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The Realignment
Giselle Hale: Moving Abundance from Op-Eds to Action - Why Local Elected Officials Are the Missing Piece of the Puzzle
01:01:47
Giselle Hale, Managing Partner at the Abundance Network and former Mayor of Redwood City, CA, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Giselle discuss Abundance Network's newly announced Abundance Elected Network, a community of local elected officials in city and county government interested in abundance and state capacity. They discuss why the local government version of the abundance discourse is completely different than the national level, think tank and pundit debate, how local officials are operationalizing abundance ideas, and what an outcomes-centered politics could look like.
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- [00:00]
A
Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment. Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. For today's episode, I'm joined by the Abundance Network's Giselle hall to discuss the new Abundance Elected network that Abundance Network has launched. The Abundance Network Elected program was officially announced to the world at the Abundance Conference earlier in September this month and it's a really interesting group of local elected officials that reflect the most interesting and undercovered part of the abundance discussion. Despite all of the national level debates we've had, despite the debates about the future of the Democratic Party, the future of the bipartisan part of the abundance movement, a lot of the national style things we focused on at the conference, the Abundance Electeds are actually local officials in the states who, separate from the electoral case for advancing abundance, just find that the actual idea of increasing supply and focusing on state capacity is an important and resonant one with the problems they have. The group includes mayors from cities such as Scranton, Lansing, Cincinnati and Boulder, and city council members and county supervisors across more than 31 states. I met a bunch of these Abundance Elected officials at the conference and I will say for the purposes of this show, promoting its brand and getting at the actual mission of the show, it turns out the first member of the network actually listened to an episode of the Realignment where the Abundance Networks meets with Shalem and came on last year and reached out to them. So it's really cool that we're able to build this into a community of people who aren't just sort of thinking about national politics, but are focused on their local issues and hopefully find solutions and approaches like the Abundance Agenda that resonate with them. Hope you all enjoy the conversation. Giselle Hale, welcome to the Realignment.
- [01:50]
B
Thank you Marshall, Good to see you.
- [01:53]
A
Great to see you too. Very excited to chat. I think this episode is going to be great because it's going to give a real face that we're not doing video, but at least a name and a sort of clear articulation of a dynamic that I've noticed when it comes to abundance topics over the past year. And I usually have to say, well, I was talking to this person in private and this other thing happened. It's never actually like meat on the bones. So here's the dynamic that I want to illustrate very clearly. There is a really interesting gap between the Abundance as a national topic discourse and do op eds, blog posts, podcasts, the take haver class like me and the actual people on the ground who are working in local politics and are attracted to that issue. So now Because I'm speaking to you, you're with the Abundance Network. You're spearheading the Abundance Electeds. We could just make all that dynamic clear. So how about you just kick off by introducing yourself? Abundance Network. Misha Shalom, co founder, came on last year, but it's been a while so it'd be great to restate that and then finally introduce the Abundance Electeds program that was announced formally at the Abundance Conference earlier this month.
- [03:04]
B
Yeah, yeah. And it was great to see you at the conference. You did a great job emceeing, leading into the discussion. So let me start with the Abundance Network. So we're a three year old C3, C4. We're based in San Francisco and we've really been at the forefront, we were at the early days of this very nascent abundance movement. So our focus within the ecosystem, if you look at all the different players, is we're really focused on like the doers. We're really focused on actualizing this movement in real life, in communities. And we do that by organizing a variety of civic leaders who are really just interested in growing the movement. So today we have four main programs that we do that through. The first and oldest is our donor network. We have about 130 individuals who donate to make our work possible, which is great. Second is we run a chapters program. We have about four chapters today and that's growing. So these are folks in cities who really want to push for long term sustained political and policy change. And they actually have their own individual donor tables of local residents. And then the last two are newer. So the third is called Abundance Professionals. Sort of the opposite of donors. These are people who don't have money to give, but they have time, they have skills, they have social capital and they're really interested in using those things to build infrastructure for the movement, advance the movement. And then the last program, which is the one that I spearheaded last year, is called Abundance Electeds and Abundance Electives is focused solely on the local layer of government. We have grown very rapidly. I think we're about six months old now. We are 124 members in 31 states. And we actually only when we came to the conference did we do a public announcement. Prior to that everything was word of mouth. So it was talking to advocacy groups who are already on the ground doing the work. And then about half of our members came from other members. So they really saw the need and the desire to have this. So that's a little bit about us and our work. Me, I have so much of a unique trifecta of experience. I came from campaign work, so I worked for Obama in 08 here. Locally, I'd worked for Congresswoman Eshoo, who's now retired tech. So I had about 15, 20 years working in small and then later big tech and then local government. So I was appointed into a planning commission and then eventually was elected to council and then sworn in as mayor. So I did about nine and a half years of local government public service.
- [05:48]
A
Yeah. And the thing that I'm really interested to hear from you on is you've referred to we're at a certain degree, we're going to talk about Abundance Network, but I also think you're the right person to talk through some of the tensions that are clearly very publicly and privately presence within this discourse. So I'm really interested in your use of the word movement when it comes to abundance in the sense that if you sort of talk to the sort of local elected officials that you're sort of discoursing around the issues they're sort of focused on. I don't think these are people who typically, if you were to talk to their 2000s or 2010s iterations, would say they're a part of a policy movement. So, like, within that context, specifically because this, I'm actually really asking questions that abundance sort of skeptics or even people are sort of just like new to this. It's sort of different to hear something referred to that way. So I'd love for you to bring your context into how you think of that.
- [06:41]
B
Yeah. Okay. So this is really fascinating. As we started to do outreach, So I did 50 literal cold calls to build this program, got names of different electeds, also spoke with a lot of partners in this group. I was just kind of like, do we need this? Like, are there other things that do this? Should we build it?
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C
Right.
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B
I don't want to build something duplicative. And this is what's been really interesting. Our members will by and large tell you they were doing abundance. They I felt that way when Misha first called me and had just learned the word abundance after talking with Derek and Ezra.
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C
Right.
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B
When they first named what would become the book and he explained it to me, I was like, oh yeah, that feels like what I was already doing in local office. But here is the power of what that book did and what this is doing is that it gave us all a name for what we were already doing. And that is really powerful. I actually think that will be like one of the biggest legacies of the book is that naming something means that you can now build like an identity around that, you can build community around that. So I really think that's, that's what sort of created the possibility for this to even be a movement. But it was this feeling that, hey, I'm already doing this. There was no word for it, but now that there is, I can find other people like that and I can do it even better. So yeah, they, a lot of them have said I never have been a part of a movement or felt like I was a part of a movement, but now they really do and see it because they're expanding outside of just the typical policy areas. They're really stretching and learning and it's, it's pretty exciting to, to watch leaders who are already so invested really double down. And that's what we're seeing.
- [08:31]
A
Yeah. And you gave me the perfect setup for my next question, which is, as you said, when you were a local official yourself and a lot of the folks you were talking with, they were already doing abundance. So what did that mean? Like, what did it mean to quote, do abundance when it came to, let's say the word of like October 2021, before this is hot and obvious and there are big conferences.
- [08:52]
B
Oh sure. So I would say most folks are the gateway to abundance in local office, by and large has been housing. It's been NIMBYism.
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C
Right.
- [09:03]
B
Housing is by far, when we pull our members, the biggest issue that they're facing in their communities and the issue that they were already very much working on in a way that is super aligned with principles that we talk about.
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C
Right.
- [09:15]
B
That, that are written about. It's all about supply. Right. Unlocking supply. Which by the way, we never say, we've done our message training. You should never say supply to a voter. We could talk more about that too. How you actually talk about abundance to real people is very different than the white papers that you read. And then second, it's sort of the gen Paul side of like, okay, like, but what about getting a permit? Does that take forever? So those are the two pillars. They were already working. I mean the examples, it's truly a no silver bullets issue. And they are layering policy after policy, but then they're really going back to see is this actually having an impact. So that's what makes, I think an abundant elected official unique is that they're sort of obsessed with the outcome. Most elected officials, you kind of are primed to pat yourself on the back once you get votes.
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C
Right.
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B
And you pass the bill, you're like, oh, my victory lap. I. If you. I don't know if this is true in other states. In California, our legislators, they'll send these pieces of mail sort of telling you what they've done. And it's basically like, I pass these bills, right? And it's like, but did that just like, add to procedural glut? Did it actually solve a problem? But that's how we metric elected officials. And this is really different because what we're saying is that was a milestone. Passing the legislation was a milestone. Maybe it was the starting line. The finish line is you've actually solved the problem. You've actually created an opportunity. Like what we see now in Austin, where rents are coming down. You know, we've talked about this. My sister lives in Austin. She was able to move into a larger home for less money. I mean, that is. That's a very big idea. So generally speaking, they're coming into it through housing, and then they. What's great about abundance and why it is different than just pure yimbyism. We can talk more about that, too. I'm a tried and true Yimby serve on the national board of yimby Action was really a part of that movement before it was named. And that was also quite a trip. But it's a framework. So yimbyism centers on one issue of housing.
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C
Right.
- [11:26]
B
Abundance gives you a framework for decision making and a mindset for how to look at problems. And that is powerful because now you can extend it across all of the many issues that you vote on, all of the many needs in your community. And the housing need is not always the same in every community.
- [11:44]
C
Right.
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B
It depends on what they're facing. So I like the flexibility of it. And yeah, it's made it so that it can really extend into other issue areas.
- [11:54]
A
Yeah. And that's so fascinating. You just, in that answer have expressed something that I detected, but I think has often been absent from the national level debate. So oftentimes, when you see critics of abundance or sort of skeptics in the topic area, they'll say, okay, sure, we should care about metrics. Okay, sure, we should increase supply. How's that novel? How does that require a book? I can say as a sort of former politician kid in high school who sort of came up in the 2000s and 2010s and was thinking about running for Congress and doing all those things. And now I have a lot of my friends who stayed on that path who are in elected office themselves. I think the point that you made that the shift from the metric being we got elected and we passed bills and then adding the additional metrics is genuinely a revelation to people. And maybe that's sad that that's a revelation, but that really is new. So like, do you kind of get what I'm trying to say? You can sort of. I've just noticed that pundit people will sort of act as if that's not a big deal actually is a big deal. So speak more, speak more about that in terms of. From a mindset of an elected local official perspective.
- [13:02]
B
Yeah, I mean the, the. So, but first I want to hear more. What do you think the pundits actually think? I'm curious. They think so, yeah.
- [13:10]
A
Basically the. Once again, most of the pundits are a D.C. or New York based and they're focused on national level political arguments. And what I've just found is that. And this is why your group is so important and this is why it's actually so important that abundance electeds isn't all these members of Congress or members of the Senate. It's not that those people shouldn't be organized and you can't have things like the Build America Caucus. But there is just a missing lack of focus on local elected officials and the challenges and frankly the mindsets and the approaches they have that goes deeper than the obvious. Politics is local. You know, people. Neil, take. I think people sort of tend to stop there. So what the national pundits will say is, and this has been said to me very explicitly, publicly and privately. Okay, cool. This abundance thing isn't that deep. Care about metrics. The Gen Pauca state capacity stuff is nice, but obviously the state should do things. But this really clicked for me when I did an abundance dinner in Oregon with a mutual friend of ours, Ben Bowman, who's the House majority leader. And I showed up at this dinner and, and there was literally a state rep who had Jen Pauka's book where she had note taken through and annotated everything with and had a million different questions about that weren't about do I get elected? Do I raise to the next level. So there really is something deep here that I just don't think because we just don't think of the person who runs the dmv, the person who's a county supervisor. They just don't exist within our national discourse. And that's a huge like socio cultural problem that's bigger in this conversation. But that's my context for being frustrated about that.
- [14:55]
B
No, I mean. So first of all I should say, like, we were very explicit about starting with local. And here there's a reason why. I mean, it's huge, right? So local is 29% of overall government spend, but it's actually 72% of government employees are in local government. So if you actually want to reform and improve upon government, it's the best place to start. It's also the best place to start if you care about changing public perception about the impact of government. Because it is the layer of government that is closest to the people. It is a layer of government that they see and feel in their everyday lives. I mean, I'm going to throw in some member stories. So one of our earliest members is John Hines. He's the current. He's on the city council in Tacoma, Washington. He's actually running premier right now. He's an example of someone who actually reached out to us. Before we created the program, he had read one of Nish's substacks. It was just like, oh, this resonates with me so much. He has this great story. So his dad's a truck driver. John himself is like a school teacher and a coach, which by, by the way, local government is basically a volunteer job. I got paid $900 a month to be mayor of Redwood City, California, which has 90,000 people. It is in the heart of Silicon Valley and is super consequential to like GDP and innovation. Right? 90 $900. I worked a second full time job and I was raising two kids. That is very typical in our group. I digress. So John, he's running for mayor, but he would say, you know, he'd talk to his trucker dad and say, dad, you know, I just don't. I worked, I did all this stuff on homelessness. And his dad would say, well, how come I see a homeless person over there?
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C
Right?
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B
And so he really started to develop this messaging framework around. It has to be changed that you can see and feel and touch. You can do all of that at the local layer of government. So if you contrast that with an initiative like DOGE that is invisible to most people, they can't see it, but we hear about it. And it's taken up so much time. But like make it so that more people don't die at that intersection or make it so that I can like get around this community or make it so that like my grandbabies can live here and they don't have to move to Austin.
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C
Right?
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B
Just typical here. I used to, when I would knock doors when I was running for assembly it was during the big split lot bill, SB 9 and 10, which was split lots in California. And often a boomer would answer the door and they're like, oh, it's a split lot. A split lot is basically, you can take a parcel of land and you can split it and then now add an additional home and perhaps even sell off that home. Creates a real opportunity for starter homes. And they would, they would say, I heard your public publicly saying, you support this bill. And I say, yeah, I do. And they'd say, well, I mean, that's going to change things. I'm like, yeah, where do you, where do your kids live? Where do they live? Denver, Idaho, Texas. And always it was one of those answers. So people are losing the ability to be together with their families. So it's a, It's a hard issue to message. And we can talk more about messaging, too, but that's sort of the reality that we see, is that they're. They're doing it and then they're seeing, look, I have to deliver a real outcome. I can't just say, I passed this homelessness policy. If there are actually still people experiencing homelessness, if there are fires and other negative externalities related to this issue, then there's a reality issue. And there, it's more of a forefront of closing that gap.
- [18:39]
A
Yeah. And let's talk about the messaging thing, because the other thing that I've said this on the podcast before, but the other fascinating dynamic that came out during the Abundance Oregon dinner I did is it was pointed out to me that in the national debate, there's lots of talk about the polls, and there's lots of talk about how bottlenecks and increasing supply versus anti corporatism or populism. The populism just polls better. But when I brought up these polls in the context of Oregon, I was sort of brought in as the nationally focused person to give context. It was just pointed out by one of these state legislators that, hey, like, we're all winning election no matter what happens. Like, this is a pretty blue state. Most of these races aren't particularly competitive. And if it is competitive, it's not going to come down to, like, specific messaging within the Democratic primary on, like, anti corporatism versus, like, abundance. So I hope that doesn't sound like cope to folks who are skeptical. But just, I think at the local level, I think if there's like a context. Let me put it this way. Like, I think if you're. I think the whole, like, abundance versus populism frame, like, definitely matters. In the context of, let's say, like the New York City mayoral primary. So there's like an alternate world where let's say it's not Andrew Cuomo versus Zoran Mandani, but instead it's Zoran being very populistic, being very focused on sort of the anti corporate, like anti Wall street thing. And then there's an abundance candidate who's saying, you know, we're going to increase supply. We're sort of, you know, he's going for the moderate middle there. That is a context where I see this messaging dynamic mattering more, but I just struggle to find examples. When I spoke to a bunch of the Abundance electeds at the Abundance Conference and my own private conversations at dinners and, and such, I struggle to see where this messaging dynamic actually plays out. So I'd love to hear, like, your context on this.
- [20:22]
B
Yeah, the whole messaging, it's been, it's been sort of like either, I don't know, you describe it as like a false choice or red hair. It's like, it's just, there's not a there there. And I, I, I think the biggest example would be a lot said about, you can't be a progressive and abundant. And our members would disagree.
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C
Right?
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B
Two of our members, Burhan Azim from Cambridge and I don't know if it was Zoe. Yeah, it was Zoe Quadri from Austin, were a part of a piece for the nation on how they are both progressive and they are abundant, but we also have moderates, we have more conservative folks in the group. And that is like, that is like a big idea that you could be not just committed to an ideology and that you really could be committed to a methodology.
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C
Right.
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B
A way of solving problems. And that you could practice that across the political spectrum. Spectrum is kind of mind blowing.
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C
Right?
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B
I do think, and you know, Ezra said on some of these polls, like, yeah, I wouldn't probably frame it that way. I probably wouldn't say bottleneck detecting. You know, hold on it. We're all like, we're looking at that. We're like, yeah, nobody would say that on the campaign trail. You know, everybody talks about it a little bit differently. We've really leveraged some great work by Sightline Institute and Welcoming Neighbors Network. They did nationwide polling on how you have like the pro housing message, for example, how you craft messages and have that conversation. And it was great because I'm sure between all of us on this training, we had like over 100 years of elected experience. Like, everybody was like, whoa, we just learned something or, oh, my gosh, I've been doing it wrong. We, we had a joke that we were going to have an invisible swear jar. So anytime we said one of the words that's actually not effective, we had to, like, contribute into this swear jar. And it's really changed how a lot of us talk. That's what I think we need to do more of. Less of this very, very high level, sort of, is this the right direction? And more of the like. No abundance exists to solve problems. So let's focus on the messaging for the actual problems and getting that right. You don't supply, say supply, and you don't say units, say people. Derek had a great point when he met with our group. He was like, say babies. Just say babies. Because, like, no babies. Right. We're building house for. We're building homes for grandbabies. Right? Who's going to be mad at that? So, yeah, it's. We have, I would say, as a movement, we actually have more work to do on messaging. And I hope that we continue to invest in great groups like Sightline and WNN who are actually working to get us this information. They're about to come out with research on parking reform messaging. My members are going to eat that up and they're going to take it and run with it. So that's the kind of messaging work that we should be wringing our hands over, not this, like, national polling. Because again, these folks are winning, they're winning reelections. Some of them are going on to higher office. I mean, Paige Cognetti is in our group and now she's running for Congress in Scranton. So I think that there is actually quite a bit of win in this issue. I am on the board of YIMBY Action, and they had done a study a year or two ago that showed these pro housing assembly members win the reelection.
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C
Right.
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B
There's always this, oh, I'm going to risk everything voting for this contentious housing bill. They win the reelection.
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C
Right.
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B
So I think we have a big gap between national and reality when it comes to what, what we should even care about on the messaging, quite frankly.
- [24:02]
A
Yeah. And I think something that I'm really dedicating the realignment to. I did a great episode with Danielle Lee Thompson last week. A lot of people really shouted out, and Danielle really talks about so two things that are really important. So one, just sort of the importance of storytelling, like, what stories is a society telling. But then two, like, the real phrase that really matched here is just like, common sense, like, what is the societal common sense is sort of like going on here and how do politicians and movements interact with that? And I think when it comes to housing for me, to your point, that's why I love your point about like talking to the voters. Can your kids live in this same town? In my town back in, you know, Portland, Oregon, when I was talking with folks from high school, when I was back there for writing just sort of the received, that common sense was, oh yeah, like we can't move back here where we went to high school, where we grew up, where our parents are, because it's just too expensive because there hasn't been that much home construction there since 2008. And everyone is just talking as if that is a societal given fact. I think if you talk to a lot of millennials, even so I'm in Austin, a lot of my friends like work in big tech, they work in tech sales and those sort of like the Austin sort of specialized in this, they will just talk as if, yeah, like we just won't be able to buy a house or if we are able to buy a house, it's going to be way outside, 30, 40, 50 minutes, like an hour outside of the city. They don't talk about starter homes. They basically say, why see myself getting a house when I'm 38, even though I'm 28? Because I'm only going to get a house when I can afford a $700,000, 800,000 to $1 million house. And that's just not going to happen for a decade. So what abundance can do is just meet people where there is this emerging common sense that, yeah, if you're just like a millennial, and unless you've got family who could buy you a house, unless you've won a lottery ticket, unless you got the right startup in 2019, you just can't have a house. And that's just this thing that used to happen for people in generations before us. What abundance needs to do is come into this emerging new common sense and say, actually we are a movement of people who think that's true, that that's what you feel. We're going to echo that story back to you to your point about the children and the split lots. This is something you are experiencing in your life. And we have an actual argument about how we're going to attack that and focus on that. And that's a different question than polls, but that's a different question than messaging per se. But that's how I think we should be approaching this from a movement perspective.
- [26:27]
B
Well, okay, so there's so much just to react to there. Oh, my gosh. Zoning codes did not come down from on high on tablets. Like people wrote them, right? This is not like, like, code that was set up. These are things we can change. And it's about not equipping this. I mean, it's really. It's really putting a leader in the place of being a change maker. Again, this feels like common sense. But I will tell you, when you are sitting at the dais with hundred, you know, dozens of people wearing T shirts or stickers and signs saying slow the growth, it feels pretty. It feels pretty crazy, right? When you feel like you're up. And that's why yimbyism was so amazing. But you can change these things. Another piece of messaging that works really well, you know, is talking about musical chairs, right? We've made housing a game of musical chairs where somebody doesn't get a chair. The logical solution is you add another chair, right? That's what we're trying to do. So really simplifying the messaging is so key. The other thing about the messaging is so much is so wonky. Where's the personal storytelling? You know, I'll steal a page from Danielle. I love that episode, by the way. I was almost like, is it going to be too similar to have these two women, like, almost back to back? Because we both had a trifecta of experiences that were unique. I'm from the Midwest originally. I grew up in Wisconsin. You know, my. My story of self is that I was raised by a single mom and she had been an entrepreneur. And when our family fell sort of below the poverty line, what I watched her do was, like, spend a lot of time in line. And what I learned in those years is that it was really time consuming to be poor. So when somebody else says state capacity, I say, I could have had a better childhood if I didn't have to wait in line for my mom to get her food stamps and her this and her that or, like, keep the lights on. You know, that's state capacity. State capacity is you having the ability to go to work, you having the ability to have your needs fulfilled and maybe do the school play so that you can, like, enjoy your childhood. I started working at age 14 to support my family, and my tiny, teeny, tiny income was. Was very important to us staying together. My husband wasn't as lucky. My husband was a foster child. He was taken away from his family at age 8, and he was passed around his extended family. And that was a state capacity issue. There were Things the state could have done that could have helped him stay with his parents or have a better childhood. That's the level we need to go to when we're talking about these abundance principles. When we moved to the Bay Area, we had to live with roommates for five years. We had to delay having children. It's why I have two kids and not three. I ran out of time. And we were so obsessed with this question of why is the rent so high. We found ourselves at planning commission meetings, reading. Reading minutes. And this is basically when we know we've got you, right? Once you had like a planning commission meeting or the minutes, you're goner. You're gonna. You're gonna go down the local government train track. And so my husband and I, once we finally. And we were working in tech in the Bay Area, we were both working and we couldn't afford it. Once we got our first home, we had our first kid. I think housing. A lot of these issues are. Once you see them, you can't unsee them. A lot of people become obsessed with them. And that's what it was for us. You just couldn't turn away from it. It was the original sin. It was like, name any issue from low quality teaching availability to your ability to get a therapist. I will show you how it relates to housing, because it does. And we got our first home and got her. Had her first baby. I actually applied to the planning commission when she was five weeks old. And like seven years later, I'm getting sworn in as mayor. One. One more kid later. So it kind of escalated, but. And we actually made progress. So my city became one of California's few pro housing cities. But again, supply state capacity. Wrong childhood ability, access, opportunity, and things that having a secure home affords you what you can do. That's the lane we need to be in when we're having these conversations. And I'm. I'm grateful for you, to you, for this opportunity, because we're not giving enough light to that. And honestly, if you want some of the answers, people should be looking to some of these leaders because they're figuring it out in their communities. They're getting it. They're growing, they're doing the. They're adding the housing. So how.
- [31:19]
A
Yeah, and I think there's what I want to pick up from your story and that I really, really, really love. And why are my sympathies with abundance. Critics come out because I think so much of our. I think there were some really severe mistakes made from a project framing perspective. From a, like, what are we trying to do here? Perspective. And what I love about the way you're telling the story and the way frankly that a lot of the abundance electeds told their stories, it was like a brilliantly democratic story. It's someone like you were like, hey, I wanted to. I cared about my community and the ways that like, the life that I saw myself wasn't lining up with my lived experience. So I joined the planning commission and then I became a mayor. Even though you're only paid $900 a year, so it's not as if a month. So it's not even as if you were sort of like taking this money to the bank. There's no Congressional stock trading equivalent. So this is what YIMBYISM does. It's like hyper participatory, like YIMBYism. And once again, I know that there are like lefty NIMBYs and there are sort of like right wing NIMBYs. But from, you know, speaking for the sort of center left, like moderate liberal part of this conversation to that varieties of abundance category, I think the Democratic reformist center does a horrible job of speaking about democracy. And it's one of the cleanest hits that the populace and like the right wingers get against us. So it's sort of like, okay, so people don't like the Democratic Party. People think that the Democratic Party is just sort of like a set of like interchanging players in Washington D.C. we need to change. So they're launching a bunch of new think tanks that aren't particularly Democratic, that are going to run some polls and now make a declaration of what the future looks like. Everything that you are describing is the exact opposite of that entire narrative. Right? Your story doesn't start with. So I came to Washington D.C. and worked on a fellowship at a think tank. And then after a big funder liked my work, I took another fellowship and. And now here I am doing this call from Falls Church, Virginia. Welcome to Falls Church, Virginia. But that is a version like that life's a. It's a particular type of person who lives that story. And it's not the type of person who I want to have this sort of broad. What does the future look like from the perspective person? Just like over highlighted. And I want just your version of the story and I want the sort of whole idea of basically. And there's this interesting. It's actually really fascinating because, you know, Ezra did a great episode of Ross Douthat last week talking about abundance and liberalism and why the book hit And Ezra had a great line about this where he said, once again, I did not write abundance specifically to have this be the entire future of liberalism in the Democratic Party. I do though recognize that there was this void that abundance filled from a ideas perspective. But I think the part that's bigger than just an idea is that abundance and yimbyism could fill if politicians and local people take it to the right direction. Is just the democracy void, just the whole. Like what's so wild when I go to YIMBY meetings or when I talk to sort of people. The abundance conference, they don't work for anyone. Like I met a person who just runs a small business and was at this conference. That is not true in other policy areas, left, right or center. I will say that my wife was at the anti monopoly conference. There are lots of other like quite quote random people there too. Like, that's very good on their part. We do that too. But that is not. But what I want liberalism to learn from the Abundance and YIMBY movements is you need to actually be seen as this thing that takes actual people who are living their actual lives and gives them a venue and a framework and settings to actually have a sort of a role in telling whatever the new story is going to be.
- [34:58]
B
Yeah. And well, the framework I just used to share my personal story, by the way, is Marshall Ganz's Story of Self.
- [35:05]
C
Right.
- [35:06]
B
So the canonical sort of grassroots movement trainer, you know, from like the last 50 years. That's an example of story of Self. It's something I learned on the Obama. It's something we train our members on where we just launched our applications for our fellowship program. We brought Libby Schaff, the former mayor of Oakland, on to be our senior advisor and she's been developing this really incredible fellowship program. And that's one of the messaging frameworks we're going to be training them on is anybody can argue with like frameworks and facts. Nobody can argue with your personal story. And like that's like, that's like that's how Obama won his campaign. Like, let's bring back what works. You know, we don't have to necessarily reinvent the wheel here. But you said something interesting and you know, I shared my story. All of our members have a version of that story. Some are, you know, really heartbreaking. Some are just like, they had a beef. Like, everybody has a government beef. If you have a driver's license, you probably have a government beef. You've had some experience with government that was like less than ideal or arduous the difference is these people took the relatively extreme measure of deciding to like put themselves forward as a tribute in their local community and run for office. That's actually quite exceptional. You know, if you're in Congress, you're only in the district part of the time. You've got layers of people, you got staff in between. You people have to book appointment. You can be pretty selective local government. I mean, I was getting feedback in the drop off line at kindergarten, right. I was getting, you know, chased down at the grocery store. One of our members said before a contentious vote, she can't run in her city. She has to do her runs outside of her city because people will chase her down. So you say Democratic 100%. I mean, we are the layer closest to the people. We hear everything. It is all around you. It is your neighbors, it is the grocery store and you can't escape it. And so in that way it's like quite pure. It's like a quite pure level of democracy.
- [37:18]
A
So I'd be curious. So we've talked about yimbyism a bit and obviously one of the tension points that I know you're actually the perfect person to speak to this about. Cause like you're doing YIMBY action and you're doing abundance. That works. So you actually are in both camps and there has been a certain degree of, if we're focusing on sort of like skeptics or sort of people who critique the sort of abundance project, it's basically like, okay, yimbyism is great, abundance is different. It's just sort of like jumping on top of it. I do think, and this is where translating this to the doers will actually provide sort of a framework here. I do think abundance. So and I think Steve tallies does the best job of this. Right. So like what Steve is like, the whole abundance idea is not supplanting yimbyism, it's saying yimbyism like it was a 10 year project and still continues. But from a sort of big idea to people on the ground, to big conferences, to bipartisan acclimation. That's a 10 year story we could tell if we do the yimby conversation.
- [38:17]
B
Yeah.
- [38:18]
A
From Steve's telling, the abundance story is what if we took this idea of increasing supply and applied it to other areas as well. I think everyone will agree though, from an abundance perspective that the. And these things have to emerge over time. Right. Like, because even the way I just told that story, the whole yimbyism 10 year story didn't start start in 2013, 2014. Actually there was work that happened before that. So I would just be curious as someone who like kind of wrangles or helps organize the doers, if we think about the other areas where abundance could be useful. So for example, huge one, childcare. Oh, I. My wife and I, before we moved to Austin, we were in New York City. And our generic line of why we were going to have to leave New York City is, man, childcare here is a disaster. And when we move to the Austin suburbs, we move to the Austin excerpts. It's going to be a mecca. It's going to be cheap, it's going to be easy, it's going to be straightforward. No, it's not. Yeah, it is not. It is not. It is not. It is not even in like the relatively like cheaper suburbs in comparison to the East Coast. So I think once again, I'm not a policy expert so I'm not going to do this work. But from like a bottom up perspective, I sort of want to put out the bat signal of talk about child care because I love your point about how you're thinking of what the common sense to the storytelling. It's not just housing and conversations about zoning codes. It's babies and it's your children moving in. But when your children move in, like that impacts the local schools. Childcare comes in there. So I'd just be curious and you don't have to have the answer. This is more just like the bathroom opportunity. What should the sort of. We get paid to think big thoughts. We're trying to build frameworks. What are other areas that you just sort of organically talk to? So here's a good way to frame the question. What's been something maybe that an abundance lecture has told you. Oh, here's something I think about from an abundance perspective, but I haven't really found any work on it. Like another example of what I got, just to sort of give you some time to think here too is the abundance. Not the left of center legislator who brought the Jen Pauka Recoding America book. Her actual, take no offense, Derek and Ezra Recoding America and Abundance of different books. Like one is like a popularizing book, the other book is a popular book, but it also is like a guidebook. She was saying, I was really hoping that abundance would go into as like aggressive detail as Jen's book. She was like, I read Jen's book and I just have my next two years chartered out. Right. That was just like a. That was a great call to action. So what are some other call to actions for the policy community that we should think about?
- [40:55]
B
Yeah, well, first of all, what was interesting when I was interviewing new members to join, they were all obsessed with Jen, almost more so than Ezrin did.
- [41:04]
A
They were something I noticed.
- [41:06]
B
They're very interested in this because if you really want to do the outcomes thing, you learn pretty quickly. Policy won't get you there. I learned this. So I. I spent all of my political capital creating, like, the most progressive Bay Area ADU policy. I was like, that's going to be my hill that I die on. As a result, was no longer invited to the block barbecue party. It's okay. We moved on. Boy, are ADUs popular in my community. But let me tell you something. I went to build an ADU for my family years later, actually, when I was out of office. And what I found was I had worked on the wrong part of the problem. I had focused on the policy. I had not focused on the policy.
- [41:49]
A
Defined as you can have an adu. Is that the policy?
- [41:53]
B
Yeah. Not just you can, but there. Let me tell you. This is also why local government matters. We are really good at blocking things. So what was happening at that time? There was a shell game happening between the state and local. If you recall, California was one of the first states to implement a number of statewide ADU policies. But it had to be like 10. I mean, I don't even know how many there were.
- [42:13]
A
I'm sorry, not to interrupt, but could you define an adu? I don't do housing that much. I just want to make sure we get the term.
- [42:19]
B
And for the benefit of your audience. Yeah, absolutely. Accessory dwelling unit, AKA granny flat, AKA cottage. It's this tiny home that sits on your property. And they are wildly popular, by the way. It's almost always one of the best first policies if you're getting into housing, because it's. It's like adding value to your home. It's giving you flexible options. Right now it might be for like, housing a nanny later. It might be for your kid who, like, can't get housed or won't leave home later. It could be for you, the kid moves into the house. I mean, that's really like lifestyle flexible housing. So. And it's. It's the devil in the details. So it's not just making them legal then it's like there's all these poison pills you can put into a bill such that they're legal, but no one's going to build it because it's actually impossible because of how you've written the bill. So that's the policy side. Really took that as far as possible. Then I go to build one and I realized I had focused on the wrong part of the problem because my permitting process was a nightmare. It was a nightmare. And it added like six months to my process. And I was hearing this from other residents. And so this whole implement, this implementation piece is not to be glazed over. And when I look at our more sophisticated members, this is where they're putting their heart and soul into. And it's hard because culturally you're like, am I going to step on toes? I got to go in with staff. There's these weird power dynamics in local government. So a lot of our cities are city manager style, which means that the city council basically appoints a city manager and then everybody reports to that city manager. And so if say you've got like a development director who's not aligned with your housing philosophy, how do I member over here, play the influence game to get city manager to change what community development director is doing? That's the game we're talking about. Like this is 3D chess for people who are like working second jobs, raising kids, getting paid nothing. And by the way, nobody trains you on this. I mean, I happen to have a business background, so strategy came really natural to me. I'd managed people, I had had to let go of people.
- [44:36]
C
Right?
- [44:37]
B
I understood this, but there were people on my council in like service jobs who had never done anything like this. I mean, that's also why I feel we need to exist. It's nobody focuses on helping uplift local elected officials skill sets after they're elected. And it's actually a pretty hard job to do. But childcare is a huge one. What's great about interesting about childcare, if you squint, it looks exactly like housing has a lot of the same dynamics. It's basically illegal to have a childcare in a lot of places. So this idea of legalizing childcare, which basically means opening up more areas of your city where you could have one, a lot of people would be surprised to learn that they can't be everywhere. Infant childcare is particularly challenging. And in home childcares are really important for that. But say it's illegal in your area. In home, childcares also tend to be led by single mothers who are trying to take care of their own kids. So this is like huge tied up issue that something similar to rezoning can fix. Like some part of it's more complex than that. We've seen members do really great work on this. You know, Lauren McLean from Boise comes to mind. They did some incredible things, not just on the zoning side, but on the state capacity side where they looked at the process and why was it taking so long to get a childcare online? Oh, well, fingerprinting. You needed fingerprinting and like the bottleneck to fingerprinting was real. So they figured up a way to open that up. That's what I'm, that's what we're talking about here. Like that's a real world pain point.
- [46:15]
A
Solution and quick thing that's super important that I think abundance people need to make very clear because there's the whole. Is abundance just deregulation versus state capacity. And the point is, you're not saying we don't need to fingerprint people. Your point is we need to fingerprint people. But if we actually just sort of empirically lay out this process or how that goes, actually this is severely. We're not even doing the fingerprinting. It's like that. I think this is like a key. Like you didn't make this mistake, but it was just an opportunity to make this point, which is deregulation versus regulation isn't the question. The question is what is the actual. And this is why people should read Jen's book. The question is how do you actually go about the regulation where no one disagrees with the idea of fingerprinting people who are doing childcare facilities.
- [47:05]
B
I'm going to like watch your infant seems like a good idea. So childcare, I think another one we're not talking enough about that's going to hit us is elder care with the silver tsunami. I think that'll come at us pretty fast. And I think there, there are elements of why ADUs will be attractive for that. I mean, we just, we need the cost of housing to come down so that people who can afford to do the elder care job can like live near the elder. So that's an interesting one. Yimbyism often bleeds into multimodal transportation. And I think because similarly it sort of feels like, oh, we had single family homes. Oh, we had this street design. It can't be changed. No, it can be changed. So once you start to change things in the built environment, you realize how many other things aren't working that could be changed. We have two members from Falls Church, Virginia who are on their council. We've got the mayor, Letty Hardy and Justine Underhill who's on their city council. And you know, they've worked over time on adding not only 20% to their housing supply, but they've made falls Church a 15 minute city. And that means you can get anywhere, any essential service within 15 minutes. It was also named consequentially the healthiest city in the US and they did that using the same sort of rinse and repeat, working on both housing and transit. And, and it has all these amazing externalities. It turns out the one that no one's talking about in a structured manner that is also going to hit us very hard will be energy abundance. Looking at where we're headed with AI, we have members like actually those two in states like Virginia. Virginia is a data center hub, right. They're going to experience this pain point faster than the rest of us. And what's tricky about that is it's so predictable, right? If you just look at like a spreadsheet and a chart and a graph, it's like we get here, we get there, this is going to happen. And it looks a lot like this other tipping point. So I think another thing the movement should be doing is really thoughtfully getting ahead of those issues instead of waiting for them to come to a tipping point. You know, I served on the Peninsula Clean Energy, which in our county in California you have these choice aggregators where you can opt in to have clean energy that you're paying for on your bill. And we, we were moving towards an all clean energy and the board didn't want to include nuclear in the mix. And because I had a business background, I was like, hey, so actually the chart doesn't work out without nuclear. Like you're not going to get there with solar. And. Or I was like, could we just like go and review the Germany France case study, please? Like this has been, this is sorted, right? That conversation is not happening yet at any local or state level in any meaningful way. And that's another one I would love to see there be more energy and resources around. So. But you know, you said DMV at one point earlier, that's another issue. So we've got a member, Tyler Journant in Missoula, Montana and he was the county clerk. Okay. And Tyler had a remit for the dmv. He was responsible for the dmv. And when he came in, the DMV had an hour long wait which feels like almost good, right? Like typical or good. And he did again this sort of rinse and repeat. Looking at the process going in, literally observing people and taking notes, it's now three minute wait and it has a 97% satisfaction rate. I mean, I'm like, Tyler, you may want to run for president. I, I don't know anybody is upset with the idea of their DMV having that. So, like, it can be done. And how do we take something like that? We actually have a case study coming out on soon, so other people can take that. How do you take something like that and just scale it everywhere? Like, how can that not be populist? Like giving me a three minute dmv. Wait, how can that not be something the general public would want?
- [51:17]
C
Right.
- [51:18]
B
It seems.
- [51:19]
A
No, I think what's great about that too is that I. What kind of frustrates me just sort of observing from the sidelines a lot of these sort of, what should politicians kind of look like? Because from the perspective of like Tyler's story, that's an action oriented person. This is a person who's going. And I think just the reason why I'm so obsessed with this storytelling and personal narrative direction thing as it's adjacent to policy, it's informed by policy. But if anything, if Tyler's running for office, for his next stage in his career, if he wants to go that route, it's not that he is taking Ezra and Derek's book and putting it on everyone's doorstep. It's that he or Jen's book from the state capacity perspective, it's that the way that someone would think about him is, oh, he's that dude who just fixed the dmv. Or he's this person very aggressive. I always have to bring in history, but the historical example I'm always obsessed with is when Theodore Roosevelt was police commissioner of New York City, before he became governor of New York and before the Rough Riders and before this was after the Civil Service Commission, but before the like really big historical things. He made police reform a huge part of his brand. So he would go out at night with famous progressive journalist and they would catch policemen who were going into, I love the 19th century Victorianism. Houses of ill repute on the job.
- [52:57]
B
Or be drinking on the street.
- [52:59]
A
And then Jacob Reese would write about how Theodore Roosevelt had very big, very shiny white teeth for the period. So they would say, if you were a policeman absconding on the job, your worst nightmare was seeing a pair of spectacles and flashing white teeth in the middle of the night. That would make you focus on your work. That is a story about state capacity and police reform, but that was really a story that then embodies what Theodore Roosevelt is. This person, this man of action. I think if abundance could think of itself as this sort of like, hey, the abundance takeaway. If you're sort of a political figure. I know some of you are listening to this episode, but my takeaway from this abundance conversation is there is just this actual thing where you can do things that are clear and that are obvious and will tell to your point about personal narratives will tell a story. You want an elected official to know about this. Like, you know, obviously we're, you know, Kamala Harris's book is about to come out and you know, we're gonna go into all the sort of like, you know, was this the right move or is that not the right move? But something I always think about is the. She had a housing plan that said we're going to build 3 million new homes. And you know, I think that was a good policy to pursue. But the problem with that is, was, and once again, regardless of like whether you're pro or anti Kamala Harris, was she a politician who I think embodied the idea of being this person who's gonna get homes built?
- [54:21]
B
No. Yeah.
- [54:22]
A
I think this is true across all these different categories. Like Donald Trump gets so much street cred by being rightly or wrongly associated with this person at a personal level who does things. So I think if Donald Trump were to say, especially in 2015, I'm the builder guy, we're going to build all these homes, people would take that seriously. So I just think that it's so important that politicians think what I'm trying to say, if abundance isn't walk around with the gospel of Ezra Klein, what I'm trying to say is there are some ideas and some policies that if you merge of your own personal story, you could do something with it.
- [54:55]
B
Yeah. I want to give you two more here. First of all, there's a leadership was the Doris Kearns Goodwin book Leadership, Leadership.
- [55:03]
A
And Turbulent Times is one of my favorite books.
- [55:06]
B
Like anybody can learn from that book. I, I read that actually after I left office and it's just how big this is. I have a ton of books that I. It's. There's a repatriation once you leave office to becoming a normal person. And I feel like I can develop a 12 step program. But I digress. I want to do one more issue and then I, I want to do a wish for the pundits as well. One more issue we didn't cover. But you said Steve Telles. I think Steve does the best job of giving light to the issue of medical abundance. And that is also one we are not talking enough about, and that one is really closely linked to capture. I also feel capture as an idea is not. We don't talk about it enough in abundance because capture is linked so closely with like, getting elected and funding and political will. And it's a reality, and we need to talk about that as the reality that it is. So much of medical abundance is tied up in licensure, which by and large happens at the state level. And so that's an interesting issue that also impacts people's lives very real ways, very dollars and cents in kitchen table ways. My other wish for the pundits is, and this is like, this would be like, directed at maybe Ezra and Derek, but you know, the California high speed rail thing, it's like, okay, we get it, it's been plain, but we can't even build low speed rail. So one of our members is Corey Mason. He's the mayor of Racine, Wisconsin. Racine is the most impoverished city in Wisconsin. I happen to be from Wisconsin. So when I was home this summer, he had just joined our group and so I drove down to meet with him and it was really heartbreaking. I had started my career in Racine and I had started a nonprofit dedicated to getting more young people to stay. And it was kind of like realizing that it had failed.
- [57:03]
C
Right.
- [57:04]
B
It had further declined as a community. And he was facing this medical abundance issue to the tune of like, there was one doctor to every 5,000 residents. But he also had this other issue of how do I create more jobs and opportunity in circulation because Chicago's just down the road. And the solution was Racine, Kenosha, Wisconsin and Chicago have been trying to get a rail line that already exists put back online. And guess how long the process is. The NEPA process, the environmental process. It's 20 years.
- [57:41]
A
I would say four years.
- [57:42]
B
But 20 is 20 year process to get an existing rail line put back on. So I wish we could spend. I know, I know the coastal cities. I know the book is around the, you know, the liberal elite. That's a community that voted for Trump. That's a community in the heartland, that's. That is economically impacted by not having the opportunity of this treasury. And it's low speed rail. I would love to see us focus more time and attention on these sort of like heartland stories and not just the, like, shiny. Yeah, I mean, that does bum me out too, right? Like, I voted for that. But hey, you know, this is the reality for like an impoverished community in the Midwest that turned to Trump. So those are the stories I'd love to see us elevating more of and we, you know, we, we see ourselves as being a great source for the pundits. Like, you want to meet these people, you want to learn more, we can connect you with them. These stories exist. They need to reach out.
- [58:42]
C
Right?
- [58:42]
B
They need to be interested in learning and not just proclaiming and declaring if they really want to get it right. And that's something that we think we can help with.
- [58:50]
A
No, that's an excellent place to end because you also just really illustrated the. Because one of the other frustrating abundance critiques that I get where it came from because to your point, like you get a big book and then there's the shiny examples. But I think a lot of pundits saw and these weren't just sort of lefties, but they saw the California high speed rail story and the focus on like everything bagel liberalism in San Francisco. And one takeaway I got from Stone Centrist were okay, abundance makes sense in California and New York, but it has nothing to say for the rest of the country and was so grant with the example view closed with is that is a story that has to do with Wisconsin and the heartland. And once again though, this is where we're not going to solve this by commissioning a someone's going to commission this book. But like a book about abundance that's focused on like Wisconsin? Like no, no, like that's that it's not going to come from punditry. It's going to come from like that local like elected leader level who's focused on this thing here. So that's a great place to end with the message we're trying to put it forward. Giselle, this has been really great. Can you give any shout outs to where folks should go next? They want to learn more about your work?
- [59:55]
B
Yeah, absolutely. We have two websites. We have abundancenetwork.com and then we have abundanceelected.com, but you can also get to Abundance Elected through the the main website. We are always interested in looking for members who feel aligned. Actually one of our our first member came to us because she heard Misha speak on your podcast like a year ago.
- [60:20]
A
Can you say that out loud for the various 501c theory alignment funders who I'm the reason why that's actually I this person came to me, she's sort of like, hey, like can I be cringe and just tell you a story? I was sort of like, no. My entire pitch for Niskanon and all these places to like fund and support this podcast is like, this is a pun. Like, obviously, like, views matter and engagement matters, but, like, I actually think there's just such a void that we're talking about here that actually just doing a, like, niche conversation and getting a person like that to reach out, like, was. Was. Was really huge. And she also noted her husband was a realignment listener and then listen to that episode. So that was sort of like just my entire existence. So thank you so much.
- [61:04]
B
It's great. And it's not just the electeds. We have the professionals network, we have the donor network and people who are interested in starting a chapter. We're. We're not done. We're looking for all the ways people want to get involved and standing up programs that help them do that. You said op EDS earlier, but literally on our professionals website, it says we want to move people from op EDS to outcomes so we care about people who want to make this happen. We will help you find a piece of this movement and we'll help you contribute. That's really what we exist to do. So eager to hear from more of your listeners.
- [61:40]
A
Excellent place to end, Shel. It's been a great podcast. Thank you for joining me on the realignment.
- [61:45]
B
Thanks, Marshall. Take care.