The Round Table: A YVote Podcast

At this week's Round Table, Maya, Skyla, and Jack spoke with Dr Seema Yasmin, Emmy Award-winning journalist, Pulitzer finalist, and a CNN medical analyst who advocates for media literacy and slowing the spread of false news. In her newest book, “What the Fact? Finding the Truth in All the Noise,” Dr Yasmin offers teens a how-to guide to build the discernment necessary to tell fact from fiction. We discussed and lamented how little media literacy is taught in schools–and how this omission contributes to the drift away from citizenship and towards polarization, fueling a vicious cycle. This is not accidental, and contributes to things like the weaponization of Critical Race Theory, leading to the banning of books and conversations that would expose young people to key information. We must ask ourselves, whose agenda does it serve to have young people lacking the skills to be critical consumers of information? This is a core challenge of our time and it can seem overwhelming BUT Dr Yasmin underscored that it’s fixable. We have evidence based strategies for how to disagree with each other, how to build bridges, and how to debunk myths. A starting place is to TEACH critical thinking to all generations and emphasize that beliefs aren’t binary. It’s important to leave your mind open to new evidence and work to develop “cognitive immunity” to create antibodies that help you resist falling for false information and propaganda.  Dr Yasmin’s book WTF is meant to be a self-armoring tool to arm us to challenge systems, help us curate our media diets, and guide us in having productive arguments without challenging people’s core identity/culture/ideology. Be sure to check it out and thanks for listening!

At this week's Round Table, Collin, Kenisha, Madeline, and Maya spoke with Stewart Fletcher, Social Media Coordinator for Living Room Conversations. Living Room Conversations works to heal society by connecting people across divides - politics, age, gender, race, nationality, and more – through guided conversations proven to build understanding and transform communities. Stewart is a political science major at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah who has always been passionate about bringing people together: as the middle of ten kids, he has had lots of experience being a mediator. Living Room Conversations is part of a larger bridging movement working to bring people who think they disagree with one another together to see where they DO agree through guided conversations, resources, and events. Stewart believes people are more similar than we tend to think—that is, under the right circumstances that enable people to tap into their humanity and commonality. He feels Living Room Conversations’ guides help do just this, creating simple, accessible, scalable scaffolds around dozens and dozens of topics that can help the common person do what they might not otherwise do. We talked about the importance of Community Agreements (Next Gen Politics’ and Living Room Conversations’ have a lot in common); how clouded people can be by our own biases; and what a successful conversation looks like and what emerges from them.  We hope that YOU will be inspired to engage in your living room conversations. Thanks for listening!

At this week's Round Table, Kenisha, Madeline, and Maya spoke with Alexa Whaley, Media Coordinator, for the Millennial Action Project (MAP) The Millennial Action Project has an audacious mission: activate young leaders to bridge the partisan divide and transform American politics. Its vision is of a diverse democracy where the political culture is grounded in empathy and leaders pursue innovative policy solutions. The Millennial Action Project works directly with our nation’s leading young policymakers on both a national and state level to bridge the partisan divide and lead a new era of collaborative governance. Through her role, Alexa helps MAP amplify its message, perspective, and membership through digital media and press outlets. She passionately believes we all can and must come together around generational issues like climate change, housing, and criminal justice–and MAP is committed to serving as a conduit for doing so. Growing up in a Conservative Christian background and attending an evangelical college majoring in political science led Alexa to want to work in politics without forgetting roots or leaving communities she cares about behind. This made MAP a perfect match, enabling Alexa to use all parts of her tool kit and ideological background in working with lots of bridge builders who are passionate about not  silencing the other side. We spoke about the ‘secret sauce’ of how MAP works with young elected officials across divides; the role of the media and social media in creating divisiveness—and how MAP is trying to become a go-to resource for young people on how to navigate politics; why ours is the largest generation registering Independent; and the power of bringing one’s full self to politics without having to hold to a party orthodoxy.  Thank you for listening!

At this week's Round Table, Jack, Kenisha, Kris, and Madeline spoke with Michaela Latimer, Winston Churchill Fellow and Community Manager at Genesis, helping move New Zealand to a sustainable, low-carbon future, powered by renewable energy. Michaela was visiting us as part of her international Churchill Fellowship to learn about community and philanthropic organizations involved in positive youth development in the U.S. and U.K. to inform positive youth development frameworks in New Zealand. We had a great conversation about global philanthropy and its strengths and limitations. Michaela is very cognizant of critiques about philanthropy–and also feels that targeting really big things like poverty and hunger can’t be done piecemeal. She feels philanthropy should be about generosity and making things happen, and is focusing on helping corporations work in the service of creating authentic systemic change. Nonprofits have so many constraints around funding that constrains scale, which she feels has to change given the urgency of issues of our times. She is inspired by a Māori cultural tradition oriented around being a thriving people in a thousand years time–and now we are too. When you think in terms of a thousand years, you make very different decisions, which we as a society need to do. We emerged from our conversation recognizing that while we tend to THINK things are local, there’s a lot more that’s global and there are a ton of common issues across our work and our world. Thank you for listening!

At this week's Round Table, Erina, Jack, Kenisha, and Madeline spoke with the leaders of our Next Gen Politics’ Rancho Bernardo Chapter: Khushi Patel and Chelsea Reilly.  Their community is VERY divided along partisan lines, which carries over into school unfortunately. At a time when many issues are deeply polarized–from vaccines to politics–they had no platform to discuss things with their peers as their teachers avoided such things during the school day. Things had become very divided and divisive with no arena for meaningful conversation to bridge the gaps. People were pushed to extremes of left and right without middle ground for mature conversations–and to have fun through them. And so a year ago, Khushi and Chelsea decided to take this on by building a Next Gen Politics chapter to talk about hot topics in non polarized ways. And it’s been going gangbusters! We talked about what civic engagement– and lack thereof– looks like in high school, how to make politics less intimidating and more engaging, how to bring participants together across broad ideological differences, the power of youth networks, and how more empathy can transform the nation. Thank you for listening!

At this week's Round Table, Ava, Jack, Kenisha, Madeline, Maya, and Skyla had a really special conversation: with each other. That’s right, no guests which gave us the opportunity to REALLY dig in with one another. We discussed a lot of things: Systemic racism and how it plays out; what we learned through Black@ accounts; whether we are unified between our home self and school self–and where does our true identity lie; how to teach beyond issues that are ingrained in society, and in us; How schools are part of larger systemic issues; if and how it’s possible to create integrated education given segregated neighborhoods; and what we can do to ensure more equitable education that provides youth with a strong foundation to build on beyond that.  We had a great time recording this and hope you’ll have an equally great time listening!

At this week's Round Table, Maya and Kris spoke with Charity Freeman, Associate Director for Teacher Training and Community Education for the Discovery Partners Institute at Pritzker Tech Talent Labs. Charity is passionate about building capacity in computer and data science/analytics at the high school and community college levels–which we 100% endorse (Maya is considering majoring in Computer Science when she gets to college.) Charity comes to this work after many years of teaching at various different kinds and sizes of high schools and she is now co-chair of a commission focused on how to scale k-12 computer science. While Charity doesn’t think computer science is necessarily for EVERYONE, she feels it’s important for everyone to have exposure so they can know what they are saying no to. There are lots of myths and misconceptions about computer science–and, of course, huge disparities in access– and Charity wants to be sure that youth, especially black and brown young people, simply aren’t afraid of it, leading them to opt out of CS as a default.  For Charity, relationships are at the core and her #1 goal is helping students find their path–not just what they want to do or what career they want to pursue. Further, one’s goal shouldn’t be to be “productive” --it should be to be fruitful. Charity's calling in computer science has now led her to help other educators find and use their voice to support minoritized students–a term she uses consciously for how systems and structures render students. She underscores that equity doesn’t mean lowering standards, it means extending resources to students who haven’t historically received them. Ultimately, getting amazing results is how you change the world and THAT is what Charity is focusing on. Thanks so much for listening!

At this week's Round Table, Ava, Kenisha, and Madeline spoke with Eric Forteza Romero and Michelle Mairena, two of the many co-founders of Rhizome. Rhizome empowers student-led communities, places college students on paths to lifelong leadership, and shapes a healthier future for local communities and for the country. Eric and Michelle are inspiring ambassadors for the organization–and for civic work more broadly. Both are immigrants now excelling at Ivy League colleges (Harvard and Stanford respectively) and embody the best of what it means to be an American, regardless of citizenship status. Rhizome is truly a collective enterprise–there are 90 cofounders from all across the country, who came together through social media in the summer of 2021 in their shared desire to create a youth led space to give young people agency and to drive social change. 80% of Rhizome participants are low income youth of color–a manifestation of the organizers’ commitment to finding and engaging students who haven’t had time or space to get involved in community organizing. Being TRULY youth-led enables Rhizome to flourish because the organization understands what it takes to foster youth participation and investment, and to get to the grassroots of what people care about. If you give students a platform, they KNOW what they need and what issues they want to focus on. While Eric and Michelle believe that schools SHOULD take responsibility for providing civic education, and that civic knowledge should be incorporated into what we consider essential knowledge, they’re not holding their breath waiting for that to happen; they’re taking action in under-resourced communities all around the country. Eric and Michelle underscored the importance of communicating that democracy is alive and evolving and that youth can participate in it. We firmly agree and we encourage any college students who are listening and interested to apply for the PAID Rhizome Organizing Fellowship.  Applications are open through the end of Oct–check out Rhizome’s website to apply. And if you admire Rhizome’s mission and vision as we do, you can donate here. Thank you for listening!

At this week's Round Table, Ava, Kenisha, Madeline, and Skyla spoke with one of our beloved podcast editors, Vanessa Chen, as well as her collaborators Kimmy Jeon and Matthew Huang, who are working on a documentary about gerrymandering. Yes, gerrymandering. A topic that doesn’t get enough attention by young people yet has a fundamental impact on voting and electoral politics, making our political system inherently already less just and less democratic before people even get to the ballot box. As such, Vanessa and her partners are investigating what young people know and care about in relation to gerrymandering and its impact on voting disparities based on race and social class. Given how political our team is, we were VERY interested in this topic, which most of us knew little about since it’s really not addressed in high school, yet we’ve recognized its impact on our communities. We discussed why voting is important to each of us, how voting can better reflect minority opinions in the decision making process, and the challenges of an orientation that isn’t on uniting the masses but rather firing up parties’ existing bases–and often the most extreme parts of it–thereby further fueling polarization. We all agreed that we HAVE to work to counteract the vision cycle of disempowerment and lack of representation. We also agreed that students across the country SHOULD be taught more about gerrymandering–and the importance of local elections– and how it affects us, not just historically but today. Thank you for listening!

a                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      t this week's Round Table, Kris,Ava, Madeline, Kenisha, and I spoke with Joy Malonza, founder of The Down Ballot. The Down Ballot seeks to help voters more easily, seamlessly, and intimately engage with the electoral processes that determine their state representatives. Joy’s political values were forged when she moved to the U.S. at age 9. There was lots of talk about politics in her family and lots of frustrations about the broken systems they experienced. She initially planned to work in economic development but became disillusioned—and a socialist :) George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent protests were the catalysts that sparked her recognition of the need for something like The Down Ballot to provide information for activists to become engaged voters. Protests aren’t going to bring us universal health care; it’s only ultimately going to happen in the legislative chambers. Joy recognized how much language around voting is opaque and off-putting which, combined with broad based voter suppression efforts, keeps communities she cares about disenfranchised. She went through tons of data on who votes and doesn’t vote. Spoiler alert: older white people vote, and landlords raising rents always vote. Voting at the local level is POWER. Others are showing up so if you don’t, you cede power. Meanwhile, a lot of people don’t know why midterms matter–so The Down Ballot needs to educate them. Joy has been experimenting with several different depths and displays of content, landing on providing brief interviews with candidates, calling out sneaky language, and more. She’s now going super hard with outreach to try to double their 40,000 followers because the midterms are sooo important. A lot of seats are being vacated and could lead to a change in party power. Joy emphasizes that there are many ways to be an activist; she chooses to focus on the legislative and hopes you will too. Thank you for listening!