Just Politics

In our Season 3 finale, Just Politics engages in conversation with one of the fiercest advocates for democracy in U.S. politics today: Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the assistant leader of the House Democratic Caucus. A lifelong champion for civil rights, Rep. Clyburn sees the connection between policies that improve people's daily lives and the strengthening of democracy. He is also a person of faith who recognizes the valuable role that faith plays in U.S. politics, helping connect people with the values that build a more just society for everyone. To listen to the rest of this season dedicated to democracy, check out previous episodes:

What's a Catholic to do? (featuring Sister Anita Baird) https://uscatholic.org/articles/202311/just-politics-whats-a-catholic-to-do/

The perilous legal landscape (featuring Celina Stewart) https://uscatholic.org/articles/202310/just-politics-the-perilous-legal-landscape/

Actual strategies for saving democracy (featuring Rachel Kleinfeld) https://uscatholic.org/articles/202310/just-politics-actual-strategies-for-saving-democracy/

What just happened!? (featuring Ronnate Asirwatham) https://uscatholic.org/articles/202310/just-politics-what-just-happened/

How did we get here? (featuring Lisa Sharon Harper) https://uscatholic.org/articles/202310/just-politics-how-did-we-get-here/

It may be nationalism, but you can't call it Christian (featuring Amanda Tyler) https://uscatholic.org/articles/202309/just-politics-it-may-be-nationalism-but-you-cant-call-it-christian/

When it's your community (featuring Nichole Flores) https://uscatholic.org/articles/202309/just-politics-when-its-your-community/

What we mean by fragile (featuring Jarrett Smith) https://uscatholic.org/articles/202309/just-politics-what-we-mean-by-fragile/

Just Politics is sponsored by the Claretian Missionaries. https://claretiansusa.org https://myclaret.org

On this season of the podcast, we've looked at Christian nationalism, voter suppression, threats of political violence, and other threats to democracy. In this episode, we ask: What's a Catholic to do? What role do people of faith and goodwill have in repairing these structural issues? And who's to blame for creating the conditions that got us here? Sister Anita Baird, D.H.M. offers insights on these questions. As a Black Catholic sister, she offers a distinct perspective on what it means to participate in a system that impacts people's lives and well-being. She also draws parallels between the struggle for the future of U.S. democracy and the unprecedented listening that is occurring in the Catholic Church via the synod process.

More from Sister Anita: Watch her participate in a dialogue panel on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington hosted by Georgetown's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life: https://catholicsocialthought.georgetown.edu/events/the-sixtieth-anniversary-of-the-march-on-washington-for-jobs-and-freedom

Just Politics is sponsored by the Claretian Missionaries. https://claretiansusa.org https://myclaret.org

Some threats to democracy, such as the insurrection on January 6, 2021, are lawless and loud. But others draw on the workings of the law to turn them against democracy itself. In this episode we talk to Celina Stewart, chief counsel and senior director of advocacy and litigation for the League of Women Voters, about those threats. They include gerrymandering, restrictive voting laws, and other measures enacted at the state level and through court decisions—most notoriously, the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

You can learn more about Celina Stewart and her work at the links below:

More on Celina Stewart https://www.lwv.org/about-us/staff-leadership/celina-stewart

More on the League of Women Voters https://www.lwv.org/

Background on Shelby County v. Holder https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/shelby-county-v-holder

How do democracy issues relate to building up the common good? Check out this deep dive from Virginia Schilder at NETWORK. https://networklobby.org/build-anew-series-democracy-102923/

Just Politics is sponsored by the Claretian Missionaries.https://claretiansusa.org https://myclaret.org

Just Politics will be taking a little break this week. We'd hoped to bring you an interview with a member of Congress, but as you may have heard, things are a little chaotic in Congress right now, and our interview was postponed due to the votes to elect a new House Speaker. As we've discussed this season, our democracy is in peril, and the past couple of months have been a clear illustration of that fact.

This conversation is more important than ever. We will keep diving into it in the coming weeks to give you insight on where our democracy is and what you can do to preserve, protect, and expand it. We look forward to being back next week with a new episode of Just Politics.

Democracy's decline at the global level can prompt feelings of helplessness and despair. But inaction is not an option for justice-seekers, and fortunately, there are ways to take action. Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in Carnegie's Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, has studied the issue and recommends five strategies for supporting democracy. She also names tactics that, while necessary for supporting democracy, are insufficient alone. In dialogue with Just Politics cohost Joan Neal, Kleinfeld reflects on her recommendations, as well as the group that she sees playing a critical role in movements to save democracy in the long term: Catholics.

You Can learn more about Rachel Kleinfeld and here work at the links below:

More on Rachel Kleinfeld https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/699

"Five Strategies to Support U.S. Democracy" by Rachel Kleinfeld https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/09/15/five-strategies-to-support-u.s.-democracy-pub-87918

Freedom House report on the decline of democracy worldwide https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2023/marking-50-years

Just Politics is sponsored by the Claretian Missionaries.https://claretiansusa.org https://myclaret.org

It's been a chaotic week in Washington, D.C., with a narrowly averted government shutdown and the historic ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. We speak with NETWORK government relations director Ronnate Asirwatham, who explains why it doesn't have to be this way—that the drama surrounding a still-possible government shutdown involves a small group of extremist legislators determined to slash funding to vital human needs programs and introduce punitive immigration provisions into the federal budget, or else.

NETWORK and allies helped keep these provisions out of the short-term deal that keeps the government funded until November 17. But the harm of these measures, to say nothing of the harm that an actual government shutdown would cause to millions of people, remains a real possibility as the weeks ahead unfold. Through all of this rings the question: What does it say for the health of U.S. democracy when the very people we elect are so fixated on stopping the functions of the federal government?

You can learn more about Ronnate Asirwatham and the averted shutdown in the links below:

From the BBC: Why government shutdowns seem to only occur in the United States: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66965637

NETWORK's Ronnate Asirwatham was named one of the 500 most influential people in Washington by Washingtonian magazine two years in a row: https://www.washingtonian.com/2023/04/27/washington-dcs-500-most-influential-people-of-2023/#Immigration

The October 2 rally for a moral budget organized by NETWORK in Louisville, Kentucky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3j6QvDZKRI

The Washington Post story Ronnate mentions about a crisis in access to nutritious food among children: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/nonalcoholic-fatty-liver-disease-kids/

Just Politics is sponsored by the Claretian Missionaries: https://www.claretiansusa.org https://www.myclaret.org

It's easy to be overwhelmed by the sense of brokenness that pervades politics in the United States today. But the problems at the heart of all this precede the dysfunction of the past decade and the political alliances of the last 40 years: They go back to Jim Crow, slavery, and beyond. This week's guest, Lisa Sharon Harper, has traced her own personal history as a Black woman in white evangelical Christian spaces and back 10 generations of her family history to understand the brokenness of America today. She is the founder and president of Freedom Road, a columnist at Sojourners magazine and the author of several books, most recently Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World and How to Repair it All.

For more about Lisa Sharon Harper visit https://freedomroad.us/who-we-are/lisa-sharon-harper/.

Just Politics is sponsored by the Claretian Missionaries. https://myclaret.org

Christian nationalism is a term that comes up with increased frequency in U.S. politics. It's a label that tries to sanitize something very ugly: the goal of a society in which only white Christians of a particular ideology enjoy the full privilege of being an American. To unmask this movement, we turn to an ally from another Christian tradition: Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Their Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign seeks to educate all people in the United States, but especially Christians, on why Christian nationalism is incompatible with living out the gospel in our society.

Amanda testified before Congress in 2022 about the ways in which Christian nationalism proves cover for white supremacy. Also, find out what people say to Sr. Eilis all the time!

Learn more about Amanda Tyler and Christians Against Christian Nationalism in the links below:

More about Amanda Tyler https://bjconline.org/amanda-tyler/

Christians Against Christian Nationalism https://www.christiansagainstchristiannationalism.org/

The Baptist Joint Committe on Religious Liberty's full report on Christian nationalism and the Jan. 6 insurrection https://bjconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Christian_Nationalism_and_the_Jan6_Insurrection-2-9-22.pdf

To learn more about Christian nationalism, register for NETWORK's Oct. 21 event, White Supremacy and American Christianity: A Consistent Ethic of Hate Threatens Our Democracy https://www.mobilize.us/network/event/580503/

Just Politics is sponsored by the Claretian Missionaries. https://www.myclaret.org/

Book bans, political violence, and other hallmarks of Christian nationalism are not things many people imagine just showing up in their backyard. But that's exactly what happened to Dr. Nichole Flores in her community of Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Dr. Flores is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia whose work focuses on justice, democracy, migration, family, gender, and economics. She is Catholic, Latina, and a wife and mother and, like so many residents of Charlottesville, she witnessed the unthinkable when white supremacists with tiki torches marched on her city and killed one young activist, Heather Heyer, in a car attack.

You can learn more about Nichole Flores and Charlottesville in the links below:

Nichole Flores' publications: https://uva.theopenscholar.com/nichole-flores

NPR report on Charlottesville's removal of Confederate statues in 2021 https://www.npr.org/2021/07/10/1014926659/charlottesville-removes-robert-e-lee-statue-that-sparked-a-deadly-rally

What does it mean to live in a fragile democracy? It can be difficult to imagine what that actually looks like. State voter suppression laws and candidates for elected office threatening political retribution against their opponents are two examples. But it isn't every day that we witness the fragility of our system of government up close.

On August 2, NETWORK government relations advocate Jarrett Smith experienced how a single false alarm can shut down the function of an entire Congressional office building. His experience makes clear how the threat of political violence can stop the functions of democracy in their tracks. If people fear for their safety, they are less likely to participate. From January 6 to people with assault rifles standing near polling places of voters of color, Christian nationalism is a serious threat to democracy in the United States today.

That's why this season of Just Politics will focus on democracy, the perils it faces, and what we can do to protect, promote and expand the system to build a pluralistic, inclusive society.

You can read more about Jarrett Smith's experience, NETWORK, and the importance of democracy in the links below:

Associated Press report on the August 2 incident on Captiol Hill https://apnews.com/article/congress-senate-lockdown-capitol-police-acf2c7c341e3445f190a59e0aaf52067

NETWORK's support for the Freedom to Vote Act https://networklobby.org/news/2023-freedom-vote-act/

More on why this season of Just Politics is centered on democracy https://uscatholic.org/articles/202309/season-3-of-just-politics-podcast-digs-into-promise-of-democracy/

You can read the transcript for this episode at U.S. Catholic:https://uscatholic.org/articles/202309/just-politics-what-we-mean-by-fragile/