#SUNDAYCIVICS

District attorneys are the most powerful position in your local criminal and legal system and we choose who they are with a vote. L. Joy kicks-off her series "Who We Elect" which will highlight state and local positions which may appear further down your ballot. District Attorney Eric Gonzalez comes to the front of the class share his #FirstCivicAction and how he sees his role as the elected district attorney of Brooklyn, New York. Our Guest Eric Gonzalez made history in November 2017 when he became the first Latino District Attorney elected in New York State. He had been appointed Acting District Attorney by Governor Andrew Cuomo a year earlier following the tragic death of his predecessor, the late Ken Thompson, for whom Gonzalez had served as Chief Assistant District Attorney. DA Gonzalez began his legal career in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office upon his graduation from law school in 1995. Since his appointment to lead the office, DA Gonzalez has implemented his own trailblazing initiatives, including bail reform, a Young Adult Court, expansion of non-prosecution of marijuana possession, a pre-court diversion program for low-level drug offenders and a policy to reduce unfair immigration consequences in criminal cases. District Attorney Gonzalez launched a ground-breaking initiative known as Justice 2020, to help him carry out his vision of keeping Brooklyn safe and strengthening trust in our justice system by ensuring fairness and equal justice for all. Justice 2020 consists of a 17-point action plan – created by a committee of criminal justice reform experts, defense groups, service providers, law enforcement, formerly incarcerated individuals, clergy and community leaders – to make the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office a national model of what a progressive prosecutor’s office can be. This blueprint will transform the work of Gonzalez’s office by shifting toward preventative and accountability solutions with a track record of success, and away from over-reliance on criminal convictions and incarceration.

Is the War on Drugs over? President Nixon began his crusade in 1971 but drug prohibition and criminalization have long deep racial and economic roots. L. Joy brings Kassandra Frederique to the front of the class to discuss the history of the war on drugs and current efforts to these failing policies. Our Guest Kassandra Frederique is New York State Director at the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). Frederique previously ran the day-to-day operations of the statewide campaign to end New York’s racially biased marijuana arrests, which cut the number of NYC marijuana arrests in half. In addition to working for policy solutions to reduce the harms associated with drug use, Frederique works with communities throughout the state to address and resolve the collateral consequences of the War on Drugs. Kassandra cultivates and mobilizes powerful coalitions in communities devastated by drug misuse and drug criminalization to develop municipal strategies to foster healthier and safer communities. Frederique’s professional focus includes building a reparative justice framework that positions Black and Latinx leaders to create solutions that not only end and repair the harms of the drug war but also create accountability structures between policymakers and people who use drugs. She is currently working on an emerging body of work that discusses Black recreation and drug use. A native New Yorker, Frederique holds a M.S. in Social Work from Columbia University and earned a B.S. in Industrial Labor Relations at Cornell University.

Impeachment has been the popular thing to talk about for awhile and L.Joy wouldn’t be the fabulous civics teacher she is, if she didn’t inform us about the process. So on this episode, L.Joy gives us a lesson on impeachment and then brings Carolyn DeWitt of Rock the Vote to the front of the class to discuss their #Census2020 work. About Our Guest Carolyn DeWitt is the President and Executive Director of Rock the Vote, the largest national organization focused on building long-term political power for this country’s most diverse youth generation. Rock the Vote has recently launched an educational awareness campaign, focused on engaging young people around the 2020 census. #FirstCivicAction Congresswoman Yvette D. Clark, Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing New York's 9th congressional district. #CivicBookClub Picks Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood Episode Reading List Impeachments of federal officials https://ballotpedia.org/Impeachments_of_federal_officials The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Impeachment_Johnson.htm List of Individuals Impeached by the House of Representatives https://history.house.gov/Institution/Impeachment/Impeachment-List/ The delicate process of impeachment https://www.brookings.edu/blog/unpacked/2017/05/19/the-delicate-process-of-impeachment/

If reading is fundamental, why aren’t our elected representatives doing it more? Since the release of the Mueller Report, we are realizing that...folks “don’t read”. On this episode, L. Joy reads a passage or two from the Mueller reports and brings political consultant Michele Watley to the front of the class to discuss the latest political headlines. Michele L. Watley, is the founder and owner of The Griot Group LLC, a strategic communications and political advocacy consulting practice. She has been honored by the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) with the 40 under 40 award and was named one of Campaign & Elections Rising Stars for 2017. Michele served as the National African American Outreach Political Director for Bernie 2016 and is the founder of Shirley’s Kitchen Cabinet, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to amplifying the voices and power of Black women through education and advocacy. Homework * Read the Mueller Report * Call and ask your House/Senate member if they have read the report. * Call and ask your House/Senate member if they have a plan to safeguard our election process from foreign influence in the future.

Who will be the electorate in 2020? What voters will be motivated to show up to the polls on Election Day and what will be the implications of the voter suppression actions in the states? Kat Calvin the Founder and Executive Director of Spread The Vote and Project ID comes to the front of the class to discuss her efforts to getting communities educated, registered and prepared to vote. Kat Calvin was named by Fast Company as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2018. She is a lawyer, activist, and social entrepreneur. Kat is the Founder and Executive Director of Spread The Vote and Project ID ~ a national organization that helps Americans obtain the IDs they need for jobs, housing, and life and that also allows them to go to the polls. Bonus #FirstCivicAction with one of L. Joy’s favorite civically engaged senior citizen Fannie Connor a retired super volunteer with the League of Women Voters (LWV). LWV was founded in 1919 and is a non-partisan group dedicated to promoting informed and active civic participation in government.

What is a political action committee (PAC)? It's a political organization that raises money to elect and/or defeat political candidates. Liuba Grechen Shirley steps to the front of the class to discuss why she created VoteMama and L. Joy gives a lesson on PACs and how you can start one. Joy and June catch up with Liuba Grechen Shirley since she petitioned the Federal Elections Committee (FEC) to use campaign funds for childcare during her historic 2016 congressional campaign in New York's 2nd District. Liuba is the Founder and CEO of VoteMama PAC which supports Democratic moms with young children running for public office up and down the ballot and across the country though mentoring, fundraising and endorsements. Reading List A guide to political money: campaigns, PACs, super PACs How to Form a Super PAC (Political Action Committee) OpenSecrets.org

Have you ever thought about how much power the President of the United States has? The power of the executive branch has significantly grown since the founders deliberated about the function of a new position called "The President". L. Joy brings political science professor Andrew Polsky to the front of the class to join us in a discussion about how the power of the presidency has expanded over time and what that means for our democratic republic. About Our Guest Professor Polsky Andrew J. Polsky teaches political science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). At Hunter College, he is the Ruth and Harold Newman Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. He served as the editor of the political science journal Polity from 2005 to 2010. In addition to a number of scholarly articles, he is the author of two books, Elusive Victories: The American Presidency at War. Reading List * Power and the Presidency, From Kennedy to Obama * The Alarming Scope of the President's Emergency Powers * How powerful is the US president? * A Guide to Emergency Powers and Their Use * Why the President Needs More Power * Executive Orders: Heritage Foundation

What do we know about the lives of military families? When we think or speak of the military, the conversation is often focused on war or the military budget, and yet the soldiers and their families are facing a myriad of issues such as sexual assault and unhealthy and dangerous housing conditions. L. Joy brings military advocates Joy Craig and Liesel Kershul to the front of the class to discuss their work and the sometimes unspoken rift between military spouses and the women who serve in the military. Military housing advocate Crystal Cornwall also joins to discuss what led to the current military housing scandal and what we can do to demand action. 5:10 - Joy Craig and Liesel Kershul discuss their extraordinary friendship and the work they are doing to address sexual assault within the military. 35:00 - Crystal Cornwall testifies before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel and Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support Watch Crystal’s Testimony on C-Span 38:05 - Crystal discusses the challenges military families face in housing, how she became and advocate on the issue and what we can do to support the efforts. Joy Craig is a retired U.S. Marine Chief Warrant Officer, mother, writer, and fierce advocate fighting against sexual assault in the military and for veterans ‘ safe-access to cannabis nationwide. She retired from the United States Marine Corps after 23 years of service as an Aviation Ordnance Officer and Drill Instructor. During her service she was awarded the Navy Commendation and Meritorious Service Medals. Joy currently serves as the Community Outreach Officer for VetsLeaf; a veteran owned and operated cannabis manufacturer in Coachella Valley. Liesel Kershul is a military spouse, an advocate, a writer and a lifelong student of philosophy, politics, and human behavior. She holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of California, Irvine, and an M.S. in applied psychology from Sacred Heart University and writer for War Horse. Crystal Cornwall is a marine spouse and a military housing advocate and a nominee for 2019 Military Spouse of the Year. She is starting a non-profit that will champion military housing issues that will include research, advocacy and other activities to ensure our military members and their families have a safe place to sleep at night. Reading List * The Bad Decisions that Led to Privatized Military Housing Woes - Military.com * Ambushed at Home:The hazardous, squalid housing of American military families - Reuters * Under Trump, Progressives in the Military Find a Voice - The Progressive * Reliving Military Sexual Trauma on Her Last Day of Active Duty - The War Horse * Hundreds of Marines investigated for sharing photos of naked colleagues - Reveal * The Impact of Our Reporting About Marines United - The War Horse

Is there one checklist to use to determine candidate viability? Who are the decision makers in this process? Candidate viability changes, ebbs and flows, depending on a myriad of factors from popularity to money. Joy brings her guests political strategists Rebecca Katz and Jessica Byrd to the front of the class to discuss the ever changing criteria of the abstract phenomena of candidate viability. Rebecca Katz (@RebeccaKKatz) is a progressive communications consultant and founder of New Deal Strategies created to help lift up the voices of women, people of color, the working class, and the LGBTQ community. Jessica Byrd (@JessicaLBYRD) is the former chief of staff to Stacey Abrams campaign for governor and the founder of Three Points Strategies created to work at the intersection of electoral politics and social justice with candidates and organizations across the country seeking electoral power for transformative change. Reading List Learn more about candidate viability and how you can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of candidates with this reading list. * How to Judge a Candidate - League of Women Voters * Just What Makes A Presidential Candidate Viable? - Independent Voter Network * Re-engineering politicians: How activist groups choose our candidates—long before we vote - Brookings Institute * The Psychology of Electability - New Yorker * Electability: What Is It? Who Defines It? - WGBH * What Does It Mean To Be Electable? - Dictionary.com

What does it mean when you hear someone say “we need to get big money out of politics?” The term “big money” refers to large campaign contributions from corporations and wealthy donors. The donors make these contributions to influence candidates and the political process. You may think there are more important issues to focus on such as climate change, voting rights or housing affordability. Yet, there is a direct link between who funds political campaigns and the policies and laws that do or don’t result in government action. 7:23 - Lawrence Norden is Deputy Director of the Brennan Center's Democracy Program. He works on a variety of issues including money in politics, voting and government dysfunction. He joined us to discuss Brennan Center's work on campaign finance reform and public financing of elections. Watch Lawrence share his First Civic Action 28:23 - L. Joy, June and Lurie are joined by Amshula Jayaram and Sal Albanese to further discuss various methods of public financing of elections. Amshula Jayaram is a Senior Campaign Strategist at Demos, a dynamic “think-and-do-tank” that champions ways to address deep-seated inequity in our political and economic systems and puts communities of color at the center She focuses on advancing democracy reforms and supporting policies that advance racial equity. She recently testified before the New York State Senate on this issue. Sal Albanese, who joined us on a previous episode, is back to weigh in on this topic, specifically offering an alternative to public financing in the form of "Democracy Vouchers". Sal is currently serving on the New York City Charter Revision Commission and heard about this alternative which he is now a proponent of. Reading List Learn more about "big money", campaign finance reform and public financing of elections with this reading list. * Dark Money – PBS * Donor Diversity Through Public Matching Funds – Brennan Center for Justice * Big Money in the Charm City - Demos * More Cities Want to Embrace ‘Democracy Vouchers’ – CityLab * Definitions For Money In Politics Terms – League of Women Voters * Whose Voice, Whose Choice? The Distorting Influence of the Political Donor Class in Our Big-Money Elections – Demos * Overview of State Laws on Public Financing – National Conference of State Legislatures * Is campaign finance an issue of gender and racial equity? - City of State New York * Exonerated Man Who Spent Years in Prison in NY Calls for Public Financing of Elections - New York Law Journal

Assemblywoman Latrice Walker sheds some light on some of the issues at stake in the state budget process along with issues and policy on the legislative docket. Rose Pierre Louis, the Chief Operating Officer of the McSilver Institute then joins us to discuss how an academic research institution creates new knowledge about the root causes of poverty and develops evidence-based interventions to impact public policy. OUR GUESTS New York State Assembly Member Latrice M. Walker is a native of the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, educated in the New York City public schools. She received her undergraduate degree from SUNY Purchase College in Sociology and Political Science., JD from Pace University and was admitted to the New York State Bar in 2007. She made a name for herself as a strong voice and advocate from the streets of Brownsville to the Halls of Justice. She represents the 55th Assembly District in the New York State Legislature as a member of the Housing, Election Law, Energy, Correction, and Insurance Committees. Currently, she serves as the Chair for the Subcommittee on Renewable Energy. I find myself as a State Legislator able to utilize, whatever it is I’m able to bring to the table, to remove barriers from the people I represent so that we’re able to get through the door, and the one thing I always leave people with is that I’m not here to kick the door open, I want to take it off the hinges so that it can never go back on again. Rose Pierre-Louis is the Deputy Director for Administration and External Affairs of The McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work which is committed to creating new knowledge about the root causes of poverty, developing evidence-based interventions to address its consequences, and rapidly translating research findings into action through policy and practice. She holds a BS in political science from Tufts University and a JD from Case Western University School of Law. Pierre-Louis is known as a force for social and economic change, and possessing extensive public sector experience. I’m use to rapid response and academia works at a different pace...You write this great research paper and it gets into some academic journal and that’s it. No, we have to think about how do we get this information to people that can really benefit from it...

Is reading the local news part of your morning ritual? What outlets do you watch and what papers do you read? L. Joy brings journalists Azi Paybarah and Ben Max to the front of the class to lead a conversation on the importance of local news and diversifying the news you consume. Show Guests Azi Paybarah is a New York-based journalist who focuses on local politics. He worked as a reporter for the New York Press, the Queens Tribune and the New York Sun, the New York Observer, Capital, WNYC and now he writes the New York Today column for The New York Times. "If you think about news, it’s something you consume. What else do you consume? Food. There is a very big movement to eat locally, local food. If you think about news as something you consume it’s pretty healthy to consume local news." Azi Paybarah Ben Max is the Executive Editor of Gotham Gazette, a New York City-based independent online watchdog publication that covers city and state government, elections, and a wide variety of policy issues. He began his career teaching high school students American Government and History. "People should recognize local news has everything....from what’s happening down the block to in-depth discussion of policy... Anything people are excited by following national news, local news has it , you just have to pay attention to it." Ben Max #TakeCivicAction * Read and share news stories about your local community. * Read beyond what fits your values. Expand your knowledge and diversify the outlets you read. * Meeting new people at a conference or need an ice breaker? Ask someone what news outlets they read regularly. * Reward people who produce good content with your attention. Share their work on social media and/or subscribe. * Find out what newspapers and/or blogs your elected officials read. If you want to get their attention on an issue submitting a letter to the editor, an editorial or getting a story placed in that outlet may help bolster your issue.

The team discusses the news “below the fold” and L. Joy shares the story of meeting Senator and Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. #CivicDocket - Stories We Discussed * Drafting Only Men for the Military Is Unconstitutional, Judge Rules link * Sen. Cory Booker Reintroducing Marijuana Justice Act link * San Francisco To Expunge Thousands Of Marijuana Convictions link * Scrubbing The Past To Give Those With A Criminal Record A Second Chance link * NYC Bodega Owners Urge Cuomo To Let Them Sell Marijuana When It's Legalized link Meeting Senator Bernie Sanders Listen as L. Joy tells the story of meeting Senator Bernie Sanders (32:18) in a small meeting of activists and organizers the day before his big announcement in Brooklyn. She asked the Senator and Presidential candidate what he learned from his 2016 campaign and how he plans to run this race different.

Organized for Black women by Black women, the Power Rising Summit is a safe space for Black women to develop strategic, actionable ways to build and maximize their economic and political power. L. Joy took the trip to New Orleans to teach civics and interview some of the participants. Show Guests Rev. Leah Daughtry on creating Power Rising: “If I could wave my magic wand, I would convene Black Women. All kinds of Black Women, to come together and let’s talk about the issues that concern us and what we want to do. What we want to do with this political power, this social power, this economic power that we have.” Jessica Pickney Vice President of Government Affairs at In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda: “We are really trying to frame voting rights and voting issues as reproductive justice issues. Bodily autonomy, and having the right to make choices about when and if to parent and how to parent in a safe environment free from harm of all kind often starts at the voting polls” Hon. Lea Webb Past 4th District City Council Representative for the City of Binghamton on why she ran for office: “I just kept seeing that more and more that leadership, and it wasn’t just the person I ran against, the leadership at that time at all levels really was not focused on issues that were impacting my community” Feminista Jones: Activist, Author on why she wrote “Reclaiming Our Space: “My contribution to the feminist cannon...What I wanted to do was point out the fact that a lot of what is happening now has been started by Black feminists and led by Black feminists...I wanted to write a book that captures the ways in which Black Feminist Women are shaping culture, influencing politics, moving progress along and how we often don’t get credit for it”

Democracy is in crisis. How do we fix it? Professor Hélène Landemore comes to the front of the class to give a lesson on various forms of democracy and how she believes we should be including more people in the governing process. On L. Joy's Book Shelf Show Guest Hélène Landemore is an associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University, she is the author of Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many and the upcoming Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the 21st Century. Her research and teaching interests include democratic theory, theories of justice, constitutional processes and theories, and workplace democracy. Her research has been featured in the New York Times, the Boston Review, Slate and more. “The right to vote is essential and important but I think the right to have access to power which is located in the sphere where deliberation is performed, agendas are set, where decisions are actually made is perhaps even more central than the right to elect people to get there.” Hélène Landemore