Amy & Nathan Do a Podcast

With School Board meetings in Tennessee making national news, Amy and Nathan walk listeners through what local government meetings are supposed to look like and how you can participate.

In the Rant, they explain why paying attention to local politics and showing up at a local level helps your immediate daily life, and hopefully keeps the unqualified from getting to D.C.

Link to archived story from Knoxville Metro Pulse on current U.S. District 2 Rep. Burchett's business & its environmental violations that was mentioned in the rant:

https://monkeyfire.com/mpol/dir_zine/dir_2000/1014/t_ear.html

In this episode Amy & Nathan discuss why donating directly to local and state campaigns is more effective than donating to the national parties, and what it's like to volunteer for local/state campaigns. Then they rant about the misconceptions about people's unwillingness to go back to their old jobs after/during this pandemic. Hint: it's not about the extra unemployment benefits Tennessee pulled out of at the beginning of July.

Amy and Nathan break down the many ways you can research political candidates & elected officials, from their Social Media accounts to Federal Election Commission & State Campaign Finance reports to voting records. Plus rant (and cuss) about people who don't do their research before hitting the voting booth.

We are not endorsed or sponsored by any of the organizations listed below. The websites mentioned in this episode are ones we have used ourselves to stay informed about local/state politics.

For non-partisan ballot & voting record research:

Ballotpedia: https://ballotpedia.org

VoteSmart: https://justfacts.votesmart.org

Info on candidates, voting records, legislative issues:

League of Women Voters (2 sites): https://www.lwv.org and https://www.vote411.org

Indivisible Tennessee (partisan, Democratic leaning): http://indivisibletn.org

Campaign Fiance:

Federal election campaign finance reports (U.S. Senate & U.S. Representative): https://www.fec.gov

State of Tennessee campaign finance reports: https://apps.tn.gov/tncamp

News outlets covering East TN local & state politics:

The TN Holler: https://tnholler.com (progressive leaning)

Knoxville News Sentinel: https://www.knoxnews.com * a subscription is required to view some content

Compass Knox: https://compassknox.com  *Subscription is required to access all content, that includes daily emails about local/state government and events.

Be sure to follow the Social Media accounts of the news outlets & voting/candidate/issue info orgs as well. Links will be on their websites.

You can email questions to us at [email protected], if there's a topic you'd like more info on in future episodes. We might even do an AMA at some point.

We'll walk listeners through the many ways they can contact their elected officials, why they should, when they should, and how they should. It's not as nerve wracking as some would have you believe. We'll also have a mini-rant about the Tennessee GOP Supermajority legislature's annual anti- LGBTQ+ "Slate of Hate" laws and the TN GOP's complete lack of support & compassion for Tennessee's unemployed.

Link for finding Tennessee State Rep & State Senator: https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/Apps/fmlv3/districts.aspx