Behind Every Progressive Policy Is Good Organizing: Tim Walz and the Minnesota Model, with Doran Schrantz

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: Welcome to Block and Build, a podcast from Convergence magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence, Cayden Mak. On this show, we’re building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the ascent of authoritarianism while building the influence of a genuinely progressive trend in the broad front that we need to win.

[00:00:28] Before we get started, I want to invite you to join our subscriber program. Convergence Magazine is an independent publication that relies on the generosity of our readers and listeners to create the rigorous, thoughtful takes you’ve come to expect from us week in and week out. You can become a subscriber at convergencemag.

[00:00:44] com slash donate. Any amount helps, either as a one time donation or a recurring monthly or annual subscription. On the show this week, we are going to do a deep dive on what some folks call the Minnesota model. Thanks for watching. We’ll Which is the power behind the policies that made Tim Waltz’s reputation as a progressive governor.

[00:01:01] While Waltz tacked to the right in his debate with J. D. Vance earlier this week, there is no denying his progressive record as governor of Minnesota. He signed legislation expanding free school meals, requiring a transition to clean energy for all Minnesota power plants by 2040, and codified the right to abortion in the state.

[00:01:19] These wins came from decades of relentless progressive organizing in Minnesota through coalitions of faith, labor, and community organizing groups willing to engage with the messy work of shared governance. Joining me in a moment to discuss that model’s strengths and complexities is Minnesota organizer and former executive director of organizing groups Faith in Minnesota and Isaiah Doren Schrantz.

[00:01:39] But first, these headlines.

[00:01:44] As the clouds clear after Hurricane Helene, images, videos, and first hand reports of its impact across the southeast, and in particular Appalachian mountain towns like Asheville, have started hitting the news and social media feeds. I gotta say, it’s horrific. As information trickles out, we’re seeing heartbreaking and infuriating stories about people caught by surprise by the storm, as well as the obstinate refusal of capital to adapt to the demands of climate change.

[00:02:10] I’m particularly outraged by stories like the workers who were forced to stay on the job at Impact Plastics in Irwin, Tennessee, the same community where people had to be rescued by helicopter from the roof of a regional hospital. Eleven workers were swept away by the floodwaters, two are confirmed dead, and four are still missing.

[00:02:27] It’s an unthinkable demand that unfortunately we’ve seen before. Workers having to choose between losing a job and losing their lives by bosses who just don’t care. As usual after a natural disaster, it’s folks on the ground with local knowledge who are best equipped to respond. Mutual aid efforts have used hikers, ATVs, and even mule teams to get help into isolated communities.

[00:02:48] Our friends at Down Home North Carolina have great resource for mutual aid if you’re looking to contribute because Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee need our help and will for years to come as people struggle with the grief and trauma and their communities work to recover. Helene is the second most deadly hurricane to make landfall in the continental U.

[00:03:06] S. after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Undoubtedly the death toll of over 180 people will continue to rise in the coming weeks as rescuers are able to reach communities cut off by the storm. Also, in its wake, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that FEMA may not have enough money for another major storm this hurricane season, which is likely to occur given that hurricane season lasts through the end of November and climate change is fueling more megastorms.

[00:03:34] 45, 000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association have shut down a number of East Coast ports from Massachusetts to Texas in their first strike since 1977. The hurricane, the election, and the holiday gift import season all strengthen the union’s position to bargain with their bosses.

[00:03:53] Union members are demanding job protections from job loss due to automation and a significant wage increase. Shipping companies have made record profits since the start of the pandemic, but have not passed those earnings on to workers. I also think it’s important to note that ILA members have said that they aren’t against using machinery to make their jobs less brutal on their bodies.

[00:04:13] They just want to make sure that they still have those jobs. Even with containerization and automation, longshore work is hard, and these workers put in long hours to make sure the products that we rely on, from bananas to medication, get to our local shops. 

[00:04:27] Producer Note: Hi folks, this is producer Josh, jumping in.

[00:04:29] Update on this story between the time we recorded it and the time of publication. The dock workers have returned to work, reaching a tentative agreement that port operators will receive a 62 percent wage increase that extends that contract through January 15th of next year. However, bargaining continues otherwise.

[00:04:50] So we will keep an eye on this story. And just a reminder, collective bargaining indeed gets the goods. Back to Cayden. 

[00:04:59] Cayden Mak: U. S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed filings from Trump’s federal criminal case regarding the January 6th coup attempt. In 165 partially redacted pages, records indicate the Trump campaign operatives attempted to undermine the integrity of the election in key swing states.

[00:05:16] They also provide much 2021, including when he personally called for rioters to go after Mike Pence. It shows that he was advised by other leaders in the GOP that his claims about fraud in Michigan were not just unfounded, but clearly lies, and that when he himself said that, quote, the details don’t matter when discussing all of this evidence with his attorneys.

[00:05:42] I don’t know what else to say, but that none of this is surprising to anybody who’s been paying attention. Trump himself, of course, has attempted to politicize this document drop, and I have no doubt that deep Trump loyalists will eat up that line of reasoning. But for the rest of us, There’s about four weeks to go before election day, and there is plenty of work to do.

[00:06:01] In the meantime, Benjamin Netanyahu’s regional war continues to escalate with the ground invasion of Lebanon. Israel, as usual, doubled down after a missile strike from Iran. If, like me, you’re also incredibly angry about the fact that Biden and the U. S. State Department appears to be twiddling their thumbs instead of de escalating the situation, you are not alone.

[00:06:20] As we close in on the one year anniversary of October 7th and 365 days of Israel’s genocide I struggle to make sense of any of this. This conflict is not good for anyone, except perhaps Benjamin Netanyahu. It feels like we’re living in an alternate reality designed by an authoritarian warmonger, and the people who have the power and influence to reel it all in are fully bought in to the bullshit.

[00:06:48] One thing that occurred to me after Tim Walz got tapped to be Kamala Harris’s running mate was that is that his progressive track record can’t have come from nowhere. Any politician’s track record is a reflection of who they see themselves as accountable to, and there are plenty of data points that indicate something about the communities that they represent.

[00:07:06] So what do we know about Minnesota’s organizing infrastructure? Some things we’ve already covered on this show and that we’ve published about recently in Convergence magazine include Representative Ilhan Omar, whose strong base of support dissuaded AIPAC from investing in our primary opponent. She hails from Minneapolis, and we’ve seen the Minnesota Uncommitted campaign organizers turn out a very strong showing.

[00:07:27] Organized labor has made significant wins in the state in the past decade, and of course the Twin Cities became a locus of organizing during the uprisings after the murders of George Floyd and Philando Castile. To take a closer look, and a longer view, on what makes progressive policy possible, I’m really grateful to be joined today by Doran Schrantz, who previously served as the executive director of Isaiah and Faith in Minnesota, and remains a senior advisor to Faith in Minnesota, and is also the director of their PAC.

[00:07:54] Doran spent over two decades at Isaiah. Including leading the organization for 12 years, as well as co founding Faith in Minnesota, their C4. She’s someone who’s seen firsthand a lot of the on the ground work that led to this moment. Welcome, Doren, and thank you for making some time to chat with us today.

[00:08:11] Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Awesome. We could probably start anywhere in the historical timeline, but I’d love to ground our listeners a little bit in a place and a time. So I’d love to start with a little background about where you think what a lot of people call the Minnesota model got started.

[00:08:30] Obviously, this, is the kind of infrastructure that takes a really long time to build out. And you’ve got a long view of the work, but could you help us situate a little bit of the origins of this moment for our listeners? Sure. 

[00:08:41] Doran Schrantz: Sure. So as you said, I have been organizing and part of organizing movements and campaigns and political work in Minnesota for 20, 22 years, actually, and and I really started in the state in 2002.

[00:09:01] And it was the same year that Paul Wellstone was running for his second term as senator. And tragically The great progressive 

[00:09:11] Cayden Mak: senator. Yes. 

[00:09:12] Doran Schrantz: So people, a lot of people have heard of Paul Wellstone. And we do in Minnesota have a history of progressive, grassroots oriented public officials and campaigns that become nationally known.

[00:09:26] We punch above our weight class on that front. So I got to know, I didn’t, get to know Paul Wellstone very well. My husband actually worked for his campaign. And when he died, tragically, and that experience of, the, for myself, but also for like thousands and thousands of people.

[00:09:49] Both the experience of mourning his loss, I think for a lot of people it was for the organizing and movement infrastructure and labor movement in the state, how do you replace Paul Wellstone? And I think there was a recognition of how much infrastructure, how much connections, relationships and infrastructure was actually built up around the rise of Paul Wellstone.

[00:10:13] So it’s like there was a co act, which was a community based organizing organization. Coming out of that if his campaigns Wellstone action, which a lot of people, it was actually formed after he died, but it was a theory of grassroots campaigns and organizing that got spread all over the country.

[00:10:31] So he has a huge legacy. 

[00:10:32] Cayden Mak: Yeah, I actually think I have a copy of Politics the Wellstone way on my bookshelf. 

[00:10:35] Doran Schrantz: Yeah, it’s Politics the Wellstone way. Yes, exactly. So there is in our history. And experience, I just want to name this there is a history and experience of people in Minnesota of civic infrastructure, grassroots organizing that can have a political impact, that regular people organizing themselves can have a significant political impact.

[00:10:58] But after he died, there was a Republican sweep. So that election that he died, Tim Pawlenty became the governor, Norm Coleman won that Senate race. There was a pretty big shift in the state legislature. So my experience, and I think a lot of other people’s experience coming out of that election, and then the kind of national vibes that were going on around that year, we went into Grover Norquist, got all the Republican legislators to sign a no new tax pledge.

[00:11:32] If you think carefully about the history of conservative infrastructure in the United States. In the two thousands, there were these patterns. It was almost like packages of policy that were replicated state by state. And it was a very state based strategy. So they cared a lot about state legislatures, it’s like how many state Republican candidates can we get to sign a no new tax pledge?

[00:11:56] And so then there was a sense that agenda and platform was on the march in our state. And then I’ll, I’ll skip forward a little bit. Cause I know you’re asking for more recent history. It’s an 

[00:12:09] Cayden Mak: important context. I 

[00:12:09] Doran Schrantz: know, it’s a very important context. So for me, and I think people in my generation, that was both a shock and a wake up call and like, why don’t we have infrastructure like that?

[00:12:23] Yeah, sure. So here I am, I was organizing, Isaiah at that time was a very, it was as much smaller, didn’t do any political work, for people who are more interested in the nerdy organizing history, it’s a genealogy, is faith based community organizing. So that is, attached to the Alinsky model.

[00:12:46] It’s like the advantages of it is it’s very skilled, high craft organizing around base building. Um, deep relational networks, like all that kind of stuff, but didn’t have a coherent sense of strategic politics in the larger scope of things, and Perfect. Not a practice around that. And so in these kinds of moments if you’re a strategy person, you look at it and go what infrastructure do we need that could actually put at the center of the political agenda in our state?

[00:13:17] Like labor rights and the public good and raising taxes on rich people. So all these things that we think we want to do are so far away from the Overton window and political possibility. In 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. Yeah. Not on the table. And in fact, we’re on defense. A victory at the state capitol in 2005 was we protected, these are the kinds of things so we protected the most, the healthcare program for the most vulnerable Minnesotans.

[00:13:51] And that was a dogfight. Just to protect it. Now, that being said, as we move forward, I would say in a good way sort of obsession on the part of a lot of organizers and labor leaders in Minnesota was what is the path to building the kind of infrastructure? So that means constituency, electoral coalitions, governing coalitions.

[00:14:18] Communications capacity, like lobbying capacity, agenda capacity, all those things, we need all those things to even be able to imagine a political possibility that a lot of people know about now, where it’s like Tim Walz did all this like insane, if people, just to give people some sense, if we go back to the, I’m giving you one bookend, 2023 legislative session with a one vote Senate majority.

[00:14:46] So one, think about it for a sec. One vote Senate majority, pass the motion. Slim 

[00:14:51] Cayden Mak: margins. 

[00:14:52] Doran Schrantz: That, anyone can be Joe Manchin. Yeah. Anyone can obstruct anything. So for any particular interest, and all of us know who do politics, that it’s easier to stop things than make things go. Absolutely. A hundred percent.

[00:15:10] So stop, the ability of various stakeholders or interest groups. To even just scare one senator to sit, to stop something could have happened at any moment. So that, with that one vote majority, which was not like our Senate, the 34th Democrat DFL senators. I just also want to say one more thing.

[00:15:34] They’re not all Bernie Sanders. 

[00:15:37] Cayden Mak: Sure. They run the gamut, I’m sure. 

[00:15:39] Doran Schrantz: For your listeners, they’re not Ilhan Omar, okay? They’re not, so it was a really, it’s a broad range of people coming from Constituencies and Senate districts that you would not classify as like deep blue or highly progressive constituencies in those Senate districts.

[00:15:59] We passed the most progressive paid family and medical leave, I think, bill in the country paid earned sick and save time. I won’t go into all the details. You could do a whole episode just on this, the labor package that went through the like pro labor, pro worker organizing. Non compete, ban one thing that’s like incredible structural reform is SEIU Healthcare got an industry standards board for nursing home workers.

[00:16:26] That is literally saying that the union and the industry and the state have to sit at the same table to negotiate about wages and working conditions. That is a new structural form for worker power and worker democracy. It’s not, and that’s not, no one’s written about that. Yeah, no, it’s 

[00:16:47] Cayden Mak: like this.

[00:16:48] I feel like 100 percent 

[00:16:50] Doran Schrantz: clean energy, environmental justice package, criminal justice reform, like a transgender refuge state, universal school meals, four billion dollars for education. One that’s close to my heart. And I worked on really closely was a billion dollar investment in childcare with raises for childcare workers.

[00:17:06] Wow. We have a huge child care organizing project, new department for children and human families that consolidates all those programs, adds a huge investment to it, built an advisory table for child care. You have to get providers and teachers to be at the table. It’s not quite an industry standards board, but we’ve got that glimmer in our eyes.

[00:17:24] If you look at the lid of, enshrining reproductive freedom in state law, like seeing after thing, and it blew even six weeks, about four weeks into the legislative session, the Star Tribune, which is, The most prominent newspaper in our state had this headline that was like their hair was blown back.

[00:17:42] It was like, you know They were like walled administration and DFL majority are passing the most progressive platform in a generation Okay, so we went from what I just described about no new tax pledge to that And it is 20 years But I would say the real bookend is the last 10 years. We’ve only had two trifectas in Minnesota State in the last 40 years of S Minnesota State history.

[00:18:13] One was in 2013, and one was in this recent one. And we all also lived through the 2013 trifecta, so after all this work, you get a moment. And the primary message from our legislature the majority at that time, was we have to be careful about overreach. Which 

[00:18:36] Cayden Mak: I feel like we hear all the time is like when we have power, people don’t want to use it.

[00:18:40] When we 

[00:18:40] Doran Schrantz: have power, we have to hedge. Yeah. We’re, it’s hedge our bets. Totally. And we could have a long conversation about why that is the instinct on the part. I don’t want to say this in like with any kind of, it’s important to understand why people have the political thoughts they have rather than immediately judging them.

[00:19:02] For sure. You know what I mean? So I think the thinking is that the imagined voter in the minds of a Democrat, especially if you’re looking in the rearview mirror, we lived through Reagan, if you’re in that generation, the peak of Democratic power is Clinton’s strategy. So it’s like the imagined voter is a moderate voter, Who doesn’t, I, this is, I used to think to myself, it’s like we Democrats really don’t believe that voters like them or their policies.

[00:19:37] So we have to hedge and we have to almost quote what it is we really believe so that we can win again. And if you have that theory, if that’s your political paradigm and framework, then everything that people said made sense. And then I think the second thing that was in the, going on in the context of Minnesota is a memory.

[00:19:57] I personally consider it. Romanticism about a lost past in which Democ moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats came together to get things done in like smoke filled rooms and made life good, 

[00:20:12] Cayden Mak: yeah, this is the bipartisan 

[00:20:15] Doran Schrantz: It’s the bipartisan it’s the bipartisan romance. Yeah, 

[00:20:18] Cayden Mak: I think it’s popular with a lot of people.

[00:20:19] Oh, it’s popular to this day. Yeah, totally. Because I 

[00:20:21] Doran Schrantz: think the truth is, I think a lot of voters do want that. Yeah. Yeah, 

[00:20:25] Cayden Mak: they want it, they want a government that feels effective, 

[00:20:28] Doran Schrantz: whatever that means. I think that’s at the core, I think that’s a very good point you make. I think people want to feel like government gets things done and they don’t want to feel like there’s gridlock or logjam.

[00:20:39] And then the narrative about partisanship gets put to, it’s that’s what’s getting blamed for the gridlock. 

[00:20:47] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:20:48] Doran Schrantz: As opposed to anyone who’s on the inside knows what’s really going on, listen, you heard this. I I, I don’t mean this in a way to, to denigrate the desire on the part of a lot of people to have a government that works for them.

[00:21:01] In fact, we have to celebrate that desire on the part of people. Like we do, we all want a government that works for people. In fact, we need to work. We deserve a government that works for people. We deserve a government that works for everybody. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But that’s not the same thing as saying we’re going to hold back on delivering things for people.

[00:21:22] Cayden Mak: That’s right. 

[00:21:23] Doran Schrantz: Which actually is making government not work for people because there’s what I think is a misunderstanding of what it is voters are saying and thinking or people, I hate calling people voters, where people are saying or thinking about what they want their government to do for them. And it’s if we hedge, we’ll look reasonable, and if we look reasonable, that they’ll know that we’re not extreme, and if they know that we’re not extreme, they’ll think that we could do bipartisanship, and 

[00:21:51] Cayden Mak: in turn, it won’t work, I this analysis and this read tracks for me personally also, that I feel like it’s something, it’s it speaks I’m just like I want to savor this for a second, because it speaks to, I think, the experience of having, I think actually Palestine is a great example of this, where people on the left are like, why are you like this?

[00:22:16] And I do think a lot of this hedging logic that like, we’re the adults, we’re reasonable, we’re moderate. We’re acting like the adults, 

[00:22:23] Doran Schrantz: we’re the reasonable people. 

[00:22:24] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah, it’s one, it’s incredibly condescending to advocates who are further to the left who have something very clear and principled to say.

[00:22:35] But it also is Mis it’s like misconstruing. Yeah. A certain kind of, a certain kind of political orientation for a work ethic. 

[00:22:45] Doran Schrantz: Yeah. That’s really interesting. 

[00:22:48] Cayden Mak: Yeah. It, it just feels very familiar to me as somebody who, like I was a young person in the Midwest in the two thousands, early two thousands and watching these things happen at a state level in Michigan, where I grew up, I feel like there’s probably a story there that’s not dissimilar, frankly. 

[00:23:05] Doran Schrantz: Oh, I don’t think it’s dissimilar. I also think we keep, if we’re going back to state politics, the 2010 sweep, which I think people don’t talk about enough, so what I’m talking about is the 2010 Tea Party sweep of state legislature.

[00:23:28] Yeah, fair. So it’s in the wake of Obama, in which now in retrospect, I look back on and think we were not, and this is like something that I think is very relevant for today and block and build. We’re not prepared for reactionary politics. Surprised and unprepared. So reactionary politics, meaning we just elected a black man to be president of the United States, and then we tried to pass health care reform, which is a major change.

[00:24:06] That is huge change. And something progressives have to wrestle with is that humans have a hard time with change. You’re asking people to take an enormous leap. of belief in a government and a system that don’t necessarily believe it as it served them. So when we ask people to make major change, and I think if we’re looking forward, we got to think about this, because the amount of change that we know we are in for, whether we want it or not, we’re talking about climate change, we’re talking about global instability, we’re talking about even this thing that we’re just you’re just bringing up Palestine and Israel.

[00:24:45] It’s are we operating under a world order from the 1950s and 1960s? And it’s where America has a particular position in the world versus it is in a shifting transitional position in the world and our role in the world is changing and it is insecure. So then previously that you have now, I grew up in Iowa during the 1980s.

[00:25:06] So the role of the consolidation of corporate agriculture, like Monsanto, everybody, if you had land, you lost it. And if you had a union, it, they broke it. I’m not excusing people’s embrace of Trump in 2016, but if you grew up in Michigan or Ohio or Iowa, you can understand that didn’t come from nowhere.

[00:25:29] Now, we’re in a position of people who believe that we need to build a multiracial democracy. We have to address climate change. We need to change the entire economy, including black and brown people, including immigrants, including women, including, we’re talking about changing the nature of how people see themselves, their gender identity.

[00:25:52] Yeah. It is a lot of change. So how we build the kind of not only electoral coalition that can win a state legislature or a governorship or presidency. But what is the governing coalition and infrastructure and strategic center of gravity that can hold anchor and hold that amount of change? And I mean take complete responsibility for the political conditions.

[00:26:29] Not only while you’re trying to make the change or to demand the change, but to manage the change process and then manage the politics afterwards. Meh. Without all of that, we miss the mark. And in fact, this is my like somewhat controversial statement, we are complicit in engendering backlash politics. So my thinking I like this, say more about this.

[00:27:00] Okay. I’m not saying, it’s unintentional, I’m not saying we want backlash politics, I’m saying Of course. Without a full and complete appreciation for the kind of power that has to get built and what the purpose of that power is. Yeah. And with an appreciation For how much we are asking both our elect elected officials, people who are policymakers, people who are in the political system, agency officials, in government, I, this sounds so mundane, but I think it highlights the point.

[00:27:37] In Minneapolis, there is a war about perking. We are in a war about perking. Because we passed 2040, which was sing ending single family. Zoning, build a shit ton of bike lanes, but we’re mid transition. We’re in the interregnum between the thing as it was before and the thing we’re becoming.

[00:27:59] And in the middle of that, someone who used to be able to go to the drugstore and who’s like 75, who needs to park their car right in front of it so they can get into the drugstore to pick up their prescriptions. Can’t park there anymore. And they’re really mad. 

[00:28:15] Cayden Mak: Yeah. And 

[00:28:16] Doran Schrantz: understandably 

[00:28:17] Cayden Mak: mad. 

[00:28:19] Doran Schrantz: There is a caucus.

[00:28:23] It’s a Minneapolis party that wants very conservative leadership in our city. And Rage Over Parking is a political resource that the, I don’t even know, we’re not even talking about Republicans right now, a conservative status quo power network can draw on for their political power. And our side sometimes just gets mad about that.

[00:28:49] Why won’t people do what we want them to do? Instead of say, how are we going to politically navigate the transition from one place to another politically? Are we taking seriously what a regular person is experiencing? Because I’m ideological, me, Doren, I’m an ideological place, but most people aren’t there.

[00:29:16] People like me and you, sometimes when they do those values clusters things, we’re 12 percent of the Democratic coalition. 

[00:29:23] Cayden Mak: I don’t think a lot of people who are in that 12 percent realize that we are 12%. 

[00:29:27] Doran Schrantz: They don’t know that they’re not the base. 

[00:29:30] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:29:30] Doran Schrantz: You’re not the base. You’re part of it. Anyway, I’m saying all that is like mega analysis, but if we’re talking about multiracial democracy versus authoritarianism, political resource for authoritarian instinct.

[00:29:48] It is there is so much change. I feel insecure. I don’t feel good about what’s happening. I feel uncertain. We, because democracy is an invitation to uncertainty, whereas authoritarianism, and look, don’t matter how much Donald Trump acts like a psycho, there’s something weirdly certain that he’s offering.

[00:30:07] Cayden Mak: Yeah. He knows what he’s about, even if what he’s about is like absolutely aberrant. 

[00:30:12] Doran Schrantz: Yes, exactly. So there’s, so part of what we so we go back to this like Minnesota model thing, and I’m going to say we, we means. Isaiah and faith in Minnesota. We mean set of labor partners. We means, other grassroots partners and organizations.

[00:30:28] I don’t want to imply in any way that I or think was single handedly. It’s not true. It’s been like a collective group project. But a lot of the analysis that we started to have coming out of 2016, the 2013 trifecta experience that just nobody was satisfied with. So it was like, we didn’t get the agenda we were looking, good things happened, but it’s like that, including a set of legislators and public officials it just that was not it.

[00:30:58] And then we lost anyway. They lost. They lost. They lost. Anyway, so we didn’t pass driver’s licenses, we didn’t do restore the boat, we like gave people a tax cut, all that kind of stuff. But we, but it didn’t matter, we lost anyway. So those lessons then with Donald Trump almost won Minnesota. It was about 40, 000 votes.

[00:31:20] That was the margin. So it was a less than 1 percent margin. So that was like a shocker oo for a lot of people. And then, coming out of that, I think the question that became an orienting question then. Was in the fight, in the struggle, MAGA is a faction of American politics that has existed for a long time, and we have to build the resilience and support for multiracial democratic governing in the state of Minnesota, and we need more people who want to join team multiracial democracy, both in terms of politics, like elections, and in terms of policy than be tempted by Okay.

[00:32:04] This other thing that’s being offered to them. And so what are all the apparatus required to construct the multi racial democratic governing power in that context? So I’m using, I sometimes say things like you need the infrastructure, you need the architecture. Another word is apparatus. So it’s, so I’m saying that word because sometimes in the kind of like progressive world or like our bubble that we hang out in, people talk about the Minnesota model.

[00:32:37] And I’ve had people ask me about it, and I’m like model sounds like a recipe, where, or like a blueprint for a house. So that if you take that blueprint, you could replicate it. Or every time you add ingredient A, B, and C, you get an orange cake. As opposed to What is the I wrote these words down.

[00:33:03] What is the, what are the strategic capacities that are required that share a strategic and power oriented North Star, whether it’s communications or grassroots organizing or policy development or political like campaign work that Leadership across all those sectors share an analysis and an orientation, meaning people with influence in those places.

[00:33:35] And there are forms and apparatus that get organized and disorganized based on the, on form follows function. So what we might need in 2016 or back in 2010 or 2012 in terms of formations, like what I mean by formations is like, Is it a coalition with a public brand, or is it an institution, or is it a think tank, or is it, what is the form we need to execute our strategy?

[00:34:05] And actually, if you map the last 10 or 15s, there’s multiple forms. But there’s a through line of leadership and a set of priorities, like strategic priorities and a clear shared North Star, if that makes any sense. 

[00:34:23] Cayden Mak: Yeah, for sure. That it’s it’s more than just Saying we need a particular vehicle for a thing.

[00:34:28] It’s actually like, how do we assess this? Or this one 

[00:34:30] Doran Schrantz: organization is going to solve this problem. Or this one election is going to change everything. Or we have an alignment table that has this name and every, we need just to get more people at it, which means we’ll have more power. Not necessarily.

[00:34:43] Yeah. Yeah. There are things that small teams can do that big teams can’t. 

[00:34:47] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Totally. Totally. 

[00:34:50] Doran Schrantz: We’ve had a lot of rehearsals about different forms. And then I think there’s been leadership in place. I, think of myself as a long time leader. There’s also people like Javier Murillo is a long term leader.

[00:35:03] Elian is a long term leader. People have been in different positions on the field, so to speak. 

[00:35:08] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:35:09] Doran Schrantz: You know what I mean? But the quest or like people who were organizers who like, I think about someone whose name is Liz Olson. She was an organizer in northern Minnesota. She became a legislator.

[00:35:19] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She started a kind of organizing oriented legislative caucus in 2018 called Minnesota Values Project, which I think was the engine for the 2023 legislative wins. It is. And she, was the, by the time we got to 2023, Liz Olson was the chair of Ways and Means. 

[00:35:40] Cayden Mak: Yeah, I remember hearing her talk about her move from organizing to becoming an elected and I was very impressed with a lot of the like insight that she brought to that.

[00:35:49] Doran Schrantz: She was like that. And then she brought her experience as an organizer, which is thinking about things in terms of relationships, networks, and power, as opposed to just like authority and position. 

[00:36:02] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:36:03] Doran Schrantz: So she thought not just in terms of positional power in the context of building legislative coalitions.

[00:36:10] And built kind of strategic hubs where she socialized, she and a set of other people socialized a whole orientation towards governance inside the Minnesota State Legislature, and of course, the Speaker of the House, Melissa Hortman, was like completely on board. But like that, it’s that is an example.

[00:36:29] Of what focusing on leadership, strategy, organizing, and power over time produces that’s hard to capture in a single media article. Do you know what I mean? I 

[00:36:41] Cayden Mak: do. I think one of the things that has helped me think about things like this is there’s a difference between a psychological story and a sociological story.

[00:36:48] And so much of our storytelling about politics is still psychological, right? Whereas in reality, politics, popular politics is a sociological story. Okay. It’s about these like dynamics that you’re describing and this like longer view and the institutions that we build and the way that humans work together.

[00:37:06] Doran Schrantz: The way that humans work together yes. Yeah. 

[00:37:09] Cayden Mak: Yeah. And it’s not about one person doing a great thing. Exactly. There are many people doing great things. 

[00:37:16] Doran Schrantz: There are many people doing great things. And how do 

[00:37:18] Cayden Mak: those great things like lock together to create something? Many people are 

[00:37:21] Doran Schrantz: acting as nodes, connectors, like they’re seeking, it’s dynamic, you’re seeking options and opportunities.

[00:37:30] Opportunities. There’s this sociologist who I follow to, I’m sure you should interview her at some point. Her name is Hari Han. She’s helped me a lot, like put words on some of this and um, some of what she talks about is like this, that we don’t want to, invest in a program, like a thing.

[00:37:50] What you need for politics and power to change is strategic capacity. So not everything is always uncertain, like we don’t know what’s going to happen in this election as much as people on Twitter would like to tell you that they know. Everybody thinks they know. It’s all dynamic, so there’s patterns, there’s trends, there’s things we can use to predict or make better bets or worse bets, those things like that.

[00:38:17] But ultimately, like people in collectives are making strategic decisions in motion, in dynamics. That’s actually how politics works. So if you so strategic capacity becomes regardless of the political conditions, do we have the capacities that we need to operate in those political conditions?

[00:38:37] Do we have a theory of communications and strategic narrative? Do we have? organs to actually get that out. Do we have pipelines of candidates? They may win, they may lose. But do we have a baseline of we’re building that resource of people who want to become political leaders? Do we have organizing, which is of course my.

[00:38:57] Meaning, do you actually have organized, muscular, politicized bases of people who can be in motion, whether it’s in an electoral campaign, but then flip on a dime and be like the constituency in District 3A, moving a child care agenda with in hand with their senator. Without those capacities, it doesn’t matter how much you might want something, you won’t be able to implement it.

[00:39:35] So I think one of the things that we, perhaps inadvertently, a whole set of us landed on was that notion of strategic capacity. So that we have to have these capacities and though, and we, and then we have enough leadership in place. That can nimbly, strategically operate when moments or opportunities arise, like the 2023 Legend of the Beatles.

[00:40:01] Yeah. 

[00:40:01] Cayden Mak: Yeah. All 

[00:40:02] Doran Schrantz: of that groundwork had been laid for many years to get from the 2013 session that I’m describing to a completely alternate governing orientation on the part of those two caucuses in the State House and the State Senate, and a movement infrastructure that could back it every step of the way.

[00:40:21] And take shared responsibility for managing the political conditions of that much change. So the amount that I was on the phone, or sets of us were on the phone, or in the, like literally co strategizing on political problems. Think about Governor Walz, like he, to his great credit, like when he saw the moment we can do this he immediately set the tone.

[00:40:50] Election night, next day press conference, he immediately set the tone, which is what the governor needs to do, set the tone to say, we’re going full steam ahead. We’ve had an agenda. I’ve run it, I ran on it in 2018. I ran on it again. All of these legislators ran on it. We’re getting it done. And then of course the reporters, political reporting, asked all kinds of questions about bipartisanship.

[00:41:15] And he was like, you know what? They didn’t put any money into our campaigns. He was literally talking about the business, like the chamber of commerce. He’s they want to roll in on the other side. We tried. So this is what you get. And that was like, for someone like me, who’d been here all the way from 2002, I was like slain in the spirit.

[00:41:35] I mean, but also all the way through, there was all kinds of problems. It’s like a very concrete example. So Minnesota Chamber of Commerce said day two, our number one enemy is paid family lease. We were going to do, we’re going to pull out every stop to say no to that. And they, their power analysis was there’s a one vote Senate majority.

[00:42:02] All we got to do is give them one Senator. They activated the power of the Chamber of Commerce in a legislative context is not usually what people think it is. The power of the Chamber of Commerce is not like their checks they write. It’s the local grassroots chambers in every Senate district. And those local chambers, they had a meeting in every Senate district with 50, 60, 70 local small business owners out of their minds angry.

[00:42:37] Now if you are a Senator who won with 150 votes and you have 50 small businesses in your district, now those people, they’re not just small business, they talk to other people. They’re community influencers. They totally matter. 

[00:42:54] Cayden Mak: Yeah, especially because a lot of those businesses are the kinds of ones that are like front facing.

[00:42:58] Yes, they’re front facing. They’ve got a window. It’s their local restaurant. 

[00:43:01] Doran Schrantz: It’s the hardware store. It’s now some of those businesses are like UnitedHealthcare. 

[00:43:07] For the advantage of their infrastructure is what I just described. So now, let’s say we had no counter infrastructure in those Senate districts.

[00:43:15] So now, let’s say we had no counter infrastructure in those Senate districts. 

[00:43:19] Cayden Mak: Yeah, suddenly you have some senators quaking in their boots. And 

[00:43:22] Doran Schrantz: not five of our activist friends. I’m talking about counter infrastructure that is respected community leadership who is aligned, who can go and influence because they know the guy who runs the hardware store.

[00:43:34] Who can go talk to the guy who runs the hardware store. Perhaps in a couple of districts, split those chambers in half over the question of paid family leave. Because you have that much, and I’m using this word indigenous, not in terms of native, but that much. authentic on the ground community leadership in those places that’s organized into a formation.

[00:43:57] And was like knocking doors for that Senator panned in hand. And then those people can go talk to all the other most important community leaders in that local Senate district. That’s what I mean by strategic capacity. Without that and the ability to say to that Senator, we are going to share responsibility with you for the political conditions in your Senate district.

[00:44:22] We’re not. We are only going to hold you accountable. We are going to make the political conditions in your Senate district thus that you will have no choice but to vote yes. 

[00:44:36] Cayden Mak: Watch us do it. 

[00:44:37] I think one of the things I really want to pull out here is the way in which the strategic capacity thing is about, it’s about accompanying your champions.

[00:44:47] Not assuming that the champion is going to be the only sort of standard bearer for the thing, but to actually go with them at every step of the journey toward getting the work done. Every 

[00:44:56] Doran Schrantz: step of the way. My lesson about this was in some of our city politics over the last ten years, electing extremely progressive city council, and in one case, probably the first progressive mayor progressive, and we had no agenda.

[00:45:18] It was like, we elect you, and then you’re gonna do the things. And in fact, sometimes in our movement, like our side of the, that’s actually not our job. Our job is to be demanding that you raise 15 minimum wage.

[00:45:43] Now, the progressive is getting eaten by the left and the right. 

[00:45:50] Cayden Mak: Because there isn’t the alignment around the governing vision. There’s no 

[00:45:53] Doran Schrantz: alignment around governing. 

[00:45:54] So now the dynamic that’s going on for that progressive mayor is that what the newspaper, who often times is aligned with the status quo that they beat

[00:46:09] is communicating the chaos of nobody likes them and the persuadable person, like the regular person, regular voter, turns on them. And oftentimes blames them, this is like Eric, there’s been people who like suite of sociology, will blame, basically progressives pay more of a price for chaos than conservatives, status quo people.

[00:46:38] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:46:40] Doran Schrantz: So from those experiences, imagine if we had elected this like authentically progressive house caucus at the state legislature. And they, all that’s happening from the movement infrastructures were running actions on you or there’s protests or we’re not in the game at all, would they pass paid family leave?

[00:47:02] Cayden Mak: It just seems impossible. It would be 

[00:47:04] Doran Schrantz: impossible for them to do it. 

[00:47:06] Cayden Mak: And what I’m hearing to call back to the thing that you were saying earlier is that it’s not like we want backlash, but in that situation, you set yourself up for a nasty backlash. 

[00:47:17] Doran Schrantz: You set yourself up for a very nasty, and they will lose their elections the next time around.

[00:47:22] They’ll lose. I come out of like accountability organizing, it’s been a journey for myself about what does it mean, especially in the context of this threat that we have. About the fight for, your block and build, fighting authoritarianism, all this. What does it mean to take no responsibility for governance, especially as progressives?

[00:47:44] Because we are saying the government has to work. In fact, the existential Imperative. When we build a political promise that you’re going to get paid family leave, you’re going to get paid sick days, you’re going to address climate change, wages are going to rise, we’re going to take on the corporate overlords, we’re going to take, we’re going to make your rent better, but then none of those things get delivered.

[00:48:10] All the conservative has to say is no. We have to get people to yes. For the last 10 years, I’ve been like, it’s actually existential imperative in this context that we figure out what it means to build the governing infrastructure that would show effective yes, bold change, effective Policymaking in the context of that change so that you can actually get it, politically get it done, ensure that there’s a political will to get it done.

[00:48:39] And then secondly, walk hand in hand with our partners on the inside, inside, outside, whatever, to say we’re actually going to manage the politics of this with you. Yeah. We are both responsible for the political conditions that make it possible for you to vote yes. And now that’s not to say that we never create tension or there’s no room for disrupted politics or there’s no room for protest.

[00:49:07] I’m not saying that at all. Those are tactics that are important in all kinds of moments. I think the uncommitted movement is a brilliant example of that. And we have power right now, meaning Faith in Minnesota has power because we led an incredibly disruptive process in 2018 around the governor’s race.

[00:49:24] We ran an uncommitted strategy. Thank you. Ended up with 12 percent of this Day of Fell State endorsing convention uncommitted. So we were going to swing the endorsement. Our people who organized 5, 000 people to go into precinct caucuses with the platform, all of which passed in 2023 was very disruptive, but at the same time, we managed it like, how do all of our allies know about it?

[00:49:53] Are we actually enrolling every governor’s candidate, even the ones we don’t endorse, in what kind of partnership we want to have with them? We are actually trying to model a form of politics of how the party should operate, how people should get to be a part of it, and what responsible progressive leadership looks like in the context of a party.

[00:50:15] Cayden Mak: Yeah, I, this is the other thing that I’ve been thinking as you’re talking is it also is a different model, or like it, A lot of this is predicated on also having a clear understanding of what a political party even is, right? I think it is predicated on that. And that I think that especially in the national context, I think there’s a lot of political education we have yet to do to help people understand Both legally, right?

[00:50:39] What is a political party, but also what a political party could be. Jennifer Knox from Working Families Party National is somebody who has given me this framework that I find to be just Like, when she said this to me, I was like, pfft, my brain was completely blown. Which is that a political party is its elected officials, but it’s also its communications infrastructure.

[00:50:58] It’s also its voters. And those things touch each other, but they’re not co constitutive. And that when we talk about political parties, we often are actually only talking about one vertical, basically, in that. And then I think that what I hear you talking about is bringing those verticals closer together so that the party is actually an expression of what people want.

[00:51:21] Which is like huge 

[00:51:24] Doran Schrantz: and also forming even our own people to operate inside. It’s bringing those constituent closer together. People start from such a position for good reason of alienation. So moving people from alienation to a sense of agency is. Deep practiced organizing work, which is like another thing.

[00:51:55] I think we need to name about like, how do people and it’s the party. The party is a great example. I think it’s also a legislative session, 

[00:52:05] Cayden Mak: right? It’s an agenda. It’s a lot of different things. It’s a donors. Also, 

[00:52:10] Doran Schrantz: We’re contesting over an agenda, right? So we’re like, it is a contest. And you should expect that it’s going to be a contest.

[00:52:17] It’s a contest for a governing agenda. 

[00:52:20] Part of what’s going on, I think, if you think about the Bernie Sanders campaign and a set of these other things, is we’re in the midst of a contest in the Democratic Party over, not only it’s what is a governing agenda and what is the electoral theory, like what moves people, what’s going to make people excited, what’s going to, whatever, and it’s also a theory of like, how do we govern if we have power, and we’re in the midst of a, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, factionalized contest about that.

[00:52:49] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:52:49] Doran Schrantz: But what’s happening is a lot of people, I think, exactly what you’re saying, it’s like you brush up against that thing but don’t have a clear eyed analysis or even a conceptual category in your mind about what this thing is and what your agency and leverage is inside of it. It’s not how it’s screwing you over.

[00:53:11] I’m not saying it does it plenty. Yes, there’s ways to operate inside. There’s ways to have power inside this thing. Like you can learn how to have power and having power then is a constructive orientation. Now you have freedom to do a bunch of things, 

[00:53:27] Cayden Mak: right? 

[00:53:28] Doran Schrantz: You’re not protesting it.

[00:53:30] You have freedom and you have rights and responsibilities in relationship to this thing. Same in a legislative context. Everyone has rights and responsibilities. So I think the other thing that we are and Hari talks about this a lot, I just think in general and wider movement, it’s like, how are we forming our members, our organizers, our activists around these questions and what it means to have a gentic power orientation towards all these entities and to accept, A shared responsibility for the consequences.

[00:54:14] Essentially, what does it mean to actually wield power? 

[00:54:17] Cayden Mak: Yeah like in real life. 

[00:54:19] Doran Schrantz: Do we want it, 

[00:54:20] Cayden Mak: yeah I do think that’s an important question to ask. Yeah, are we mature enough to accept it? Yeah, because it’s not simple. And mature enough 

[00:54:26] Doran Schrantz: to accept it.

[00:54:28] Because it’s not, once you get in there in any way, it’s not simple at all. 

[00:54:33] Cayden Mak: And I think that one of the things that I was very excited about talking to you about was exactly this process of maturation, right? That that’s not something that I’m hearing from what you’re talking about happened by accident.

[00:54:44] It is a very intentional process by which community organizations, faith organizations, labor came together to be like, we need to be ready. Because we don’t, we did, we’re not playing to lose. Yes. And that’s huge. 

[00:54:58] Doran Schrantz: We’re not playing to lose. I remember it was post Trump and then going into the 2018 governor’s race.

[00:55:05] We had a whole collective process. I want to give like hats, hat tip to there’s an amazing workers center here in the Twin Cities called Satool. And the woman who, she’s not currently the co director, but was at the time, was Veronica Mendez, and she led a process with a whole lot of organizers and organizations about what do we mean by governing?

[00:55:25] What is governing power? What does it mean to have it? Do we want it? What would it look like? How do we have to prepare ourselves? And that was a, I think it was a very important inflection point in a lot of people’s thought process and conversations. Transcription by CastingWords See, it’s hard because sometimes you have this really easy to blame shift.

[00:55:47] It’s really easy to blame shift when things don’t go the way you want them to go. But when they don’t go the way you want them to go and you have that like sick feeling in your stomach, asking, like deciding to lean into the hard questions and those moments of what was my responsibility for that outcome?

[00:56:02] What responsibility do I bear as a political architect, as a strategist, as an organizer for that outcome? What were my blind spots? What didn’t I see? What didn’t we see? What And so I think that’s another thing that I mean about strategic capacity and leadership. It’s can we learn?

[00:56:23] Cayden Mak: That’s such a simple but spicy question. Yeah. 

[00:56:26] Doran Schrantz: Can we learn? 

[00:56:28] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:56:29] Doran Schrantz: Because if we can’t learn and adapt, then you repeat stuck patterns over and over again. For me, personally, I would get to moments and I would just be like, we are, I am stuck. We are stuck in a loop. And I could be like, it’s because of them, because of the donors in the Democratic Party, or it’s because of the corporate overlords, or it’s because we got sold out.

[00:56:59] Or it could be like, we didn’t have enough power to do X, Y, or Z. Why? Why not?

[00:57:11] And that is a space of tremendous, it takes a lot of courage, but it also is a space of a lot of creativity, if we can embrace it. 

[00:57:20] Cayden Mak: Yeah, I can imagine a lot of our listeners being like, wow, that’s scary. Yeah, it’s 

[00:57:24] Doran Schrantz: really 

[00:57:25] Cayden Mak: scary. Because it is I feel it, right? I’m like, ooh. We don’t like 

[00:57:28] Doran Schrantz: change. You know what I’m saying?

[00:57:29] We don’t like change. So we, we’re in a battle with ourselves about whether we want power. We’re in a battle with ourselves about whether we ourselves are willing to change. Yes. And that is actually the end. I would argue for democratic politics. If we’re trying to build multiracial democratic power politics, we have to become resilient to adaptation, uncertainty and change.

[00:57:55] Because that’s what we’re in for the next 25 years. 

[00:57:58] Cayden Mak: That’s right. I think the thing that’s wild about it too is it’s this is actually a lot of just what it means to be alive stuff. I know. That’s why I love 

[00:58:06] Doran Schrantz: politics. 

[00:58:07] Cayden Mak: It’s like about the like concrete work of building power from the ground up.

[00:58:12] But it’s also about, I think, at the risk of sounding a little corny, like kind of an evolved understanding of how humans operate in societies. Is. That I think is it feels evolutionary in some way to me, in that it’s like, moving away from this sort of static understanding of the balance of forces, and into something that like, really sees people as whole people.

[00:58:38] Doran Schrantz: Yes. 

[00:58:39] Cayden Mak: In our like weird lizard brain selves, in our like traumatized selves, in our, that there’s something that is it’s almost like I would call what the model you’re describing, like almost like trauma informed organizing, right? I agree. Yeah, I 

[00:58:55] Doran Schrantz: don’t necessarily call it that. Yeah, 

[00:58:56] Cayden Mak: But that’s something that, that keeps popping for me that I’m like, there’s something about the way that you’re talking about people.

[00:59:03] Yeah, everybody like from elected officials to literally every leaders to just like regular human beings who care about their communities that like the way that you’re describing their thought processes of the way they relate to each other is holistic. Yes, grounded. And I think there’s a lot to learn there.

[00:59:22] Doran Schrantz: Yeah. I do believe, So this is like a big leap. I don’t know if it sounds corny, but it’ll reveal my nerdiness. I’ve read a lot of political philosophy. And I’m talking about like the old school political philosophy. Like Aristotle or, things like that. And one thing that struck me at a certain point, Which is very different than political science, which we could have a whole conversation about the science ification of politics, which is, in my mind technocratic, efficiency, outsourcing, human agency, all that, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay, but Data based, 

[00:59:55] Cayden Mak: in a way that’s maybe deterministic, whatever.

[00:59:56] Yeah, data based, 

[00:59:57] Doran Schrantz: very market, people are, like, a promita I hate it. Anyway, so the point is all polit a lot of political philosophy, where it starts is, what’s a human being? Yeah. Where is a hu What is a human being? And what do human beings need? And from that first principle, we build politics. Putting humans, like this sort of question for us in this moment is what do we think is a human being?

[01:00:29] And what makes them work? And what do they need? And what is when we use these kind of phrases all the time about liberation or freedom. I’ve thought a lot about I really believe that the path to the political is part of the right and responsibility and fullness of human dignity and being a human being.

[01:00:52] That you get to make and create in the world around you. You get to learn. You get to grow. You get to change. . And so being then with other people ’cause I don’t think human beings live in some kind of vacuum. I’m not a Hobbesian, like human beings realize that experience in the context of being in relationship with others.

[01:01:19] . So if, and they, and that relationship with others is not just communitarian. It’s like we are building a political community in which I get to grow and you get to grow. I get to change and you get to change. I get to learn how to take responsibility and so do you. And we’re gonna challenge each other about that.

[01:01:37] So that we can grow and experience agency. And but as someone who is a political architect, like someone who gets to create a space in which something like that happens, which could have some impact and consequence in the world, which I think is imperative for me to do, because I don’t think agency means anything if you can’t actually make anything happen.

[01:01:55] So the responsibility of Isaiah and Faith in Minnesota is to make sure That people could participate to discover their own agency, something fucking happens in the world. They caused a conference. So how do we take full responsibility? And then I think what we’re doing in the wider politics is this is why I feel so urgent about this question about governing, is like, if people do not have the experience in which they believe their expression of the political and the world around them matters, It doesn’t work.

[01:02:28] It’s all corrupt and broken. Nothing I do matters or nothing anybody else does matters. It’s cynical and it’s on purpose that people are told that. 

[01:02:41] Cayden Mak: Yep. 

[01:02:43] Doran Schrantz: So how do we, how we battle that is you have to insulate enough like space where people can discover and experience as human beings, their own agency, community with others.

[01:02:56] We need lots of vehicles for people to be able to do that. And then we have to make politics work. It has to work. And if we on the quote unquote left, or progressives, whatever you want to call it, the blob of us who are like left of center, I don’t know what your ideological, whatever.

[01:03:14] Be honest, in my orientation, I care about that and I don’t. For me, the imperative is, how are we making democratic, resilient agency, governing delivery? I had the experience that I got to do something. It happened. It made my life better. I’m going to do it again. That is a huge part of what we need for block and build.

[01:03:36] Cayden Mak: That’s right. 

[01:03:36] Doran Schrantz: So that means people like me, who are in positions like I’m in, or organizers, have to think a lot harder about how we’re making it work, actually work, and take a lot more responsibility for it.

[01:03:53] Cayden Mak: Damn. I think that to wrap up this conversation a little bit I do want to like bring us back to the moment that we’re in right now. And I really appreciate the way that you’ve woven this framework of block and dole through, through your reflections. But thinking about the moment that we’re in now, and I think what’s really interesting to me is the way in which now Tim Walz is a vice presidential candidate, and We’re seeing one, more national interest in what has been built in Minnesota, but also I’m curious about what you think about the ways in which this model may already be trickling up into the national discourse.

[01:04:34] What do you and what are your dreams about the sort of ripple effects of this, right? 

[01:04:39] Doran Schrantz: So I would say that one of my reflections about this is. Watching the national media discourse about Tim Walls, and I’ve had lots of conversations with colleagues on the ground here in Minnesota, I feel like one aspect of it is you feel a little bit like you were doing like a group project in a basement someplace, and then all of a sudden it’s on CNN.

[01:05:03] Amazing. Incredible. It wasn’t like that at all. But you’re also watching a manufactured version. of what the real experience was, which is orienting. Secondly, there’s very little, I’ve actually had my share of conversations with reporters, in, in this whole process. Not as much as some people, but I’ve done some of that, and it’s they do not have any conceptual categories for how change or politics or power happens.

[01:05:34] Outside of tactical, efficient electoral apparatus equals great leader. 

[01:05:40] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[01:05:41] Doran Schrantz: It is all an individualized great individual like Tim Walz, and this is taking nothing away from Tim Walz Tim Walz. is a great leader and he’s done a great job as a governor. I’m a huge fan, but he did not single handedly create the conditions in which the 2023 legislative session was possible.

[01:06:04] That is actually a very interesting question that people should be asking themselves. Like, how did that happen? And some people are, you’re asking that question, but like I had a conversation with a New York Times reporter and he was like how do I talk about you? And I’m like, I’m an organizer. And he’s I showed up in his story as a walls allied operative So I was like, I mean without it like your literal only conceptual category 

[01:06:34] Cayden Mak: Yeah 

[01:06:36] Doran Schrantz: For who I am on the board in Minnesota and in relationship to Governor Walz.

[01:06:43] It’s I know. Governor Walz would never describe me that way. 

[01:06:47] Cayden Mak: How would you ever describe yourself? 

[01:06:49] Doran Schrantz: I would not describe I would never describe myself that way, but I understand where he’s coming from and it was like create a lot of jokes on, on the guys. I am now a Walz Island operative apparently, but.

[01:07:00] But it’s just made me think about like, how do people think the inputs equal outputs and what are the Who is the protagonist in a story? Like, how do we build other forms of protagonism in our story about politics? The narrative we’re telling ourselves about politics, I, and I have no idea how to stage that intervention, but I do think that the opening of like curiosity about what’s happened in Minnesota and where someone like Governor Walz came from is an opportunity for us to have more of this conversation.

[01:07:37] And I will say that. What Governor Walz and his administration has had the experience of is that long term partnership with movement partners is essential to governing. I think he absolutely knows that. And we do not have that at that level at the federal. 

[01:07:55] Cayden Mak: We’ve never had 

[01:07:56] Doran Schrantz: that. It’s just never had that.

[01:07:58] It’s never happened. Because the progressive infrastructure at the, or progressive or democratic infrastructure at the federal level is, it’s super beltway. I’m constantly screaming. I’m just like, you do know that people live in places out here. 

[01:08:16] Cayden Mak: Yeah, all across this country. So a source 

[01:08:19] Doran Schrantz: of political power is actually happening out here.

[01:08:23] It’s not happening in, it’s not being produced. If you think about production, it’s not being produced in D. C. Political power is being produced out in places. But our scaffolding and architecture doesn’t reflect that reality, so it’s just, and I would argue that a lot of right wing infrastructure does reflect that reality.

[01:08:43] Cayden Mak: Yes, I think that’s very correct. 

[01:08:45] Doran Schrantz: Their architecture is much more focused on like pipelines of leadership and like state legislatures and structural power in cities and states. And like grassroots power in we have to get hit 175 school districts over the course of six months. To make CRT an issue.

[01:09:05] Cayden Mak: And also to talk to your point about telling the more sociological stories. In a lot of ways, they figured out how to do it with those school boards and stuff like that, right? That the larger apparatus of the far right’s media infrastructure and think tank infrastructure knows how to tell that story.

[01:09:20] And they’re 

[01:09:21] Doran Schrantz: cult funded grassroots organizing. 

[01:09:23] Cayden Mak: Yeah, absolutely. It’s 

[01:09:25] Doran Schrantz: real. 

[01:09:26] Cayden Mak: Totally. All the parents who are concerned about like trans people. Yeah, the Moms for 

[01:09:30] Doran Schrantz: Liberty groups, and they put different titles on it, like it’s the Tea Party, now it’s Moms for Liberty, now it’s Americans for Prosperity.

[01:09:35] It’s all the same infrastructure. And they’re, I think we can beat them in a heartbeat on all that stuff. We have way more people. It’s just that we don’t have the apparatus. But the apparatus isn’t designed around human power. In places where power is produced. So it’s anyway, that might be, I’ve been thinking lightly about what do we want my last 15, 20 years of life to be about?

[01:10:00] Maybe I’ll think about this, like how do we worry about that kind of apparatus that’s like state, local and state and organizing and I do think you asked me this question about Governor Walz. I do think it’s possible that if he’s VP, there is lines of. influence into the Harris Walls apparatus kind of campaign.

[01:10:21] And I don’t mean just me. There’s the Minnesota crew, but there’s also I think there’s more like lines of relationship and influence that maybe we could do some rehearsals about a very different way of making federal, as it uses word rehearsal, because I never think you’d do with anything in one shot, so it’s like, how do we exercise the muscle of some other forms and apparatus of how we do power together? 

[01:10:47] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[01:10:47] Doran Schrantz: And so I hope that is an, I do have hope that’s an opportunity in front of us if they win. 

[01:10:53] Cayden Mak: Yeah. I’m with you there. I feel like there’s we’re entering, I, the thing about always being in unprecedented times, but I feel like this is maybe a good way in which we’re maybe going to learn 

[01:11:04] Doran Schrantz: something.

[01:11:04] Yeah. I think something’s shifting. 

[01:11:06] Cayden Mak: Yeah, fantastic. Doren, it’s been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for spending your time. It’s 

[01:11:11] Doran Schrantz: been such a pleasure to meet you. I didn’t know what we were going to talk about. This was really fun. I’m glad you let me be a political philosopher type. 

[01:11:19] Cayden Mak: Fantastic. I also hope we get to talk again soon.

[01:11:22] We do. Because there’s so many other, there’s so many other sort of branches and threads that I think are worth exploring with you. I would love to. Yeah. This was really 

[01:11:31] Doran Schrantz: fun. I really do. I really did have a good time. Thank you so much, Caden. 

[01:11:35] Cayden Mak: Yeah, thank you.

[01:11:41] This election season we are pleased to be featuring stories from the field from people who are doing the hard work of getting out the vote. I hear a lot from friends that they think that canvassing is not for them, that it’s hard, unpleasant, and it doesn’t feel effective. However, we do know That canvassing, especially when canvassers take the time to really talk to people on the doors in a practice called deep canvassing, can really help people think more deeply about issues that affect them and can move voters from non voters to participants.

[01:12:08] This week we have an audio diary from Danielle, a volunteer with Seed the Vote, about her experience on the doors in Arizona. While Danielle talks about convincing this voter on the doors to vote for Harris, I do want to remind listeners that Convergence is a nonpartisan publication and that this personal perspective isn’t an endorsement of any particular candidate or party by our organization.

[01:12:32] Danielle: Hi, so I’m Danielle. I’m a canvasser volunteering with Seed the Vote in Phoenix, and we are showing up this week for Lucha. I’m based in Austin, but grew up in Phoenix, so it’s been really amazing to walk in these neighborhoods. Thanks. So story that I did want to share last night, my very first, before we started block walking, we did a quick conversation when it comes to talking to voters that are aggravated by the current political system and just really not engaged to show up to vote at all.

[01:13:03] So we talked through what some examples of those conversations could sound like, et cetera. So first knock first door and a Hispanic man answered the door and based on many van, there are two people living in the house. So I initially asked if both of them were there. And he said, that’s the first person is me.

[01:13:19] The second person is my wife. How can we help? Like, how can I help you? And I just did the little spiel, hi, my name is Danielle. I’m a volunteer with Lucha and we are canvassing the neighborhood this evening to talk with voters about their plan for November 5th. Do you plan on turning out to vote in this election?

[01:13:36] And he immediately jumped in and said, no, I don’t vote. And I had practiced this. So I responded, just said, would you mind sharing why? And he said, no, I’m really not comfortable telling you. So that’s no problem. Would you be comfortable telling me what issues are important to you and your family? He said, I actually, things have been really hard.

[01:13:52] Things are expensive and wasn’t really going into any specifics. And I don’t know what told me to go a little deeper with this. Individual, but I did. And I said, for, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to share a little bit about why I’m voting. And he didn’t really respond. And I said, my cousin, which this is true, my cousin was sent to prison this week for three years and he doesn’t get to vote.

[01:14:12] So I just want to make sure that I show up to vote and help other people show up to vote thinking of those that are incarcerated, that can’t vote. And I also shared with him that my family has been really heavily impacted by the fentanyl crisis. I’ve lost. several cousins and have several cousins that have been in and out of prison because of fentanyl in the opiate epidemic, especially here in Phoenix.

[01:14:31] And that. I want to elect candidates, I want to take care of people and want to help with curbing that issue, but making sure people, as they’re in and out of addiction, have the support by the government and are able to, get back on their feet. And he shared with me that he is recently out of prison and is just recently sober from fentanyl himself.

[01:14:52] And I said, I told him, I was like, I have chills. I, Do not know this. I just felt called to share this with you. Would you consider after what I’ve shared voting for Harris, given that she has helped with the trafficking of drugs at the border, but she also views people as human as opposed to Trump, who wants people to be afraid of one another rather than take care of each other.

[01:15:13] And he said, I have been interested in Kamala Harris. I just don’t know about voting. And then I said, when you vote, if you don’t vote, you are saying that you agree with the status quo. And there’s two very different candidates. That are running and one views you as a person that has dignity and one truly and everything that they’re saying has shown that they don’t.

[01:15:34] And I hope that when you make that decision, whether it’s for Harris versus Trump, or when you’re talking about Ruben Gallego, Who has gone to the border, who has supported people, who has been a champion of people that have been in and out of prison, that have struggled with addiction, that have really just been down over several years, as opposed to Kerry Lake, who is just a long standing liar.

[01:15:53] It was a really powerful conversation and it did end with him saying he will look into voting. He’ll make sure that he’s registered, and if he does, he’s planning to vote for Vice President Harris.

[01:16:07] Cayden Mak: This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights. I’m Caden Mock, and our producer is Josh Elstro. If you have something to say, please drop me a line. You can send me an email that we’ll consider running on an upcoming Mailbag episode at mailbag at convergencemag. com. If you’d like to support the work that we do at Convergence, bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment, you can become a member at convergencemag.

[01:16:31] com slash donate. Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to making sure our independent small team can continue to build a map for our movements. I hope this helps.