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Vote like your life depends on it… because it does

As we head into another election shitsh–– I mean cycle, it’s more important than ever to starte engaging in the civic process in more ways than just voting. Voting is of course, one of the most important liberties we have as citizens, but if we want to see any meaningful and lasting change, we have to get involved outside of the ballot box, too.

In today’s 4th of July release, we’re rejoined by Emily Tisch Sussman, former DNC political strategist and consultant, to talk about how to increae voter turnout, get your friends and family engaged, volunteer, and make sure your vote counts (literally and metaphorically). 

In this episode, Emily breaks down:

• What elections are coming up

• What the most common voting mistakes are and how to avoid them so your ballot counts

• How to volunteer in both partisan and non-partisan ways

• The most important thing to remember when it comes to our representatives

Links: 

She Pivots Podcast

Emily’s Instagram

How To Save Democracy Episode

Check Your Voting Registration

Run for Something

Moms Demand Action

Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Swing Left

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Transcript:

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Every single elected official works for you. You may not think you have the ability to connect with them, talk to them. They work for you, they have to talk to you, they have to meet with you, they cannot avoid you. I was talking with some other moms out here and I was like, we’re going to go to the congressman’s office and talk to him. And they’re like, “Why would he talk to us?” And I was like, “Because he works for us. That’s why.” You may not feel that what you’re feeling is like enough to be talking to them. It is. They have to listen to you.

Tori Dunlap:

Hi, financial feminists. Welcome back to the show. I am always hesitant to say Happy 4th of July. It’s just like a weird holiday. That’s why we’re doing an episode about it. If you, like me and many of our other team members here at Her First $100K have mixed feelings about 4th of July, this episode is for you. If you are about to walk into a 4th of July barbecue or maybe just left a 4th of July barbecue and had weird conversations about guns with your uncle. Or just again, feel weird about flying an American flag when you’re like not super excited about what America’s doing right now. Then we’re going to hopefully give you some really actionable ways to transform that uncomfortability, that anger, that frustration into political, social, economic change. And that’s what we’re doing here. We are releasing this episode on 4th of July, which is a holiday that just feels stranger and stranger as the years go by.

Especially since a place that we were once taught was the beacon of freedom. And the best country in the world has done so much to also strip the freedoms from so many people. We are just over a year out from the overturn of Roe v. Wade and we are three years from the Black Lives Matter resurgence protests after the murder of George Floyd. And we’re also in this year where gender-affirming care is at stake for already vulnerable populations. And it seems like shootings, especially mass shootings happen more than ever. We invited Emily Tisch Sussman, a previous guest on the show to come back and join us for today’s episode. Emily is podcast host, women’s empowerment and family policy advocate, leading democratic political strategist, contributing editor to Marie Claire and mother of three. Emily is the host of the award-winning podcast She Pivots, which features women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success.

After leaving her fast-paced job as the Vice President of Campaigns at the largest democratic think tank in DC, the Center for American Progress, she learned to redefine her own idea of success when she left the career she thought she would have forever. Emily is a seasoned host interviewing countless leaders and influential women including Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, Stacey Abrams, and Sophia Bush, to name a few. We’re so excited to have Emily back on the show. And we also will link a bunch of episodes that we’ve done previously about voting, about saving democracy, about getting politically involved, including Emily’s previous episode down below, so please don’t let this be the first and last time that you engage with these topics. All right, before we dive into our interview with Emily, a couple stats about voting. I just think this is really interesting. We talk in the interview about the importance of voting. And I know you’ve been told your entire life, vote, vote, vote.

It’s so important. And you may be feeling very disillusioned with voting. You may be thinking, well, what’s it matter? But the truth is, as Emily says in this episode, the people we are voting for work for us, they work for the people. And so one of the biggest ways that we can impact change is not only by voting ourselves, by making sure that our ballot actually gets counted, but by making sure our communities and our friends and family vote as well. First, the national election rate, which is actual voters per a hundred eligible voters in 2022 was 52.2%. This was the second highest rate that the Census Bureau has recorded for a midterm in four decades, which means that more and more people are voting, which is incredible. The highest was in 2018, so four years before at 53.4%. And the 2020 presidential election meanwhile recorded an extremely high rate of 66.3%.

What does this tell us? It tells us that people are activated and are voting on both sides, right? A couple other interesting facts about voting. Among broad age groups, 18 to 29 year olds. I’m in that, I’m 28, about to be 29. We showed a noticeable decline in turnout since 2018. So if you are 18 to 29, I need you voting. I’ll be right there with you. This is one of the most powerful things and of course that we can not only do is vote, but specifically for our generation, right? Millennials, younger millennials, gen Z, we are voting for the kind of world and the kind of country we would like to see as we continue to age. And on the flip side of that, the oldest group, which was over the age of 65, they voted more. Which means that with these older folks who are typically more conservative, they are having a bigger sway on these policies.

So if you would like to counteract that, you need to make sure to vote. What do I take from this? One, voting is important, obviously. Two, voting in not just national elections, midterm elections, your local elections incredibly important. Yes. Who we determine to be the president of the United States. Very important. I would argue the things that have a much bigger impact on your day-to-day life are the things at your state and local level, right? As well as the midterm elections. And if you have a particular issue that you care about, we’re covering the big three that I think are on a lot of people’s minds, which is abortion access and gender identity, gender freedom. The second is gun rights and really gun violence. And the third is the environment and the climate crisis. If you care about one of those things or all of those things, voting, protesting, donating, canvassing, getting involved in some way, even if it’s small, is going to be the way we shift the entire society as a whole.

And lastly, again, if you’re like me and you live in a place that is blue and is always blue, yes vote, continue to vote, support those policies and also spend some of your energy in places that are really contentious. We are so excited to have Emily joining us for an even deeper conversation. Let’s go ahead and get into it. But first a word from our sponsors. I’m like, you get me started on any, I’m like, abortion is a financial issue. Let’s talk about why. But hi, I’m so excited to see you back. You’re still rocking the purple hair. I feel like you’ve gone summer purple now. Is that accurate?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

I’m so happy you recognize that. Yes. Lavender is my summer purple and deep purple is my winter purple, so thank you so much for recognizing it.

Tori Dunlap:

We had a conversation I think last time you came home on the show of the different purples and what that looked like. I think you had mentioned you took your family to the beach and one of your children was like, why is your hair not summer purple?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Yeah, all three children. It was a big
topic of discussion of why is mommy’s hair the wrong purple for this weather?

Tori Dunlap:

I’ve really appreciate that they’re on top of it though, like that’s the dream.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

They keep me on my toes, they keep me young. I can’t remember what movie that’s from.

Tori Dunlap:

I don’t even know either. Thank you for coming back. We are talking today around really 4th of July and how we can become more involved in electoral process. Literally in my company Slack today, one of our team members posted, does anybody else absolutely hate 4th of July? And all of us were just like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I think for folks that maybe don’t feel the most excited about America all the time, it’s a kind of interesting holiday where you’re like, I am very thankful for the freedoms I do have and also this bullshit. I just want to start, what are your opinions about 4th of July? What are your opinions about these national holidays? And as a fellow progressive, how have you been able to balance the feelings of Wow, we got a long way to go with also, I’m thankful for what I do have?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Well, I have to tell you, I love the parade in fanfare.

Tori Dunlap:

Oh sure.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

My day starts in a real high with the big parade fanfare situation. Last year I chased the Boy Scouts down the parade to get their phone number, because I was so into it. And by the way, I’ve texted them all year and they cannot tell me when they’re meeting, so maybe it’s personal, maybe they can see it, sense it in me, that I’m a progressive to my core and not everyone’s aligned on July 4th.

Tori Dunlap:

It might be the purple hair, just maybe that.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

I know sometimes I think that, the Let’s Go Brandon Firefighters that are next to me. I’m like, “But what if they knew?” And then finally someone said to me, “Emily, you have purple hair. They know. They just think you’re one of the ones who’s nice to them.” Look, it’s obviously complicated, but I do like to think about the day as a day that I spend with my family, whether it’s my kids, my immediate family, my chosen family. But it is a day that we get and it’s beautiful weather and we do get to just kind of use it as a freebie, almost like a summer snow day to reset our feelings and be out of the hubbub. And that I do really appreciate. I love when it falls. I love that we have it. It always feels kind of special to me. I also like turning kind of any outfit into a costume, so if we have good outfit parameters, then we can really go nuts.

Tori Dunlap:

This is the theater background in you. I understand it very well. Yes.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Yes. Really anything can be a costume if you try hard enough.

Tori Dunlap:

Agreed.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

So great outfits on that one. I don’t love how they hand out little portable or disposable American flags because I do actually really feel wrong throwing them away. But also I really hate clutter, so at one point we just had a giant box of American flags, the little ones that give out at the parade. I didn’t love that.

Tori Dunlap:

It, I think is against the official rule of the flag is that you have to dispose of it in a certain way. If you ever read, I don’t know why in elementary school they made us read that it was the rules of conduct around the American flag.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

I don’t know what the rules are, but I know that exists because my husband was in the army, so that’s like a thing. Actually, so then I made him take responsibility for all of the flags that I was like, I want no responsibility for them. You either hide them or you keep them, but they’re not coming home with us. And if they are, this is what I said last year, I was like, “If they are, you got to figure out the way to dispose of them.”

Tori Dunlap:

Totally. For me, on 4th of July and any sort of national holiday, I’m always like, “Okay, what one thing can I be doing to fulfill my civic duty of supporting a cause I believe in? And I think one of the easiest things we can do is understanding our elections, becoming registered to vote, thinking more about getting involved, especially at the local level. We’ve talked about that a lot on the show. What is the upcoming timeline for elections? What primaries are coming up? What does that look like?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

There’s a couple primaries in state this summer and in the fall, the biggest ones that are going to be this year are going to be mayoral, and city, and town. Those are going to be the big ones that are coming up this year. It’s really kind of all about setting for next year in the big Senate and congressional, there’s been states that have been redistricted. There’s obviously the presidential, but there’s going to be opportunity for the house to flip and potentially the Senate to be held by Democrats. And there is a very realistic possibility that Democrats can flip the house back to Democrat control if Biden is reelected. The margin is really small that Republicans won. And actually that margin is districts that Biden won and there’s actually enough in New York to flip control of the house. I don’t think that people necessarily think about that, but that there’s enough districts that are represented by a Republican member of Congress right now that Biden won pretty handily in a lot of them, in New York to flip the House of Representatives back.

And then if Democrats control the House, Senate and presidency, then we can start to see all these incredibly important policies that kind of got dropped out of the Build Back Better Bill pieces like national paid leave, the Pregnancy Fairness Workers Discrimination Act did go into effect just now. But there’s so much more that we can be doing. We will actually see a right to reproductive autonomy in law. It’s never going to come from the courts again. And Democrats controlling the House, Senate and presidency, no matter how you feel about any other issue, if you ever want to control your body in any reproductive way, again, having Democrats in the House, Senate and presidency is the only way it’s going to happen.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah, I mean, let’s talk about that. I think the issue that is top of my mind and top of most of my friends with the uterus’s mind is reproductive rights. The right to terminate a pregnancy. I was
literally at a Planned Parenthood luncheon like two weeks ago just talking about all of this, I don’t know, stress, but also all of the work that’s happening. Can you give us, I mean we’re recording this at the end of June in 2023, can you give us a status update of what’s going on, what victories have we had, and also what have we lost?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Status update is that we’re a year out from the Dobbs decision, which is when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the right to reproductive autonomy for women, the underlying right to privacy, so we’re a year out from that decision. What we saw is that the lawmaking went back to the states, so it went totally state by state with whether or not you are not just allowed to have abortion. But how and when, including medical abortions, like pills, what doctors can advise you if you are in any sort of pregnancy or miscarriage or carrying something that is no longer viable, the things that doctors can advise you have changed and it is totally gone state by state. And look, I think we were all thinking the sky would fall if Roe was overturned. And I actually think it’s maybe a little worse than we thought it was going to be because states didn’t pause.

They went immediately, not just a six-week ban, they went to full out bans with no exception for rape, no exception for incest. Even in the gray areas, abortion practitioners and clinics are nervous to be practicing because they don’t know when they’re going to have their license revoked, when they’re going to be sued, when they’re going to end up in jail. Of course, these extreme circumstance need to have laws that protect women, but also women just need to be able to make their own decision about how and when they have a baby. We don’t need to be going to all of these extremes about why you need to have bodily autonomy and reproductive autonomy and it is gone. And even for those that live in blue states and think they are protected, the Anti Women’s Body Caucus is not stopping. This was not like, oh, we got enough. We overturned Roe. They’re moving forward on trying to limit the use of pills being sent across states. They’re going to start prosecuting doctors in other states. If someone travels to a state to get an abortion, it is really very live.

I’d say the good news is that Americans as a whole do actually support, like it always kind of hovers in the mid-seventies of Americans as a whole do actually support reproductive autonomy. And whenever the laws swing in one direction or the other being more permissible or more strict, the public tends to go in the other direction. And the laws have swung so far in becoming strict and abortions being inaccessible, public opinion is going more and more towards, oh shit, we actually need to be able to get abortions. And we just lost that right. I do think there’s going to be a little bit of maybe a correction where lawmakers start to hear, wow, we actually went too far. Unfortunately, women are going to die, babies are going to be born that they cannot support. And there’s going to be a lot of unintended consequences in the meantime. But I would say that’s the one piece, is the silver lining is that the louder people get to say this is unacceptable, the more lawmakers will step back and say, okay, I went a little bit too far. And to start to change the laws.

Tori Dunlap:

Okay. A couple things to follow up on what you just said. One, I feel like even in the midterms we saw that, like Republicans, I think were expecting this red wave. And what happened was actually people came out and droves to support and to protect abortion. Do you feel like that, is that strong enough to carry the left through 2024? Because I’ve been listening to a lot of the podcasts and a lot of the shows about is that a strong enough issue to continue moving people to vote and especially to vote progressive?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Look, women are real pissed.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Look, we never realistically thought we would lose this right. And there’s a lot of us that grew up with it. It’s not just we’re super young people, there’s a lot of us that never actually thought we’d lose this right. So I do think the more that Democrats can hammer it home, I think they should be running on we will actually respect you and protect you and get the government out of your business. I think as it pertains to abortion, as it pertains to gender-affirming care, I do think that the more Democrats can do that, then you stand for something. And then I think you also run on your track record, which is the infrastructure stuff, the paid leave stuff, the kind of nitty-gritty that has actually come to fruition under the Biden administration. It doesn’t get a lot of catchy headlines, but it’s actually the nitty-gritty of the government can function.

I think running on those two tracks are the strongest way to actually get people to engage, to turn out. But the other piece, which I know you see among your listeners is guns. People are saying this is an unacceptable way.

Tori Dunlap:

That was my next question. Yep.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Yeah, and climate is the other piece, but like on guns, it’s actually super interesting.

Tori Dunlap:

That was my third question.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Oh yeah, okay. We can get to each of them. But on guns, I think for a lot of young moms, and I put myself in that category of moms with young kids, even if you are not motivated yourself by reproductive freedom, which is unmanageable to me, but what we are seeing is there is more engagement among moms of young kids on guns than there is on reproductive freedom. And I had trouble making sense of that, but I mean, I felt like you would give up everything for your kid. You want to protect your kid even more than you want to protect yourself. I feel like sometimes these political strategy conversations end up coming down to, oh, it’s guns, it’s abortion. Women will turn out and they just kind of say the same things over and over. But I think those are the reasons that those things matter, that you will engage people because you have to engage people on two levels when you think about turning them, I’m sorry I’m going back to being a political strategist, not being a voter.

But you have to engage voters on two levels. One, you have to make their decision. You have to get them on your side of the candidate of the ballot initiative of whatever the thing is they’re voting on. And then you have to have them feel committed enough to actually go through with voting. It’s not easy to vote in America. It should be a lot easier. If you could think through all the steps to make sure that you can actually make sure your voter registration is up-to-date, make sure that whoever typed it in didn’t put a typo in, make sure that they didn’t purge you from the voter rolls because someone else in your state with the same name died, and so now they think you’re a dead person. All of those things happen all the time, by the way. And that’s why whe
n campaigns talk to you, they start with are you registered to vote? And did you check? Because even if you think you’re registered, the State Voter Board of Elections will purge you all the time.

Tori Dunlap:

Oh, it happened, not that, but it happened to me. I realized last election, my ballot went to my previous address and it never got to me. And I sat there waiting, and waiting, and waiting and I was registered to vote, but realized my address was wrong. And so I didn’t get a chance to vote. And it was so frustrating and it was also on me. I should have looked into it further. But I feel like that’s the thing that happens is its even the well-intentioned of like, yeah, I’m going to register to vote, I’m going to sign up to vote. Yeah, you mistype your name, it’s going to a wrong address. I moved a lot in the past year and a half, and so it went to a address I was at previous, and so I’d never got it. Yeah, that’s I think the easiest thing that somebody can do listening, it’s just not only register to vote, but make sure it’s like correct. Make sure it’s going to get to you on time and make sure you fill it out and turn it in on time too.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Yeah, totally. And there’s really good programs that help you stay on top of, like vote.org is who I always go to as a resource. They’re so good about knowing where you are and knowing what elections are coming up in your district to say, Hey, the early vote is coming up. Have you thought about early voting? Have you checked your address? I am a voter is another good one, but I always use vote.org because they’re really good about the reminders. Yeah, I mean I think that young people now move, I think an average of seven times by the time they’re 29. What is the chance that the last address you were registered at is the current address by the time the election rolls back around, right? It’s the fastest thing you can do, is just check.

Tori Dunlap:

The other thing that I’m thinking about with these issues, and you were mentioning of course it’s a political strategist, how do we get people to vote on these specific issues? It feels very immediate. I think that that’s the other thing is for both sides, Republicans are largely using, I think, gender identity and transgender issues to get people to the polls in a way that strips folks of their rights for their own gender and their own identity. I think on the flip side, there’s something really powerful about the urgency of we can see our rights getting taken away. We can see abortion getting removed. We can see this threat for transgender people. We literally see shootings especially in schools every single day. Is that part of it? Is that like the urgency? And how do we use that sense of urgency to actually make lasting change beyond just one election cycle?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Well, I think it’s consistency. The process is slow on purpose. There’s a lot that an executive can do, so a president, a governor, a mayor, a county executive, because they can just kind of sign it, but big things have to be moved by Congress, moved by your state legislature. It’s slow on purpose so that it’s deliberate, so it is the consistency. And that is on us, to stay consistent and to stay with it and to keep reminding them that we are there. We were chatting right before we started recording about the power of the NRA. I worked on guns for seven years and I ran the only campaign that defeated the NRA at a federal level for the last two decades. And basically the biggest thing is that it’s not that there’s so many people that want no gun laws, it’s that they’re really loud and they’re really consistent.

They’re just really consistent, so what a lot of the senator and there’s offices would say to me at the time is they would say, look, we’re never going to expect to get more calls into our office on your side. We just need to not get killed on the numbers. Can you just get it a little more even just so I feel like I’m not making the total wrong decision for my state? We just need to keep showing up. And that’s not the easiest message to hear where you’re like, oh my God, my life happens. I’m exhausted. How am I going to keep at this intensity level for a prolonged period of time? And the answer is, you can’t. And so you dip in and you dip out when you can and you do what’s right for you and what makes sense. This used to be my whole life, this used to be my whole job.

And then I had three kids in three years and my political career took a total nose dive. And now I’m on the local school board, I’m involved in super local elections, I worked on our local ballot initiative for affordable housing, and I’m starting a Mom’s Demand Action chapter. It changes, what it looks like changes all the time, but just knowing that the things that you care about, I think you need to have confidence in the system. And it’s hard for all of us to have confidence in the system right now. And I think that’s what keeps people out of it is they say, well, why should I keep engaging when I’m not seeing results? And kind of the answer is that, one, the system’s not great, but also we need to be really consistent and really loud, and that’s not comfortable for everybody. And so you have to find your different role.

One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give to people if they’re not comfortable engaging in election or something they feel is controversial is offer to be childcare for somebody who can. What’s kept me from knocking on doors a million times, the fact that it looks like I’m tugging a circus behind me, I hit two doors and I’m like, well, this was fine. We’re getting the fuck home. Go to a campaign office and say like, Hey, I’m willing to just be a little daycare center here, so anybody who wants to volunteer, I can watch their kids while they’re going out. Everybody can find a role they are comfortable with, but having elected officials know that these are things that we care about is the thing that is going to make change. They know in elections, but they also have to know off-cycle.

Tori Dunlap:

I think about the resurgence of BLM in 2020, and there were plenty of people, actually, myself included, who I was not the most comfortable going out and protesting. That was just, I was just this, and that’s my own privilege and I know that, but it was something that was really scary for me. I had other friends who would do that. I was literally staying at home. I was right by my phone in case they needed anything. They had my number on their arm, I was donating, I was sending food. There’s ways that you can support movements if you don’t want to be the person who’s directly directly in it or like you said, it feels weird or it feels controversial for you. I love that idea of either supporting the people who are going out there or finding a different way to show up. I think that’s great.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

I think that’s a really good example. Look, similarly, I had a three week old baby when the protests were happening. The fear of COVID was very real and that would, it just didn’t. And I spent my whole life protesting. I love a protest, but it just did not feel like it was in the cards for me at that moment. And I love those examples you gave, having your number written on their arm if they need anything. And maybe it’s just being the emotional support to someone to say, oh, you just went out and did th
is thing. Do you want to talk about it?

Tori Dunlap:

It was certainly traumatic, right? And you got tear-gassed. And that’s what happened is plenty of my friends had that happen and we had long conversations about it. Yep, totally.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

I mean, you were an incredible support to them and that was big. It can also be something more minor like a friend, so I mentioned last election cycle, I worked on the Affordable Housing Initiative out here to try to increase our access to affordable housing. And so a friend of mine and I took the morning, she’d never canvased. We took the morning and we walked up and down Main Street and we asked, does anybody have a business? Can we talk to your employees about the fact that this thing is happening and there’s an opportunity for them to commute less and actually get housing in this neighborhood? And so one place in particular said,” This is really interesting. Can I bring everyone out from the kitchen to talk to you?”

Tori Dunlap:

Cool.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

And we were like, “Yeah, we’d love to.”

Tori Dunlap:

That’s why we’re here.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Yeah. And so we stayed there for a little while and talked with them, but then afterwards, we still then had, when we even were walking around, we still have little kids. We needed another friend to go pick up our kids from school.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

And that person was not as comfortable coming and doing the front facing talking. But had they not done that, we would’ve not been able to go out and have those conversations with those voters. There’s something that everybody can do. And voting itself, voter registration is nonpartisan, it’s not controversial, and I cannot stress this enough. People do need to check their registration all the time.

Tori Dunlap:

We’re mentioning getting involved. Again, we’re trying to make as quick hit of this as possible. If you are sitting here and you’re listening and you’re like, “I want to get involved.” I think obviously first thing is to register to vote and make sure your registration’s correct. What other volunteer, canvassing, donation opportunities are there for the issues you care about?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

I would say find the issue and then figure out who’s working on it locally. I’ve mentioned like I am working on Mom’s Demand Action because we don’t have a chapter here, and I live in a Republican congressional district where our Republican member of Congress just reiterated his right that everybody should be able to have access to massive guns, so we need to do better organizing here. And quite frankly, I see this as an opening to be able to engage a lot of people that aren’t politically engaged. I was like, here I am. I am a national political strategist. I’m amazing at this. I’m going to work on this local housing initiative. And I did not get a lot of people involved. I really failed with a lot of people. And I think that starting in a different place, like starting around safety for our kids, I actually think is going to be a new place, a new entry point to get people involved.

Again, I would look at vote.org. Just make sure it gets on your calendar, so you know when things are happening, there’s a lot of great organizations that are doing stuff around choice. I’d say Swing Left really has very good resources for people to find a variety of ways that they can find the thing that feels good to them. And even just find out when your local elections are, so much can happen at the local level. I mean, these school boards are being overrun by Moms of Liberty and they’re making crazy policies. And how many people show up in every election, like 200, 400? It’s really not a lot of people. And I’d say the lowest hanging fruit thing that you can do is just say what you care about. The more you normalize caring about things, other people will be open about what they care about as well.

And it will get to that sense of community. As human beings, we’re always trying to get to, people want to be in community. And so if you’re normalizing asking people, Have you registered to vote yet? Or what does your company do for election day? Or again, I have people with young kids. I know a lot of people that have personal staff as in a nanny or a babysitter. Did you ask them if they are registered? Do you give them time off on election day to be able to go vote? That just normalizing that conversation is probably the strongest thing that you can do. I don’t know if there’s anywhere that you can donate that can run an ad that is better than somebody seeing someone stand up in their community, not even in a loud way, just saying, I make sure that everyone around me has information and access to vote.

Tori Dunlap:

Yep. And I think to your point about picking the issue or picking the thing that really matters to you, I think it’s also, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed to the point where you’re like, I either need to run for office or I do nothing, right? Now running for office is great, especially we’ve had many conversations on this show, Amanda Litman from Run for Something, you on our previous episode about the importance and the power of running for office, especially local office. If that’s in the cards for you, great. I think most people are like, I can’t do that. Okay, then find one thing you can do. For me, it was phone banking.

I literally sat on my bike desk and just, I’m pedaling and I’m just making phone calls and I’m just like, Hey, are you registered to vote? Who are you voting for? There are so many places to get involved. Maybe you can’t donate your time. Maybe you can donate some money. Maybe like you said, you can care give for other folks who are doing that, and there is no too small action. Just do something, make some sort of change, or do some sort of thing. Especially today, when we’re thinking about America and patriotism, what is just the tiniest thing you can do to get started? Rather than feeling like, oh, it’s either, yeah, I become president or I don’t involve myself at all.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Or nothing at all.

Tori Dunlap:

Right.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

I’ll give you the lowest possible hanging fruit thing that I did when I was on maternity leave, so you can not just phone bank. You can text bank.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah, yeah.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

So you can
text. First of all, talk about low hanging fruit, but then also when I would be up all night with the baby, I became a super volunteer. Thank you so much. Very proud of that. Because I’m doing something, because I was home with the baby, so I was texting all day and then I was up in the middle of the night when no one else was up, so they gave me the manager password to go in and clear out all the hate texts, all the spam.

Tori Dunlap:

And you’re like, you need that, that’s helpful. Yeah.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

You know what? I was like the overnight in there, make good use of that newborn maternity leave.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Okay. As we’re wrapping up, what organizations can we connect with both directly and indirectly that are related to elections, that are related to causes we care about? You mentioned Moms Demand Action. What other organizations? Oh, vote.org. Anything else?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Swing Left is doing great stuff. Planned Parenthood has built a really good political machine, and I don’t have a particularly favorite one on climate. I think the League of Conservation Voters always puts up a good show.

Tori Dunlap:

There’s a couple environmental justice organizations too. We can drop them all in the show notes too for folks. One last thing. If someone is ending this episode, leaving feeling inspired, what is one soapbox thing you have to say to them as they go eat a hotdog on 4th of July?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Every single elected official works for you. You may not think you have the ability to connect with them, talk to them. They work for you. They have to talk to you, they have to meet with you, they cannot avoid you. They will feel it on election day, potentially. But I was talking with some other moms out here and I was like, well, we’re going to go to the congressman’s office and talk to him. And they’re like, “Why would he talk to us?” And I was like, “Because he works for us. That’s why.”

Tori Dunlap:

Totally.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

So remember that. You may not feel that what you’re feeling is like enough to be talking to them. It is. They have to listen to you.

Tori Dunlap:

I still remember the first time I called my representative’s office and I actually spoke to a live person and I was like, okay, they’re actually listening in theory, but they’re actually listening. It was very, very exciting for me.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

And it’s not scary because it’s an intern who answers the phone.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Their only job, like I’m telling you how this works, their only job is to mark off a tally every day on what issues people call on. And if they’re for or against it, they’re very pleasant. They do nothing else. They just answer the phone nicely and they mark it, like it’s not scary to call offices.

Tori Dunlap:

I love it. Thank you for being here. Where can people find you and your work?

Emily Tisch Sussman:

I host a podcast called She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who have changed their careers for deeply personal, not professional reasons. And I started it because I pivoted out of politics, as you can see from this conversation. We’re on Instagram. You can find us anywhere there is podcasts.

Tori Dunlap:

Amazing. Thanks for coming back.

Emily Tisch Sussman:

Thank you.

Tori Dunlap:

Thank you, Emily, for joining us. Thank you for just holding space for this. It’s always a hard conversation and especially when we’re thinking about how do we become good involved citizens of a country that sometimes we are not proud to be a member of. If that is you, I see you, I feel you, I am you. But I’m going to take one, at least one tiny little piece of action today that’ll make the world a better place for everybody. If you like the show, if you like the episode, please feel free to share it, you know the drill, subscribe, review, all of that. Thank you for your support of this movement. Thank you for your support of our work, and we’ll talk to you soon. Have a great, safe, happy 4th of July.

Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, marketing and administration by Karina Patel, Sophia Cohen, Kahlil Dumas, Elizabeth McCumber, Beth Bowen, Amanda Leffew, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Kailyn Sprinkle, Sumaya Mulla-Carrillo, and Harvey Carlson. Research by Ariel Johnson. Audio engineering by Austin Fields. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton. Photography by Sarah Wolfe. And theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K team and community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests, and episode show notes visit financialfeministpodcast.com.