 Good morning, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to Los Angeles and welcome to our session here, Democracy Dollars in the Future of Campaign Finance. It's wonderful to see you all at 9.30 am. My name is Mike Drashkevich. I am a volunteer colleague with Los Angeles for Democracy Dollars. We are a new campaign organizing for an open and equitable campaign finance system here in Los Angeles. Thank you for choosing to be with us here. It's always energizing to see folks interested in new ideas for strengthening our democracy, specifically our campaign finance system. I want to give a special shout out to represent us for giving us an hour to have this conversation with you. I'm honored to be on stage with these folks here, aspiring readers from across the country, working to push democracy dollars in the respective communities on a different capacity. I'm also told we have a live stream going. So for those joining us, hello and welcome. I'd like to have you to start, you know, we're all aware of the destructive forces acting upon our democracy to divide us, to exclude us from participating. I think we can also see the important role that campaign finance reform has to play in leading the foundation for a new politics, one that can pulse forth all of our voices on the stage, draw upon their experiences in organizing insights, to see how democracy dollars specifically can be a critical piece of that foundation and something we can all take up right now in our backyards, wherever you are. This is something that you can start working on. At the end of the session, I'm going to reserve 15-20 minutes to get your questions, but I just had to take your questions in mind. Before I analyze here, I just want to give you a brief overview of democracy dollars for those who may be unfamiliar. Democracy dollars are democracy vouchers. We call them both terms. But a democracy vouchers is a campaign finance system, which all residents are issued vouchers that they can give to any local campaign of their choosing, who can then redeem those vouchers for public campaign funds. And what that does is, you know, for donors, it means, well, anyone can donate. You no longer need disposable income to participate in your campaign finance system. And so for candidates, that means you no longer need connections to wealthy fundraising networks to run competitive and successful campaigns. That means more voices can run, especially from communities that have been historically disenfranchised, like our working class communities and our communities of color. And so when you have those more candidates, when you have those more donors, you just have greater levels of participation, especially among low-compensating voters. We're going to hear about that in a bit from the folks in Seattle. And yeah, this is not just theoretical. It's happening right now in Seattle. They've had several cycle effects that we're starting to score here. We're going to hear how to expand our finance program through Democracy Vouchers to include all Angelinos. If you're interested in diving into the research on Democracy Vouchers, we've just published a report on our website, lademocracyvouchers.org. I'll give you a really good introduction to what they are and some of the research on that. So let's dive in. Let's get started. I want to introduce starting with Cynthia E. John Asquez, who's the executive director of Washington Bus, a statewide movement-building organization that increases political power and civic participation among young people across Washington state. She's currently working on a ballot initiative to bring Democracy Vouchers to the state level, and brings a remarkable and much-needed perspective to campaign finance performance. Next up we have Liz Suck, the executive director of Oakland Rising, a social justice collaborative that educates and mobilizes voters to self-organize for more inclusive democracy. Liz was a key leader in the coalition behind Measure W, the Oakland Fair Elections Act, which voters overwhelmingly passed last November, making Oakland the second city in the nation to introduce the democracy voucher system. And just personally, Liz was so generous with the time and support of our campaign. Next we have Pastor Leslie Jones, organizing director for the Amos Project, a faith-based project out of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, the state's largest community organizing power-building network. Pastor Leslie has been pastoring for 20 years. Wow. Focused on organizing in the Black church and Black congregations, and it's so inspiring to see their faith-based approach in action in the campaign finance program. I'm so excited to hear more about that today. Next we have Aura Vazquez, environmental justice organizer, good friend and advisor to Los Angeles for Democracy Vouchers. And we ran for city council here in 2020 and is running again. Aura served as the youngest commissioner and the first immigrant commissioner of the powerful Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. She brings an immense passion and I'm grateful we get to work with her daily, so thank you so much. And last but not least, we have Erin McKean, the legal counsel for state and local reform at Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan nonprofit that works to advance democracy at all levels of government. Erin also served with the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau. Drafting legislation from members of the Wisconsin Legislature. So no thing or two about a bill in legislation. And also thank you for Erin's generosity and patience for tolerating all of our questions. Thank you for being here. Let's dive in. Cynthia, I'd love to start with you. You're now working on this statewide effort. But just to start from the beginning, why did Democracy Vouchers initially resonate with you and how has it lived in Seattle? Definitely. Good morning, everyone. And thank you all for being here. I am not a morning person, but one thing that gets me up is doing work to protect democracy. So I appreciate all of you for being here. So as Mike mentioned, at its core, the Democracy Vouchers are a way to empower everyday people to participate in our democracy. And that's what voters understood back in 2015 when they overwhelmingly approved the program. And it has been widely successful on so many fronts. It has not only increased and diversified who is running for Seattle city council positions. There's also been increases in civic engagement. And it's also empowering new candidates to run for office for the very first time. And it's really incredibly exciting to see so many efforts begin to pop up, progress to Oakland. Soon we'll have LA and so many more. So thank you to my colleagues here on stage and those out in the audience for your work on this. So, you know, your question, Mike, was like, what has the impact been? What are the numbers telling us? In terms of small donor participation, we have since seen the introduction of the program, more than double of small donors in Seattle city council races. And we have especially seen increases amongst historically disenfranchised communities like black indigenous people of color, young folks, immigrants as well. In terms of increased civic engagement, we have seen through a study that what are known as low propensity voters for first time voters are more than 11 times more likely to vote and continue to vote after they use the democracy voucher. Right. Like, we got to get a clap for that y'all. And we have also seen huge successes in empowering the first time candidates to run. I'll share a quick story of city council members that is a mosquito that was the first, first time candidate to use the voucher program and win in the city of Seattle elections. Since then, she has been a strong champion on our city council for workers rights, student rights, youth rights, our aim of experiencing homelessness, and we wouldn't have that as almost without like the democracy voucher program. Right. So this is a testament to it working. Now there's election cycle running for county council. And this shows that there is a potential strong with a program like this. And that's pretty important to if we want to continue to build strong progressive candidates at every level of our government. And then my your second question was why did I get involved or the Washington bus get involved in the work that we do. There's two reasons for that. The first one is that it's just good common sense policy. And that's just the bottom line. This type of program gives everybody the opportunity again to participate in our democracy and to be a donor regardless of their wealth, their income or even immigration status because in Seattle residents are also able to use the voucher program. Um, and this program also means that candidates have to interact with their communities if they want to win, you know, and all of that, like just strengthens our democracy because candidates aren't going to big donors or wealthy donors. They're encouraged to talk to their constituents, listen to the issues that they care about most and they're not beholden to those big special interests of the wealthy few. And I'll end with this that the second reason why I got involved in advocating for democracy voucher program is is personal to me. I'm an undocumented immigrant and growing up, I saw voting as the only board of civic engagement and someone that can't vote. I didn't think that I could participate by allowing legal permanent residents to be a part of this program. It is expanding the electorate base. It is giving every person the opportunity to have a say in what issues are voted on because of the candidates that they're choosing. So for me, this issue, this program, this policy is very personal. Touching on the program's ability to expand access and bring everyone into the process is really, really critical. Tell me, what are some of the lessons you've learned from Seattle that you're hoping to bring to this campaign at the state level? Definitely. So while Washington State is a leader in campaign transparency, voting access, voting rights, there's still so much work to do for us. And I think one of the biggest lessons learned is just being able to expand on the narrative of why this is important for all legislators who are going to be voting on the issue, but also community members as well. That is one of the most important things that we can do is really empowering our constituencies, our basis of organizations that we work with to understand the program. And so for us, we still believe that to view people of color, rural people have the resources to run for office across Washington State. We still believe that to view people are able to donate in our elections and that's why we're running a legislation that we introduced this past cycle. But we'll reintroduce again in 2024 to expand the democracy voucher program statewide so that more people, more communities are able to see the same success and access to democracy that we have seen in Seattle. Amazing. Now for folks here and also doing this online, what's one piece of advice you would give to folks who may want to get started with this work and how can they support your work? Well, supporting our work, their funding is always a thing. Please fund us, resource us, give us C4 dollars. But more importantly, I think the success that we have seen in Seattle is due to the coalition building that we have done. I have like Cindy Black and Spencer Olson out in the audience who are dear colleagues to me. We can't do this work alone. No organization can do it alone. And by us breaking across multiple sectors, you'll only be able to strengthen the movement to implement a similar program in your jurisdiction. Thank you. Liz, you've been a long time grassroots community organism. Curious, what led you to choose democracy dollars as a big issue for Oakland to take on? And what were the problems you were hoping to address? I think I want to give a little bit of background first. So Oakland Rising for the last 15 years has been building political power in what we call the Flatbanks. And so this is working class for communities of color that have been disinfested in and redlined for generations. And so, you know, about 20 years ago, organizations that were doing base building work around different racial, economic and environmental justice issues. We're trying to go to City Hall to really push policy and we're getting turned away because we have a very neoliberal mayors and very neoliberal city council members. That really just continue to see the same kind of policies where they prioritize developers, prioritize corporations to pollute our air and our water and our land. And then, you know, led to lots of displacement in our communities. And so we have gone from a city that was 65% black, 25% black, and in the last 15 years. And so we came together to in order to begin to engage and mobilize voters in the Flatbanks as a power building strategy. So our end goal actually isn't to just pass a ballot measure or to get somebody in office. It's to actually build power amongst community to be able to speak to thousands of voters or thousands of people at one time to engage them in a process that they're not only coming out to vote, but they're actually pushing against power. So I want to be really clear about that. And so we don't necessarily we've been focusing more on the democracy piece in our work because it is an overarching element to, in order for us to have the past policy, we need to have equitable democracy, which is not only accessible, but that engages the community. And I think that's a big difference. And the reason why open rising decided to join. It's a collaborative of eight organizations. It's not like I just decided it was like a big coalition of folks that came together and decided this was the piece that we would work on and push together because we knew that that would also engage and bring people more into our power building strategy and open rising builds over the last 15 years. We went from the very beginnings of 1500 voter supporters to 60,000. So, like, when we talk to voters at the doors at the low low propensity, first time voters, when we talk to them at the doors, we're talking about 70 to 80% of the lectured is going to go our way. And so we put out extensive voter guys we do endorsement processes and so we push against power in the city, and into Alameda County. So, that's sort of the basis of why we started and why we joined the democracy dollars work. I think the other thing about it was the coalition of folks that we stepped into the room with was important because, you know, I've said it before and I think, you know, I think we're going to talk a little bit more about it in a bit but, you know, it was really a broad based coalition and we were brought in as a as the arm of that campaign to do the outreach. And we pushed in that space to really focus, you know, you all run the already campaign or, and I'm just going to name the room is very white. Right. And you all are probably most likely to be outreach to, but in most campaigns campaign consultants don't want to talk to our community. They don't, they don't want to pay for the translation. They don't want to do that additional work that it creates trust of the actual conversations in the room. And we know how to do that. And so, when it came to if you want to win anything in Oakland, you got to bring it to open rising because we're that we're that arm of that work. And I So we're talking to, you know, like 60% renters in Oakland, we have 60% renters working class folks, communities of color that are really deep in in the city. And so that's where we're engaging. And that's why we were buying the process. Thank you for sharing that and bringing attention to the issues within, you know, how these, how these topics get talked about and even fun. So thank you for that. I want to point out that the measure W received 73% of the vote just incredible or something like this to get that support. Can you talk a little bit about what you think were some of the key factors to that? I think first it's is the coalition that we created. So it was an Oakland rising our have a relevant organization in the Bay called Bay Rising that we set up a steering committee for and common cause California Northern California ACLU Asian law caucus. And that's why the legal women voters came together. You these folks probably would end up in the same room and any other many other situations. And so when we came together, we really spent an incredible amount of time establishing trust and principles of how we would work as a coalition. And so every dollar that was spent, we talked about how we moved strategically who we would hire. It wasn't any one person. Of course, you know, the legal folks really brought their expertise to the room, we brought our expertise to the room. So whatever, you know, they led in the conversation, but it was always a joint decision. And I don't think we ever even got to a place where we had to be like, you know, vote, you know, it was like consensus every day. And so, and it's a lot of laughter a lot of fun together. And I think that those things really matters the relationships that at the end of the day the same as when you engage people at the doors, you have to be building relationships with people. And that's our I think the critical and value. And I think the other thing that really helped us was because we actually had some really strong electives in office, progressive electives that we helped on our C4 side to open right and have a C3 on our C4 side, we helped to elect some really strong progressives in Oakland, then help to champion it in order to get the city council to get on the ballot. And those champions really worked with us on that legislation and advised us in particular ways that could really help. And I also think that one of the biggest things that we were talking about early Aaron about like we know the political landscape, we know what what is moving at any given moment. So I think that at every step of the way is something to talk about and to work on right so when you start, we started it like the process six years six years prior to winning. And that conversation was very, you know, it was the conditions were very different for like post Trump, you know, like Trump and everybody like oh shit our democracy is at risk. Right, the virility of this messaging and is the way that he moved politically really set us up in a way that people are like we need to strengthen democracy. So when we went to the doors we were told actually by Seattle folks give sweeteners which were other like Democratic or anti-democracy type reforms. And actually the conditions in Oakland required that we could actually meet those are needed to talk to people about those things. Our lead actually was democracy dollars your opportunity to like join in this process. And people really resonated with that like the black and brown voters that we talked to. So I think like understanding the conditions of the where you're working because we were so rooted in the community and the political landscape that we could actually win. Thank you for that. And in that spirit of collaborating and participating, there's a number of democracy vouchers and out of advocates here in the room. If you could raise your hand please if you work on democracy vouchers, this one point about please for folks who are interested to talk to these individuals with Common Cause, with folks in Seattle, San Diego, Washington. We really want this to be the learning community drawing upon lessons and trying new things. And Liz, before we go, what advice would you give to folks who are looking to get started and how can they support your work? I mean, I mean, you know, learning also from Seattle and from Washington is coalition building. You can't just drop in out of the blue and say we're going to bring democracy dollars to this place. It really has to be part of the relationship building. I think really understanding and knowing the political context because even though we won, we had to fight for at least some implementation money because of what we were advised to put into the valid measure. And then we were faced with $345 million deficit in the city of Oakland and the funding was cut severely. So our ability to implement it and is the landscape now has changed and our progressive candidates are now completely under attack because of this climate punishment kind of narrative that is out there. The fear that has been stoked and the ways that the right wing and the venture capitalism developers in our town are like, you know, fueling hatred between different organizations and different people, different communities, using Asian people as wedges against black folks. This is not this is not a new game, but it's heightened in this moment, and it is actually the tool of the right. And so like for us, it's like, now we're faced with trying to the conditions that we want with or we brought it to the ballot are different. What are we working with now so always at every step of the game, looking at what is your landscape, what is the context, what is the condition, who are you talking to, where are the people we saw because of this placement we saw huge movements of our voter supporter base leaving Oakland. And most of them, I will say, ended up on the street, right became unhoused, we have 8000 unhoused people in Oakland of a city of 400,000. So we're talking like about years and years of this kind of displacement years and years of the type of rhetoric around more policing, more, more conditions that criminalize communities of color, hitting each other against each other in order to maintain the status quo. So I think that understanding your conditions, understanding how that is always constantly moving and having people on the ground who know that conditions and know how to be honest. Thank you so much. One last thing that I would say is, make sure that your campaign includes non English speaking media. You must have the array of languages that can reach as many of your electorate, as possible, if particularly amongst, you know, Spanish speaking and different Asian speaking languages, because without them coming up with a cross to the other side, sitting on the fence without anybody talking to them, right. And having someone talk to them in their language, culturally appropriate work, then you can, you can bring those over to your side. Thank you. Pastor Leslie. You just started exploring. What was it that brought you to the idea? What inspired you about it? What are you learning on the way? Well, first, I want to thank you all for inviting me to be here today and hopefully I don't get too preachy, but I am a pastor. Whenever you give me a microphone, there's something about that anointing that begins. And as Mark Twain said, you know, we're almost going to go to Cincinnati because they'll know it's 20 years later. And I travel, I work with, you know, sitting here on this panel, I see all the progressive work that's happening, you know, across the country and then you have good old Cincinnati. So in 2017, I actually ran for Cincinnati City Council. We have a complete nine X system, so nine at large, no awards, no districts. And we have the same retread. I mean, people run for office there 20 years, they get term limited, they come back 20 years later, they run and so they keep keep running. And oftentimes those are people that do not look like me. And while we have had probably 50 years of democratic rule in Cincinnati, it has not proven well for people of color communities and particularly low income communities. But development and developers, of course, are homing. And so we began to look at what really needed to happen as we have shifted demographics also, much like Oakland, we have a city that was almost 50%. Well, it was 50% and at one point well over 50% of the population of Cincinnati was black. We are now sitting somewhere around 30, between 38 and 40%. And we are starting to see our neighborhoods and our communities literally be decimated, disappear. There's no, you go there and you don't even think that maybe there was ever black people there. And there's such a rich history of, you know, the end of slavery and all of that in Cincinnati. So when we look at that, we say, what is that going to mean down the road for our city and our community? And we look at, there needs to be some reforms. So we began to look overall at all the reforms that need to happen, but particularly we needed to have something happening around campaign finance reform and electing folks. In 2017, as I said, I ran for city council. Actually, I thank God that I didn't win. And a part of the reason I thank God that I didn't win is that three individuals that did win all are now either have served or are getting ready to serve. To serve jail time for right. And all of it was around development deals. They all happened to happen to be Democrats, one Republican, two African American and one white male Caucasian who came from the wrong kind of money. Let me put it that way. He didn't come from the old money in Cincinnati, right? His dad was pretty new and struck something great, invented something, struck some deal with Procter and Gamble and that's how they got their money. But that wasn't the right kind of money in Cincinnati. And so when we look at that to say, well, and I was told that I shouldn't even consider running if I couldn't raise $75,000. And I was set out to prove that I really didn't need to raise $75,000 to win a race. I came in 12 in a race of 28 contenders, nine seats. There are only nine seats. I finished 12. There was only 1800 votes between number nine and myself, which I raised $10,000 intentional. Right? So thank you. So my, as we looked at that, we have to find what are the ways that we can, we can change some things here. But we have to get big money or I would, I like to also think of it as shady money. Not so much dark, but shady money out of politics and also get a pathway for people such as myself that are everyday grassroots people. One thing they didn't say. I'm also the founding pastor of my congregation that has survived 20 years in a very conservative, very conservative place. And we are pretty radical and progressive and where people said we couldn't do it. So I think people like myself and others who we have a system of having neighborhood councils and community councils that are supposed to be, you know, overseeing their community and neighborhood. But they can't actually run for office and go down the city hall and make some decisions because either they can't raise the money or they don't have enough right name recognition or they don't come from the right side of the tracks. So when I look at that, I think about what happens every year. It probably doesn't happen in the majority if you're a person of faith and you have a faith community. It probably doesn't happen in your neighborhood. But in Black neighborhoods, every election cycle, politicians file through our churches. They come in, they wave, they make all these processes, they do all this stuff. Some of them just now that we have, you know, social media, they show up, they take pictures and if they took pictures with the right clergy at the right church, right place, they're going to get the vote. That's pandering. No, we need to stop that and bring it into it. So as we explore that, the way much as the national scene has set up, you know, has done a lot of the work for us. We don't have to explain a lot now and just show up at the door and say, you want to fight back. And people are like, yeah, we got to do something about this. And so we need to know the way, how do we come back that? How do we change that narrative? How do we stop a lot of our Black clergy, honestly, from thinking that they have power and influence because the mayor calls them to a meeting and never shows up at the meeting they call? Or the council members, how do we change that? How do we put some power back into people? We have people sitting in those congregations that want to run for office, want to make a change in impact, but they can't get involved. And so that's really how we end this exploratory conversation. And actually right before the pandemic hit, we were actually talking about at least getting districts and we had a campaign all laid out. We were ready to collect signatures and then we had shut down. And at one time we had proportional representation in Cincinnati. And it changed when a Black man was going to be most likely elected mayor. And so we look at all of those types of reforms, but we have decided as we're building, as we said, we have to build a diverse coalition. And we're at that point of building that coalition and talking to them. And right now, what is at the top of our list is democracy dollars and looking at some type of change in how we elect our senior councilman. What are folks responding to democracy dollars? Well, most of the electives are like, what? What are you talking about? What? I mean, I don't have to take any more money for the developer. I don't understand. So on that side, we've had some pushback from some electives because we're having conversations with both our county commissioners and city council members because we still don't know if this should be a county initiative or a city initiative. And where we should really be starting with that. But people on the ground, the grassroots folks, so the ground folks are like, yeah, teach me more. I want to know more. We've learned some, also learned some lessons along the journey not to have what we kind of call those, those wide broadcast meetings where somebody, everybody that wants to do something shows up and you end up with 20 more. So we've learned not to do that. I've learned that real easy. I thought, well, let's just put it out there and see who responds. Well, I've gotten everything. And so I have learned to be a little more strategic about invitations and voting. But I do understand, you know, that that people want to make change. And what I'm excited about is that it is right now a broad. It is a spectrum is a broad spectrum of people who have an interest and they they are wanting to learn more. And so that's where we are with that. And I'd love for you to touch on to this and bring your faith based approaches and what folks who are in faith based communities can learn from your organizing around funding. Right. So for me, it kind of starts, I think. For me at a very young age, I pretty much knew that I wanted to be in ministry of some sort, some way. I did not want to say I wanted to be a pastor for some obvious reasons. I was a little cantankerous of this child as well. So but I was taught that that's why I was going to make a great creature. And so in my up to me, I grew up in sort of a back to met the cost experience. My father was my stepfather was Baptist. My biological father was Methodist and my mother was apostolic. And these these people who raised me decided that the best education was for me to go to a Catholic school. Right. And I had an uncle who was a great friend growing up and he was Muslim. I grew up in this very pluralistic kind of environment and always thought something is wrong here with some of this. We have all this separatism, we have all this division, but then when it came to politics in my house, I also grew up in a very politically active and civically active home. There didn't seem to be division there a lot. They all seem to be at one party, kind of thought the same. For the most part, most of my family was very socially conservative as well and physically conservative. You know, at one point, many members of my family probably were Republicans and of course, when it shifted, they became Democrats, but there didn't seem to be a lot of difference there. But when it came to certain issues, my family seemed to be like they be at each other's throats. And I thought, well, but they always thought, you know, and always knew these elected folks, elected folks were always around. And I was like, well, how's my grandfather, you know, talking to that guy that ever seemed to turn, he votes against our interests. I don't quite understand that. But yet certain things would happen. And I'll just give this example, like a robe got paved in our little country town in West Carolina on one side. And it happened to be the side that my great grandmother moved from. Only that part of the road got paved. The other part of the road didn't get paved. What is happening, you know, and I'm beginning to wonder what is happening. And so as I grew and I began to understand is exactly what I spoke about how elected officials parade through the black church and that their conversations that happen sort of off to the side and individual congregations, individual situations, you know, seem to get help, but not the whole community. And so when I looked at that, I was like, something's got to be done about this. I also, in my ministry, became one of those pastors that would get called on by organizers during their campaign time because I was progressive. I could speak, I could wrap a crowd up, get out there. And then when I started talking about stuff that needed to happen, they disappeared. We had to start, stop, stop, stop. I don't know what that means. Oh, it just seems like my mic was going in and out. So I began to see that there was nothing being built that was sustained, the work that we really needed to do. And so I kind of labeled myself as a rent-a-collar. And so when I would get those calls, I'd be like, oh, you want to rent my collar? Okay. You know, and that's honestly how it felt. And then a lot of clergy, honestly, because of many times being socially conservative around certain issues, just around a few issues, really, would get, honestly, I was boxalized by evangelicals on the right and often told a whole story that made no sense. And so, and I've been a part of, I've been to those meetings as well. And I said, I can't do this anymore. And I began to tell folks that I actually agreed with, no, I'm not going to come and speak at your rally. I'm not going to do this because it does not oftentimes weigh good for me. And so along came the opportunity for me to have a conversation with the folks at Ohio Organized Collaborative and gave them my mom's speech. And they said, well, would you join us as a consultant and kind of look at what we're doing and give us some feedback. And I did that. And then I said, okay, thanks, you know, wish you guys well. And they came back about three months later and said, well, who's going to do this? I go, I don't know. I just gave you the report you asked for. And then they said, oh, it sounds like you wrote your job description. And so I accepted the task and that's why I came. And I really came and I'll close with this point. Matthew 2323. If you read that story, it's a story of the scribes, the Pharisees that are challenging Jesus. They're challenging Jesus about this group of people that are not keeping the law. Right. And they're saying, okay, they're not keeping the law. We are good lawkeepers. We pay our 10%. Right. But these were the same people who also were putting weights on the scales at the market and overcharging the people sound familiar. And Jesus's response to them was, you know, he called all the fighters and back then that was calling my like snakes, you know, you know, have some other words. In my congregation because I can't cause a little bit. So I point to them and they say. And so, so, you know, yes, you can. So, you know, because there are some choice words you want to say. And so in that Jesus said to these Pharisees who were keeping one part of the law and you can kind of follow that and where I'm going now, the things that are so unlawful. And then Jesus said, but you should be concerned about the more weightier matters of faith, of justice, love and mercy. That's why I do what I do. Thank you guys for that. Yeah. And I hope they will stick around if there are questions. Yeah, absolutely. So just before we move on quickly, how can folks support your work? Yeah, you can look for us at amosproject.org and sure we take contribution. Most of all, if you would do one thing for me, those of you who are praying people or you send good vibes and energy because we need it in Ohio. Yes. Thank you guys. Next up out of the size of the 2020 running against one of the most powerful politicians, not just in Los Angeles, but in California. Tell us, what was that experience like? What was fundraising like? And how do you think the democracy vouchers program would change that service? Well, welcome everyone to Los Angeles. I hope you're all having a great time. Thank you for being here. I'm Olga Vasquez. I ran in 2020 for city council here. LA has 15 council members for a four million people city. So it's a pretty small electorate for the amount of people that live here. And my district is one of the most diverse districts. We have places like Korea town, little Ethiopia. We have historic, you know, West Adams, which is an African American neighborhood and 70% of the community in my district are Latinos. So it's a very diverse, you know, pool of people. In 2020, I ran against a very prominent politician, Marie Thomas, who after he got elected was indicted by the FBI and 22 counts of money, you know, different things. In the past five years in Los Angeles, at least once a year, we have seen an electroficial being indicted and actually going to jail. So some of them think they're innocent, some of them fight, some of them fight with the rest of the city council members when they get, you know, suspended from their duties. They want to keep serving up. They are accused of crimes. So, you know, so we have a very interesting kind of moment here and especially after the pandemic with so many people. So it's more businesses closing and renters being on the verge of being on the streets. People would not work. I mean, we really as a society experience such a struggle and, you know, in our healthcare system and our democracy also. So in 2020, when I run, one of the things that I that I can identify with a lot of the other speakers is that I also went and not condors of the unusual people. I'm the first Afro Latina from Columbia and Afro Latina in general to run for city council in LA. So for me, reaching out to my people was important. It was out of principle. I didn't care what the consultant said. The consultant also said, you got to go get the high propensity voters, the people that vote all the time. Latinos don't vote. You know, so when I went knocking on these doors, one of the surprises that I found is that a lot of people said, I have been living here 24 years, 30 years, 15 years, five years. Nobody has ever come knocking on my door. You're the first one. And that's a problem. We are the American Democracy Summit. And that's the bottom, like that's the most democratic thing that we can do. So our job, all of us here is really pushed for an agenda where everybody, everybody has a vote, a voice and that every vote counts. We have to start reaching out to the people that come and vote and are in the mix and are in the pictures and are, you know, going around. Are people deserve our attention? And they deserve to also be part of the, you know, of the electoral poll and also deserve to know that there's elections and that these elections also affect them. So of course, you know, people told me also, you know, in order to run for city council, you need to raise a half a million dollars for a grassroots summit. You know, so in LA, we have already some sort of form of campaign reform. We have a city matching program where people in Los Angeles can donate it for every dollar. Not enough. That was not enough to go against a powerful politician that had all labor supporting him that played all the dirty tricks on the book. And I'm not just talking about House of Cards, guys. This is like, you know, like where they poison wells, where they call people in my community and said, if you support her, you are done. You will never get work here. You will never, you know, we will never do anything for you where they call me to offer me jobs, fancy jobs too, you know, to kind of get me out of the race. And that's how I kind of got involved with democracy vouchers because like, well, that's not enough because all those doors that are not needed. Also a reason to come out and to say, well, if the money and politics is so important, how are you listening to me if I don't have any money? So this is why this, this is like, this is so important. We're hoping now in 2024 and moving forward to establish a democracy vouchers, you know, program that can help people like me. And I can really, you know, and now I'm running again, same district, same stuff. And democracy vouchers could be a game changer for all those doors and those people that I go and reach out to that feel like they don't have a state in the game. Thank you. The next one is a 130 so we can definitely go over that. Thank you so much. Okay, so yeah, just from the point we have a little bit more time and we initially thought so we'll continue with the questions here. How do you also, environmental activists, what's the connection you see between campaign finance reform and democracy vouchers specifically? Yeah, I always say that the same people that are polluting our environment, the face of your industry are also polluting our political process. Because they invest like, I mean, and I'll give you my example again, they gave out, you know, money to certain local trades in 2020, the petroleum industry so that they spend $40,000 against me. I was the only candidate that had an independent expenditure against her. We also need to tackle independent expenditure. Somehow we need to figure that one out. So democracy vouchers today are such an incredible way. Imagine now, I'm running again, imagine if I could have the choice to all of those doors that I'm already knocking, people that I already know, people that often are like, you're the first one knocking on my door. And then you say, well, I have $100, you know, I'll give you $50. Imagine what will also that do to the regular establishment candidates that know the playbook because they have a system that works for them. That doesn't work for people in our community that actually can be representing the real interest of community members, you know, on the ground. So especially with environmental justice is so important because again, the same people that we build gas plants in that we have that have lower quality that don't have healthy water or clean water are the same people that never get to participate in our political process and that we need to change that. One piece of advice to be to our candidates, we're thinking about potential candidates, we're thinking about running for office with other advocates who are looking at pushing this idea. How can we support organizations you've been involved with? Yeah, it's such an honor and it's so exciting to see that programs like this are bubbling up at the local level and that candidates like me can kind of get behind something like that and learn and give our experience and be great advocates. So if you are thinking about doing something similar in your city, go reach out to those members in your community that are thinking about running and have them also offer their experience and champion these policies because there is nothing better that someone with their own experience is speaking about something that affects them, you know, directly. And Los Angeles, we've been doing a very hard push. I wrote a, you know, I know that that was published in the 80 times, we've done a lot of, like, you know, events. And I imagine a world where we have really a level play field because this is what we're asking for. Now, we have a whole industry that revolves around elections. We have people that make a lot of money, a lot of consultants that make a lot of money. You all got to fire these consultants. I'm sorry to get rid of that because they don't really understand what we're trying to do. We are movement candidates. We're trying to change the face of the game and we're trying to change the game in general. So it's actually not in their best interest also to help people like us. And also because their style, their playbook doesn't work for a candidate that was a former undocumented student. Doesn't work for a candidate that is a renter. Doesn't work for a candidate that cares deeply and acts with courage for our planet. You know, they have their candidate that loves their development. That loves their bankers and the people that have a pool of donors that are going to contribute to that kind of work. And again, if we want to see a true democracy, guys, when 2023, the game is different. Social media is here, AI is here. I mean, if we really want to change the face of the game, we got to also recreate what the game is. So that's my invitation to you. Thank you. Now I'd love to move to the policy legal realm of democracy about your space. So Aaron, tell us about the policy legal landscape and what should advocates be aware of as they start their projects looking to push this end? Thanks for having me. I know my contribution is going to be a little different because I'm not an organizer, but I do get to benefit and learn from people who are on the ground. I serve as a legal advisor. And the role that I play and the role that I'd like to play is making sure that these solutions are actually doable at the legal pitfalls, right? And that legal advisors, policy advisors can inform the organizer. I am not an organizer. I am always in awe of the organizers and the work they do. But we can help you inform that process and strategy because I have to think in the long term of once this gets passed, then what does it look like? Once it gets challenged in court, what does this look like? And helping think in that long term process and then making sure that these wins, these organizing wins, these coalitional wins are actually durable for the long term. And that's the role that I see myself in and making sure that we do with the voices of all these communities. That's what democracy dollars is about, what the public finance thing is about, ensuring that more people have access to the political process. And I want to make sure that when we get these wins, we get to keep them and actually benefit from them. The Seattle Democracy Voucher example is a perfect jumping off point for this. Particularly because you saw it was passed in 2013. It went into effect in 2017. But it also had a legal challenge after it was implemented. And folks said that it was unconstitutional. It challenged the constitutionality of the program saying that you're forcing taxpayers to subsidize other people's political speech. That's compelled speech and that's unconstitutional. But that's not what this program does, right? Public financing is about enlarging the discussion, making sure it's more accessible. And so when you look at the Seattle program, you can see that it's built into the legislation that there are legal protections in there. Talking about the purposes of these programs, it's not to stop someone else from speaking and lift up just one group of voices. It's to make sure it's accessible to everyone. And that's part of the legal and policy piece is making sure that those pieces are in there so that when you get into court, we can successfully defend them. And that's what happened in Washington. The Supreme Court of Washington held the program as constitutional. Camping Legal Center, my organization was a part of that. But we also worked alongside all the organizations that were on the ground in Seattle, in Washington to bring that home. They brought it home on the ground and getting it passed. And then we were there to help bring it home when it got challenged. And we want to take that win and keep getting more wins like that, make sure they're durable, especially as more groups see this can work. We want to do it in our backyard. How do we make sure that we're legally tight, we're ready to go when the implementation challenges. Thank you. I think you shared a bit earlier about not trying to finalize all the policy details up front. That comes later with the culture, but when people are getting started, what's most important for them to know as they begin this program? Yeah, I think it's really helpful for me to know what's going on out there. I have groups that do come to me to the Camping Legal Center because we've worked on these issues before. And they say, oh, what are we going to do? How do we do this? And sometimes it's early in the process, right? And we're able to talk through, you're kind of like the guardrails. Here are the things you can't do. Here are the things you can do to try to, and that to me, that's helpful because that helps inform the discussions that people are having about what can we pursue? What's going to make this legally risky? How do we make sure that everybody in coalition is on the same page about what we're actually pursuing? Is it a transparency reform? Is it a democracy dollars reform? And then once you're actually talking about the details, having set that groundwork of having an early conversation means that people are on the same page about the lines you can't cross, or maybe the lines that you're going to push a little bit. And that's the role I see myself there, and it's like, how do I do that? How do I make sure that I'm giving good advice to folks as they're developing their policy plans? The questionary tale is a different public financing program that is a long-running program in Arizona where it's a successful program and we're certainly supportive of it. It's not the democracy dollars, but we're supportive of it. And they had included in their program a piece that was like a legal mechanism for increasing the amount that a publicly financed candidate could get in public funding based on the amounts that they're privately funded of opponents were getting. And so you basically ratchet it up, how much public financing you would get. Personally, that sounds like a good idea, but legally that was something that the U.S. Supreme Court took a look at and they struck it down because they said that regardless of their view of how they reasoned through this, they said that has the effect of burdening those private candidate speech, right, because of public funding. This is what the opinion says, so that's what we're doing. I'm just a messenger here. But knowing that that's out there means that folks in the coalition for deciding what their policy is can make decisions knowing that that's a risk that could come up if you wanted to adopt something similar to that type of system. I will be the first one to tell you that that is a risky thing to include because it could get struck down. And the U.S. Supreme Court essentially said if your goal, and this is in their opinion, if your goal is leveling the playing field, that's not a constitutional, that's not a constitutionally permissible goal. The goal is expanding who has access to our political process, enlarging the public discussion. And that's really where we focus on the purposes and the design of these programs. Thank you. And then if people want to get in touch with you to ask questions to use your resources, how should they do that? I mean, so the best way to do it is to contact us at Campaign Legal Center because it's me and I also have other colleagues who are fantastic at working on this. And the best thing to do is certainly feel free to grab my card, I have parts. But I also, you can email info at campaignlegal.org. Mic drop, little mic drop. Very exciting. But I am around and so if anyone wants to chat afterwards, I'm happy to have you chat. All right. And thank you, Erin, and we're being told we're saying bye to the live stream. Thank you for joining us virtually. Okay, y'all. You are coming to...