Episode Transcript
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Dick Flax here with an episode of Talking Strategy Making History. I have the pleasure this time of a conversation with a former student of mine, Harley Augustino. Harley graduated from UCSB 25 years ago, went on to become a I think well known community and labor organizer ever since. He spent his entire life since graduation in those kinds of roles. He trained with the Dolores Huerta foundation in their perspective on what we could call relational organizing. Working at the grassroots to build community organization, not just to turn people out for periodic campaigns, but to really build stable relationship for social change in communities. And after spending some years here in the Santa Barbara area developing such an organization, which we called at that time Pueblo in the Latino community, Harley went on to the Northwest and became a key organizer for the hotel workers unions, spending a lot of the last number of years in Vancouver in Canada, very successfully organizing in that domain. And Harley decided a couple of years ago to retire in effect from labor organizing and engage back in community based organizing focused on electoral oriented work, focusing on swing states, on particular districts and areas where turnout was a big issue for the progressive side, for the Democratic party, seeing what he could accomplish. And he's recently written a very penetrating account of the experiences that he had in these last couple of years and especially in the 2024 campaign in many parts of the country, training organizers, developing people for this kind of work and also his own experiences in door to door kinds of voter connection. And it's a very relevant conversation for our ongoing effort on this podcast to understand how the Democratic Party can be reshaped into a party for the people.
There's a lot of talk now about the need for the party. This is a very valid talk. The need for the party to support and engage deeply in grassroots year round organizing, not only in blue areas but in purple and red areas, supporting the state party organizations in that kind of effort. All of that is background in a way for what Harley was doing, trying to see what could be accomplished in those ways. And his assessment of the possibilities and of the frustrations and failures coming out of this 2024 campaign is what we are going to be talking about in this conversation. I think it's a particularly relevant conversation. I hope you can stick with it. He's a forceful and dynamic person to get to know. Daraka couldn't be with us for this particular episode. Family business intervened, but his influence I think will be evident in what we are talking about. Stick with us. Harley Augustino. So great that you are here, that you have time beyond talking strategy, making history. Very glad to see you, as always. And I'm remembering that it's 25 years to the almost the date that you graduated from ucsb. And I remember that you were in my class and decided to go up to Seattle for the large scale historic demonstrations up there. You remember all that?
[00:04:25] Speaker B: I do. I believe you were giving class credit for civil disobedience.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Don't tell that to the public world. That's not quite true. You had to write something about it. Right. So that's all educational anyway, in a way that started your organizing career, is that right?
[00:04:41] Speaker B: In many ways, yeah. I, you know, doing the global organizing circuit. But then as you know, I did a lot of tenants organizing afterwards. So I really credit the I love VISTA families with getting me involved in the first place.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: So in this 25 years, you've done a lot.
I like to call you one of the legendary organizers of our time. At least for me, you're legendary and you're exemplary. Not only have you had a lot of achievement as an organizer, but you are very good at observing and maintaining a record of what you experiencing and what you're accomplishing in the field. And that's what prompted us to reach out to you for this particular moment on this podcast, because we are gearing up. We've geared up for a new season, as we call it, of the podcast, focused on the Trump time and what to do about it. And Baraka came up with the idea that there are three Rs for the Trump time. They are reform, which has to do with policy. It's trying to achieve that even on a local level, realignment. And that's in a way where you come in, which has to do with transforming the Democratic Party and the electoral participation of people, especially working class people, and resistance. So that's in a way the framework for having this conversation with you, Harley. And you wrote this piece that you circulated a bit on online and which I think you hope to, and I hope you get some version of it in print, which is let's say, 13 recommendations or observations that you are hoping people who are activists and organizers learn from. And to kind of summarize my understanding of it, on the one hand, you have a critique of how the Democratic Party and the Harris campaign operated in the field. And we don't want to spend a lot of time, but we want to spend some time, I do, on this. There's been a lot written about, of course, why the Harris campaign did not succeed. You have some, I think, particular observations that are important not only for understanding that but understanding where we need to go, you also had a sense connected to that that the Republicans and Trump have done a better job in the field than the Democrats have tended to do. So I want to go through those points, but you have had experience that I think is remarkable given what people have been saying, which is that you're finding many people in the field, ordinary folks in the communities you were in, ready to volunteer to work with their neighbors to help bring people into direct engagement politically. And that's something. And you're also finding in the field, people are more persuadable than we're given the impression. This is my quick summary of what I think you wrote here. And then going forward, what do we do with all that as we go forward? What are some of the things we need to be doing? So let's start by saying where were you? What, what are all these observations based on in terms of the actual places and work that you were doing for the past couple of years?
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Well, thank you, Dick, and it's great to be in organizing community with you once again. I've been organizing over the last couple years in swing states through Base Building for Power, which is the organization that I run and training organizers. And we particularly in Pennsylvania and Arizona, but some other swing states as well. But where a lot of my observations came from was, was more just being in the field myself. And I was depressed in Portland, where I live, very blue area, reading the news in June, and it was just so dark and so depressing and so negative. Biden was still in the race. It felt like we were all being dragged towards this choice that we didn't want. And I just decided to go knock on some doors to help clarify what's actually out there. Right. I felt like I was in a, in a, in a bubble, maybe like a New York Times bubble.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: And so I told my husband, I'm going to Arizona for 10 days of door knocking. I'm going to go to Yuma, Tucson, Phoenix and Flagstaff. I'm going to meet with organizers that I've been working with, and I'm going to knock on a bunch of doors. And the main thing that surprised me in that first tour of door knocking was how open people were to volunteering. I always ask people to volunteer if they are a supporter. In this case, I was supporting Biden to, I was really talking more negatively about Trump, but that meant supporting Biden. And I would, you know, when somebody said, yes, I don't want Trump to be in office, I would say, well, that's Great. I'm so glad that you're going to vote, but this election, we have to do more than vote. Are you willing to knock on doors, make phone calls, talk to your friends and family? And I found that 80% of the people I talked to were willing to, to do something. And that thing usually was talking to their friends and family, which was also delightful because that happens to be the most effective thing that anybody can do to get people to vote. So I saw a real contrast from just the negative. We don't want to do anything. This is terrible. To when I go knock on doors. People were like, yeah, of course they were frustrated, too, but they were like, yeah, and, and I'll do, yes, I'll talk to my friends and family. And then I decided, I was like, okay, this isn't enough. We need a little bit of accountability. Maybe some, you know, a goal or a list. And so I went to Kinko's and designed this card that said, you know, I will commit to stopping Trump. They had to sign it. They have to say how many people they would talk to and give me all their information so that I could.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Follow up with them.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: And still, when I did that, 80% of supporters filled it out, made a list of who they were going to talk to, gave the stranger that just knocked on their door all of their information, and I told them I was going to follow up with them. And I did. And many of them did do organizing afterwards. So to me, it was just, in some ways, it was inspirational. And then I started turning a little dark and just thinking, oh, man, there are so many people out there willing to volunteer. Who's asking them? Who's giving them the opportunity to participate beyond voting, which is a very simple thing that many of us can do. Maybe not simple for some, but for a lot of people, it's a very small thing to do to enact our values.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: You discovered, if I'm correct, that the Democratic campaign was not doing what you just said. And this is important because I, sitting in my isolation from the real world, took at face value the claims of the campaign that they were doing enormous amount of door knocking and, you know, door to door voter mobilization. So talk about that difference.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll talk about it a little bit. I mean, I'm, I'm a little hesitant. I'm not really as interested in joining the chorus of, you know, critiques of the Democratic Party. There's plenty of people doing that. But, you know, I was out there, I knocked on doors with the campaign. The first thing that I Noticed was really eye opening was I just signed up to volunteer on Biden's campaign website and I immediately got about 20 course of 24 hours, 20 emails slash texts asking me to give money. And I was saying I'm here in Arizona, I want to volunteer. Knocking on doors and using a list that would be helpful to the campaign. Where can I go, what can I do? And I wasn't able to find a place in, in June that wasn't too far from the election to end in swing state to volunteer anywhere. And instead I got all of these, a lot of emails and it just, what it did was it sent the message to me that, that at least at that point in the campaign that volunteers knocking on doors were not a priority. So I did a little experiment and then I, I did the same thing with the Trump campaign. I was just curious what if I signed up to volunteer for the Trump campaign, would there be any difference? And I, there was a complete different tone they think first of all sent me one email that thanked me for being part of the movement and values volunteers as being important to their victory. And so, and then, so I didn't, and I didn't get any fundraising emails for a while and then I got a lot of invitations to be, I got an invitation weekly to be a precinct leader in, in Arizona, which I think is one of the most effective things that you can do to talk to your neighbors. I didn't, I stopped there. I didn't end up going volunteering for Trump's campaign but, but just the approach to a, the lowest hanging fruit you can find, right? Which is the people who go onto a website and say I will sign up to volunteer. Just the difference that the two campaigns treated me in a swing state in, in June was very troubling. And then I went to, you know, I did knock on some doors and I did find some campaigns and you know, I met a lot of good people. But the training, the door knocking training and just program was, you know, was just not, they definitely weren't asking for volunteers but sometimes I would go knock on doors and they wouldn't even ask me to come back.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: So my understanding is that the approach they used typically was to what's been, we're quite used to from, from the past is round up people from elsewhere to maybe bus into let's say Tucson and coming from California and people from California really eager to help go some kind of door to door effort in, in a place that they're not familiar with. And you know, you indicated in your, in Your essay, they weren't really trying to persuade people. What were they being asked to do? Typically, as far as you, you're concerned, when they were doing the door knocking?
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Well, I did come across a lot of people from California or from New York when I was in Pennsylvania that would come in and knock on doors. And a lot of it was just a lack of training, of persuading people.
So, for example, and this was especially important for people from California, from blue areas, because I learned that a lot of the people that came from blue areas just had very little resilience of talking to Trump voters. It was like you live in a blue bubble and you talk to a Trump voter. I just saw so many people from liberal blue areas just get really stuck and tongue tied of how to even talk to somebody who votes for Trump because they live in a community or have a circle of friends that they don't communicate with people from, with difference of opinions. But for everybody, for everybody, there just, you know, there wasn't a focus on how do you persuade someone. I believe this was a very winnable election. There were a lot of people willing to volunteer who were supporting Kamala, and there were a lot of persuadable voters up until the last minute, that it was just a matter of whether we could get people to volunteer, talk to their friends and family, and help persuade them and persuade people at the doors. Now, the number one issue in the whole country was the cost of living. I would say the number two that I heard was immigration. I think those are not a huge surprise. However, how to move people on those two issues was very doable. And yet much of the training was like, well, let's don't talk about those two issues, which happen to be Trump's strongest issues, polling or what have you, and try to talk about something else, like democracy or abortion. Well, usually democracy and abortion were people's number five and six issues. So if you go to the door and you don't talk to the voter about the issue that is the most important to them, and then convince them that your candidate is the best, which I believe she is the best for cost of living was the best for cost of living, then what are we doing? So it was just like a missed opportunity where you have all these undecided voters with lots of contradictory opinions and feelings.
And it wasn't rocket science. It takes a little listening.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: It's.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: It doesn't take a lot of. You don't have to be a policy expert. You have to listen, you have to connect, and then you have to learn from what is working from other people who are doing the same thing that you're doing.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: Are you able just to give an example of a kind of conversation. Typical. And I know this might be a little strange, a typical exchange that you think shows how persuasion can work. You know, the point. Part of what we're being constantly, we in the blue areas feeling is that there's this cult of Trump, which there is, and that therefore, the voters all must be in that cult, which. Which is a. You're saying a big mistake to think and that. So give it. Persuade me that there are people who are persuadable. How does it work?
[00:18:42] Speaker B: I mean, it's really sad. I'm getting lots of Facebook posts, posts on my. On my feed of people screaming at Trump voters, you know, for ruining the country and for being just in lockstep with everything.
And first of all, while that may be gratifying, it's not going to help us get out of this mess. We have to figure out how to talk to Trump voters. We also have to figure out to talk to all the people who didn't vote, who don't like Trump, which.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you know, do you know that there's one estimate that 19 million people who voted for Biden did not turn out at all for this election? That's. That's the key to why. That's probably a great deal to do with how the thing turned out, right?
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean, you. You can look at lots of different things. I mean, the question is, are. I mean, we can yell at each other or the Democratic Party or the Trump supporter in my family, you know, but where does that get us? I mean, I really think we need to learn from talking to people. And that's why I love being on the doors, is because the doors are different than what the polls are. You know, I would say 20 to 30% of people I would categorize as movable. Some of them were Trump leaners, but they were movable. Like they could be voted, they could be convinced. And this was in Pennsylvania. Right. So to go back to your earlier question of, like, what. I think what you were asking is what worked for me to give it.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Give us an example.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Move people. Okay, I'll do a little role play with myself.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Yeah, do a little role play.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: So I was knocking on doors in Hazleton for the last three weeks of the election. It's a mostly Dominican community, and over the time, I figured out a rap that worked. And then I was like, okay, when you figure out something that works. You keep doing it, and then you tell everybody about it and see if it works for them. And it turned out to work for a lot of people. But so I would say, hey, how's it going? I'm Harley. I'm here volunteering with Kamala Harris's campaign for. For. For president. Are you supporting Kamala? Are you supporting Trump? And I'd kind of say it like, you know, it's fine. Whatever you. You know, whatever. Whoever you're for. I'm just trying to open up. Right. So you. Oh, you're. You're supporting Trump. Oh, that's great. Okay, so most of your neighbors are. Oh, I would. If they said they were supporting Trump, I would ask them, you know, are you a hard supporter of Trump, or do you support him 100%? Or do you have some, you know, some reservations like some other people have? And if they were 100% Trump, I wouldn't waste my time. If they had reservations, I'd ask them what their reservations were, but mostly I would talk about the cost of living. So I'd say, oh, so many of your neighbors have told me that the cost of living is really, really impacting them and their families. Is that impacting you? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, oh, what's impacting you? Is it groceries? Is it gas?
And they say, oh, the groceries are, you know, just out of control. And, you know, it's. It's getting harder and harder. Everyone identified with high cost of living. I said, all right, well, did you know that who we elect for president is going to impact our cost of living? Did you know that? Oh, no, I guess. Or they'd say something, you know, nondescript. Well, okay, let me give you an example. So do you know. So Trump wants to do these tariffs on China. Have you heard of the tariffs? So it's basically just like a tax, Right? So it's a tax on any goods that are made in China. Do you go to the Walmart down the street? Oh, yeah, I go to the Walmart down the street. How much of that stuff is made in China? Oh, it's all made in China. It's all made in China. Okay, so what do you think will happen if Trump puts a tax on all of those things that are made in China? How is that going to impact your cost of living? Oh, well, everything's going to go up. And then I would sometimes take a turn to immigration, and I'd say, well, you know, there's another thing that Trump wants to do, which has to do with immigration and I know, you know, people have different opinions about immigration. It's very complicated. But you know that most of the people who pick our food, you know, the farm workers, like, they make like less than $10 an hour, right? And they're mostly non document. They're mostly undocumented workers, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, what do you think will happen to the cost of a head of lettuce if all those people get deported? Are they gonna. Don't you think they're gonna have to raise their wages for the other? So I kind of. You can kind of see where I'm going. And then I'd say, so these are two very clear things that are going to impact our cost of living if Trump is elected. Right now, he's a billionaire. He cares about the billionaires. And I'd say a little thing about Kamala, and then I'd ask them to support Kamala. This was different than door knocking that I've done before, this particular rap, because what I liked about it is it kind of walked people through economics in a way that was respectful and that trusted that working class people can understand basic economics.
Right. And so I could see people, like, moving through and like, oh, okay, this is a concrete thing that's going to impact my number one issue right now. I guarantee you. Some of those people voted for Trump. I wasn't the only person that was tugging on their, you know, they met, you know, they had their pastor, you know, but people did move in that conversation right now, if they moved and they were like 100%, which usually they moved, but they weren't like 100% for Kamala, you know, then I would go into volunteering and talking to your friends and family. So that worked for me. For people who were in the middle, it moved people 95% of the time. And I don't think it's that complicated. I don't know. Do you think you could do something like that, Dick?
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Yes, I think I could. I also think that in the post election, now that Trump's been in, we see him in office, a whole lot of topics can come up. Did you vote. Did you vote to do the following things? And you know that this is what they've been doing, you know, would be, I think, an important.
So let me take one step back in time because you were very instrumental in organizing a campaign in. For a congressional candidate in Washington in what year was that? 2022.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Could you want to tell about that story? Because that's, I think, relevant to this conversation.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of negative things that are said about volunteers or, you know, we only get older volunteers, we can't get younger volunteers or nobody will volunteer. They don't have capacity. There's just like a lot of, there's a collective non belief in volunteer or we can't get swing state volunteers. We need to bus everybody in from, from New York or California. And I just don't believe that. I think that people will volunteer if given the chance. Now sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's harder. The Marie Glusomkamp Perez campaign in 2022 I think is a bright spot, regardless of how you feel about her now as a politician. The campaign needs to be looked at and analyzed by anybody who cares about grassroots organizing. And the reason is because Nick, or what was his name, the538 guy, he gave it a 2% chance of winning. It was the most surprising race in the whole country. We had 500 volunteers and there was one paid staff member and there was a lot of younger volunteers and there were a lot of Republican volunteers. And that campaign, more than any campaign that I've seen in the last couple of years, believed in volunteers and asked people and the people that came asked them to do more and to bring their friends.
And so a campaign that really, really believes in volunteers is going to get a lot more out of volunteers. And in that case, they had zero money from the DCC because nobody expected to win that race. So they, in some ways it was a necessity. They just had to do it with all volunteers. Now I would argue if you had seven good organizers from the DCC or somewhere else that really believed in volunteers, you could have three, four times that amount of volunteers. Right.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: When you got those volunteers in, in this congressional race, did you train them in any way?
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So I came in and found that they had a great field campaign manager with zero experience, but very open and really believed in people.
And there was a lot of volunteer energy, especially against the right wing jerk who was running against her. But what their challenge was how to make, how, how to harness the energy of these volunteers, which is not that different from what I'm saying of how do we harness the energy of the volunteers in the last election. So they just had all these people and like, how do you like organize them with one person? So what I did is I got the top 10 volunteers and then I gave those, I basically made those 10 volunteers organizers and said, all right, each of you is going to have a list of 30 volunteers that you need to call every day. Every other day and get them to the next door knocking campaign or the next time we're canvassing. So we basically created 10 organizers out of 10 volunteers who then reached out to their 30 each. And when we had that, then we got more younger volunteers, a lot of moms, and people started bringing other folks. And the demographics of the volunteers, actually, the age went way down because you may have to work a little harder to recruit a mom than you would recruit a retired lefty who's knocked on doors all their lives. But it is possible, and in fact, that mom may be way more effective as a door knocker in the district.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: So she. What's her name? Maria Gluckenkamp Perez. That basically, that's her name.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: Maria Glusenkamp Perez.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Right. She had some appeal as a person, presumably, that made people want to work for her. Did she? I mean, what was. What was that important?
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Yeah, she had a. She had an appeal as she was an owner of a. Of a car repair shop. I'm not sure if she came from a working class background herself, but she has an ability to talk about working class issues and talk to working class people without a college education.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: And so she walks in a very straightforward, ordinary, conversational way that's, you know, different, right?
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's. She's the opposite of the liberal elite politician. Right. She talks about issues, she swears. She's kind of angry sometimes. She's feisty, She's. I really, really liked her as a candidate, but, like the last election, I was more motivated by the alternative.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: So, you know, you find your motivation just like I was more motivated about stopping Trump than I was about the Democratic candidates. And then whatever that motivation is, then you, you know, you push it. But. But that campaign really didn't get any attention from anybody interested in organizing. I asked Tim Gohan, who is the campaign was the field director. I think he was the campaign manager this time, where they had another great group of volunteers. I went to one of their events, I knocked on doors with them, and I was like, wow, look at all these young people getting ready to knock on doors. I didn't see that anywhere in the country other than that race. And so I asked him after the 2022 election, the surprise election that nobody thought was possible, if anybody called him, hey, Tim, you won an election. Can you tell us a little bit about it? And nobody called them. And I think that's one of the challenges that we're having at the left is that there are bright spots. There are places where we're winning. But are we learning from each other? Are we asking the campaign manager that won the surprise race? How did you do that? How did you recruit volunteers? Because maybe that can help me in my race.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: There is a famous sociologist, Theta Skocbowl, who we've had, we've interviewed on this podcast a couple years ago. She's written now several books based on field studies she's done of the very things we're talking about, both of the, of the Republican side, Tea Party, the Trump people, and more left wing efforts, like in Pennsylvania, like in Georgia. And so the most recent book, which I haven't yet read is called Union Blues. And she wrote a book that came out in 2016 or no, 2018 called upending American Democracy. These are actual sociologically informed field studies of grassroots organizing efforts, right and left. She argues that the Democratic side has at the grassroots has been in trouble because of the decline of labor unions in many areas of the country, drying up that base of social interaction and community, while the right wing, through the evangelical churches, rifle clubs, they have built up those kind of institution, local institutions that bring people together for them. And she's basically saying the left has to pay attention to this and rebuild at the grassroots year round. So does the observations that you're talking about apply not just to particular election campaigns, but to a year round kind of approach to local organizing?
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Let's not forget the Republicans also were able to neutralize a couple unions in this last election.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: The answer is to have year round relational organizing of people talking to their friends and family and being part of organizations, organizations that support that.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: You know, I saw in two areas that I was particularly engaged in was Yuma county and in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, both which swung way to the right. And there were some good organizers, did some good work. But then once I started uncovering what the Republicans were doing for the last three years, I was like, oh wow, we were throwing some hope into the wind on that. Like they were really deeply organized in Yuma. They had every single race they had somebody running where the Democrats were struggling to get. We they had to write in an elections candidate in the primary because of some technicality. In Hazelton, the Republican mayor, just 20 years out of after the most anti immigrant law was passed in Hazelton in the country has turned around and done a tremendous job building relationships in the Dominican community and with the business owners. And, and so, you know, what I found in Hazleton was there were a lot of people left out. There were a lot of people Looking for a place to join, to be a part of. And the ones that were the easiest to join and be a part of were the evangelical church, the Republican Party, which they ran through a local state representative named Dan Watro. That's from what I could see. And so, yeah, building organizations, building personal networks, knocking on doors, persuading people, talking to people. I mean these are things that are not new. You've been around the while. There's a lot of lessons from generations of organizers that have been successful doing this. And at some point the Republicans learned from our successes and then did deep organizing. And yes, they had some help from billionaires, but did some really deep organ. Their number one organizer in Yuma was the school librarian. Right, the school librarian. I mean you can't get more milquetoast than that. Like all the kids, I mean that were knocking on the doors, they're like, oh man, my school librarian is the main Trump person. Like, and people listen to her and she moved them. And so she's going to be way better than an out of town Californian, you know, knocking on doors. Right. So.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Well, it makes me realize what you just said about the past is that the community, the region that you came out of, namely this region here in Santa Barbara, Ventura county, we have a long standing organization that you helped to build cold cause that is operating the way you're talking about it. They do relational organizing, they do the Dolores Huerta style house meeting forms of organization. They have community leaders in many of the cities throughout the region. Now they just starting in some new cities here in the north county of Santa Barbara as well as the base they've already built. So California may be a much more large scale effort I think exists in la, which is alive with the labor movement in la, but also has community organizing thrust. So California is almost like a different country from the one that people are describing in terms of exactly this point, that there is a long, really grounded organizing networks of people. And yes, and the Republicans don't really exist in many parts of the state as a grassroots force on that account. This is all in tribute to your contributions when you were just starting out and you, I remember you saying you want to organize and you're not of Latino background, but you thought you could do something in the Latino neighborhood in Santa Barbara. And I said, oh, people have tried that. I was very skeptical. You're not a skeptical kind of person. You believe. And you helped start a process which we're still democracy is really benefiting from in our region. And so thank you for that. What made me want to bring that up is because you, you say in Pennsylvania, the Dominican community there was being organized by the Republicans, even though the Republicans are opposed to immigration. So how does that work? How does an immigrant community get connected? I mean, why would they be connected to, to the Republicans? Do you have a sense of that?
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Well, first of all, I want to say that Santa Maria, California, which is north of Santa Barbara, California, is much more similar to a Hazleton or Yuma, Arizona.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: That's probably true. Yeah.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Than, you know, than a San Francisco or Oakland. So, you know, definitely.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: So California is enormously diverse. And I also really appreciate you putting a plug for Cause because just like anybody interested in congressional or any organizing around politics should talk to Tim Goen from the Marie Glen Camp Perez campaign. People should talk to, to Hazel from Cause because they are one of the few groups that puts aside what they're doing for a period of time every year and just base builds recruits more people into movement. So definitely a bright spot there as far as, you know, immigration policy and immigrants and how people feel. I'm going to punt a little bit on that. That's a very complex. I think, for one, the question is a little bit problematic because identity politics, what I saw on the doors was that identity politics, it doesn't work often to get people, you know, so I would hear all kinds of people from liberal areas. California, how could immigrants vote against their, how could white working class people vote against their interests? How could a woman vote for, you know, abortion, you know, or vote against abortion access? And so people are just way more complex and communities are way more complex. And so you have to, whatever the issue is, you have to really understand.
And I got a crash course, but I'm not an expert in like, you know, how immigrant, Dominican immigrants and immigration patterns are very, very different than Mexican immigrants in California, you know, and there's, it's very complex. But if you do deep organizing in a community and if, let's say Hazleton, the number one issue in Hazelton is not, I mean, a lot of people are really upset about what's going on right now with, with the raids and with immigration. But the number one issue during the campaign was the cost of living. So if you can build an organization based on the cost of living and get people focused on the number one issue. Now if the number one issue changes, you should focus on that number one issue.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: Well, you said that immigration was number two for a lot of those people. That's why I focused on it a bit. But you know, and I think the Democrats, just to riff a little bit, from my vantage point as a sociologist, sort of obvious point that the community has, is a clear, the immigrant community. A place like that, there's strong religious poles toward a kind of cultural conservatism. No doubt there's generational. So earlier waves of immigrants may have some many people who resent those who have come undocumented or those who've come come. And you know, there's a long history among immigrant populations forever of longer lasting immigrant immigrants resenting the newcomers, you know, for a whole variety of reasons that that can be a chord that is played by, by say the Republicans to divide the community. And so your warning about that is really apropos. I think, you know, just one final point on that. Maybe a lot of the progressive view of why don't people vote their interests is because we see the African American electorate in this country as the most sophisticated constituency in America in terms of voting interest, of voting as a bloc, of seeing the collective power of their voting together as determinative. So yes, of course there's percentages in the black community that are deviate from that pattern. But it's such an overwhelming tendency to understand what is the most strategic way we as a community can use our vote. And that's unusual in this country by and large.
[00:42:02] Speaker B: So I think we need to let go of this like voter bloc ideology. The way that we talk about it, people are very complex, right. And especially swing voters, you'll talk to them and you know, they're against abortion access, but they're pro environment, but they don't like what's going on at the border and they care about the cost of living. Okay, Those are for a liberal, lefty, whatever. You're not going to find people that have two things that are considered, you know, stronger on Democrats, stronger on Republicans. And so we have to let people be complicated and then listen to them and then organize and invest in the people in that community that know that community the best. For example, there's this guy, David Dominguez that I've been talking with. He's now the head of the Democratic Party in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
And he's born and raised, he's Dominican and he wants to organize and he wants to build. Well, people need to invest in what he is doing. Now I happen to connect him with Daraka because I know that Daraka knows something about building Democratic parties way better than I do. So yeah, I think we gotta, you know, people are much more complicated and I have tons of people in my family that are all over the place. So I'm, I'm always talking to people who have lots of difference in opinions. And I also come from the labor movement, where you go into a workplace and people have tons of different ideas and opinions and grudges and family stuff. And you have to figure out when you're in the labor movement, how do we get all of these people who some may be racist, some may be, you know, like there's just. So how do you get this group of people around a unified set of goals to then fight the boss?
[00:43:57] Speaker A: Right.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: And so that idea is not a particularly new idea, but if we can kind of use that idea, understanding that we don't, in a labor, in a family or a labor union shop, you don't get to choose the politics or the race or the ideology of the people you work with, but you are in a structure to fight for a better life. And so that's the magic. That's why I love the labor movement.
[00:44:24] Speaker A: You're saying. I'll just repeat, I'll just reiterate what you're saying in the following way, as I understand it, is that many people with great diversity and even conflicting views on many questions can find common ground around a share of and see their collective power to achieve their interests in certainly the workplace. And so the problem, and the Republicans have been brilliant at getting that kind of base, unified base on their side. That's not really the working class base, that's the pro business, you know, small, small town business, but wealthy people and the religious block that supports them into, into this very cohesive bloc. So it isn't that block voting doesn't occur, but the lesson from your experience, Harley Augustino, is that many of the voters who end up voted, who ended up voting for Trump or abstaining were not part of that cohesion. They were able to be not only conversed with, they may have even been hungry for other ways of thinking once they were presented with some opportunity to have them. Is this a fair way of looking at it? And so going forward, what do you hope people are going to keep their eyes on? The, what prize should they keep their eyes on as we enter this Trump hell?
[00:45:55] Speaker B: Well, I think we need to fight and I think we need to help each other get into a fighting spirit. However we need to do that, I think we need a base build. I think we need to learn from good examples. I think we need to invest in people like David Dominguez and cause and the organizations that, whether they have the resources or not. They do believe in base building.
So those are some of the things. I mean, I, you know, I don't have a mat. I'm not, you know, I'm not going to wade into the Democratic Party stuff because there's plenty of people doing that. That space is fill. Filled with people who have opinions about how to, you know, and if somebody asked my opinion, I'll tell my opinion, but I just, I want to talk to other organizers. And so if there's anybody listening to this who also is knocking on doors and also wants to figure out how do we get better as organizers to talk to people, I think that's great. But we have to, we have to be open to talking with people. And I'm afraid that our polarization, particularly on the left of like, screw these people. They ruined everything, is damaging and that, you know, people voted for Trump for lots of reasons. And some were, you know, some were really racist and terrible, and some were wacky. Some were like, the last, you know, the last minute, I talked to this guy who, you know, was 19 years old, African American guy from in Hazleton at the polling place, and as he's going in a vote, and I said, so, you know, is this your first time voting? Yeah, it's my first time, but congratulations, that's great. So who are you voting? Are you voting for, comma. Are you voting for Trump? You know, and he says, honestly, I don't know.
And I was shocked. I said, are you kidding me? So you just came here to vote? You're in line to vote the vote. The poll's going to close in two hours and you haven't even made up your mind of who you're going to vote? He's like, no, no, no, I really haven't. I'm like, okay, can. Can I bend your ear for a moment and tell you what I think? So then I, I told him and I was like, okay, are you still undecided? He's like, yeah, I'm still undecided. All right, so you're going to go in there and vote. Okay, do me a favor. When you come back out, just think about what I said. And when you come back out, regardless of how you voted, please tell me who you voted for. Will you do that? He says, yes. He goes in, comes back out, and he says, I'm not going to lie to you, but I voted for Kamala.
And I gave him a big hug and thanked him, and I, you know, and just congratulated him. And then later, I Was like, did he really vote for Kamala? I wasn't sure. I mean, he could. Like, people lie to you, you know, like, they want to tell you which they don't want, a conflict or whatever.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: So anyway, ballot. Yeah.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: And. And, oh, I remember. Yeah. And he told me about some of the things he was concerned about going into, and he. He was informed about different issues. He was worried about criminal justice being a black man and her and Kamala being a prosecutor. So anyway, I just. People are movable. Can we reach them? Can we move them? Can we suspend our frustration and anger to reach out to folks? And the best thing that you can do is. Is to go to a working class bar in anywhere in Pennsylvania, because that is where you will see Democrats and Republicans and independents coexist and talk with each other and talk politics with each other. Only working class bars.
[00:49:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:40] Speaker B: And they also have, you know, so like, hang out in one of those and you'll see, like, what, you know, what can be possible, how people talk to each other.
[00:49:48] Speaker A: All right, so two last questions quickly on this, and you may not have a strong opinion. There are some experienced, longtime veterans of the movement who tell me there's really a drying up of interest on the part of people willing to be organizers. They mean people like you, that there's less of such people. I don't think that's true, but I wonder what your feeling is about that. Or do we. We still need. Do we still need students coming off the campus ready to go into the labor movement, ready to go into community organizing? Don't we need those people?
[00:50:26] Speaker B: I mean, my whole program is. Is. Is about training, organizing.
[00:50:30] Speaker A: Okay, so that's what I'm saying.
[00:50:31] Speaker B: Yes, I have a very strong opinion about that. There are tons of young people who are wanting to organize, who want the tools, and, you know, our program is. Is what trains them and mentors them on the way. So, I mean, I have. We're not talking about the program that I run today very much, but, you know, like, that is what gives me the most hope for the world, is that there are lots of people willing to volunteer, willing to organize, wanting to be organizers. And just like the volunteers in Arizona sitting there waiting to be asked to do something more than vote, there are tons of people waiting to learn what it even means to be an organizer, what is the labor union? But they want to fight and they want the tools, and they want to grow and learn. And a ton of them organized in this last election. Tons of leadership was built in this election. You know, there were People who went through our program their first time organizing and like by the end they were leading Canvas teams of 400 people in Detroit, Michigan, you know, so there's a lot of hope there. And I think they're also going to help us learn how to base build and in a time that we really need to do that.
[00:51:44] Speaker A: How can people get in touch with your program if they want to enter that space that you just, you just attractively offered them?
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean anybody organizing is hard. We got to do it in community. And so anybody who wants to fight and grow and whether you want to be paid or volunteer organizer, you don't know what to do, but you want to fight, you can be part of our community. We help people with job, you know, recommendations. We also help people with different skills and mentorship and just community connections. So base building for power. Base building.net my email is tenant harleymail.com and happy to reach out with anyone and to support your journey in fighting in this crazy world that we find ourselves in.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: Harley Agostino, what a pleasure to talk to you and to be part of the world that you are helping to create, to share your experience which is always so well observed by you and your energy is always so inspiring to old fogies like myself at least. No, I think this has been great. Good luck to you.
I know you've been doing a lot of traveling. You're going to be doing some more and you will be. You know that you have my support and I think you good at cultivating a lot of other people's support. People can maybe if you, if you send me a little text with, with the information you just provided, I'll put it in print in such a way that listeners can be in touch if they want to. And take care of yourself, my friend.
[00:53:27] Speaker B: Thank you, Dick. It was a pleasure talking to you about organizing and you have mentored and supported generations of organizers and really appreciate this chance to get into some details about organizing with you today.
[00:53:43] Speaker A: I think we learned a lot. Take care, man.
None Singly none Step by step the longest march can be one can be one Many stones to form an AR Singly none Singly none Stand by union what we will gain Accomplish Still Drops of water turn a meal Singly nine Singly nine Step by step the longest march can be won can be won Many stones to form an arch Singling on singling Stand by union what we.
[00:54:53] Speaker B: Will.
[00:55:12] Speaker A: Step by step Step by step Step by step.
