Cory Booker On Winning the Messaging War Against Trump with Radical Empathy

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Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media.

I am your host, Stacey Abrams.

Here at Assembly Required, we have been covering the shock and awe agenda of the Trump administration's first 100 days.

And we know it's incredibly important that in this moment, we cut through what is vile rhetoric or intentional distraction and focus on what actions are doing real tangible damage to people's lives.

Which is why I want to take a moment and talk about language.

What we say matters.

I write books for a living.

I know that words matter.

So what you won't hear me saying, what you won't hear me talking about on this podcast are MAGA Republicans or extremist Republicans.

Because MAGA and extremist, those are adjectives we use to distance words from one another.

But what is largely unfolding in our nation is happening with the permission and participation of Republicans at every level of government across the entire spectrum.

That means their behavior is not extremism.

Because if rank and file Republicans condone it with their silence or their interaction and engagement, or worse with their championing of it, then it is now mainstream Republican orthodoxy.

We cannot keep pretending that Donald Trump is an outlier when everyone else seems to be out there with him.

We have to accept that whether they are active participants or passive condoners, if Republicans won't use their power to stop him, they own what he does.

I say that because, like the recent despots of Hungary, India, or Brazil, the president and his party will wrap themselves in slogans and give lip service to values, but their actions will always shout the truth.

For example, there are cancer treatments in this country that were halted because President Trump won't allow the NIH to speak to hospitals.

There are disabled workers placed in jeopardy by executive orders that that reneg on our nation's promises of inclusion and accessibility.

The Justice Department's blanket refusal to pursue civil rights claims, that's just wrong.

And then there are the communities that are losing people they love to indiscriminate Roundups and raids.

We are seeing this in the form of immigration and customs enforcement raids or ICE raids that are taking place across a number of cities.

It started with the inauguration and they are continuing unabated.

Well, we're still working to piece together what exactly happened here in Newark, New Jersey.

Yesterday, we spoke to a number of members of this community, and they tell us they are too afraid to speak out.

According to media reports, there was an ICE raid at the Seafood Depot that you see behind me.

We also know that Trump's sycophantic cabinet is also taking shape, a cabinet that would be filled with the individuals who have the power to wield entire government agencies.

And those folks are making their way through Senate confirmations right now.

These newly minted political leaders will be tasked with implementing the more than 200 executive orders issued by Trump, as well as managing billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

and millions of staff.

So today we'll talk about what we expect from our Democratic leaders and how they plan to fight back and more importantly, fight for all of us.

As you know, here at Assembly Required, we will also continue to face each executive order, legislative policy, and each news cycle, however terrifying or absurd, with our signature toolkit, asking, what can we do to learn more about what's happening?

What can we do to solve problems, however small?

And how can we find the kind of hope that can sustain our work in difficult times?

This week, to accomplish the tasks of knowing where we are, figuring out how to survive what's to come, and planning for what we do to fix what they're going to try to destroy, I've invited a dear friend with a lot of experience in doing all of these things.

Someone who understands that fighting can be more about how we make friends than defeat enemies.

Someone who recognizes the humanity and what may seem like numbers or statistics, and someone who has put radical empathy at the center of his life in public service, even at the time when extreme fear and division can make it seem that holding on to these values is impossible.

New Jersey Senator Corey Booker, welcome to Assembly Required.

I hope that you are not just for your podcast calling me Senator Corey Booker, but that we could go back to how we normally talk to each other, Corey and Stacey.

I can do that if, but, you know, I have to follow protocol.

I'm from the South.

That is very true.

But I hope your listeners know that you and I have known each other for more than a second.

And

as wonderful as you are in sourcing people

as a public figure, you're even better as a friend.

And I'm grateful.

Well, I open this up by talking about just how kind you are and the phrase you used, radical empathy, we're going to get into this later.

later.

It not just describes how you approach the world.

It is the experience that every person who's gotten more than 15 seconds in your presence, it's what they feel.

But I'm going to start in a place that's a little different than just how you're going to fix everything.

And that is by talking about how we're going to, what we have to fix.

So we are recording on day eight of Donald Trump's second administration.

So I want to start with a really easy question.

Will we survive four years of this chaos and catastrophe regime?

Tell us.

Well, you and I are probably both steeped in strength we draw from our ancestors.

And no matter what you want to say about this moment in time,

we as a nation, people in struggle, have faced moments like this far worse and have found a way to survive.

And so I've been leaning hard.

This morning, one of the videos I posted on my platforms, like Instagram, was just wisdom from Fannie Lou Hamer.

You You know, even if they knock me over, I'm going to fall five foot four inches forward.

But look, we saw an election defeat, but we're not defeated.

We got knocked down, but not knocked out.

And

here in the Senate, we used to be on the pedestal of power.

We got knocked off, but now we've all got to determine that it's on and we've got to get to work.

And so They didn't give up after slavery was lasting for hundreds of years.

So they didn't give up that after slavery and Reconstruction fell and terror swarmed over the South.

Folks didn't give up then.

They didn't give up when Brown versus Board of Education came and it came with a massive backlash where the Klan rose to greater membership than they've had, than they had decades earlier and swept again terror across the South.

There's so many points at which horrifically

mean-hearted people were elected or put into positions of power and folks just kept on fighting.

And you and I are here today as living testimonies to the people that did not give up.

All of us who are listening to this, we are, no matter what your background, we are all testimonies to our ancestors'

not only hopes and not only work, not only sweat, but also their unyielding, indefatigable dreams for a better America.

I love how you anchor this in what we've overcome, but more importantly, in who are some of the lodestars.

And I think about this in the context of the roles and responsibilities, not only of the victors, but the activists, the advocates, the resistors, the persisters.

I was once responsible for leading the loyal opposition in the Georgia House of Representatives as minority leader.

And the title they give you, I like to joke that they call you leader to make you feel good.

They put minority in front of it so you know how hard it's supposed to be.

Yes.

And you are now in the minority in the U.S.

Senate in a moment where the question of what the role of the loyal opposition should be is much more complicated.

This is not the traditional my party wants X, your party wants Y.

This is a conversation of my party wants democracy, your party wants autocracy.

So You have a new role yourself.

You are the newly elected chair of the Strategic Communications Committee.

What does that mean in this moment?

And how are you thinking about where you, I mean, you're going to fall forward at least six foot five inches.

But what does it mean as you think about what we need to do from the space that you occupy now?

Well, you know, first of all, you and I both, and I know, live this, our loyalty is to this nation, not to a party.

I'm a Democrat because my grandfather was a Democrat and told me very pointedly that the Democratic Party stands for affordable health care, security and retirement.

He would name all these issues that were really important to him.

And he said,

but yet you remember your loyalty to what's best for this country.

And I think that we have to stop in many ways.

making it all about left versus right or Republican versus Democrat and start trying to refocus people's attention on the things that matter to Americans.

I think the Democratic Party will thrive most if people know that we're fighting for them, we're fighting for their issues, we're fighting fighting for the things that

really vex, frankly, so many Americans on both sides of the aisle.

Once people understand that and trust that.

And so I'm keeping a spotlight in everything that I can do and trying to help my party do that, keep a spotlight on not on Donald Trump, who wants to suck the oxygen out of the room and make it all about him, but make it about the issues that matter.

and the reality of how it impacts people's lives.

And I tell people, look, I'll work with anybody, and I have worked with people who I disagree with dramatically, as did you when you were a leader in the legislature, because

none of us are sent to our positions or representative elected positions

to be great Democrats.

We're sent to fight for people.

So my role right now

is doing everything I can to see good things happen and stop bad things happening to people and to look for opportunities.

The last time Donald Trump was elected, we got some very big bills passed, including one called the First Step Act that has led to the liberation of thousands and thousands of people from unjust incarceration as a result of unjust sentencing and more.

But I want to, part of your question made me immediately think about, well,

there is going to be a lot of bad things happening.

There is a lot of bad things that happened in this last eight days that's inexcusable.

I'm watching Donald Trump take an immigration issue, which has some really real issues in it, but use it in a way that demonizes, scapegoats, and undermines the security of communities, the strength of communities, and the economic prosperity of communities.

And we have to be thoughtful enough to be able to always stand up and call out what's wrong to try to stop what's wrong,

especially in times when that's not popular.

And I'm going to do everything I can to be one of those voices that speaks truth whenever is possible.

And one of the things I love about you, and this is the last point I'll make, is that you remind people

that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference, it's silence, and that everybody's voice at this time, especially is really important to speak truth about what's going on, especially when it threatens folks.

I had

a raid done, an ICE raid done in my home city, not far from where I live in a restaurant.

I'm going to get better briefed on it soon by ICE.

But when they asked ICE officers, you know, are you coming into this restaurant because of violent criminals or all the people that Trump talked about that threatened the safety, they said, no, we just got a tip that there were undocumented people working in the kitchen.

And so I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute.

you're prioritizing police resources, law enforcement resources, detention resources, not to the people that Donald Trump said he was going to focus on, but to people that were in the kitchen working jobs

that are not a threat to the safety and security of my communities.

And so there's a lot of nuance that people have to be willing to speak to, a lot of truth that people have to tell, and a lot of light that we need to shine when things go severely off the rails.

And all of us have an obligation to know what's happening, especially to vulnerable people and talk about it.

So I want to unpack a couple of the things you said.

One, and I appreciate the framing that, yes, the opposite of

love isn't hate, it's indifference.

And one of the concerns that I've heard bubbling up is that

in years past,

it was

not just noble, it was necessary to

come together and to work with the opposite party because the goal was to serve people that that is absolutely a given and it's a belief that I hold.

But one thing I said at the top of this episode is that I'm very

unhappy about this attribution of extremism or MAGA as a qualifier for a Republican in a moment where the party is suborning the behavior of their leader.

And I frame it in that way because

one of the questions people have is, what does it mean to be a Democrat?

Not what does it mean to be an American, because there is a common belief in that, but what does it mean to be a Democrat in this America?

And as someone who's helping us think about that, can you talk a little bit, not about how you're going to work with, but what we should expect of those who carry the same

moniker of ideations that we believe?

I mean, we're all Americans first, but what's that secondary responsibility?

Yeah, first of all, I want to

just pick up the first part you said about this idea of silence and holding people accountable.

If Pete Hegseth, who is now our Secretary of Defense, if it was a secret ballot

on the confirmation in the Senate, he would have lost that election.

There are some people that knew he was not right

and perhaps dangerous in that position.

but supported him anyway.

And that's the kind of complicit nature I'm seeing in the the Republican Party, where people are even afraid to tell the truth about the 2020 elections being rightfully decided that Joe Biden was the rightful elected leader.

And that's problematic, and we should call that out.

But to go into the core of your question about

what does our party stand for,

to me, that's really important.

And you've been a force in trying to get a lot more substance and richness and truth into who we are as Democrats.

And I think that that's for my new position.

I'm going to do everything I can to make our party stand for something

that makes people feel encouraged and not frustrated with a Democratic Party that many people view as feckless or ineffective or

lacking a moral core and a moral compass.

And so for me, it's telling those stories as we're going about doing the work down here is really, really important.

And that means standing up and calling things out.

And so Donald Trump, for example, had a raft of executive orders, and a lot of them went unnoticed.

Like when he's cutting resources towards the Center for Medicare and Medicaid innovation, for example, which was these were innovative programs that were going towards trying to lower the cost of health care for Americans.

And this is people like Stephen Miller's whole goal is to flood the zone so much that people can't see everything that Donald Trump is doing to raise your costs, to make prescription drugs more expensive, to make healthcare more expensive.

And if our party can't call that out in an effective way and can't get that information out to voters and to people in the community, then we're failing at what we do.

And so I just am coming from giving a presentation to the chiefs of staff of all my colleagues

where I was just saying to them, the way we are communicating is ineffective.

When I'm going around the country and I'm meeting people that don't realize what we're fighting for, when I see polls that got rid of the candidates' names, but just polled the policy issues alone, and the Democratic issues would win overwhelmingly, yet people would vote for the Republican or not trust that the Democrats were really fighting for those things, we have a serious, serious problem.

And unless we start finding more effective ways to communicate, unless we start finding ways to let people know that they can trust us, that in the arena we're fighting for them, we're going to continue to be a minority party.

And in a world where power matters, we will be ineffective in getting things done.

And so I am going to tell you right now, it's going to be very hard for us to stop.

Donald Trump from renewing his Trump tax cuts, where the benefits of that overwhelmingly went.

The majority of those benefits went to the top 1%

of Americans, where the corporations got tax cuts well beyond what they were even asking for or thought were possible, where we saw some people in some tax brackets actually have their taxes go up.

It is such a sinister thing because it's going to blow trillions of dollars more into our deficits, which then later Republicans are going to say the only way we can fix these deficits is by cutting your health care or your retirement security.

And so that, the reason why they have the advantage in getting that done is because we lost elections and in areas where we should have won them had we got a greater turnout amongst base Democrats who did not know enough or were not inspired enough or did not believe in us enough to come out and vote.

And so you're one of those leaders that you and I have had private conversations about this, which you're just saying, like, wait a minute, a lot of people saying, we need to reach out to those Republicans.

I believe we should do that.

I think there's a lot of people that vote Republican that should, that I want to persuade that we are better.

But you're often saying a lot of Democrats have just checked out because they don't believe anymore.

They don't believe that we're fighting for them.

They've got cynical.

They've surrendered to cynicism.

And so I'm now in a position where I'm going to do everything I can to help our party really think about communicating to folks that we are fighting for you.

We have your back and we're there and we're going to tell you stories.

We're going to bring to light the things we're doing.

And here's something that a lot of folks now realize after that election.

Most people are not getting their news from newspapers or 24-hour news networks.

They're just not.

They're getting them on these devices.

They're getting them from influencers and social media and more.

And that's something that we have to understand.

We're communicating still

in ways that aren't getting through or cutting through and we're not telling it stories or elevating voices that I think people are yearning to hear more of.

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So let's talk about how we get those voices and how we tell those stories because I read an article you were quoted in recently about these conversations you're having.

And we know that one of the challenges is that the right, or however you want to couch it, they have an ecosystem.

They've spent 30 years building this infrastructure that has all of the component parts.

And we are

more in the early stages of tinker toys, where we haven't quite figured out the map for putting it together.

And therefore, they are able to tell a story and have that story repeated multiple times before we can find the person to report the fact that we might know a story that we need to tell.

So how are you fixing that?

So look, and that's where your listeners should know.

It is not a you, it's an us.

And you and I probably raised the same way.

It's like, my mama told me not to talk about problems in the world unless I was doing something.

about that, which is what I was complaining about.

And never let your inability to do everything to undermine your determination to do something.

And when I talk to young people who all have social media accounts, I'm like, audit your own social media.

Am I elevating the voices that I think need to be heard more?

Am I communicating the information?

I may not know everything about every issue, but I know something about environmentalism, or I know something about housing, or I know something about where people can find a better job opportunity.

How much are we sharing information and elevating information and liking information that we think is important because it all feeds a larger algorithm?

And the Republicans have been so smart in going out and engaging with influencers and building up voices so that now when Ted Cruz rants in a hearing, he puts that on his platforms.

But then all of a sudden, there's all of these people ready to jump on that and elevate the content.

In fact, the meeting I just referenced, I showed them the anatomy of how one of their stories went viral and how much their ecosystem swarmed around content, elevated it in a significant way, and pushed it out.

But yet we are letting some of the most compelling voices go unheard because we're not understanding our role in that ecosystem.

And so my goal right now is to number one, help my individual colleagues.

Like I learned when I was mayor of the city of Newark and brought our city far better attention and focus on how incredible and special our city was when all the major media wanted to do was talk about how violent it is or corrupt it is, which wasn't the full story.

We found ways to elevate the stories of Newark and Newarkers through social media.

Now we need to start talking about the issues that matter and looking towards the content that matters.

And so I'm helping each individual senator think through strategically.

how they can better use the platforms that they control to get more engagement and to tell better stories.

And we're already seeing some of the success with that with a lot of my individual senators in the last eight days that Trump has been in office getting far more views on their content than they had the month before prior by finding ways to break through and to get people to start sharing stories as all of us.

They say, oh, you're an influencer.

All of us are influencers.

I always cite the Stanford study that showed just by you walking down the street and picking up a piece of trash.

There's one researcher has shown that people witnessing you do that affects the behavior of three people of people, three degrees separation.

Everything you do and say resonates.

We're all little nodes in the intricate lattice of life.

The energy we bring, how we show up, what we do, what we say affects people.

The internet is just a digital representation of the spiritual truth of humanity.

As King said, we're all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a common garment of destiny.

But your silence and inaction as a node hurts us all because we need to hear your voice.

So let's say you live in a state that does not have Democratic senators representing you.

Who are the three senators, not including yourself, because everyone that we know is following you right now?

Who are the next three people that you want them to follow if they don't want to follow Ted Cruz?

If you know a Democratic senator's name, follow them on social media.

It's such a low-cost thing to do.

So if you know that senator's name, follow them.

But while you're at it, follow some of the senators who are in difficult races in purple states.

I just left Tina Smith in Minnesota, John Osoff in Georgia, Gary Peters, who's in Michigan.

These are senators that are in purple states that are going to have tough reelections before them.

But follow as many Democratic senators and congresspeople as you know of, and then share their content.

Let them know what's going on.

It's such a low-cost thing to do than simply click a follow button or click a like button, but it definitely helps to

push the algorithm in that way.

So let's talk about algorithms and how time matters, because we are hearing a lot about about the power of the president's first 100 days.

And to your point, Stephen Miller and others, they are flooding the zone, hoping to distract us.

They know that chaos is effective, but you have been on both the majority and the minority side during this period.

Can you talk about the importance of this stretch of time and how this impacts the kinds of policies we're going to see?

Like putting aside the executive orders, which will be adjudicated in a lot of course of law, the issue for Congress in the first 100 days is what comes before you.

So can you talk a little bit about what we need to be thinking about?

Well, Donald Trump is going to try to push as much as he can to get done in the shortest amount of time before the inertia of the government gets to him.

And that is usually an opportunity for Barack Obama to push, get the Affordable Care Act done, for Joe Biden to get some of the most significant pieces of legislation in our lifetime that have helped everything from infrastructure all the way to the environment.

But Donald Trump's bills, we've already seen some of the earliest bills, something called the Lake and Riley Act, which is named after somebody who died horribly, but all of us would like to get violent criminals, be they undocumented or frankly, American citizens, off the streets.

But this bill would actually make us less safe because it mandates the detention.

of anybody who is undocumented or not a citizen.

So you could be a dreamer here for 35 years, but you're 37 and you were brought when you were two.

You could be a first responder as a dreamer.

You could be a served in the military as a dreamer.

You could be a business person as a dreamer, but you can be indefinitely detained for the accusation of stealing a candy bar, which anybody can make against you.

And as soon as that accusation is made, even if it's proven to be false, you can be indefinitely detained.

And so it's a bad bill that they pushed under the guise of, oh, we're making people safer.

And because of their momentum, they were able to ram it through.

There's another one about taking away reproductive rights, what they call late-term abortions.

And but it's already a crime to kill a child after their birth.

And it's just this exaggeration of issues in a way to try

to catch the momentum of the moment to ram something through.

And so we're seeing a whole bunch of these bad bills coming through.

And what's interesting about his bills so far is that none of them is doing the core core thing that he ran his presidency around, which was lowering your costs, lowering inflation, making healthcare or groceries or housing more affordable.

And again, I keep telling people this over and over again.

What he's doing are things that are actually going to make you less safe, less economically prosperous, and ultimately undermine our nation's communities and make them less thriving.

And so this is, I think, a toxic period in which the president is really trying to show a lot of activity and energy that helps him get things into law that really have nothing to do with what he promised people.

So just staying on the issue of law enforcement, one of the most terrifying pronouncements is the

intention that he has to send up to 10,000 U.S.

troops to the border.

The U.S.

military is not legally allowed to play a law enforcement role domestically.

The concern that I have and so many have, is that if he chooses to do this, the Defense Secretary, Pete Hexeth, will comply.

And that right now, our systems are too weak to stop him from taking even more dramatic steps, such as using immigration as a pretext.

He can then do the same for protesters.

You and I met in law school where hypotheticals actually felt hypothetical, but nothing seems to be off limits.

So, how should we think about that?

And to your point, that is not what we signed up for and not what we should expect.

But how do we prepare for this idea that the military could be deployed in our streets, especially as a former mayor?

So you said it.

Some of the foundations of our country's laws are that the military should have very focused powers on defense.

There's things in

the Constitution that reflect these days that they never wanted to see come back where the military was just taking over people's houses or

undermining people's basic rights.

And so here we are at a moment where he wants to do things with the military that are not only unorthodox, but even in his last administration, we saw military leaders fighting to stop him.

When he tried to turn the military on protesters in front of the White House, thank God, there were military leaders that were independent of his

designs.

There were checks and balances his power.

Well, we now have the most unchecked and unbalanced president there is, thanks to a Supreme Court that was designed by him that told him, well, there's no legal consequences whatsoever for you if you should break the law.

If somebody gave him the hypothetical of, if you turn the United States military on American citizens, could you be

tried in American courts for that?

And the Supreme Court, in essence, said universally no.

So he's a guy that feels like he has no checks.

He's now hiring people to some of the most important positions, not based on their qualifications.

Hag Seth is one of the most unqualified people ever to serve in that job, if not the most unqualified.

He's hiring them based upon ideas of loyalty to him.

And you can see that from the FBI to the military to some other positions.

It's a loyalty test, not a qualifications test.

And so that makes me very concerned that when the military is starting to be ordered to do things that there's no democratic traditions of them doing, how they could be violative of the rights of people here in the United States who are citizens, who are simply going about their God-given rights, which is to protest the government,

to petition their government, to peacefully assemble, and more.

When you start seeing people confirmed where there's enemies lists they have against people who are state legislatures or members of the media, we should all be very concerned and not think that this is beyond what Trump Trump can do.

I thought it was beyond what Trump could do about undermining the peaceful transfer of power.

So we should take nothing for granted in our democracy.

And these should things like this should raise our alarm bells.

What do we do with that concern?

I mean, we know that this confirmation process is terrifying, but focusing on

the confirmation process as a whole is a full-time job.

When people have these concerns, one, what aspect of these early processes should we be focused on?

And then what should we do with that concern?

Well, look, again,

we all have the power to speak out and not let things simply go by.

And that's why I think for those of us that are on social media platforms or listen to podcasts like this, is to take content that speaks to your concerns, share it.

elevate it, let people know that you're a source in your community of truth-telling, of not letting these things go by.

Because I saw in Trump's first term that when there are people that are going to stand up, speak up,

even act up in non-violent ways, they can make a difference.

His attempt to tear away health care from tens of millions of Americans was stopped.

by the activism and the engagement of people.

And so the first thing is you are not powerless to speak up.

And we, again, noted our ancestors at the beginning of the show who were never silent in the face of wrongdoing.

And so that's number one is to let people know that you have a voice and you're going to use it in these times.

The second thing I would say that's just really important for folks beyond telling the truth is to find those organizations that are engaged, that are doing something.

I will tell you right now, on all of these issues, there are nonprofits and organizing groups that are doing something.

Again, do not let your inability to do everything to undermine your determination to do something.

Absolutely.

Even if it's just, I'm going to send a dollar to this person or this organization, you and I know this, Stacey, because significant amounts of the resources that we've used to stay in office and help other people were small dollar contributors.

You don't have to be Elon Musk to do something in the cause of justice.

So find small actions that you can do, one speaking up, and then do one thing to support people that are trying to organize because that's where our power comes from as the old african saying six in a bundle can't be broken bringing people together who are focused on an issue often can give more strength than you believe you have as an individual

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted Challenger School class.

They're reviewing the American Revolution.

The British were initiating force, and the Americans were retaliating.

Okay.

Where did they initiate force?

It started in their taxation without representation.

Why is that wrong?

The purpose of a government is to protect individual rights, and by encroaching on individual rights, they cannot protect them.

Welcome to eighth grade at Challenger School.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.

So when I met you, we were in law school.

You were a 3L who deigned to talk to us.

We were just getting there.

And I just remember how

beloved you were.

You were known as someone who would go out of his way to broker compromise or to understand the needs of everyone who was involved in a dispute.

I thought you worked there.

I didn't realize you were just a student.

You were, you were just, you were.

willing to engage even if it wasn't your thing, not interfere, but engage.

And what I found later was that, you know, you've very famously talked about how love is at the center of your politics and your approach to public service.

How do you hold your commitment to that ideation

in the midst of all of this pain and anger and rancor?

It seems hard to me that someone who's sitting in the Capitol with people who you know know better.

and are refusing to do better, how do you navigate that?

How do you internally hold to what has remained for 25 years, this very central ethos that love is at the center of what you do?

Well, I resist the people that think that love is weakness or meekness or silence.

I just think that what I first and foremost tell folks is, I am not going to let Donald Trump change me.

I'm not going to let him contort.

my being so that I become something that I'm not and

really focus on on what my calling is in this world, which is to show up, which is to engage and remember that every ground is not a battleground, that I can find ways to stand my ground, but also draw people to common ground at the same time.

What is your point to life if it's not to remind people that we belong to each other?

that we share a common humanity, that somehow in this crazy diverse nation, we can come together and create something special.

And if you can not let the ugliness of the world turn you ugly, the darkness of the world to somehow extinguish your light, then you're the kind of hero that this country needs.

And I'm not good on every day.

There are days I get angry, and anger is actually something I think that's important because

Vannie Lou Hamer got angry.

So Journal of Truth got angry.

Harriet Tubman got angry.

But let your anger fuel your action, not in some way consume you as a person.

What I appreciate so much is embedded in that is this recognition of the legitimacy of anger, but the strategy of engagement.

That for you, love is your strategy of engagement, and that anger is not the antithesis or incompatible with it's a necessary ingredient.

If you're not angry, what's wrong with you and and and if america hasn't broken your heart you don't love her enough

but then the question becomes for those who are desperate to see this righteous anger one of the things they're looking to you and your colleagues for is some demonstration of fight not necessarily invective and polemical

degradation of another person's humanity, but something that says, we share your anger and we're going to do something about it.

And that's why you're seeing a lot of think pieces about how Democrats should do nothing with Republicans, how they should own it and we just let everything fall.

How do you respond to those who say that the way to show the righteous anger, to show the fight, is to say, no, you own it, you broke it, you deal with it yourself?

So

I revere W.B.

Du Bois and Booker T.

Washington, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

Revere them both.

There is not one way to go about this.

And before you're speaking about someone else's activism, they may share your same motivation, but maybe not the same way you go about working, look at yourself first.

Am I fully showing up and doing everything I can do?

It's so easy to criticize folks.

And so I've chosen my way.

I am going to be, if you follow me on social media, you're going to hear me being loud and angry about a lot of things, but you're also going to see me huddling with Republicans on the Senate floor, trying to find a way

to not allow foreign aid.

This is my battle this morning,

when Trump just universally froze foreign aid.

Well, that is seriously threatening the lives of people from Sudan to Ukraine.

And I can't just scream about it on the Senate floor.

I need to sit with Lindsey Graham, who I know has Trump's ear, and talk to him about how I can unfreeze vital life-saving aid.

And so, before people criticize me, because I saw you talking to Lindsey Graham, or I saw you sitting with this world leader who is a killer or what have you, I'm sorry.

I've made a decision that New Jersey sent me to Washington to deliver results that are best for our national security, or best for our values, or best for people in our state.

But I want everybody

to, again, to not succumb to cynicism,

but to rise to activism.

And that's what you've got to have

in so many ways, a conversation with yourself every day and deciding how I'm going to show up.

And if what defines you is

how you're criticizing other people's actions and not how much you're deciding and strategizing what should be your own,

then I think that that's a little problematic to me.

I think that's well said.

So Corey, you've previously said that doing a small action radiates light into this universe and illuminates darkness.

And one of the reasons I was so excited to get you on the podcast is that one of our key missions is to help people feel empowered through their actions.

And one of the things we do at the end of the podcast is that I answer listener questions.

But what I wanted to do today is give one of them to you because I have one that's perfect for you.

So her name is Kim.

She is a retired school library media specialist.

And she asks, asks, How can I effectively communicate with my legislators?

This is the route most often suggested when I search for how to make a difference, but I feel like my efforts are not unlike sending words into the ether with no response, much less any effective difference being made.

I will be relentless at this if I know how to do it effectively.

And so she goes on to share some specific questions like, how can I make myself heard?

How should I compose my letters?

How effective are scripted letters versus those that I come up with myself?

What platform should I use?

Should I make these communications public?

I mean, she's got a very long list.

So

do you have any specific suggestions for Kim as the chair of strategic communications for the U.S.

Senate Democratic Caucus?

And can you share examples of why this would have changed your mind as a mayor, as a senator, as a political leader?

So first of all, I love that she's asking that question

because it's a question I get a lot too, not about my office, but about how do they get through the people, especially if they're in a state or a district where there are persons of a different party than them.

So first of all, I will tell you that most good offices in state legislatures, city councils, or United States Senate do pay attention to the incoming they get.

But I will say this, that the more they people they get calling in, the better.

So I would say not just your communicating with that office, but getting, making it easy for for your friends and others.

I love when people put the number on their social media.

Call your legislator today.

Let them know.

So that's one thing is trying to increase the volume of people that are reaching out to a legislator is really important.

Number two, I would say

it is being creative in how you communicate.

Because if you're just giving a form to some legislature, I think that's treated a lot differently than somebody seeing a heartfelt, detailed letter.

letter.

A lot of offices ask for sampling at times, and those are the letters that would get through to me more than somebody writing a form letter.

And then the last thing I will say, and again,

I think you know this, Stacey, is like when you organize with other people of like minds, so much of life is about organizing and connecting.

And you're speaking for yourself is one thing, but if you're speaking for a larger group of people, that could often get you a meeting, come together with others who share your issue.

You're going to speak with a lot more volume and breakthrough in a much more significant way.

And then just the ethos of this show, I got to go back to what you said.

The greatest mistake people make is underestimating the power they have.

Each and every one of us have power.

And you may not be able to change the mind of a president or United States senator.

You should try and you should talk and organize and do all of that.

But the biggest thing you can do in any day is a small act of kindness, decency, love, or justice.

So please use your moral imagination every day for how you show up, how you talk to people, how you try to bring people together, or that small act of kindness that you think might go unnoticed, but radiates into this world that needs so much more decency, goodness, and kindness.

Senator Corey Booker of New Jersey, my dear friend, you're just one of my favorite people.

Thank you so much for spending time with us on Assembly Required.

Well, that is mutual that

what you've done for me in my lifetime, and especially my decade in the Senate,

has been invaluable.

And I'm grateful that you've got this podcast, a place for me to direct people when they need just not just instruction and information,

but also to have a little bit of heart healing and nourishing in a very difficult time.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Trump's first week in office has made it very clear that he and his party are determined to eviscerate the very concept of norms, that idea that there are certain aspects of American life and American politics that no one can violate.

Yet, we learned the first time around that there is no shortage of harmful actions that he and his Republican allies are willing to take to implement their dark vision for America.

But this time around, we are also more informed, we're more engaged, and we understand that even the smallest action can make a difference, just like Senator Booker talked about.

So let's turn to our toolkit.

We're going to be curious about which senators we know and which ones we're following.

So you're going to go and look at your social media feed, do a social media audit, and be curious about who you're following.

Make sure that you've got people on your list that are doing things that can change your life.

So that's your first job.

Second, we're going to solve problems.

We're going to invest in ourselves and invest in each other.

And that's why Senator Booker mentioned, send a dollar to an organization that matters to you.

Maybe it's a dollar a month, but those small amounts add up.

And we know that right now there are organizations that are working hard to correct and to fix and to help.

We know that food banks are doing a lot of work, but we also know that groups that provide support to immigration and that provide support to communities that are being hit hard by these executive orders could use your support.

You can't do everything, but you can do something.

And lastly, do good.

Over the next few weeks, I want you to intentionally post something that's encouraging.

Send it through your social media feed.

Text friends, but make sure you're telling as many people as you can something that reminds them that this is a fight worth fighting.

Don't say anything untrue, but say something that lifts your spirits.

Repost podcasts like this one and have conversations with folks who might simply need to hear from a friend.

We have the ability in this moment to do what we can for whomever we can.

And as Corey said, small actions make a difference.

So if you want to tell us what you've learned and solved, send us an email at assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail and you and your questions and comments might be featured on the pod.

Our number is 213-293-9509.

That wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.

I'll meet you here next week.

Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Alona Minkowski and our associate producer is Paulina Velasco.

Kirill Polaviev is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Our theme song is by Vasilius Vitopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroote, Kyle Seglund, Tyler Boozer, and Samantha Slossberg for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long, Madeline Herringer, and me, Stacey Abrams.

Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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