do, then it is safe. Then we are in the majority. Then they are marginalized. Then it is foreign and untenable for them to crack down on peaceful protest. But the fear is real. But that's the plan. That is their goal, is to spread that fear.
- [25:46]
Leah Greenberg
The fear is real, the risk is real, but it's not evenly distributed. Like all of us are in fact under threat. I want to be clear that we are indeed all under threat. We're not all under threat in the same ways at the same times. And so one of the things that I think I am seeing a lot of is people who are recognizing, you know, maybe that foreign student who's on a visa, maybe they can't be the one leading the protest right now. That's why I, you know, I'm an older, white, college educated person. I gotta show up, I gotta put myself on the line here. We've heard from a lot of people who understand that because they don't have quite as many risk factors right now for themselves personally, it is more incumbent on them to step forward. And I think that's really important and powerful.
- [26:24]
Tim Miller
I totally agree with that and I try to spread that message as much as possible. I worry I'm going to give you guys a chance to critique us in the kind of anti Trump media a little bit. I worry that the doomerism has a negative effect on people actually showing up. I get comments and questions like, Tim, it's like, we're not even gonna have elections in 2028 and it's fucking over. And I worry about this, right? I think that a lot of times we're covering things that are legitimate things to be concerned about. It's kind of hard in a media pundit space to contextualize something that's a 15% risk. A 15% risk that we don't have an election in 2028 is really bad. And it's much higher than 0% my entire life. And now it's 15%, but it's still only 15%. Right? It's not like 85%, but the people listening. So I do kind of worry that, like the bubble of anti Trump media gets people into an unhealthy place. I don't know, what do you guys make of that?
- [27:24]
Ezra Levin
I think it's only unhealthy if people's only experience with politics is as a consumer of political media. I think it's important to consume political media, to become informed about the world. Like, you want to know what's going on. But what we advise people to do is not just be a consumer. Politics should not be something that you just treat as a TV show that you watch, that you are not some sort of victim of world events. You are an active participant in it. And so by all means, listen to the bulwark, listen to Tim. You'll get informed. You'll learn about the world. That is great, but don't shut it off and then go to your next task. Think about what do you do with that information. And so for us, our unit of activism is not the individual. Our unit of activism is the local group. We've got a couple thousand local indivisible groups spread across every congressional district in the country. And that's important because those groups foster action. They don't exist just to talk about political media. They exist to focus on where do we have leverage? Maybe our Republican senator doesn't give a shit about us. Okay, we're not going to push them now, but maybe we've got a city council person or a state legislature or a U.S. rep or a governor we can push there. Let's talk about how we collectively use our power. What's the next thing we're doing? Is there a march that we're showing up? Is there an op ed that we can write? Is there a town hall we can go to? But taking that step from being informed to action, those two things go together. I don't want people taking action if they're not informed. And I also don't want people to just be informed for the sake of being depressed about the state of the world.
- [28:58]
Leah Greenberg
World. I'd also just add, like, I think we have this very tricky messaging balance to land all of us in media or advocacy, right? Because we kind of need people to live in two worlds at the same time. We need them to live in the world where normal advocacy, normal elections are real and are happening and matter and invest in that world and insist on that world, right? Because a really, really bad outcome is one where everybody just kind of assumes that elections are off the table and won't happen anymore, right? If they do try to steal elections, we need people to be outraged as if it had never occurred to them that this was an option at all. So we need people to live in that normal world and we also need them to live in a world where there is a. A regime that's rapidly trying to consolidate power and we have to look at like, what are the tactics? What are the ways in which you organize as, you know, a nonviolent social movement that's trying to prevent that consolidation of power? And some of those overlap and some of them are different.
- [29:52]
Ezra Levin
I like to. Can I just make a meta comment? I like we don't do a ton of interviews together and it's kind of funny because Lee and I play very different roles in the organization. She's like the brilliant strategy and think I'm like the enthusiast. And I think it's on full display in this interview.
- [30:07]
Tim Miller
I'm loving it. I'm also noticing you guys since you said that you do your little team meetings in the room together. We're just kind of looking at each other and now we've separated, you and I kind of notice Ezra, like looking over to be like, is this a you? And it's like, wait a minute, we're not.
- [30:21]
Leah Greenberg
We're normally like nudging each other, you know, like, I want this question or, you know, so now we have to like use it.
- [30:26]
Tim Miller
It is cute, dude. Let's do strategy then. So we'll go to Leah, since you're the strategist. One thing that I just wonder when I was watching the hands off protests is like, there is, it's like there's this balance, right? Like, it's like on the one hand that's a vague big umbrella, right, that everybody can kind of feel like they fit under, whether they're a former Republican or a Communist, you know, on the other hand, like, if you look at protests that have been really catalyzing in the past, like, it's usually like about something, right? George Floyd. The Tea Party was kind of broad, but it was ostensibly about spending march for our Lives spent school shootings. How do you guys balance that right now? And how are you thinking about it? And are you thinking that you need to find a catalyzing event or that you're thinking you're trying to keep it as broad as possible?
- [31:12]
Leah Greenberg
The answer is kind of yes and yes both. An initial assumption we had heading into this period was that protests would be more touched off by specific events, catalyzing events during this time. And what we've seen is that the speed at which they are moving, right, they're doing this kind of warp speed, running through a bunch of very, very awful and unpopular things very swiftly makes it hard for individual things that should be massive era defining developments to break through, right? You get rid of the Department of Education, that should be the only thing anyone talks about for like A month.
- [31:45]
Tim Miller
Had George Bush done that in 2001, you know, it'd be the only thing that everybody's protesting on until 911 happened, I guess. But you know what I mean, like in a different time.
- [31:53]
Leah Greenberg
Right, Exactly. So our strategy with Hands off was to, you know, to articulate an emotion that everyone was feeling, regardless of what specific thing was bringing them to, bringing them to that moment. Right. Whether it was the attack on Social Security and Medicare, whether it was an attack on our civil rights, whether it was the attack on immigrants in our communities, articulate that kind of collective sense of loss aversion, and wed it to a story that could hold us all. Right. It's, you know, they are out of control. They're wrecking the things we care about, and they are doing it to benefit themselves and then push together. And there may well be moments in the future that do break through as that catalyzing moment, and then we're kind of in a rapid response, mobilizing around that. But for now, what we're seeing is working is giving people the container that holds the collective sense of chaos and harm and destruction and gives people a space for outrage and pushing back. And we did that with, you know, that was the thinking behind the hands off framing. That's the thinking behind the no Kings framing as well. Right. We're creating a container. Container that's big enough to hold anybody who's like, this guy has gone too far. We're not trying to say, you know, here's our entire issues platform, but we are saying, you know, we are all under attack and we're all showing up to push back on this autocratic, imperious, corrupt rule.
- [33:08]
Tim Miller
Yeah. And the Elon thing was maybe felt like for a moment, that could be it. But now maybe he's going back. I don't know. Ezra, what do you think about that? And on some level, the no kings, I wonder, is like, will some people be like, well, he's not a king, you know, again, is this at play to just people that are really focused? I don't know.
- [33:23]
Ezra Levin
Look, there is such power in no. There is such power in no. And when you look across the world at creeping authoritarianism and the movements that push back successfully against them, they did not agree on what the ruling party should do after the authoritarian was taken down. They didn't. And that's really important. We've got to recognize a hard political truth. We lost the White House.
- [33:49]
Tim Miller
House.
- [33:49]
Ezra Levin
We lost the House. We lost the Senate. The orange guy with tiny hands sets the agenda every week. Whatever he posts on Truth Social. Suddenly, that's what we're talking about. That's the consequences of being wiped out in 2024 at the national level. So we have the ability to respond that. That's what we have the ability to do. We can respond to the agenda that's being put forward. And your response can be, well, let's see how we can cut some deals. Maybe we can work with them. Or it can be, fuck no, we're not going along with this guy. We're not allowing him to concentrate power further in the White House. We are in the fuck no category. And we are trying to build a unified. A unified opposition party that says no. And that unified opposition party should include you, Tim. It should include the Socialists in tsa, it should include Matt Iglesias, and it should include liberals, and it shouldn't include progressives. We can all agree right now that the political question of the day, which is, do we want more authoritarianism or don't we? We can all have the same answer to that. And then we can fight it out in 2029 when we have a unified democratic control of the government. That's great. Let's fight then. But right now, to build a mass movement, being able to say, do you want a king? Is a king something you want in America? Well, this Guy is spending $50 million taxpayer dollars on a military parade on his birthday on June 14th. I'm gonna put tanks through the street of D.C. is that something you want? While he comes after your Social Security, your Medicaid, your Medicare? Well, a very. Every big coalition can say no to that. And our plan is to have, I don't know, a thousand, two thousand protests around the world on that day, everywhere but D.C. and it's going to be driven by normal people who say, nah, I don't want kings. I might not agree on economic policy. I might not agree on education policy. But you know what I do agree with these DSA folks on? I don't want kings. You know what I agree with Tim on? I don't want kings. That's great. And then we can fight it out after we actually have a liberal democracy that responds to the will of the people on what the future proactive policy agenda ought to be.
- [35:45]
Tim Miller
Yeah, I don't want any kings. I don't want this fucking king in particular. Well, we can start there. So I do another show that's focused on getting Gen Z folks involved is that we have only Gen Z guests with Cam Caskey, who did March for Our Lives, and he's like, I didn't feel like my networks were very engaged on hands off on the first round. And I don't mean this as a criticism. It's just kind of a reality. They're getting information differently. You look at the pictures from the protests, and it does seem to be kind of a lot of more older folks. Right. Which is a little different. Right. At least for, you know, that's not different throughout all of history, but it's different like through our lives. Right. Like, most of the big protests we've seen have kind of been, you know, it's been younger folks that have been driving them or the front faces of them at least. Why do you think that is? Are you worried about it? Are you thinking about how to engage younger people differently?
- [36:36]
Leah Greenberg
It's a great question. And we've seen the same pictures and, you know, it's a live conversation within our own network as well. Right. Because is, we do tend to have folks who are millennial, who are baby boomer, who are Gen X as kind of our core organizing cadre. And so who's, you know, kind of how, how Gen Z moves into action is, is definitely a live question. And I, and I do think that, you know, there's a bunch of complicated and intersecting stuff here, right? Like this is, this is a generation whose formative years were derailed by Covid in a way that wasn't true for someone who was, you know, 30 or older when Covid hit. This is a generation that's been shaped by watching the catastrophic events unfold in the Middle east over the last couple of years and by the Biden administration's response. And, you know, I think we've got to note that, like, the most visible, like, mass demonstration of youth over the last couple of years has been the pro Palestine movement, right. Has been the anti genocide movement. And so there are in fact, young people who are out there. And we actually, you know, figure this is again, where we talk about, like, what is the big tent, right? So I think there's a piece of this that's about, you know, how do you engage young people who have generally experienced the system as one that has not served them and so are not moved by appeals around institutions, are not moved by appeals around, you know, reclaiming and protecting a democracy that they perceive as not having worked for them. That's not unique to young people, right? Like, that's the million dollar question for a lot of voters who we lost in 2024. But I think it's particularly notable with them.
- [38:06]
Tim Miller
I'd add One other element to that. Ezra, I'm curious your take on this to answer anything on that, but specifically on the Trump question because it relates to the no Kings framing. I think part of it is just that our age and up, he's more of an aberration. And so using him as the catalyst is going to work more. I don't know. I was speaking at my high school when I was home a couple of weeks ago. The linear nature of time is confusing. And I was talking about the 2016 campaign and one of the kids raised their hand, was asking an obvious question about the 2016 campaign. I appreciate all obvious questions, but then I was like, wait a minute, so how old were you then? He was seven. Seven, you know, and I'm going, oh, right, like a sophomore in high school or freshman or a junior in high school, whatever. Was seven during the 2016 campaign. And so they don't have any framework. So I do wonder if that is like part of the challenge. Right? Like figuring out some other way that besides Trump bad. I don't know. What do you think about that?
- [39:01]
Ezra Levin
God, that's so tragic, Tim. That just makes me sad that there, there's a generation of, of people who are growing up where Trump is normal, Trump is reality and he defines a political era. We gotta make it so that's not normal. We've gotta get beyond this era. There has to be an era of accountability after this where we make very clear that people who go along with the demolishing of our institutions face consequences. And that that is not something that we as a society accept. God, that makes me so sad to think of young people.
- [39:30]
Tim Miller
Do I keep getting sad his picture's gonna be in the classroom two times when your kid goes to school. School. So anyway, just on the little president poster on the wall.
- [39:37]
Ezra Levin
Thanks for that, Tim.
- [39:38]
Tim Miller
Yeah, yeah. That's my job here. That's my job. You guys are the earnest cheerleader. Let's go protest. I'm like, yeah, here we go. Here's a reality bomb.
- [39:47]
Ezra Levin
Our kids are 2 years old and 4 years old. So Zeke, the older one, was at the protest when we defeated Trump, which was glorious. And he only knows Trump as the guy, the bad guy who wants to take my toys. And the younger, the two year old doesn't know anything. Yeah. And actually an increasing number of Americans are knowing him as the bad guy who wants to take your dolls, which is great. It's pretty accurate assessment and more accurate than it's good.
- [40:11]
Tim Miller
Maybe Jan Alpha will have a more coherent Trump as evil worldview. Than the Gen Zs.
- [40:18]
Ezra Levin
Look, if we're successful, the story of this period is going to be that time when America faced some scary authoritarian threat, but ultimately we overcame it and we reasserted democracy. And that's the future that we're aiming for. I do think it is really important that we don't just get the Merrick Garlands of the world in power again in 2029 and decline to actually prosecute these assholes who are demolishing our institutions. And I think it's actually important not just to have a democratic trifecta in 2029, but to start talking about an accountability agenda now. Because we want those institutions and those leaders who are considering going along with this guy to think, oh no, if the Democrats win and it looks like they're going to, I might face consequences. I might actually have to face a committee and talk about how I helped implement a deportation agenda that kidnapped Americans and sent them to a work camp in El Salvador. I want leaders making that choice. I want airplane pilots deciding whether or not to take off to be thinking about that when they choose whether or not to help this authoritarian. But on Gen Z, the thing I was going to say, I think we suck at reaching Gen Z where they are are as a pro democracy movement at the Democratic Party. I think we're just getting our clock cleaned by the other side, I think. And that's.
- [41:33]
Tim Miller
Charlie Kirk is just better at this. I hate to give Charlie Kirk, you know, I hate to give him credit, but it's like you have to actually try. How did Charlie Kirk get better at it? He fucking tried. He like, you know, he did the same thing you guys did, but just with a focus on campus and like trying actually matters.
- [41:49]
Ezra Levin
So we just hired on somebody from NextGen, one of the lead youth organizers, to lead up our new media operations. Specifically with an eye for. Look, we don't know what the hell we're doing in this. We're not doing it well right now. How can we do better? How can we actually reach out to different audiences? Because I love getting quoted in New York Times or Washington Post or in msnbc. That's great. It's not enough to reach the populations we need to reach. We need to figure out how to reach out to new and emerging media.
- [42:13]
Tim Miller
I totally agree with all that, especially the accountability part, which I didn't ask about. But you know how to, you know how to pander to the podcast because I'm with you on that. The immigration thing, that's the other. I think it's A strategic question kind of, right? Because this is the thing that pisses me off the most, right? Like it's the thing that gets my blood boiling. It's the fact that it's us, it's our government, government that has kidnapped people and put them in a fucking hole in El Salvador. It's our government that took a 19 year old who came here when she was 4, she didn't commit any crimes consciously, and now she's shackled in a fucking cell in Georgia because she did a right on a no right turn traffic light that happened yesterday. So that stuff pisses me off the most. But like, I don't know, is it maybe not strategically right to get into just an immigration frame because of that broad tent? How can you take these horror stories and use them to appeal to a broader group and have it not just be a straight immigration protest? You guys think about that at all?
- [43:08]
Leah Greenberg
Well, we think that it's a core part of the story, right? Because you can't separate this kind of escalation of a deportation agenda from the broader attack on democracy and civil rights. Right. Like the, the same tools, the same vehicles, the same people are being used for both, the same threats are being applied to both. Right. When they take innocent people and consign them to a torture camp in El Salvador, they're trying to create conditions that cause a lot of immigrants in this country to leave. Because that threat, that fear, is so great. That is an intentional strategy to create fear amongst our immigrant neighbors. It's also an intentional strategy to create fear amongst the rest of us. Right? Like the idea, the threat behind we might put American citizens in El Salvador is aimed at everyone who might oppose the regime in any possible way. And so I think that we have to fold these stories together and we have to recognize that the ways in which they are going after immigrant communities in this country are actually the preview and the same kind of coercive machinery that they intend to apply to the rest of us. And that fighting back against these kinds of attacks is actually core to what we are collectively doing. I don't think it's a matter of framing it as, you know, an immigration issue or a not immigration issue. It's a matter of what are our values, what are our rights, what are our expectations for everybody who lives in this country and are we going to stand behind that and what kind of country are we going to be?
- [44:32]
Ezra Levin
This pisses me off so much because you can, you can almost hear the democratic political consultants talking to elected officials and saying, look, we pulled this issue and immigration is lower. Therefore don't talk about immigration. And then you see it in their actions and their speeches. Not everybody, obviously. There are a lot of good ones. But look, Joe Rogan is pissed off about this. There are plenty of Republicans and conservatives and non politicos who see this in say, wait, they're fucking kidnapping people? Are you kidding me? They're just taking them off the street, not giving them any due process, and sending them to a labor camp in El Salvador. This is wild. You know what? We don't have to agree on path to citizenship, on border security, on broader comprehensive immigration reform to say, hey, you know what? The federal government shouldn't be kidnapping people off of the street. Because if they can do that to somebody who's brown, they can do it to me too. Like that. That is crazy that, that any Democrat would say this is a losing position for us. They're thinking about it in these like 1990s political terms. And we just live in a completely different environment now. I, I see a lot of fighters in the Democratic Party and we're trying to support those fighters. I think it's the right thing to do because I don't think we should be terrorizing any populations in this country. But I also think it's a politically advantageous thing to do. Not kidnapping people is a pretty good political slogan. You can build a pretty broad based constituency off of. Let's not kidnap people.
- [45:59]
Tim Miller
I'm trying to fit in with my new progressive friends. I'm snapping at you right now.
- [46:05]
Leah Greenberg
Thanks. Thanks. That's great. You're doing a great job.
- [46:07]
Tim Miller
All right, guys. Do you guys ever fight?
- [46:09]
Ezra Levin
All the time.
- [46:10]
Tim Miller
I'm trying to think about doing something with my husband. Tell me a story about a bicker that you guys did.
- [46:14]
Ezra Levin
Never write a book with your spouse. It was the most that. We're both very opinionated writers. I write a lot and then Leah can kills all of what I've written. And it's just. It was traumatic.
- [46:24]
Leah Greenberg
It's true.
- [46:25]
Ezra Levin
He's.
- [46:25]
Leah Greenberg
He writes a lot and I am the editor. And then. And then we get into pretty extended.
- [46:29]
Tim Miller
Was there ever a guest room sleeping situation during the editing process?
- [46:33]
Ezra Levin
But there is this like this thing that. This thing that happened in what it was 2017, 2018. Leah. That I think of a lot because I think it is a good representation of the roles that we play in the organization. We use like an internal communication slack platform to talk internally with the team and somebody proposed that we do something. I don't even remember what it was it was a strategic play. And Leah and I both responded at the same time. And Leah wrote, yeah, Leah wrote, maybe, but let's run the traps on this. And I wrote, fuck it. Let's do it and be legends. And I think. I actually do think that healthy tension has been beneficial to the organization because you do need both of those impulses.
- [47:13]
Leah Greenberg
Well, and I also think, like, I am not. I'm not advocating that the future of, you know, nonprofit leadership is people who are married to each other running organizations, but there are. There are actually real advantages. Being the head of an organization is. It's hard and there's not enough hours in the day and it's lonely. And I don't really understand how anyone does it as an individual. And I also don't understand how co executive directors can do it if they're not married to each other, because you kind of need that foundation of unconditional love if you're going to make it through the moments that are tough.
- [47:43]
Tim Miller
Are you ever, like, watching severance and one of you is, like, bringing up a staffing issue and the other one's like, will you just shut the fuck up about this for a second? I'm trying to have 30 minutes of peace.
- [47:52]
Ezra Levin
We literally, last night watching andor literally that happened.
- [47:57]
Leah Greenberg
This is true. This is true.
- [48:00]
Tim Miller
Okay, well, good luck with that. I gotta tell you, better you than me, I guess, is all I'm saying. I'm in a very great marriage, but the separate roles and responsibilities are also important. But happy it's working for you guys. I'm just so impressed with you. I'm so happy you all are doing it. And thank you for coming on. The POD folks can go check out the groups. Indivisible. It seems like you've got groups everywhere, but, you know, we got a listener in a place where you don't have a group. They can start One, please. And the King's Day. What is it again? June 14th.
- [48:25]
Ezra Levin
June 14th. Donald Trump's birthday. 79th birthday. Military parade in D.C. protest literally everywhere else.
- [48:31]
Tim Miller
All right. I don't know where the hell I am. June 14th. Wherever I am, I'll be at 1.
- [48:35]
Ezra Levin
There will be one near you. I guarantee you.
- [48:37]
Leah Greenberg
We can promise.
- [48:38]
Tim Miller
All right, I look forward to it. And let's stay in touch. All right, thanks, J. Everybody else, come back tomorrow for another edition of the Borg podcast. It will be less earnest, and I promise you there'll be more humorism, and we'll see you all then. Peace.
- [48:50]
Unknown
Now is the time of our lives, but it won't last long west and it's fun Sight of the fight? You sing this song, it's always a new day? You have one. There's always a new way to heaven. You my mother, you're going to take me with you? You are your. Where do we stand in this land where invincible now come and prepared to be led indivisible in heaven? I'm really gonna miss you. You're my father. You're gonna take me with you? We'll be together now and forever? We'll meet together now and forever.
- [50:55]
Tim Miller
The Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.