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Democracy Lessons From an Evangelical Church, with Hahrie Han

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Democracy Lessons From an Evangelical Church, with Hahrie Han
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Scot and Sue are joined by Hahrie Han, an award-winning author and professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, to discuss her new book Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church (Penguin Random House 2024). Undivided tells the story of Hahrie’s visits to a megachurch in Ohio as it goes through a six-week program developed by church leaders to cultivate meaningful relationships across race and foster collective anti-racist action. Listening to the congregation and the participants she follows, Hahrie hears a powerful story about politics in the US and what we can do to protect democracy.

Guest Bio

Hahrie Han is a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, as well as the inaugural director of SNF Agora, an institute dedicated to strengthening global democracy. She writes for The New York Times, the Washington Post, and The New Republic and is an award-winning author of four books. The daughter of Korean immigrants, she lives in Baltimore. 

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This transcript was automatically generated and may contain minor errors.

[00:00:00] Sound on Tape: This podcast is presented by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights. 

[00:00:07] Hahrie Han: If I’m just a consumer of democracy, then it’s I’m going to the grocery store and I’m taking out, do I want this candidate or that candidate? Do I want this policy or that policy? The same way that I go to the grocery store and I pick out, do I want.

[00:00:18] Campbell’s soup or do I want chunky soup, right? Like I make choices about products and then if I don’t like Campbell’s soup, next time I’m going to go and buy chunky soup, right? I’m just going to go and whenever I decide I don’t like something, I just go buy something else. And that to me is really different from being part of.

[00:00:34] A group in which if I don’t like the way something happens, I’m not just going to leave and say see, I’m going to go find a different product. But that I’m going to actually try and change and engage with others to deliberate about why do I think this is not the right thing for us to be doing.

[00:00:50] Why should we, in fact, be doing something else?

[00:01:09] Scot Nakagawa: Welcome to the Anti Authoritarian Podcast, a project of the 22nd Century Initiative. I’m Scott Nakagawa, one of your hosts. 

[00:01:17] Sue Hyde: Hello friends. I’m co-host Sue Hyde Scott and I first joined forces about 30 years ago to help defeat anti L-G-B-T-Q ballot measures proposed by Christian authoritarian groups. 

[00:01:29] Scot Nakagawa: It was as true then as it is now that those of us who believe in democracy make up a supermajority of people in this country.

[00:01:37] The challenge is, how do we go from being the majority to acting like the majority? 

[00:01:42] Sue Hyde: We dig into strategy questions like these and prescriptions for change. We talk with expert guests and commentators whose scholarship, political activism, and organizing define the cutting edge of anti authoritarian resistance.

[00:01:58] Thank you for joining us.

[00:02:04] Scot Nakagawa: Today on the anti authoritarian podcast, we are joined by Hari Han. Hari is the inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation professor of political science, as well as faculty director. of the P3 Research Lab at Johns Hopkins University. And by the way, the P3 Lab examines the way civic and political organizations make the participation of ordinary people possible, probable, and powerful.

[00:02:34] Reading that made me hopeful. Hari is also the author of five books. The most recent is Undivided, The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, from Penguin Random House. Welcome to the Anti Authoritarian Podcast, Hari. 

[00:02:49] Hahrie Han: Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited for the conversation. 

[00:02:51] Scot Nakagawa: Hari’s book, Undivided tells the story of one of the largest evangelical megachurches in America, where thousands of congregants have participated in a remarkable experiment.

[00:03:02] Undivided, a six week program developed by church leaders that is designed to cultivate meaningful relationships across race and to foster collective anti racist action. The designers of Undivided recognized that any effort to combat racial injustice had to move beyond addressing only individual prejudice.

[00:03:21] Change, therefore, would have to be radical, from the very roots, tracing both individual prejudices and the structures that perpetuate them. Hari, you were given complete and open access to tell the story of the work of the undivided leaders, and we’re really curious about your findings. Did this experiment change hearts and minds about individual racial prejudice as well as structural racism?

[00:03:46] Hahrie Han: Yeah. So first, let me just start by saying, so what the book does is it traces the story of four characters, essentially, who are all part of this church. It’s a white dominant megachurch in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it traces the journeys of two white and two black people as they go through this program are animated to get involved around racial justice and then shows how they navigate all the challenges that come with the work and.

[00:04:11] Just to be really clear, the story is not at all that there’s some kind of linear pathway, from complicity to anti racism or anything like that at all. It’s for each of the characters, the journey is unpredictable. It’s hard. They experience backlash in their lives. A lot of the questions that the book tries to tackle is a question of what does it take to first engage people who may not necessarily come with, quote unquote, like liberal orientation, towards the work into into it.

[00:04:40] But then second, what does it take to keep people involved in actually doing the hard work that it takes to really just not just change hearts and minds, but actually begin to think about how you animate people to get involved around, longer term kind of structural questions.

[00:04:55] And I think what was remarkable about the story is that Undivided is hardly the only program out there that is trying to do this. There’s actually a number of different programs. Both within evangelical churches and outside of evangelical churches, but it was the one that I happened to get to know, it’s the one that I happened to have access to, and it didn’t necessarily have the same impact on everyone, but for a lot of people that it did take through the program, they did get involved, it did really animate people into a series of pathways, I think, that Was relatively unusual.

[00:05:28] And I think part of it was the kind of initial six week program that undivided takes people through. But a lot of it was the kind of organizing that came after that really sustained the work and channeled it into longer term campaigns. 

[00:05:41] Sue Hyde: You, you’ve also traced the history of the white evangelical movement, including the ongoing contestation over its historic ties to white supremacy and exclusion.

[00:05:56] What did you find that could disrupt the rise of white Christian nationalism within evangelicalism? Evangelical churches. 

[00:06:05] Hahrie Han: Yeah. Okay. So just to give you a little bit of context about how I came into the work. So I was not raised in the evangelical church. This was a world that I was not familiar with.

[00:06:13] And I happened upon this project because we were actually doing research on a different campaign in Cincinnati and in a church was involved in the campaign in a different way. And that’s how I came upon this work. And so as I began to dive into research on undivided, which is the racial justice program, the church had developed, then I started raising all these questions like the one that you’re asking, which is, how is this happening within the context of an event, a white dominant evangelical mega church when everything you hear about in the news is about these churches just being bastions of white Christian nationalism or, all these different kind of things.

[00:06:48] And what I realized is that I think the news actually masks a lot of heterogeneity that exists within the white evangelical community. And that’s true both in terms of how different strands of evangelicalism have evolved historically and also I think the cross sectional, heterogeneity that we have right now.

[00:07:08] So historically, it is absolutely true that there’s always been these strains of certainly conservatism, certainly white supremacy and whiteness. The church has always, from the very earliest days of the church in America have been, institutions that helped uphold structures of white supremacy in America.

[00:07:26] That’s absolutely true. And that’s true, not only in evangelical churches, but many different faith institutions in America. But on the other hand, as the kind of contemporary evangelical church began to emerge the portion of the church that was really focused on the class for political power, which is what I think we hear about in the news was one strain.

[00:07:44] of evangelicalism, but existed alongside other strains of evangelicalism that I think get much less attention. And so this church, which is the third largest megachurch in America it has it’s a 35, 000 person congregation. So it’s a really large congregation. They emerged out of a. strain that’s, that is, it’s called like a seeker sensitive tradition or was really more a kind of missionary tradition of evangelicalism.

[00:08:08] Now the missionary tradition and Protestant evangelicalism also, had like strong colonial roots. They would go to these, foreign countries and set up these bastions of little like white European communities essentially, and then try to, draw indigenous people into those communities.

[00:08:22] So I’m not saying it’s not without. It’s own biases, but it just didn’t have the same kind of quest for political power at the center of the work that it was doing a lot of what it was trying to do is think about how do we draw more people and more individuals into relationship with God, and because of that, because that was the goal, the way in which they thought about building relationship with and entering into communities and engaging difference was very different.

[00:08:48] Then how it began to emerge in other parts of the faith. And so those have always existed alongside each other within the faith tradition. And I think began as we saw the book takes place during the Trump era and kind of goes through till 2022, 2023. As we began to see a lot of these questions become more pointed during the Trump era, those strands began to grapple with questions more overtly than they had in the past.

[00:09:18] Sound on Tape: Hi there, this is Caden, the publisher of Convergence, and the host of our weekly news magazine, Block and Build. If you’re enjoying this show, I’d love to invite you to join me every Friday for a breakdown of the headlines with the kind of insight and analysis you’ve come to expect from Convergence magazine.

[00:09:33] I also get to go deep with movement journalists about their crucial reporting, and get exclusive insights from some of the most strategic organizers fighting for the world that we deserve. If you’re looking for a break from the news cycle that feels grounded and strategic, come along for the ride. Find Block and Build wherever you listen to podcasts, and subscribe today.

[00:09:51] And, subscribers to Convergence get exclusive access to a live stream of the show as we record it every Friday. To become a subscriber, go to convergencemag. com slash donate and set up a new recurring donation. Subscriptions start at 10 a month and are the best way to ensure that we keep making media that helps our movements understand the moment.

[00:10:10] Thanks for listening.

[00:10:17] Scot Nakagawa: So you have described democracy as a system that embraces uncertainty about outcomes. But it requires certainty about the process of getting to those outcomes. 

[00:10:26] Authoritarianism, of course, is the inverse, right? Authoritarianism feeds on fear of uncertainty, justifying corruption of the process. What observers of authoritarianism warn us is that as authoritarians drive uncertainty and fear, many people retreat from openness and turn toward more rigid worldviews.

[00:10:43] to the appeal of strongman politicians. So how do we prepare for all of this? How do we prepare for these pressures that are likely to make us more rigid, more afraid of outsiders, even as we make our inside circle smaller and more homogeneous? 

[00:10:59] Hahrie Han: Yeah. I think just really clear the definition of But I Of democracy as being one that embraces uncertainty over outcome in order to have certain processes.

[00:11:07] It’s not mine. I’m quoting a political scientist named Valerie Buffs, who originally built her career studying Eastern Europe, essentially, and she was studying the post Soviet bloc countries and observed that one of the things that differentiates democracy from any other form of government is that.

[00:11:22] People have to be willing to accept the fact that their side might lose, right? But in exchange, what they get is they should have a certain set of rights and responsibilities that are guaranteed in the process. And authoritarianism, of course, is the reverse. If there’s an election in North Korea, we know who’s going to win, right?

[00:11:37] We don’t know exactly how they’re going to get there, but we know what the outcome is going to be, right? And so that’s one of the kind of key differentiating factors of a democratic party. Kind of community. And so the question is, we begin to see this kind of erosion of democracy all over the world and the kind of quest for, victory or power over all else then.

[00:11:56] How do you begin to combat against that? And when I think about what I learned about the churches, what I was really interested in as someone who spends a lot of time kind of thinking about questions of the mechanics of organizing and how do you make organizing work is how was it that this.

[00:12:14] Community, in Southern Ohio, they drew their population primarily from Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky. So it was, absolutely not like a politically left community was politically diverse, very politically diverse community. How is it they were able to sustain that kind of difference, even within.

[00:12:32] this tradition that in some places, like if we look at other churches in America, became much more politically homogenous and arguably a lot more authoritarian. And I think there were some really interesting things that I learned about the way in which, for example, they were able to create basically like a cellular structure within the church through this kind of, through these kinds of communities of small groups.

[00:12:55] And within the small groups, people were able to have a lot of agency so that Even if I’m, obviously if I’m in a 35, 000 person church, I’m not influ most people are not influencing what that church actually does. Having these small groups where they’re in real relate authentic relationship with people who, might have some shared characteristic with them, but not all.

[00:13:17] But not necessarily share all their political views or share all their, Racial identities or whatever the kind of thing, access of differences that you’re interested in. It allowed the church to bend without breaking, so as they were navigating some really controversial moments during the Trump era, during George Floyd, during all these kinds of things, I had a lot of people who I was talking to say things basically like my small group is my church, you know So there are moments when people felt really alienated Let’s say from what the church was doing, but they felt like they were in deep relationship with these other people That were they were able to put their hands in the levers of change kind of shape the way in which that group Was acting it allowed them to experience Small d democracy in a small self governing community and then it ultimately created I think some room You For the church to maneuver through some pretty complicated moments, you know in society writ large 

[00:14:11] Scot Nakagawa: So is the key social capital?

[00:14:13] Hahrie Han: I think social capital is a part of it but I think part of sometimes I worry when people focus only on social capital because I think it’s a combination of the relationship of social capital and engaging with questions of power because I think sometimes, so in some ways it depends on what you mean by social capital, but some, one interpretation of social capital is that like we all need to go and get out and like form relationships with each other.

[00:14:35] And if we form those relationships will inherently inoculate us against authoritarianism. And I think the answer to that is actually not true, right? Because what we know, if we look at the rise of authoritarianism in other countries, Is that civil society organizations can actually be a carrier for authoritarianism, or it can be a carrier for democracy, right?

[00:14:54] Like Sherry Berman has done some really famous work about, documenting the way in which civil society organizations were actually the carriers of Nazism in the Weimar Republic. And so the question is, what are the conditions under which the social capital that is created in civil society, whether it’s faith institutions or other kinds of institutions can be carriers of democracy and not authoritarianism.

[00:15:15] And In my mind, part of the reason why that kind of folk, I love that definition of democracy that Valerie Bunce has part of the reason why it’s so important. It’s puts the focus on this question of what do people need in order to accept the uncertainty over outcome, right? Democracy is actually demanding a really big thing from us, right?

[00:15:34] It’s demanding that we accept uncertainty over outcome. And so it’s what do I need to be able to do that? You know what? If I feel like I can put my hands and levers of change if I feel like I have ownership over the results that are going to emerge from this process that you’re asking me to engage in, then I’m much more willing to accept that kind of uncertainty.

[00:15:52] So it’s not just that I have to have social capital. I also have to have this feeling of agency. And that’s where I think civil society organizations that give people the opportunity to rehearse democracy, are really important. And so that’s where it’s at. These kind of small groups were really important because it gave people the opportunity to actually rehearse what it means to do democracy, as opposed to just having it or consuming it in a way.

[00:16:17] But then the other piece of it was because, and this is something that social capital literature does address, is that. Because a lot of these small groups were organized around, it could be organized on anything from like a Bible study to, rock climbers to people who need a tax advice to new parents, right?

[00:16:35] That they were they often brought people together who had heterogeneous. political views, heterogeneous racial backgrounds, different things like that. And I may have joined this group because I wanted to be part of a Bible study, but then all of a sudden I’m in relationship with people of color, with white people, with people who are not normally part of my social community.

[00:16:54] And if I’m in this self governing group where we’re doing that work of rehearsing democracy, even if they didn’t call it democracy, then I’m doing that with people who are different from me, and so I think It’s a combination of those things that are certainly part and parcel, but social capital, but I think certain variants of it that we need to be careful around thinking through.

[00:17:13] Sue Hyde: All right. When you say rehearsing democracy, what do you mean, what do you mean by that? 

[00:17:20] Hahrie Han: So to me, it’s, I think a lot about the difference between what it means to be a consumer of democracy versus an agent within it or someone who can produce it. And if I’m someone who does, rehearses democracy, I’m like actually doing it.

[00:17:34] Then I should make sure to say it in reverse. If I’m just a consumer of democracy, then it’s like I’m going to the grocery store and I’m taking out, do I want this candidate or that candidate? Do I want this policy or that policy? The same way that I go to the grocery store and I pick out, do I want, Campbell’s soup or do I want chunky soup, right?

[00:17:50] Like I make choices about products and then if I don’t like Campbell’s soup, next time I’m going to go and buy chunky soup, right? I’m just going to go and whenever I decide I don’t like something, I just go buy something else. And that to me is really different from being part of a group in which if I don’t like the way something happens, I’m not just going to leave and say see, I’m going to go find a different product.

[00:18:12] But that I’m going to actually try and change and engage with others that kind of deliberate about why do I think this is not the right thing for us to be doing? Why should we in fact be doing something else? And so that means people have to have the capacity to know how to articulate their own interests, how to work in combination with others, like how it is that you engage with other people.

[00:18:37] And how you then. Begin to put your hands on the levers of change in a way, right? And that’s what I mean when I say rehearsing democracy of how do I come to articulate my own interests? How do I come to see what it means to do that in relationship with other people? And then partake in a process in which we’re trying to learn How it is that we navigate that kind of difference or whatever?

[00:19:02] And then translate that into actions that we can do to kind of project You What we’re trying to accomplish out into a broader landscape. Like all those things are part of a set of things that I think people have to learn to become an agent in democracy as opposed to just consuming choices where I’m like I like that one better than that one.

[00:19:19] And that’s what I’m going to do. And I think too much of our politics. Is really one that’s focused on treating people more as consumers in which some far off someone else is the one that constructs the choices and all kinds of things. And what I was really blown away by, I think, in this church is that even if they didn’t use the language of organizing, they didn’t use the language of democracy or anything like that.

[00:19:43] They very much were equipping people with these skills because they were creating these kind of self governing communities. 

[00:19:50] Sue Hyde: You, you mentioned that you thought the, I think both the undivided program and the smaller social groups within the very larger church had an impact on how the church itself reacted to or responded to some very stressful social And political dynamics.

[00:20:15] Can you say a little bit more about how you think? It changed the big picture. 

[00:20:22] Hahrie Han: Yeah, sure. And let me say one more thing about what we were just talking about before we move on from that, which is that, one of the, in thinking about what brought me to this project, one of the things is certainly the piece that we’ve already talked about, which is the fact that this work was happening in kind of an unexpected environment.

[00:20:35] And I wanted to understand how it was happening and what the mechanics of it were. But then the other piece was, But if you think about what happened after George Floyd, is that we have this summer of racial reckoning, there’s this moment where everyone is wait a minute, is this time going to be different, and then if you look at the data about what happened a year after George Floyd, like a lot of the promises that were made, Remained unfulfilled, right? A lot of the polling data showed that there was actually a backlash that occurred after this kind of rise and support for things like the movement for black lives and so on and so forth.

[00:21:07] And so we, it was this rubber band got pulled and then it just snapped back in some ways went, sent the country in the opposite direction. Then it looked like it was going if we look just didn’t let you know, July, August of 2020 or something like that. And I think 1 of the things that we saw was that even for a lot of, let’s say, liberal white people who are sympathetic to the cause of racial inequality.

[00:21:30] Their activism kind of got to the point where it felt like, I’ve donated money, I’ve voted for candidates who are supporting the cause of racial equality, and I have a tote bag and a sign that says, Black Lives Matter. What else should I do? And it’s there, I think there are a lot of meaning white people, to put it like, bluntly, who are I’m not really sure what else to do.

[00:21:48] And that, to me, is a kind of symptom of this notion of this kind of consumerism of politics. Where I think that Even the activism of people who want to feel like they’re doing the right thing, quote unquote, or resisting authoritarianism becomes hollow. And so part of what was interesting about Undivided was also the fact that here they were taking a group of people who many of them would not identify as liberal at all, but were stayed engaged in the work of anti racism in a way that went beyond bumper stickers or signs or something like that, and and so I think that’s, I just want to like highlight that as something else.

[00:22:20] I think that was unusual. In terms of the impact that it had on the larger church, though, When Undivided first started, I should say it was started in 2015 because there was a black pastor who was the highest ranking black pastor in the church, very popular, who spoke out and said, there’s, there’d been this incident within Cincinnati of a police cheating of an unarmed black man, and it was causing all this controversy in the city, and he stood up and he said, I feel like it’s I need to be a voice of racial healing.

[00:22:50] Like I need to do something on this. And he had grown up in the black church and had moved to Cincinnati and then gotten involved and become a pastor in this kind of white dominant church. And there was an outpouring of support from the congregation that he totally didn’t expect, and from that outpouring of support is how the program Undivided originally grew.

[00:23:09] And so When he first started Undivided in 2016, so he spoke, the sermon was in 2015. He then took a year to develop the program in 2016, early 2016 is when the program started. I think the church was about a 20, 000 person church at the time. And in the first session of Undivided, they had 1200 people sign up, which is a pretty, if you think about it, It’s a, large number especially because like they have all, they have these kind of like small group sessions for all different kinds of things happening, and the fact that there was 12 percent or whatever, 6 percent of Turks, went and signed up for this was not insignificant.

[00:23:40] And so I think part of the impact that they had was just taking so many people who were in the congregation, through the church, but then they also took the entire church staff. Through it at a certain point and all this kind of stuff. So even, a lot of the people who are in leadership at different ways Engage with the program so that when you had moments like George Floyd come along a few years later A lot of the kind of leader the white evangelical leaders in the church were hearing Alternate perspectives on this experience in America that wasn’t just coming from, the typical kind of white leader within evangelicalism, and it’s a church that’s really trying.

[00:24:21] It’s like tacking back between, all these different viewpoints and controversies in America. So it’s not, you can’t categorize. It really is like a far right or far left church. It’s absolutely not either one of those things. But. All right. I think the fact that it had such a large portion of both church leadership and church membership go through this program definitely shaped the way in which it was engaging some of the kind of hot button moments in our politics.

[00:24:49] And I think just to the conversation, I know that you all are having, as we think about Not only how do we inculcate the question of like, how do you inculcate pro democratic attitudes, but how do you just inoculate against authoritarianism? Just having that kind of alternate perspective, that sense that there’s another way to look at this moment, was really important.

[00:25:08] So after George Floyd happened, for example, the head pastor in Crossroads, who’s a white pastor, and he got on social media immediately, and he said, I just saw that video. That video is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. And if you’re Christian, and you Don’t look at that video and just feel immediately so much pain for what happened to that, to George Floyd, then you really have to think about, what are, what is it that is.

[00:25:32] Making you feel that way, he was like calling out some of the kind of conspiracy theories and the sort of Disinformation that could change the way in which people might interpret that moment, And he did that like right away. I think it was a very instinctual reaction And so that alone set him apart from other pastors within the evangelical community.

[00:25:50] Sue Hyde: Wow, that is quite a story of growth and transformation. 

[00:25:58] Hahrie Han: And just to be, I should be really clear. Like I, there are other things that church did that I think a lot of people would look at and say, Whoa I don’t know that I would think of that as being, and it also it got called out for some of the sermons that it had given on LGBTQ plus issue, and so it’s definitely grappling with this question of how does it want to engage and understand and interpret what justice means in this moment, like it’s not, I wouldn’t say that it’s monolithically, but it is grappling and to me on this question of how do you inoculate against authoritarianism, if you can even bring People and institutions into the place where they’re grappling, then that’s already a very different kind of conversation than if they’re not even questioning what might be received wisdom from other places.

[00:26:44] Sue Hyde: Exactly.

[00:26:52] Scot Nakagawa: This podcast is presented by the 22nd Century Initiative, a hub for strategy and action for frontline activists, national leaders, and people like you. 

[00:27:02] Sue Hyde: At 22ci. org, you can sign up for our newsletter, you can learn from our anti authoritarian playbook, which includes resources. On how to block rising authoritarianism, bridge across the multiracial majority and build an inclusive pro democracy movement in your community.

[00:27:27] Scot Nakagawa: Hari, your previous four books dug into the role of volunteerism and organizing and political campaigns and community organizations and movements. What’s the difference between a movement that wins victory for its constituents and one that fails? What are some of the factors that make collection, collective action powerful?

[00:27:46] Hahrie Han: So a lot of my previous work is the, Scott, you gave the really nice introduction that, our research lab is called the P3 lab because we’re trying to understand how you make the participation of ordinary people possible, probable and powerful. So people have to be able to participate, they have to want to participate, and then it has to actually matter.

[00:28:01] And a lot of our work is basically partnering with grassroots organizations and putting research and learning around the work that they’re doing and try to understand like, How do you pull people off the sidelines into public life? How do you, what is the scaffolding that you need to build around their engagement in order to make, translate that engagement and project it onto a larger landscape of political influence and political power?

[00:28:22] And I think the kind of key thing, if we were to put like all the pieces together, is that what was interesting to me is that like the thing that differentiates the most effective kind of campaigns and entities and movements for collective action, From those that don’t is not in some sense how good their strategy was at time one But instead it was their capacity to respond to challenge and push back at time two right and so what I mean by that is that there’s never been a campaign for social change in like the history of the world, you know that tried to engage some real question of Structural power structural inequity or something like that or they went and said hey like we want to change this thing and the people And power like oh, yes Sorry, of course, like just come, open up the door and come let them do it.

[00:29:06] At some point, every plan is going to experience some kind of challenge or some unexpected happening. And then they have to figure out how to respond. And the question is what differentiates movements that are really good at knowing how to respond from those that don’t. And one of the things that we find is that it’s really about the extent to which Movements have what we call like a flexible, committed constituency that enables them to react nimbly to the kind of challenges, the inevitable challenges that come their way.

[00:29:43] And so that to me is the even if you have no kind of moral commitment to organizing or people’s agency or anything like that That’s it’s like strategic reason why organizing really matters, because if you have an organized base of people that you’re actually in authentic relationship with, then when that unexpected challenge comes and you have to pivot, or you have to engage people in a different way or whatever, then you’re able to respond a lot more nimbly.

[00:30:08] But if you’re resource based, Is not flexible is, you only have money to do this one narrow thing, or your people are only with you if you act in this certain way or something like that, or you’re not an authentic relationship with them to be able to pivot the campaign, then when that challenge comes, you’re stuck.

[00:30:26] And then when you’re stuck, you don’t really have a lot of like tools in the toolbox, so to speak, to respond to all the ways in which your original strategy fails. And I think that’s where it is when you have a base that you built that, where they feel like they’re consumers of the movement that you’re creating, then when you go back to them and ask them, Hey, We’re not going to make chunky soup anymore.

[00:30:47] We’ve decided we’re going to do this other thing over here. Then they’re all like, we’ll see ya. Like we’re going to go buy, purchase, right? Like another product somewhere else. And then you’ve lost all your power. But if you actually are in relationship with them where they’re not just consumers, but actual agents in it.

[00:31:00] You go back and say Hey, we’re facing this challenge. Like we need we know we need to pivot like work with us to figure out what the right next thing to do is And there’s a you know That requires a whole structure and I mean there’s all sorts of stuff that goes into being able to do that at scale but that’s how you that’s how a movement’s able to really win is when they can respond in those move in those moments and so You know, that, that question of what does it take to build an independent, flexible and committed constituency that’s going to move with you, be able to move with you is, I think a lot of where our previous work has gone.

[00:31:34] Scot Nakagawa: Thank you very much. That is very good advice. Folks need to get ready. 

[00:31:40] Hahrie Han: Yeah, it’s so many of the choices that we make now influence the things that we do later, that we’re able to do later, 

[00:31:45] Scot Nakagawa: certainly the readier we are, the readier we will be. 

[00:31:48] Sue Hyde: Hari we are in a moment in our country where many folks feel a little bit discouraged.

[00:31:57] What, what gives you hope? 

[00:32:00] Hahrie Han: Gosh, um, on, on so I’ll say this. I think that, I’m a college professor, my day job and one of the great privileges I think of being college professors. I get to work with young people all the time and I love it because I have a mentor who once says, it’s no accident that young people have always been at the forefront of most social movements that have changed the world because they have what he calls a critical eye and a hopeful heart.

[00:32:24] And that’s what you need to make change, right? Is that They are not afraid to be critical. Anyone who’s been around, an adolescent or a young person knows, but they have no choice but to be hopeful for the future, right? Because it’s stretching out in front of them. And they’re the ones that are going to inherit the world that we leave.

[00:32:41] And I think so being around young people, certainly. It’s makes me really hopeful because I think young people now come with this just incredible insight and acumen and clarity about the world that we are in, and the gap between the world as it is in the world as it could be, and so I think that is one thing that makes me hopeful.

[00:33:03] But then the other thing. I would say beyond that, like beyond just the young people is, when I in doing research for undivided in other work on other kind of projects that we’re working on, where we’re going out and talking to people who are part of these different efforts and communities across not only in America, but, all over the world.

[00:33:22] I have a lot of cynicism about our political system. And I think the flaws with which our system treats people. But when you talk to actual humans out there who are living in communities and making. Whatever choices they can to be able to solve the problems they see before them. I feel a lot of hope there, cause I think that people are still people, but that the challenge is more on the supply of opportunities that they’re being offered.

[00:33:49] And that’s something that we can change. I think if we can create a different kind of. invitation that we’re offering to people, most people are still going to be in a place where they can respond to that. Now, it’s not easy to change the system. The first thing you have to do is make that visible.

[00:34:05] But I do feel hopeful when I talk to, when we go out and do research with these different communities. 

[00:34:10] Sue Hyde: Thank you for your work. Thank you for your critical thinking. And thank you for your hopeful heart. 

[00:34:16] Hahrie Han: Thank you. And thank you guys for the, just doing the podcast and sharing these stories.

[00:34:20] I think it’s so important. So for the invitation. 

[00:34:23] Scot Nakagawa: for joining us. 

[00:34:25] Hahrie Han: Thank you for having me. Thank you. Hari. Hey, 

[00:34:38] Sue Hyde: thanks again for listening. Find more episodes of the Anti Authoritarian Podcast on all of your favorite platforms and also at 22ci. org and convergencemag. org. Direct links to these and other resources referenced in this episode are in the show notes.

[00:35:04] Sound on Tape: The Anti Authoritarian Podcast is created by the 22nd Century Initiative and published by Conversions Magazine. Our theme music is After the Revolution by Carsey Blanton and is licensed under Creative Commons. The show is hosted by Scott Nawa and Sue Hyde. Executive producers are James, mom and Tony Esberg.

[00:35:22] Our producer is Josh Stro and Yong Chan Miller is our production assistant.

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