 Welcome to Coast to Coast. My name is Lily Weinberg. I'm here joined by my colleague, Raul Moaz. How's it going, Raul? Hello, hello. Doing well yourself? Doing well. So we are on month six of this pandemic. Is that how far along we are? And it only feels like year six. That's right. That's right. And as you know, the purpose of Coast to Coast is really to look at, you know, how our communities are changing during this really dynamic time. We've looked at all sorts of topics from how public spaces can be leveraged during pandemics to mobility. We really did a deep dive during the racial reckoning that's occurring in our country. And so we've looked at all different types of topics. Of course, we have something really major going on in November. As you know, we have an election. And it's only completely obvious that we should be doing some. We should be examining voting and civic engagement, which is really Knight Foundation's North Star. So I'm really excited about our topic today. And can you tell us a bit about what we're going to chat about? Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's exactly right. In some ways, I think the election has gotten swooped up in the fact that there is a public health crisis and there's so much happening in our country this year. But it is less than 30 years away. And so I think to your point about talking about the trends that are effectuating the lives of cities and communities, one of the things that we've picked up on and we wanted to dive into today was how do these different kind of tensions and trends around civic participation manifest, right? And in the context of engaging communities and promoting civic participation, voter turnout, particularly, where it seems to be periods of rather high distrust, lack of trust in the institutions of this country, we're also seeing a lot of engagement on the civic front in terms of folks demanding racial equity of folks. And locally in Miami, for example, in August, we had record turnout for the primary. And so there's these different indicators that tell us different things about the health of our democracy and the health of civic participation and engagement. And so for that, we wanted to invite Joanne Godoy, who is the executive director of Radical Partners and a dear friend of ours, to join us in conversation. She's leading some really fascinating work around a project called Vote Miami. You can check out votemyamy.org. And we wanted her to give us her insights and her learnings from what can other communities around the country learn about civic engagement in times of disruption, in times of turmoil that might help get us through this. That might be exactly the medicine we need to get us through this process. So investing in our democracy, investing in voter participation to get us through the noise and the challenges that we're living through today. So with that, Joanne, thank you so much for joining us and being with us today. Thank you so much for the invitation. We've been very excited. Fantastic. Well, I'll see you guys in 15 minutes or so. OK? Bye. See you in a bit. And so as the lead alluded, Joanne and I are going to go back and forth for a bit just to kind of set the scene and set the table. As with other Coast to Coast episodes, we really are predicated on your involvement. And so if you have any questions for Joanne, please feel free to drop them. You can either drop them right here into the Q&A feature within the chat or on Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag Night Live. And our team will scrape them together and we'll put them to Joanne at the end. So we'll do about 10, 15 minutes of Q&A towards the end. Joanne, welcome. Really good to see you. And glad that you're doing well and able to spend this time with us. Could you give us a quick kind of overview of radical partners and then more specifically, what has built Miami and how did it come about? Yeah, totally happy to. Thank you again, Raul. So radical partners is a Miami-based social impact accelerator. So for those of you who are familiar with the business concept, we kind of take it and own it so that we can not only identify who's already doing and leading social impact initiatives in town, but also scale their impact and make it grow. So we have three pillars of work. One is that we invest in leaders. Two is that we activate and engage locals, which we're going to be talking more about today. And the third thing is that we try to design innovative solutions to solve and collectively confront, I would say, the issues that we all care about. So in those lines of work, we have several programs, including Vote Miami, which is the one that we're going to be talking about today. And this is basically an initiative that started a year ago, thanks to the support of Knight, actually, and in partnership with the Miami Herald and the Miami Foundation as well. And the idea was, how can we make it easy and accessible for everybody to not only care about voting but doing something about it? So that's how the platform was born. And back then, it was an online assemblage of tools that people could use to register, learn, and mobilize. And this year, it has grown to be so much more, right? But I'm going to pause there because I'm sure we're going to dive in later on. Yeah, I love the way you kind of describe what radical parties are investing in people, investing in ideas, nurturing them. All of that happens within a context, all that happens within a current setting. Could you give us a bit about kind of the relief, the background against which you're doing this work in Vote Miami? Tell us what you all kind of assumed or saw or concluded about Miami that led you to this point to say we need this kind of aggregation of resources and tools, and then how you kind of designed Vote Miami in response to that. Yeah, happy to. So I think there's nothing new when one looks at the numbers, right? Miami, unfortunately, has one of the lowest turnouts when you compare it to other cities in the world. So we started digging like, what is happening? Why is this happening? And we found certain trends, right? One of them is that for those of them who care about civic engagement and voting already, it is hard. And it's time-consuming for you to understand what is happening when, where should I go? Where should I register? So even if you're interested, it takes you a while to navigate a system that it might be built with good intentions, but it's archaic in a way. So you have to navigate a lot of websites, calls, et cetera. So it takes time. So that was one. And then the second one is there are some people that do not care, right? And you and I have talked about this role. Miami, in the end, is one of the cities that has more foreign-based locals. So we all come, including myself, with some traumas of what we've dealt in our countries, how we perceive democracies, et cetera. So we are kind of like disenfranchised and lost hope in those systems, which has led us to not really care or to not really have hope that our vote in our voice matters. And the third one is that some people really don't know, right? Like some people that have two or three jobs to take care of dogs and kids, et cetera. Like they just do not have the time or the brain space to care and learn about all these things. I think that you're hitting on this concept that we touched on before, the multiple Miami's, right? That from the outside, I think a lot of folks, especially from the American kind of world, do you would say that Miami is very diverse and it has a very strong Latino community or what have you. But when you get really close to Miami, you realize it's 10,000 shades of gray in some ways. And there's nuance to the nuance to the nuance. And so I'm curious in terms of advice that you might be able to impart on other folks in other communities across the country, how should we be thinking of meeting people where they're at? In Miami, it's really the multiple Miami's. And it's meeting each of those communities that you just beautifully kind of delineated, meeting them where they're at, in terms of what do you need to further your engagement. So what are basic concepts or pre-substitutions that you found in the work thus far that others in other cities could say, all right, we really got to get nuance. We got to meet the customer where they're at. We should follow these principles when designing an intervention around civic participation and voter engagement. So many things to share there, right? But I think the first thing that we all not only could but have to do is to really do some research, right? And try to understand what is our community and what do our communities look like, right? So in Miami, yes, we have the high rises. Yes, we have the Yacht clubs and the golf clubs, but we also have the lowest salaries in the countries. So it's understanding how Miami fits in when you compare it to the United States, but also understanding what Miami looks like for the Latin American country and countries and how we're kind of like stuck in the middle of these several realities. So that's definitely the one thing that you need to do, zoom in to understand who's living in your cities, where are they, what are they looking towards? And also, where are they having these conversations, right? So once you understand who's out there is, what is it that they're doing? What do they care about? And where are they having these conversations? And I think that's a very important thing that that will Miami tries to fill the gap in terms of, yes, there are plenty of conversations out there. Yes, there are plenty of platforms. The reality is that it's hard to understand role. So what Miami is, how can we make it simple in plain English and Spanish and Creole to make sure that people can access the information in whatever level they have, right? So access is definitely a thing and that might look different in its city. And the third thing is, how do we make it a 2020 thing, right? Like how can we just make it modern and exciting and celebratory, just like it was a hundred years ago to make sure that we're all not only keen to engage but actually acting and doing something about it. I think it's such an interesting kind of, that's such an interesting point that we don't really talk about like, I think engagement voter participation today is definitely being, has absolutely been politicized on our fronts and there's this kind of really, there's huge moral imperative. I think fewer and fewer folks in this election cycle have spoken about kind of the excitement of voting from an optimistic perspective necessarily because we're living in times of such a massive change in disruption. And so I'm curious about this element of emotion, right? Like of sentiment and sentiment again might mean different things for different folks. What are you seeing? What sort of sentiments and emotions are you trying to tap into to kind of really kind of coax folks to step up or to be more active, whether that's voting or if you're not able to vote because you're not a citizen engaging in civic participation in a different way? Are there certain sentiments? Is it an emotional kind of response? Is it a call to kind of responsibility? What sentiments are we using to get folks kind of in the door so to speak? So I would say that's kind of like the MO at Radical Partners and we tried to replicate it with Bo Miami and one of the sentiments is collaboration, right? How can we make everybody believe that this is a thing of everybody, right? So vote Miami is not the only movement definitely here. So instead of competing with other organizations who are definitely registering folks that are mobilizing leaders around as an issue, instead of competing with them, we try to leverage what they're doing and uplifting the work that you're doing. So in a tangible way, that means either having public dialogues on social media, that means sharing their content, using their content, adding it to the vote Miami website so that we can create like this family and the celebratory sentiment towards what we're doing. And the second one role is how do we make everybody own this and be excited about this? So if you look at our social, if you look at our content and it's not about like Radical Partners here, vote Miami here is look, stop scrolling. We just want you today to take the census and register to vote. And what we want is for people to look at that image, say like, oh, this is so cool. I wanna share with my friends and family so that they make it their own and they make it their own thing. So definitely non-partisanship is key. We're not pushing for any candidates for anything. We just want whomever is watching and reading to own this and to understand that this is their process too. This is their city too. Totally. One particularly kind of noxious and toxic element, I think of our reality today is miss and disinformation. And so folks using technology and platforms to spread information that's intentionally meant to keep folks out of the democratic process, to keep folks away from participating whether that's in the census or in an election or what have you. Could you give us a bit of context in terms of how you all have approached this challenge of miss and disinformation? Again, we're dealing against the relief of massive distress, right? And polling at night and others have done trust in American institutions is at its lowest level since the Vietnam War. And missing disinformation have definitely contributed to that. And so with that kind of reality in play, how do we kind of, how do we manage? How do we build? How do we design interventions that navigate around that? So I go back to what you and I were discussing earlier like it's all about listening, right? And instead of ignoring or fighting that, how can you join those movements and meet people where they are? So for the census, for example, we know there are many organizations doing significant efforts to get people out and take the census. So yes, we uplift and we try to enhance and that message. But the reality is that people who aren't US citizens or who do not have papers in this country are afraid of that, right? So instead of fighting it and just pushing more and more of those PSAs and typical messages, how can we then create something simpler? How do we can hop on the phone? How can we send text messages and find people in their communities that they trust more than us to tell them what this is about and why this matters, et cetera. So in the end, it goes back to active listening and leveraging those movements and those fears and that this information and tackling it with something that they already trust and that they're already listening to. I'd love to kind of, before we hand this off to the Q&A portion, I'd love to do two things. One is invite everyone who's joining us today live to drop your question either on Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag nightly or right here into the chat on the Q&A feature. You can pop your question in there and we'll kind of bring them to the forefront. Joanne, I'd love to kind of, if you will, kind of, as we transition, transition kind of on a more optimistic note, if you will. And that is to say, kind of, there's also opportunity, right? I think there's a massive amount of disruption. There is kind of, at this moment in time, the calls to our conscience, collective conscience as individuals, but collective conscience communities and as a nation are deeper than in recent memory, both around economic kind of justice and inequality as a result of the pandemic, racial inequality and justice that has been kind of part of America's fabric for forever. Those are all really large and big and heavy kind of things that to confront and they're changing the way that we even get together, right? We're having this conversation in this format because of some of that. That kind of disruption also brings about opportunity. It brings about renewal and creation and new beginnings and so I'm curious what opportunities you're seeing, right? What gives you reason for hope? What gives you kind of cautious optimism that out of what's happening right now in our communities and be it in Miami or nationally, we're designing, building something better, a better democracy, a better sense of attachment to place, a better sense of solidarity and camaraderie. What are the things that you're seeing that give you kind of radical partners, a kind of a guiding light to say there's opportunity in this direction? I love that question. I always say I'm an idealist by choice, right? Despite all the news and despite all the things that we see, I choose to stay optimistic and do something about it. So whomever is watching, I encourage you to do the same and some of the opportunities that I see role is, as you were saying, there was chaos, right? And chaos has a negative connotation, but chaos means change and every time something clashes, we have an opportunity to transform things and there was chaos, not only in this country, but in the world this year. So one of the things that I think we can transform is who is holding those positions of power? What are the conversations that we're having and how can we make decisions moving forward? And to give specific examples, we are seeing models that were old and worked centuries ago, decades ago. And kind of like those platforms and those processes continue to be, but then we're also seeing a large movement of younger generations taking the streets, right? And wanting change. So I'm starting to see this two generations, these two groups willing to talk to each other because now the older folks who have been in those positions and these processes understand the relevance and the activation and the energy that the younger people can bring, but then the younger folks are realizing that if they don't permeate, if that's a word in English, the structures, the change is not gonna be sustainable. So that's definitely one. The second one, and I think it's especially relevant for this country is technology, right? And how we can democratize knowledge because technology exists and use it to our advantage. Just as we're seeing many negative messages, we could use it to our advantage and organize people in a click, with a click. We could do it very, very fast. And then the third one is that there's been this opportunity to just humanize ourselves again. You and I have talked about this before and it might sound cheesy for some, but it's like in years like this, we realize that sometimes we just need to bet on connections, that we need to bet on relationships, that we need to bet on people, even if we can't measure the impact, even if the money might not be there, it just reminded us that that human solidarity and doing something in community about the things that we care about might be the best way to go. I love that you kind of brought that point up, elevated that point up. A lot of talk about systems change these days, rightly so, fairly so, can absolutely imagine a renewal and a redesign of the systems that we have in our communities and our country for the times that we live in, but systems ultimately kind of live or die and succeed or fail based on the people that inhabit them and that use them. And so that conversion that you're talking about, that renewal that you're having at community, that's people to people, that's critical, critical to what we're talking about here. I'd love to bring Lily back into the conversation. Lily has been screening the questions, fielding the questions from a lot of folks and we've got a good number stacked up, so we're gonna try to get to as many as we can in the time we've got. So Lily, if you can help us understand kind of what are the common themes or questions that are coming through from the audience? Sure, sure, sure. And I love the human solidarity point. So thanks for ending on that in your conversation, Joanne. So the first one is around the Vote Miami and how can one in our community leverage Vote Miami to activate their community to the polls? That's a great question. So for those of you in Florida that are watching, yesterday was the last day to register, so unfortunately you cannot do that if you're in Florida, but if you are in other coasts, please find out about that and register. But then there are two ways in which you could leverage Vote Miami. One is to learn as many things as you can. So in the website, you will find links to voter guides I would say like as many resources as you can that are being built in the community for you to learn about the candidates. But the most important tool that people could leverage is a ballot ready widget that we have there. So once you enter your address, it filters the information for you based on your party and your address and it tells you who could you vote for, how can you learn about these candidates and actually prepare your ballot, print it or mail it your way so that you can understand and make the elections in an informed way, right? That's what we're looking for. And the third one is if you can vote or not, like myself, you can mobilize your people. So in the Vote Miami website, you will have images and resources that we want you to download and make your own posts, share, call, text, whatever you can do to mobilize your people. That's definitely the most effective thing you can do. And that's so incredibly valuable because what we're finding in communities across the country, including in Miami, with local news decreasing, with legacy media decreasing, there's really a gap in this information around who to vote for. Of course, you probably have in your mind who you want to vote for, for president, but for judges or for other officials that are on the ballot. So that's incredibly valuable for a voter. One of the things, Joanne, that I really liked and there was a question around this around issues and linking what you care about to understanding the vote. And so let me be a little bit more clear. So when you go to Vote Miami, there are questions like, do you care about mobility? Do you care about parks? And it's making that link that the things that we have around us are there because of our local officials. But one of the things that we found in Miami and across the country is that for many young people who actually value their parks or transit are not showing up to vote. And so tell me, I want to dig a little bit deeper. How does Vote Miami make that clear around kind of the issues that you might care about whether it's like mobility or walkability and really getting to the ballot and voting? That's a great question. And I laugh, right? Because when I moved to Miami four years ago and they told me, oh, there are 30 plus mayors and then there's another mayor. You're like, wait, what is this structure and where can I learn from it? The reality is that there was no real one place where I could understand that structure. So Vote Miami has the government 101 page. And it's basically going back to your school and doing that civic education back again. And it tells you from the federal level to the local level, who are these representatives and what are they doing? What's their job, right? What are they deciding for us? So that's definitely a way in which people can not only understand the structure but try to take that local and up approach, right? Like you don't really care about the precedent or the national level stuff. You care about the hole in your street. You will understand who's that person in charge of that. So that's definitely one. And then the other way is we ourselves don't really endorse or promote any candidates. But when you use that ballot ready tool that I'm telling you about, that's in Spanish, Creole and Portuguese as well. When you look at the candidates you could look for endorsements based on the issues that you care about. So there are definitely tags and filters that you could use if it's transportation. You click on transportation and it will tell you what the candidates have been saying. Oh, fantastic. What they care about. Fantastic. I mean, that's incredibly valuable to be able to make that link. These are the things that impact your life, right? And making that link to the local official, that's great. And so role in you talked a little bit about disinformation and how that is a major pain point and across the country and our community. And I would also, a major pain point is around trust. So there's a couple of questions around disinformation and trust. And there's fear actually. There is fear in our community around whether it's a census or voting or there's fear that there could be chaos. So can you talk a little bit about how we as community leaders can support our community and staying calm and getting out the information but then also empowering folks to feel comfortable to vote? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So I think it's okay not to stay calm, right? In terms of like some of the things are alarming, right? Like some of the things one reads, you're like, why is this out there and how can this be true? But then what you do with that sentiment I think is what matters. So I would suggest two things and that's kind of like the approach that we take. One is if there's a community and certain fears that are around that you just wanna bring more information to them, I would say if you're not close to that community, don't do it yourself. Find leaders and find organizations that are already doing that work and have a conversation with them. What is this happening? How can I help you, et cetera? For them to be the ones that deliver the message because that's definitely important when it comes to trust. And the second thing is we just have to then fight that information with positive things, right? And the reality is that unfortunately, the economy and the financial bets are on the Coca-Cola ads of the world and the partisan ads of the world. So if we can come together and just fight that negative noise with positive noise on social because that's where people are. We just gotta do it and we just gotta try. There's an article I once read that said the bad people win because they're noisy, they're loud. So how can we, the good people that are not really pushing for anything but just to bring power back to the people, be as loud and as noisy as we can. That's really powerful. That is really powerful. Aroly, do you wanna jump in here? Yeah, I just wanna, first of all, plus one kudos to that. And I wanted to add that just before we came on about a few minutes before we came on live on the show, Florida Secretary of State did reopen voter registration until 7 p.m. tonight because of the technical difficulties on the voter registration website yesterday. So if you're listening live or you're listening at some point today, October 6th, in Florida and you want to register when you're having it, you have until 7 p.m. today to do so. Yeah, I saw that, that there was some technical. I literally, it was like one minute before that there was technical issues. So thank you for the live update around that. We got a breaking news show here. Breaking news. Yeah, that's awesome. We have so much to go then. Yeah, yeah, but that's great that there's a bit more time. And on that note, Joanne, I would love to invite you to end on any final thoughts that you have around voter engagement and my any civic engagement and just that you wanna leave with our audience. I have so many things to say, but I think for those of you who can vote, just register if you haven't. You can make decisions in this next three weeks and figure it out. In a country like the United States, I think your voice matters more than in others where maybe voting cannot be safe or feel as hopeful as it does here. So leverage that right and use your right. And for those of you who cannot vote and live in the US, there's something for you to do, right? Learn who these people are, talk to your people, have these conversations with respect and love. It's enough about saying like, oh, let's not talk about politics. Yes, let's do talk about politics because that's literally what's shaping our context. And we can hold people accountable, right? So voting and civic engagement does not stop. On November 3rd, it actually starts. So let's just think of civic engagement about understanding the issues that affect your city, caring about them and acting in the way that you can act according to your needs and wants and impossibilities and things like that. Understanding, caring and acting. Powerful, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us, Joanne Raul. Thank you for co-hosting. We also are, we film this in Spanish and in Creole. So for our various audience, our diverse audience in Miami and across the country, you can listen in multiple languages, which I think is incredibly important for this really, really timely critical topic around civic engagement. So thank you again and we'll see you next Tuesday at 1 p.m. Eastern. Take care. Thank you. Thank you folks. Thanks, Joanne.