Live From No Preference Fest: How Young Voters Are Shaping Local Politics

Are young voters really disengaged, or are they just demanding a better system? Find out in this episode! Recorded live at No Preference Fest, Monét and Quay are bringing you a conversation featuring Mary Black, Aminah Jenkins, and Brea Perry that breaks down the myths about voters under 30. They share their perspectives on the political system, what drives them to the polls (or keeps them away), and how they view local elections as a critical avenue for change. Exploring how issues like climate change, student debt, and social justice impact their voting decisions, this candid conversation highlights the future of civic engagement in the Triangle and beyond.

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Down Ballot Banter is hosted by Monèt Marshall and Quay Weston and is a production of Earfluence.

Creators & Guests

Host

Monet Marshall

Director. Playwright. Arts Consultant. Cultural Organizer.

What is Down Ballot Banter?

Welcome to Down Ballot Banter, the podcast that puts the spotlight on local elections and what local government actually means for you. Hosted by Monèt Marshall and Quay Weston.

Monét - 00:00:03:

Hey y'all, welcome to Down Ballot Banter, the podcast that puts a spotlight on local elections and what local government actually means for you. I'm Monèt Noelle Marshall.

Quay - 00:00:13:

And I am Quay Weston.

Monét - 00:00:14:

Yeah, you are.

Quay - 00:00:16:

Local elections are extremely important and we're on a mission to learn together and to break down local politics in a way that makes sense to us and doesn't require us to be experts.

Monét - 00:00:25:

Because we are not.

Quay - 00:00:26:

Hello.

Monét - 00:00:26:

So whether you're a seasoned voter or this is your first opportunity, we've got the insights and information to keep you informed and engaged.

Quay - 00:00:34:

Because when it comes to building new worlds, all of our inputs matter.

Monét - 00:00:39:

Yes. So if you're ready to learn with us, let's go. Today is another one of those special episodes. This is from No Preference Fest, a live event that happened on August 3rd at North Star Church of the Arts. And it was a gathering for the ambivalent voter where we had special conversations. And this is another one of those that we want to share with you. This one was under 30 voters and it featured Mary Black, Aminah Jenkins, and Brea Perry. And again, facilitated by me. So, Quay, you are not an under 30 voter.

Quay - 00:01:20:

I am not.

Monét - 00:01:20:

And neither am I.

Quay - 00:01:22:

Yep. No longer. Nope.

Monét - 00:01:24:

So, but when you were listening to those conversations, was there anything that surprised you in that conversation?

Quay - 00:01:32:

Yeah, you asked the question, what do we get wrong? About under 30 voters. And the responses from each of the people were like really profound to me. Specifically around lack of engagement, meaning not caring. And that was big. So, yeah, I'm very, very excited for people to hear this and what young minds have to say.

Monét - 00:01:58:

Yeah, me too. And, you know, for folks who are listening, we would love to hear your thoughts. So please, like, message us, hit us up, leave comments, because I really do think that so many folks think that young people are not involved because they care. Or the other point that came up is like, we're not idealistic. We just really still believe that we can make the world different. And I was like, ooh, have I stopped believing that? I hope not. But yeah, you listen and then you let us know what you think. Here we go. So I'm reflecting on my first presidential election. It was 2008. I was at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Aggie pride. Thank you. I was like, somebody has to do it. I didn't wanna do it. I was like, do it. And I had the distinct pleasure of getting to vote for Barack Obama, his first term, at an HBCU. And not only the voting, but the day after. Like, which is such a, It was a spiritual experience, right? Are presidents going to save us? No. But that moment of possibility and to experience that with thousand of other young black people on campus, I think was such a defining moment of my political upbringing. And I'm curious to y'all, so. So the question is, I want to know your name, your pronoun. And yes or no, have you had the experience of voting for a candidate that you were really excited about. And that can be presidential, state, or local.

Mary - 00:03:34:

Hi everyone, my name's Mary Black. She, her, they pronouns. I think my experience is very similar to yours. For all transparency purposes, I just turned 30 like a month ago. So not technically.

Monét - 00:03:49:

Get off the stage.

Mary - 00:03:52:

Not technically under 30 anymore. So the first time I voted was actually in the 2012 election. And it was for Obama. And it actually was at A&T as well. So very similar. I give pride. Very similar experience as yours. Yes. Just the newness of being able to vote and the fact that I get to vote for, you know, at the time, what I thought was like this really understanding of blackness and just history in the making and being able to like celebrate at an HBCU is something that sticks with me forever. So that's my experience, very similar to yours.

Monét - 00:04:31:

That's beautiful.

Brea - 00:04:32:

Hi everyone, again, my name is Brea Perry. I use she, her pronouns. I am 26 years old as of today. Thanks, guys. You know I'm a Leo, so. You had to shout out, it's your birthday. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Wow, I really appreciate it. Yes, I'm 26, and so the first election I voted in was 2016. I was a freshman in college at a PWI. And when the person who won that election won, it was traumatizing for me because I was at a 79% PWI, UNC Wilmington. So that's to say, let me answer your question. No, I have not. Well, not on the federal level. On the local level, I have. I was very excited to vote for the person sitting to the right of me. I don't know if y'all know that, but yes. And I will be very excited to vote for her again in this election. But yeah, so on a local level, I've had plenty of amazing people that I've been happy to vote for. But on a federal level, it's been a little help us, Father.

Aminah - 00:05:47:

Yeah. Hi, my name is Aminah. I'm 23. I use any pronouns. So whatever pronouns you can think of, I will use them. And I have not had the ability to vote for any candidate I felt very excited about just because being so young, my first election was the midterm election of 2018. And the most I can remember from that is voting straight ticket for that one similar to 2020, I voted straight ticket. And I just remember not feeling enthusiastic about my decision, but feeling like there weren't any other options for me or at least any other options that had ever been presented to me.

Monét - 00:06:28:

Thanks, y'all. So I want to get right into it and ask you, I'm going to start with Aminah and work our way back. What are folks getting wrong about y'all and about under 30 voters?

Aminah - 00:06:39:

Yeah, I think the biggest thing people are getting wrong is that dissent equals disengagement. I think that there is this notion that disagreeing not just with specific people, but with systems and parties, that there is a lack of awareness of what the call to action is overall. I keep hearing a lot recently, especially with Kamala Harris announcing that she's running, that not only do we have another option, but that there is hope. I don't know if any of you guys have gone to her website, but the only things listed on her website are donations and volunteering. There is no information about policy coming from her. And so I think that there is this idea that not being someone equals being something, if that makes sense. So not being Republicans means being this other better thing when either we don't have access to information or we excuse sometimes as a society not having information for being the answer. I don't know if that makes sense. But I think that there's also this idea that being so young means that you don't know enough to be engaged. And I feel like the young people who are being the loudest are the ones who have been engaged for the longest. You know, I spent a lot of time like in middle school and in high school and in undergrad being in these youth spaces where people would say they wanted to hear from young people or they wanted to inform some of the decisions their organizations were making. But it was always involving young people to a point. So, you know, it was allowing young people to share their experiences, but not allowing those experiences to enter spaces where policies or legislative changes could be made because that felt like it was too much. So I think that there's the idea, again, that dissent means disengagement, but also that the limitations that young people experience are on our own fault. When in reality, there are so many other things that are stopping us from being able to participate in those spaces.

Brea - 00:08:40:

That was beautiful. I really don't want to add much to it because that was a near perfect answer. And I think I would actually argue that when we're talking about dissent not being disengagement, I would actually argue that the people who are dissenting are the ones who are the most engaged because we recognize something that's happening in the world that we don't we don't want to happen. And we are engaged enough. To speak truth to power, to be in the streets, to organize, to talk to our elected officials, to tell them this is not the world that we want. This is not the world that we want to inherit. And so really that's kind of the only part that I wanna add is that. The engagement on election, electoral work, because I also want people to understand that electoralism is not the only form of organizing and political engagement, and in fact it is the lowest, one of the lowest levels of political engagement. I think that you can. Be a part of. I think that us young folks are wondering when we when we engage in the electoral process, what we are going to get for our vote. And not just, oh, I should vote for you because you're not that. Because we're not just against something. We're actually trying to build a liberatory future. And so really that's the only part is that I would say that We are asking questions about what kind of world we are going to inherit and be leaders in and live our lives in and build our own futures in. And we care about the Self-determination of our own futures. And so when we are engaging in the electoral process, when we are talking about the different candidates who are up for election, those are the things that we are thinking about.

Mary - 00:10:37:

Absolutely. More to that, just listening to the both of you talk. Thank you. Something that comes to mind is that when you're talking about the world that you want to create and how we're going to be engaged in it, they think that we're just too idealistic and that in order to participate in making change, you're just going to have to adhere to the system as is, even though it hasn't been serving people. And we can see with our eyes and our bodies and our ancestral experiences that these things have not been serving us, serving our communities, at least the way they need to. And that we're just idealistic and we'll just get over that as we get older. And I believe what we're finding more and more is people are doubling down in their vision of the world and creating radical change and spaces to engage in creating that world, whether it is through politics and voting or if it's just through creating strong communities of care where we're taking care of each other and we are able to exist outside of the way that it is. The government and the things that we need to have exist. And so that's something that comes to mind a lot, just being a person, a younger person in politics is that. We're just out here just dreaming and it's never going to come true and we're going to let go of that as time goes on. And another thing is that we're only connected through these ideas that are brought about through, I think, social media. And social media has been, I think, a point that has really brought us together. It's brought up narratives that have never existed in mainstream conversations up until this point. But I don't think we're getting our thoughts and collective hive minding around social media. I think it's just bringing us together so that we are able to eloquently talk about the things that are happening in our community and in the world around us. And I think it frightens people who have held power for so long that we have access to information in this way and that we are talking about how radical change can happen in South Africa and happen. In Hong Kong, it happened. In Congo and Sudan and Puerto Rico and how that relates to our experiences here. So yeah.

Monét - 00:12:42:

Thanks, Mary. And I want to ask the question back to you, what you just said specifically, because I think a lot of what I hear is that social media is also a tool of disconnection and that it doesn't leave room for nuanced conversation, which is part of why I really wanted to have an in-person bring your whole body to the room conversation. So how do we also. Both utilize the power and the goodness that social media has offered, while also what can we do to mitigate some of the damaging parts of it.

Mary - 00:13:12:

I think you exist in real life as much as you exist online. And I don't think we get a lot of that. I think people have gotten into their silos of communication, both in person, but especially on the Internet. And you have to be just as much of a real person in your real life experience and show up for what you're talking about in the real world as much as you do online. And my favorite thing is to just say, go touch some grass. I think we're very disconnected from those experiences because we have so much of our interactions based around social media. But there are people in your community who also would benefit from having these types of conversations, I think. Creating spaces like this, smaller, larger, more medium-sized, but just focusing on those interpersonal connections, building, organizing, mobilizing, educating yourself, and using that as a tool to actually exist as a real person and do that work in the space you actually live in.

Monét - 00:14:05:

Thanks, Mary. So I'm going to start back at you. What do you feel like is most important to you and to your friends right now in this electoral?

Aminah - 00:14:17:

Yeah, so I asked my friends before coming, I was like, what do you guys feel like we talk about the most? And the two biggest things that came up were the imperialist core, which I'll talk about in a minute, and accountability. So for accountability, I think one of the things that was very interesting about the 2020 election was it was our first presidential election that a lot of my friends and I voted in. And one of the main narratives that I heard a lot was, you know, Biden's not the perfect candidate, but we're going to hold him accountable, right? Like we're going to call him on his stuff. We're going to make it known when he does stuff we don't like. And I noticed that there are certain people who have limits to how far their accountability goes and where it shows up. I think there were a lot of people who viewed accountability as something where you just simply say, I don't agree, and not as an action that you take. So not as physically showing up in spaces and saying that you disagree with something, or even going as far as, for some people, withholding a vote for certain offices. There was this idea that accountability was simply something you do internally, and that it wasn't a community-building action. But the other thing I mentioned was the imperialist core. I don't know if a lot of people have heard that term before, but it's this idea that living in a country that practices imperialism and colonialism offers you a different level of privilege and opportunity that those who are subject to your country's actions don't have. So for example, living in the imperialist core gives us the opportunity to have access to goods and resources like phones or cars or clothing that others well-being and their well-being is put in harm's way so that we can have these good things. And so one of the things that my friends and I notice amongst other people our age is this idea that we have to like vote to save our rights, like to save our lives. You know, people talk about Project 2025 a lot, but a lot of people in the South will tell you, especially in North Carolina, that Project 2025 and a lot of those ideals are not things specific to these larger organizations. It's been happening for a while, you know, and if it's not Project 2025, it'll be Project 2029. Like it's an ongoing fight that happens. But specific to colonization and imperialism, you know, people are talking a lot about Palestine. We're talking a lot about the Congo. We're talking a lot about Sudan and how our tax dollars fund genocides abroad. But also how a lot of these people don't have voices here that we do, and they also don't have the ability to have their voices heard. Yeah, I guess focusing a lot more on the impact of where our money goes and what our votes actually mean for a lot of people. And wanting to have a say in making those changes possible.

Monét - 00:17:19:

Thank you.Brea?

Brea - 00:17:22:

Yeah, I think that a lot of me and my friends in our community And my friends kind of span the gamut of political engagement. I have organizer friends who are participating in dissent against our tax dollars funding genocide abroad in Palestine, Congo, and Sudan. And then I have friends who are, you know, I was in the black church panel. I have black church friends who are very disengaged and have kind of become a part of the community of people who have created silos of perceived safety in their church buildings that shields them from engaging with the rest of the world. And those are the people I have to struggle with. Those are the people I have to bring these conversations to and say, what do you think about this? What do you think about the fact that your mama is about to get evicted, but your tax dollars are funding bombs to to murder children and not just children men and women and people who who who span the the gender the gender spectrum what do you like what do you feel about that um and so i have to struggle with those people but i think that we are just just in general what is the connecting piece for all of my friends for all of for all of us young people is that we are trying to figure out what kind of future we are going to be able to build and so Self-determination is a big concept for me. And to me, it just means I have the power and the control to determine my own destiny. We collectively have the power and the control to determine our own futures. How we are going to live together collectively is not just about our individual lives and our me and mine, families and children and friends. But collectively, how are we deciding our own futures? And so I had a conversation. This is a whole different generation, I think. I don't know if 17-year-olds are considered Gen Z. But my brother is 17. And the other day, he just started talking to me about how scared he was to eventually have to move out on his own, to pay rent, to pay bills, to pay all these things. He was just like, I don't know if people are struggling right now, I don't know what the world is going to look like in a few years when it's time for me to do the same thing. If you're talking about like, oh, like rent is so, so expensive and, um, Yeah, just how much the ruling class is trying to literally price us out of existence is what's happening in the imperial court. If that's what's happening right now, what is it going to look like for me? What is it going to look like for our cousin who is 12 years old? What is it going to look like for them? He's engaging. He's seeing the world the way it is. He's not shielded from that. None of us are shielded from that. The children are not shielded from that. They recognize that if the world continues in the direction that it's going, they might not have a future. So I think we're really trying to just determine what do we need to do to be able to actually build a world that we want to live in.

Monét - 00:20:52:

Thank you so much, Brea. And thank you to your brother.

Mary - 00:20:54:

Yeah.

Brea - 00:20:55:

He's a smart kid.

Mary - 00:20:56:

I love him.

Monét - 00:20:58:

So Mary, I'm going to ask you a different question. You are a young person that chose to become an elected official. And I want to know, like, what drove that decision? And what would you, what would be your advice to other young people who are interested in, like becoming part of the process in that way.

Mary - 00:21:18:

That's a great question. Thank you. Great shift. The most immediate advice that pops into my head that nobody ever likes when I say it is be delusional. That was something that was like the motto I lived my life by, because when I started running for office as a 26 year old nobody with a bachelor's degree in environmental science, talking about environmental justice, climate change, community engagement and affordable housing, I didn't think I was going to win. I didn't think anybody was going to pay attention to me. And what I found was that through being my most authentic self and showing up as a disruptor, as a weaver, as an organizer, people resonated with that because they want to see something different in their elected officials. They want to pour their love, their time, their energy. They want to support people who they believe in more than just because they are the lesser of two evils, but actually because they believe that they are people that are going to be a part of making change or at least holding the line, because a lot of a lot of politics is holding the line, which is why when Brea spoke earlier about how it might have been you, Amina, about how politics is just a harm reduction sort of space. In many ways, it is, because liberation from systemic oppression, from people who have been experiencing it, historically dispossessed communities, isn't going to come through voting, but it is going to stop another onslaught onto what's affecting your community more if you get the right people in office. And that's the hard part, because we don't have a lot of people who believe that they can do it. So that's my advice. Just be delusional about the world you want to create be delusional about what you can do and put yourself out there in ways that you didn't think was possible, because it is possible. And you, I think, will be surprised by the things that pour into your life when you start to pour into yourself.

Monét - 00:23:17:

Thank you, Mary. I think. Yeah. I have been so pleased to meet you. I think that I see so much of myself in all of you, but particularly this idea of not giving up on the dream I had. Like not giving up on the dream of 25 year old Monet or 15 year old Monet who believed that a different world was possible, right? And like, I think there's something really radical and also there's a lot of grieving. That comes with holding on to that dream when you're also living in the reality every day. And so I, but being in relationship with y'all helps me to remember what 25 year old Monet wanted. And I want to ask you about examples from your own life of intergenerational coalition that really worked. Like moments when somebody older than you, somebody like that you, it was, and it was mutual, right? That you gave, they gave, you received, they received. Cause I want to hear from you. And too, because I want to remind us that we really do need all of us. That we need the young people to be like, no, actually we're fighting for this other thing. Don't settle here. We're not building a house here. We're going there, right? So I would like to hear from y'all about that.

Mary - 00:24:35:

I don't know, I'm just gonna leave it out there.

Aminah - 00:24:37:

Um, oh man.

Brea - 00:24:41:

Wow, that's a good question. I think intergenerational work happens a lot in the organizing world. I'm an organizer with Refund Raleigh Freedom Committee, and I'm also a part of, if you're in Raleigh, you might have heard of these. Of these things, but also Fertile Ground Food Cooperative. We are working to to build a community-owned grocery store in southeast Raleigh, which is experiencing food apartheid We say food apartheid and not a food desert because it's not a naturally occurring thing It's a it's a an issue of systemic dispossession And so it both in both of those places I have seen the the beauty and the success of intergenerational work where I'm working with elders who have been working to build these things for 10 20 30 years and they have had they've had a lot of lessons that they want to Instill in us and they're in some ways passing the torch, but also they are still in the work It's beautiful to see elders still in the work still Still on the ground organizing their communities still at the food line on on Raleigh Boulevard in southeast Raleigh Passing out flyers to get people to come to the next neighborhood meeting. That is a beautiful thing but I think in that in that experience I see how much work Intergenerational organizing takes because sometimes we're recognizing that we're not speaking the same language We have the same ideas we have we have very similar goals in the world that we want to see and build and work towards but I've experienced the, just the work and the struggle that it takes to really make that work. And it's a really forming, like, formative thing for me. For me, it's a spiritual formation thing, to be able to learn from the wisdom of my elders who have been in the struggle for such a long time, while also, you know, knowing that I have something to offer, and we all have something to offer each other. But to be able to be humble and sit down and listen, but to also recognize that no one is perfect in this work, that we are all still learning. The lessons of today's organizing and the organizing of the past. So, yeah, I think I've seen some beautiful iterations of intergenerational work. Um, and it's got to continue. I think it's one of, it's actually one of the things that I think. Really, really, that we really had to hone in, hone, lock down, hone in on, however you say that, one of them, to really work to make better. Because there are a lot of elders in this work who have a lot to offer to the young folks, to all of us in this generation. And while we are very intelligent and we are very engaged and we are very well studied, we still need to sit at the feet of our elders. So, yeah, I don't know if that answered the question.

Monét - 00:27:46:

It did, Brea. Thank you.

Brea - 00:27:47:

That's what I was thinking about.

Monét - 00:27:48:

I'm going to get to Mary next.

Mary - 00:27:51:

Thanks, I was gonna hop in next. So a lot of my background has been in the environmental justice space. How many in the audience are familiar with West Baden? West Baden. North Carolina. West Baden? Yeah, with the North Carolina Environmental... Okay, so the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network has been working with this community over the last 13 years. They were a community that was fraught with industrial pollution from an aluminum smelting facility that was there for about 100 years. And if you know anything about how industries and companies work, if you've been operating for 100 years, you've done some dirty things to some communities and they were either poor people or black people. Or both. Or indigenous folks.

Monét - 00:28:33:

Yes. Sorry.

Mary - 00:28:35:

Yes. Them too. Also them. So in this community in particular, it's West Baden, North Carolina. It's a part of the larger community of Baden, but it used to be known as the Negro Village. And they buried all of these pot liners, which is one of the most dirtiest parts of the aluminum process, into the ground. And it's been leaching into the lake for the last 50 years. They would put the black workers in the factory in the most dangerous jobs and not give them proper PPE. So now a lot of people have asbestos of the lung, lung cancer. People have died from cancer and it's something that's been going on generationally. And so when I was listening to Brea talk, that was something that I was thinking about when I have been in community and been organizing around these topics so that the company, the company's name is well, the old company is called Alcoa and the new company has been connected to different sorts of crimes against humanities in different ways, but specifically Alcoa. They want them to come and clean up their mess. And I think it's the lessons we learn from older generations or generations that have come along that have been organizing and advocating because it grounds you in the reality of that nobody is just placed here and that although we have a lot of focus on youth and youth to power and youth, youth, youth, we're going to be older one day and we're going to need to be able to pass the reins to the next generation who has more energy, who has the time to be in the streets, who has the time to strap up and be ready to go when it's time to go. But also the wisdom of the people who are, who were losing, because that was something that really sat with me when I was organizing in that community. They were just happy that we were there and paying attention because the people who have been holding that space for so long are older and they're sick and they're dying. And they're trying to save their communities, not for themselves, but for future generations and it has been the young people from the West Bayton community that continue to pick up the torch and continue to fight for the future of their communities. And that's just kind of how it is. We're talking about... Oppression in the way that it has happened and manifested so pervasively within our society, Um we're in a relay race for justice so we're going to be handing off that baton until we get to where we're going and we're going to get there but it only comes through understanding intergenerational aspects of why and why that's important so that was the thing that came to my mind i don't know if i answered the question either.

Monét - 00:31:04:

It did it did no fear aminah?

Aminah - 00:31:07:

Can you repeat the question just to make sure i have the phrasing right?

Monét - 00:31:11:

Sure, maybe. Can you give me an example of successes you've seen when it comes to intergenerational organizing?

Aminah - 00:31:22:

Okay, yes, okay. I wanted to make sure that the example I was thinking of connected to the question. So I thought about it because happy, hi happy, was a teacher at the high school I went to where I feel like I really got my grounding in organizing. I went to Jordan High School and I had two teachers in particular who played a really big role in making sure that youth voices were not only heard, but that they were able to grow. And so those teachers were Mr. Perez and Dr. Swain. Haven't talked to them in a while, but a friend and I started an organization called Allies for Racial Equity. And when you're like 16, 17 years old, I like to say that for young children of color, specifically young black children, that we are able to identify experiences and terms before we have the language for them. And so we felt like a lot of what we were battling were systems and forces that we didn't necessarily know of or have the language to describe, but we understood that something was wrong. For Dr. Swain in particular, she came to a friend and I, or we had heard about a friend and I, a friend and I had heard of her. And she came to us to talk about what we envisioned for students of color at our school in terms of academic equity, social equity, and then also other community issues that we noticed. And she gave us a space, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but for young people, having a physical location to meet and talk and discuss your ideas is such a rarity. It is something that's not given very often. And she gave us her classroom. She gave us her time. She made time during her very busy schedule as an English teacher to let us talk to each other and hear each other out but she was also very open to questions. So questions about how the school operated, about policies that we didn't necessarily understand. And similarly, Mr. Perez gave us that same experience once Dr. Swain left, you know, not just giving us the language to understand why. I can't even say, but like why certain officials in DPS were willing to approve some policies and not approve others out of personal gain, but also were giving us tools beyond our current scope. So there was a book that I got from him my senior year that really opened my eyes to, I guess, how pervasive. Racism was in our society. It's called From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation. Oh my gosh, that book changed my life. The preface of that book changed my life. And I remember distinctly reading about the election of Obama and how a lot of black people voted for Obama because there was this idea that Obama was going to save us. And then black people kept dying and Obama either didn't say anything or the things that he were saying felt like a slap in the face. And so many people felt so hurt by that, but that became a jumping point for a lot of people, that distinct feeling of feeling like there's, I guess, going back to what I said earlier, feeling like there are no other options and then realizing that the options that we've been presented are more limited than we thought and so they basically gave me spaces, gave me resources, but also created an open dialogue that I think I'd been missing in a lot of other youth spaces. So they were open to hearing from us, but also open to speaking with us. And I think that that's something a lot of young people are missing nowadays is feeling like people are talking to you and not talking at you, feeling like your voice matters, but also that they want to provide input into what's going on.

Monét - 00:35:10:

Thank you so much, Aminah. Thank y'all so much for this panel. I think I'm walking away just one, what you're saying about physical space. I don't think I've thought about that as much, like what it means to just open the door, right? And so I'm really reflecting on that, about how we can open more doors for young people to have the conversations and have the spaces they need. And I just want to say thank y'all for the work that you do, for the people that you are, and for the imagination and the push that you continue to provide our community. Thanks, y'all. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to Down Ballot Banter. We hope y'all enjoy diving into the tentacular world of local politics with us.

Quay - 00:35:59:

Yeah, and don't forget, this podcast is an extension of Monet's beautiful dream, The Down Ballot Brunch, where there are three simple steps. It's to eat, have a conversation, and to act.

Monét - 00:36:10:

That's right. Have a conversation using this podcast episode, the Down Ballot Brunch chat guide, or your own prompts. Write a note to an elected official on a Down Ballot Brunch postcard. Share quotes from your convo on social media with consent, of course. Or text three friends about their voting plans and find out what matters to them.

Quay - 00:36:30:

And if you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like, share, subscribe. If you're listening on other platforms, be sure to rate and review. Share it with your people.

Monét - 00:36:39:

Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and keep up with the down-ballot banter.