Mobilizing Against Discriminatory Legislation

As we navigate these challenging times, we’ve watched as the state of Florida has become ground zero for some of the most contentious battles over equality, producing some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the country. This week In the Den, Sara visits with special guest Nadine Smith, who is on the frontlines of that fight. Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida and has been a relentless advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. She has played a pivotal role in mobilizing communities and standing up to discriminatory legislation.

Special Guest: Nadine Smith

Nadine Smith is the Executive Director of Equality Florida, the state's largest organization dedicated to ending discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In 2022, she was named to the Time100, TIME's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. An award-winning journalist turned organizer, Nadine was one of four national co-chairs of the 1993 March on Washington. She was part of the historic meeting between then-President Clinton - the first Oval Office meeting between a sitting President and LGBTQ community leaders. She served on the founding board of the International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization.

She is a Florida Chamber Foundation Trustee and served on President Obama's National Finance Committee. She is one of the 100 Most Influential Floridians by Influence Magazine. She currently serves as chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Florida Advisory Committee. She lives in St. Petersburg with her wife Andrea and son Logan.

Links from the Show:

• Wide Awake America: https://www.wmnf.org/events/wide-awake-america/# 
• Equality Florida:  https://eqfl.org/
• Nadine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in 2022: https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2022/6177748/nadine-smith/ 
• Join Mama Dragons here: www.mamadragons.org 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.

Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons. A podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here.

As we’re navigating these incredibly challenging times, we’ve watched as the state of Florida has become ground zero for some of the most contentious battles over equality, producing some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the country. And our guest today is on the frontlines of that fight. Nadine Smith is the executive director of Equality Florida and has been a relentless advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. She has played a pivotal role in mobilizing communities and standing up to discriminatory legislation.

Her leadership in Florida, where these culture wars have reached a fever pitch and are infiltrating all many of our states in the country really. Nadine has inspired so many families to fight back and set an example for how we all can stand strong against attacks on our fundamental rights and dignity. In addition to leading Equality Florida, In 2022, she was named to the Time100, the annual list TIME produces of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is also an award-winning journalist turned organizer. She served as one of four national co-chairs of the 1993 March on Washington and was part of an historic meeting between then - President Clinton in the first Oval Office meeting between a sitting President and LGBTQ+ community leaders. Impressive bio, Nadine, welcome to In the Den. It is really wonderful to have you with us.

NADINE: Thank you for inviting me.

SARA: I want to start a little bit with your personal story and your journey into advocacy in hopes that you’ll share with us what was the path that led you to become the Executive Director of Equality Florida?

NADINE: Well, you know, my path to activism, the shortest story, is I’m a black woman and a lesbian raised in the South. You kind of have to be an activist in a place that is so often hostile to all aspects of your identity. But I also come from a long line of organizers. My grandparents were part of the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union. My grandmother was one of the Black Angels, the black nurses that were brought into Sea View Hospital when white nurses fled rather than treat the immigrant tuberculosis patients. And it was because she and the other nurses could actually see the humanity of her patients that they spent time, not hiding from them, but reading to them and holding their hand, and recognizing small changes in how they reacted to different medication. And that provided the roadmap for researchers to begin to identify what became the successful response to ending tuberculosis as a death sentence. So I can look back at the people in my life, including my parents who were activists in their own right, so I’m just carrying on the family tradition.

SARA: That’s amazing. You’ve had some incredible role models. That is a fantastic story. Can you tell us a little more about Equality Florida’s origin story and the kind of work the organization engages in today?

NADINE: I grew up in the panhandle of Florida, very conservative part of the state. And I remember when Anita Bryant went from selling us orange juice to saying horrible things about gay people. And I did not have the entire vocabulary, but I knew she was talking about me. And, in fact I would joke with people that back then there were two shows, one was called PTL, Praise the Lord, and the other was the 700 Club. And it was the most reliable way to see gay content because they loved to show B-roll of a pride event in San Francisco or New York as they told these terrible stories and would update about what Anita Bryant was up to. I would tune in to see the film they were rolling in the background and think, “I’ve got to get there. I’ve got to get to that event.” So I think it backfired from their intent but it’s also the reason that I was invited onto a conservative Christian television. I would always do it because I knew there was a little kid like me for whom this was the only portal to see anybody who resonated with them. So my road to activism, really, it came from my journalism in the sense that I had been an activist on campus against Apartheid in South Africa, part of the University Peace Alliance, and the 1987 March on Washington for gay rights was, for me, the moment that I began to unlock all of the internalized hatred. It was the first time, for example, I remember I might not even have marched; I probably stayed on the sideline and watched the march. But I remember vividly Salsa Soul Sisters coming up over the rise and suddenly seeing a wave of Black lesbians. And I just remember weeping because the gay spaces that I saw were overwhelmingly male and almost exclusively white. And for me, that was a moment of, “There I am!” And so that became part of it. But what I always wanted to be was a journalist and that was my professional life. And one of the things about journalism is you gather lots of information and you present it so that the reader or listener can come to their own conclusions. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t see the path, whether it’s a bond issue or something the government’s working on. And I got to the place where I felt like I was listening to the city council and county commission debate whether or not to pass nondiscrimination policies. And they were talking about me and I felt like I couldn’t be on the sidelines of that anymore. So that was the passage of a local ordinance and then the clarity that other cities wanted to do the same thing. We started out local. We became regional. And finally we became state-wide. And in 1997, we went from being a PAC to launching Equality Florida as a 501c3, a tax-deductible nonprofit.

SARA: Wow. And Equality Florida has a number of different focus areas. Where are some of the largest focus areas in the work that you do?

NADINE: I mean the work that we do really emerges from what the community has demanded from us. And quite recently, that has meant working on safe schools. The thing that sort of unites, everybody has some experience with what it is to go to school, to feel welcomed or unwelcomed. And school, home and faith community – if you are part of a faith community – have an outsized influence on whether or not you grow up in a world where you feel welcomed and safe or not. So right now, we’ve done work with faith communities. Certainly we have a growing parents network that we work with right now, including many people who I think never would have thought of themselves as activist, but they’re seeing what’s happening to their kid and it has engaged parents to go up against the cosplaying phony political operatives that call themselves Moms for Liberty and show parents with kids who actually go to the schools. So we do a lot of work around creating safety in schools. Not only stopping bullying, but creating school environments where all young people can thrive. Working with parents. We, of course, legislative session is in right now, so helping individuals show up in Tallahassee and have their voices be heard is a huge part of what we do. And the turn out this year was phenomenal. Record-breaking crowds, used all the overflow spaces, had to turn people away because we didn’t have the infrastructure to handle more. But it’s a testament to the fact that here in Florida, at the tip of the spear, in the place where they have run the trials on what they wish to export elsewhere, people are not hiding or cowering. They’re standing up and they’re pushing back. And every place that we push back, we claw back things that they took and we stop them from taking more.

SARA: That is amazing and inspiring because we are watching how Florida is exporting some of the worst legislation to other states. They’ve become a testing ground. And I want to talk about some of those particulars and specifics of those battles and how you’re fighting back because I know that Equality Florida had quite a frontline role in pushing back against the 2022 Don’t Say Gay bill which kind of became a cultural flashpoint in the fight for LGBTQ rights as it was beginning to sweep through state legislatures. My own state in Idaho is moving a very similar bill through our legislature right now. So can you walk us through a little bit about how Equality Florida responded to the legislation and the impact on families and students?

NADINE: Sure. I think the most important thing for people to understand is this is not some movement that grew up out of an actual need. Moms for Liberty and all of these right-wing bills that we’re seeing were crafted in a right-wing think tank. I think the American Principles Project said in the New York Times, “After marriage equality stopped being a reliable wedge issue, we had to find something else. We threw everything against the wall. And, to our surprise, what stuck was that Americans didn’t know much about the transgender community and we knew we could work with that.” That’s the essence of what they said. And from that, you see suddenly the introduction of just an avalanche of anti-transgender bills that constantly expand to include not only gender identity, but sexual orientation. And then beyond that, expand to race. So that the same legislation that banned And Tango Makes Three, the true story of two male penguins raising a penguin chick in the New York Zoo, gets taken off the shelf, labeled pornography and right behind it, the Life and Times of Rosa Parks because the goal has always been the same, to manufacture a crisis to create scapegoats, to rally their base, so that they don’t pay attention to what they are actually doing, stripping away protections. And it’s an Orwellian doublespeak. Part of the reason that it was really important to us to name this bill accurately what it did – the Don’t Say Gay, Don’t Say Trans Bill – this bill was about censorship. It was about surveillance. It was about government intrusion. It was about stripping parents of the rights and handing that off to this small cadre of right-wing extremists. And by not using their parental rights framework and talking about it through the lens of censorship, we talked to people about what it did and the impact that I had. And it properly invoked for people book bans, book burning, big brother, and the hypocrisy of Moms for Liberty. Just to be crystal clear, again, this thing was cooked up by the then head of the Florida Republican Party who said on multiple occasions, “We’re losing suburban moms in the wake of George Floyd’s execution on camera.” Right. And a lot of people who never thought of themselves as activists around police brutality witnessed that and it changed them. And the republican party was terrified. And so when they say, “We’re losing suburban moms,” what they mean is, “We’re losing white women of a certain age and we’ve got to do something” – in their words – “to scare them back into the fold.” And the weapon that they have used is scapegoating the trans community and the larger LGBTQ community. And Moms for Liberty has been the deliverer of this message, completely fabricated, that our schools are rife with pornography and we’ve got to get in there and start removing these terrible influences on our kids. And I think that the two things that we did that I’m proudest of was not only relabel it about what it did, but we took money we did not have to create two commercials and those commercials just hit the moment. They explained to people in a way that emotionally resonated what was happening in Florida. One was of a little girl who, she’s about to walk up to the front of the class. She gets an encouraging nod from her friend. And on the blackboard you see behind her, it says the word, “Heroes,” that’s the theme of the report she’s giving. She takes a deep breath and she says, “My heroes are my moms.” And you see a red light flash in the background and the teacher looks down at the Don’t Say Gay Bill and then the teacher takes a deep breath and says, “Go ahead. You should be proud.” And then over the loudspeaker it says, “Miss Evans, report to the front office.” And when we released that ad, the deSantos administration, they were furious. They were like, “This is outrageous. Nothing like that is possible.” And then what came to pass? We saw people being fired – well, we saw all sorts of things – books being cleared out of classrooms, teachers being told to take their spouse’s picture down, parents being told “Your kids identity will not be respected,” there are topics that are off-limits, teachers cannot address any topic that they have not approved. All of these things, we began to see happening in the schools which is why we took them to court. But in many ways, our ad was tame compared to what eventually began to unfold in schools. And that’s why we went to court. And in the settlement that came from that court case, we not only got almost everything we went to court for, but we got more. We basically got a settlement that compelled the Governor to write to every school district and tell them the much narrower scope of what the bill did and more explicitly what it could not do. So our message to people all over is challenge what they’re saying when they try to pass these laws. Make them say out loud the hateful things that they’re trying to imply without saying explicitly because that becomes fodder in the court to narrow the scope of these. Because they’re trying to have it both ways. They’re trying to use a lot of hateful rhetoric to have a chilling effect and make school districts comply in advance, not to the letter of the law but to the toxic spirit of the law.

SARA: Yes.

NADINE: Everything that we’ve done was to make sure that we didn’t allow them to intimidate and we made them follow the letter of a very narrowly written law because they wanted to be able to disavow it when it was convenient for them and embrace the more hateful aspects when it was politically useful to them.

SARA: Wow. That’s a fabulous story. Thank you for talking us through that. And the description even of that commercial brought tears to my eyes. It’s really great to hear some guidance about how any of us can start to reframe these messages that we’re hearing in our own communities. You talked about Moms for Liberty and little bit of the origin of how they came to be in the forefront of these issues. And I know that you and Equality Florida have had some really direct involvement in pushing back against their rhetoric and their intrusion in the lives of our schools. Can you tell us a little more of that story and some of how that evolved?

NADINE: Yeah. I mean, one of the things we realized right out of the gate was these were mostly not parents of kids in public school. They either didn’t have kids in public school at all or they were homeschoolers or private religious schools. And yet, here they were coming to school board meetings trying to dictate what other parents – parents like me – curtail what our kids could see. And so we knew that part of pushing back meant getting the real parents of children in public school to show up. And the good news for us was that we had invested many years in creating relationships with school districts and the PTA and other organizations. And so we became a resource for parents. And it didn’t matter whether a parent had ever been political because our job wasn’t to make them, “You’ve got to go to a school board meeting and testify before we’ll help you.” We’re going to help anybody. And for some parents, that was the first step and then maybe they would help another parent who was dealing with the same thing. “My child isn’t being given access to a restroom during the school day,” or “They’re being misgendered,” or whatever was happening in the schools, we were able to help that parent navigate that on behalf of their child. And then many of those parents wanted to know how they could help, like the problem is coming further upstream. And that’s usually your school board or the governor’s office. And you have to remember at this time, Moms for Liberty traveled with the Proud Boys who would be masked and armed, forming a gauntlet outside of school board meetings and yelling the most grotesque things at parents and kids. Yelling at students going to testify at their school board meeting, calling children pedophiles. And we did soul searching about how we should prepare parents, whether it was even right to encourage people to go to these meetings. And we really understood that our job was not to decide for people their comfort level, but to be very clear about what you’ll face. And instead of backing away, those parents showed up in droves. Even parents who said, “I’m just going to watch.” Sitting there listening to them talk about their kid in the most hateful ways, suddenly people who never thought that they were going to speak into that microphone were up at the microphone pushing back with that emotional resonance that can shake a room when the truth is told. And so that went from an idea where we thought maybe we’d get a few dozen parents involved to one where we have thousands of families that are part of our Parenting with Pride Network.

SARA: That’s beautiful. That’s really encouraging to hear that and it’s really hard. It’s very brave, I know, for families and kids to continue to show up and stand up in that way. I’m wondering if you’ll help us think through some of the arguments that we hear from the other side often. You talked a little bit about how you counter the narrative around parental rights, that some of these restrictions are about parental rights, when really what they’re about is censorship and restricting parental rights. And one of the arguments we’re hearing a lot – and I’m sure you’re hearing it a lot now because I’m reading about the Don’t Say Gay or Trans at Work bill which is alive in your legislature in this particular session – but we hear this argument about protecting women and children. That these bathroom bills, and these pronoun bills, and some of these other, particularly, anti-trans bills are all about protecting this particular class of people. How are you all reworking that narrative?

NADINE: There’s a couple of things. If we want to really talk about how you protect women, you have to ask, “Who poses a threat to women?” First and foremost, husbands and boyfriends. Second, I think tied for second are places of worship where they leverage religious piety to silence their victims – whether those are women or children or boys and men. The third is the work place where the economic leverage that an employer has over women can be used to exploit her. And then far below that, approaching zero, is strangers. And so rather than actually confront the things that cause harm to women, they have invented a scapegoat that serves two purposes. One, we don’t have to deal with what is actually unfolding, where the actual danger is. And, two, we get to demonize, vilify, and heap every anxiety onto a group of innocent people but who are politically small, numerically, and don’t have the political power that makes them a useful target. And so we call it out for the lie that it is. And we’ve had to time and time again. That is not the danger to women. And anyone who cares about women’s safety or girls’ and women’s opportunity in sports, this is not where they would be spending their time. They would be spending their time addressing the sexual abuse scandal in college women’s sports. They would go about standing up on economic disparities in college, the deployment of college resources for supporting teams. Or the disparities in pay for professional athletes. They don’t care at all about any of those things. And they never have. If you were to say to them, “How many collegiate athletes are there in the NCAA who are transgender?” They have no idea. It’s maybe 10. And yet, all of this rhetoric has been directed at this issue because it allows them to weaponize unfamiliarity. And instead of provoking curiosity, they’ve created an environment that scapegoating always creates, whether it’s claiming Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs. With no basis and evidence whatsoever, they assert these things. And in no basis and evidence whatsoever, they claim that transgender women are a threat when the reality is transgender women are under threat.

SARA: Thank you for those reminders and that explanation. My brain is churning. I am finding this very helpful to think about how we all, in our different places in the country and in the different communities we inhabit, can use some of the language that you’ve just shared to counter these false arguments and these false narratives.

NADINE: Yeah. Well, the other thing that I think is really important to say is that transgender people have always existed across all times, all continents, all cultures, revered in some cultures, ignored in others, and demonized at different times usually for political gain. And so this is not a new phenomenon. The only question is not whether or not transgender people will exist. The only question is will we treat them with dignity and respect or not. And so I land on the side of dignity and respect for everyone, the trans community, my communities. And I think it’s important to take the very clear stand, not simply that this is a distraction from bigger issues – though it is deployed for that purpose – it is important to affirm the dignity and value and humanity of the communities that are being targeted, the transgender community, the broader LGBTQ community, to push back on these notions that diversity, equity, and inclusion are anything but an antidote to a world in which people were not chosen based on merit, but based on being white and male from a particular class. And DEI has become an antidote to ensure that having actual merit and skills can get you through doors that were previously closed. And we have to be really vocal and not timid in stepping forward and asserting those values.

SARA: Yes. And I have been reading about how some of this is rolling through the Florida legislature right now. What are some of the other bills and issues that you’re following? You have an elimination of DEI and funding bill that’s coming up.

NADINE: Well, I think there’s two things that I think are really worth underscoring. Last session, we had 22 terrible bills that we were fighting. We blocked 21 of them.

SARA: Wow.

NADINE: Most of them did not come back this session. And I say that and I underscore that because I think it is really important for people to understand that winning takes a lot of different forms. The clock running out on a bill, this past week, we had our Pride at the Capitol day. And two bills that we were pushing back against were temporarily postponed which is basically they did not pass, they were tabled. And oftentimes, if a bill is TP’d, Temporarily Postponed, it doesn’t get picked up again. And that came from 2,000 people putting in cards to speak on a particular bill. That came from people being physically present and making their voices heard in a way that demonstrated that we weren’t going to quietly allow this to happen. Sessions are always a chess match. It is hard to tell just from headlines what’s really going on. And I say that because everywhere I go – we did this thing called Coast to Coast for Equality – and everywhere I’ve spoken, whether it’s in California, New York or Seattle. I remember a lawmaker in Seattle saying, “I wish I’d spoken to you sooner. I feel like we gave up more than we should have because we went off headlines and we did not understand fully how effectively you all are pushing back”. And from that, we’ve really taken it as a responsibility, because we are at the front line, to share everything. Here are the talking points that worked. Here’s something that we tried that didn’t work, but because you have a more balanced legislature, you ought to give it a try. We feel a real obligation to share every tool in the toolbox with every other state. So I’m glad that we’re having this conversation. And I would just say, get closer to the more granular details of what’s happening because there’s a reason that 21 out of 22 bad bills got killed last year. And it wasn’t in one heroic sweep. It was small decisions made at critical moments that allowed those to fail.

SARA: That’s extraordinary. And I am glad we’re having this conversation too so that people across the country and our community can listen and think about how to apply some of these very same strategies and messaging in their own states and in their own cities. And we’ll make sure to link to Equality Florida’s website in our show notes. But your website’s chock-full of messages and some strategies that you’re using on your own bills that we’re seeing everywhere else. So it’s a really excellent resource for all of us.

NADINE: And the other thing that I think is really important for people to understand is this is an unprecedented opportunity to build coalitions beyond your usual suspects. Because we are everywhere. Our parents are everywhere. There are people who have never thought of themselves as political who are stepping forward in this moment. And we’ve added 150,000 new members over the past few years. There’s a real hunger that people have to take action because when you don’t step forward, then you fall back into a defensive crouch. You isolate. It is a lonely place to be. There is joy in community. There’s joy in organizing together. And it’s an antidote to a feeling of helplessness. And so I would say, do everything you can to organize parents. Do everything you can to create opportunities for people to use their own voice. Yes, we have talking points about this or that. But there’s nothing more powerful than your story, especially in the sphere of influence that you uniquely have access to. And there are a lot of people that are morally conflicted about doing the dirt of Donald Trump or Ron DeSantos or whatever right-wing, MAGA operative is driving what is happening. And there are moments where, again, it might not be a big made-for-tv movie of heroism. But in a critical moment, they can make a small decision that derails a hateful bill.

SARA: Yes. You’ve touched on this a bit already in some of your answers. But I wanted to dig a little deeper because your work, and you talk about the intersectionality in your work and also about how these issues all have the same purpose of scapegoating and denying rights and denying dignity. But, as we think about LGBTQ+ advocacy, how can we work to ensure that that kind of advocacy includes, has some intersectionality in it, and includes people of color, immigrants, and other marginalized communities?

NADINE: Well, you know, I mentioned Anita Bryant earlier and it’s important for people to realize that when Anita Bryant came to power, she launched the Save our Children campaign. But she was bankrolled by the so-called Moral Majority. And their big issue back then was not abortion. They resented the fact that the supreme court had integrated schools. So they saw Anita Bryant as a vehicle, and her campaign as a vehicle, to go after public schools, to erode confidence in the public school system, to politically build their base to undo integration. That was their driving force. So the fact that we see the twin attacks on the LGBTQ community and racial scapegoating hand in hand is not an accident. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature. It is part of the recurring political strategy. So the racist dog whistles, which are now fog horns, you have to understand that they will go after whoever they think it is politically expedient to go after. Again, Haitian immigrants in Ohio, you had every local republican saying, “Great people have done nothing but contribute to our community. None of these rumors are true.” It didn’t matter because it served a political function which was, not so much to persuade you that it was factual, but to give you a feeling that they’re different and they don’t belong. That is the function of propaganda is to make nothing trustworthy and everything plausible. And so what we are dealing with is a belief. They do not believe in democracy. They’re perfectly happy with a king. But they believe that the pathway for them to enrich themselves is to dismantle public education in favor of the private schools that they run. And not just create private schools, but redirect all of the resources from public schools into their privately run entities that are free to discriminate in whatever way they please and are exempt from the standards the public schools are held to. And so they’ve done in the private sector, the striping things for parts. These hostile take-overs, take-overs of pension boards, all of these things, and destroyed the companies because it is more lucrative for them to raid the coffers than to allow these industries to grow. They’re just now applying that to the government. So “Let’s get rid of the infrastructure of the FAA and that’ll just be another StarLink contract.” “Let’s get rid of public schools.” It's not an accident or a coincidence that so many republican lawmakers who are behind the push to destroy the department of education and public education overall also have financial interest in charter schools, private schools, etcetera. And so I say that just to say it’s always “Follow the Money.” It is always to understand that these are moves that they are making in service of a strategy that says, “If we break things badly enough, then privatizing it to our financial benefit will always be the right answer.” So they’re going after the post office next, right? Elon Musk wants to buy Amtrak, even though Amtrak is profitable right now. And so in service to that goal, they will use whatever scapegoat they can. A plane crash is days into the DOGE/Elon Musk gutting of infrastructure. And do they take responsibility? We’ve got airports closing because they don’t have enough staffing right now. They don’t take responsibility. No, the problem must’ve been DEI. So when we understand that every move they make is in service to eliminating the enforcement mechanisms that – how many law enforcement or watch-dog organizations were investigating yet another explosion of SpaceX. These fires, these spontaneous fires in Tesla, the glued-on doors falling off. There was a case in Florida where a woman drove over debris and her Tesla burst into flames. And so all of the places where there might be oversight and regulation and some accountability, they immediately went in and gutted. And so they have a very singular purpose. And whoever they attack is in service to that purpose which is to disable the surveillance cameras so that they can raid public coffers. And we saw here in Florida when a whistleblower revealed that there was an entire plan to privatize a State Park, turn it into a golf course, open the door for development. And had it not been for this whistleblower, we wouldn’t have heard anything about it until it was fully in play. So when we see the National Park Service firing so many people that they have to shut down these tourist attractions and the places aren’t safe for people to go, it raises a flag to me. “We’ll break the National Park Service and privatize it. And now you’ve got resorts,” all of the things that they do in order to raid the public coffers are in motion. So while they have their base, lighting torches and grabbing pitchforks to go after whoever they’re scapegoating, and have us in these culture wars, they are steadily making moves to raid the public coffers. And we’re even seeing, I think right now with farm land, where you see farmers going, “Wait a second. You shut down USAID. You shut down the Equip Program. We can’t make our note.” “Well, don’t worry because agribusiness is going to be there to buy off your land ten cents on the dollar and further squeeze you out. And you were too busy worrying about ten transgender NCAA athletes whose lives you know nothing about, nor care anything about, to understand how they were coming for your livelihood.”

SARA: So those are really terrifying and helpful reminders of all that is unfolding, all at once, in front of us in this kind of tidal wave of attacks and dismantling and scapegoating and diversion techniques. “Look over here so you’re not looking over here.” What keeps you going in the face of all of that increasing hostility and attack?

NADINE: I would say the past, the present, and the future keep me going. I know where I came from. I know what my people, my parents, my grandparents went through. And I can draw a great deal of strength from their journey. The present, I see people showing up. I don’t see people bowing down to this or giving up. I see people fighting back. And it is absolutely inspirational to be in a state that we were the canary in the coal mine in many ways and we were sending our warnings out to everybody else. And yeah, there have been some people who left Florida for places that felt like they were safer. And I have nothing but love and respect and understanding. Even though it was hard to see a lot of those good people leave, to see them shut down their businesses, sell a home that’s been in their family for generations, and move to Illinois or move to Minnesota or move to Massachusetts or wherever. But I get it. And I respect it. And people have to make that decision for themselves. And I’ve got nothing but respect for the people who stay to fight. And in doing so, we throw sand in the gears of this machinery. We make it harder for them to get away with these cheap arguments. And we put people in the position where there’s a battle of their conscience, the gap between who they say they are and what they are willing to do to serve their MAGA master. And so I met a guy. I spoke at Howard University. And during the question and answers session, a guy stood up. He stood up. He said, “My name’s Rich Logis and I’m from Florida, Delray Beach, and I’m MAGA, or at least I was until about six months ago.” He and I ended up in a 45-minute conversation in the stairwell. And it really was a profound thing for me because it gave me such an insight. I mean, he was hard-core. He was writing scripts, doing podcasts. He said, ”I would wake up in the morning asking myself how can I serve Donald Trump? And I’d go to sleep wondering if it’d done enough.” Those were his words. But his departure, he said, was a slow, quiet quitting. He kept running into these moments where he couldn’t square what he was saying or seeing or doing with who he knew himself to be as a person. And the first one, I think he said, he minimized it. The second one, he couldn’t minimize it, but he saw himself serving a larger purpose. And he said, by the third one, I knew I was leaving and it was a matter of how. And he said, “You have to understand, I had isolated myself where if there was a birthday party, it was a MAGA birthday party. I had burnt bridges with all my friends who weren’y deep in the heart of this world. So to walk away from it was to walk away from everybody that had been the center of my world for years.” And so I think he called it, “The year of heaven and hell.” This quiet detachment. And I think there are a lot of people who, we live in these algorithmically narrow tunnels, bubbles of information, where our neighbor might not even see the same news that we see. And the ease with which misinformation travels and festers in that kind of environment is extraordinary. And so are the people who go, “Hey, you know what, I’m going to peek beyond the aperture that has been put in front of me,” or begin to run into the contradiction between what they’ve been given to believe and what they see with their own eyes for example. I think we’ve got to – as is said in my speech at Howard – leave the light on for people to make that journey. And not think that it will happen in a sudden thunderbolt of regret, but in the slow erosion of the lies, that we can either create hospitable paths for them to turn that realization into positive action, redemptive action. Or we can just say “FAFO. You created this.Haha.” And get some -- what is it, the leopard eats my face – that’ll make a lot of sense to people who are on TikTok. But there’s a woman who sings, “I can’t believe the leopard would eat my face.” And it’s off of people are shocked once they voted for the face-eating leopard party that the leopard is actually eating their face, right? Like “I was fine when this was happening to other people. But not to me.” So I think there’s a real opportunity in the midst of this. But the future makes me optimistic. And it does because we’ve seen backlash like this before, in very much the same circumstances. Reconstruction, the first black president, a realization that police brutality was a real and unavoidable thing that we needed to account for as a society. And now we’re in the midst of a backlash of all of that and this push to go, “We’re going to erase the contributions of Black people, women, we’re going to erase disability. We’re going to do all of these things to set it back to make America what it was in the 50s and the 40s and the 30s.” And so what history also tells us is there will be a backlash to this backlash if we do our jobs right. As long as we don’t shrink from this moment. And not only is there the possibility that there’s a backlash to this attack on our democracy, on our freedoms, on the very essence of who we are, but it can be a springboard forward to an America of our wildest imagination. The oligarchs controlling media and sending in the Pinkerton boys to beat up union organizers and all of that. What we also saw emerge from that was The New Deal, Social Security, workplace safety. We saw a new contract in our country emerge from the arrogance and the excess and the cruelty of that Oligarchy. And so I think it’s important to fight back. But also to fix our sites on an America that is truly the democracy that we deserve to have. And out of the rubble of what they are destroying and breaking, we can ask the question, not only how do we defend it, but how do we build something even better out of that destruction.” So that gives me a sense that our future can be better, not only than the moment we’re in right now, but better than what we’ve experienced even before this backlash began.

SARA: Thank you for that. That feels very hopeful. And I appreciate that MAGA story, which reminds us of both the possibility with some nuance. I’m seeing so many of us are shutting down and becoming jaded and not leaving open or casting that light of opportunity for others to come in and engage into some conversation and think differently together with us. So I really appreciate all those stories. In light of everything that you just said and all of that inspiration and hope, do you have some practical thoughts for us? What can individuals do on a daily basis to make a small difference, especially thinking about folks who are feeling pretty powerless now in the face of all of these challenges.

NADINE: Again, for me, I look back on the history of my own family. I’ve held the hand of a relative who has held the hand of an enslaved relative. It is not that long ago. And so I know that it is possible for significant change to happen in the space of one generation. Number two, I would say you don’t have to do everything, but you have to do something. So donate to the organization in your backyard that is doing the work. And show up for them, volunteer. Hold your elected officials accountable. Demand that they meet with you. If you have a congress member or a senator who refuses to host a town hall because they don’t want to be accountable, host one in their absence. Reach out to the universe of people that you are uniquely able to. You send something through the mail, maybe they read it. If you text, we’re all bombarded with text messages. Email, most of us have spam filters. But there’s a world of people. They’re in your family. They’re in your friend group. They’re your coworkers. They’re on the sports team. You have a unique handprint of people in your world, that is unique to us, of people that we can reach who will answer the phone if we call. Who we can invite over for coffee. And we’ve got to reach those networks. And not simply for the purpose of debating and arguing but having a real human connection. How many of us know our neighbors, have ever invited our neighbors over for dinner? And it’s okay to say, “I know that person had a different yard sign during the presidential race than I had. But we both like gardening, and we’re going to have these conversations.” And maybe it becomes a conversation about soil quality and air quality and water quality. “I wonder what they’re doing about that.” I had a conversation with somebody who is an anti-vax conspiracist. And we went back and forth for a while. And I really tried to be and hear where their fear was coming from. And finally I said, “You know what. There’s one piece of ground that we agree on. We both believe that money should play no role, there should be no financial incentive that drives the outcome of research.” And I think that’s true for big pharma and I also think it’s true when these anti-vax hucksters are selling whatever ointment they’re selling. I think that all of that should be transparent. And that was one sliver of ground on which we could agree. And so maybe, financial transparency and making sure that the people who fund the research aren’t benefiting from the outcome of the research. I’m for that. But the more you get to the place where people live – part of the reason that the midterms tend to revert if Republicans had prevailed, Democrats tend to do better in the midterms – is in part because when the conversation isn’t nationalized, when it’s local, it gets more less rancorous and partisan. It becomes much more of a conversation about the things that you and your neighbor actually share. “Like our insurance rates are sky high.” And it doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican, and Democrat, and Independent. You’re hurting because of that. So maybe we’ll go together to this city council or county commission meeting or this legislative delegation meeting, and together we’re going to speak up about that. And those are the places where you forge this trust and this coalition possibility. I see that with farmers right now who are kind of going, “Wait a second. They do not care about us and they do not care that we’re hurting.” And I think there’s real possibilities. And it’s hard. Especially when people have been animated by rhetoric that has fundamentally dehumanizing. But again, even behind that is the sense of being left behind, ignored, being seen as the villain in one story and the hero in the story they’re weaving around you. And it’s not our fault as progressives, any more than it’s women’s fault that having to address disparities between men and women can make some men feel very inadequate to the moment. That’s too bad. But when that sense of inadequacy is weaponized to make you resent people who are asking in this world for what you’ve taken for granted in this world, it is still a reality that we have to cope with. So I’ve had lots of conversations with people who started off in sort of a, “The trans community, why are they always so angry? Why are they angry about pronouns?” And I say, “Really. What happened? What do you mean? Well, it sounds like something terrible happened to you. What happened?” “Well, not to me.” “What happened to your friend or family member, somebody you know?” “Well, no. Not anybody I know. Just, I’ve read some things.” I say, “Wow, you’re really this upset about a thing you haven’t experienced and don’t know anybody who has experienced. Because I can tell you, I’ve misgendered people a lot. It’s kind of a hazard of my job that I‘ve misgendered people. And you know what happens, I get corrected.” And I say, “If I didn’t know, I go thanks for the information. And if I did know I go, my bad. And the conversation rolls on. But isn’t it interesting that somehow you’ve gotten this idea that you will be drawn and quartered. Who benefits from that idea? Where did it come from? Aren’t you curious about that?” And I’m not saying this person suddenly went, “Oh my goodness, Nadine, you’re so correct.” But I can see them chewing on it and it wasn’t a conversation intended to humiliate. It’s like “I’m really curious, where did you come up with that idea and doesn’t make you curious about who has a vested interest in instilling that idea in you.”

SARA: Thank you for that. So many good tips in what you just offered us. I’m going to particularly take the unique handprint and we each have a unique network with me to share with other people. That is such a helpful reminder to remember that how we show up doesn’t have to look like other people are showing up. And you gave us some really great tips to think about how we might engage our unique network. This conversation’s been really extraordinary, Nadine. Thank you so much for your time. And I have a couple of final questions for you. And these are questions that I like to ask most of my guests at the very end of the episode. And the first one is about the Mama Dragons name. So Mama Dragons came about out of a sense of fierceness and a sense of fierce protection for our kids. So I like to ask my guests, what are you fierce about?

NADINE: Well, I am fierce about my kid. I’m fierce about my marriage. I’m fierce about my family and friends. And I, you know, I went to the Air Force Academy right out of high school so I was there ’83, ’84. And I think a lot right now about the oath that you take to defend the Constitution, not a king, not a party, but the basic constitutional rights of all people. And I have a podcast, radio show called “Wide Awake America.” And wideawakeamerica.org is the sub stack. And I write about this a lot because I think there comes a time for all of us where we have to ask ourselves, what will I do in that moment? So, around bullying, we tell people you’ve got to get yourself into a headset that if you’re on the bus, you’re walking down the street, and you see somebody being bullied, if you don’t actually have a mental plan for what you will do to intervene, you’ll freeze in that moment or you’ll do something that escalates it. But when you rehearse in your mind, “What I’ll do is I’ll go to the person being bullied and I’ll inquire about their safety. I’ll put my body between them and the person being aggressive towards them. I won’t engage the belligerent party. I will, with my presence, soothe the person who’s being attacked, and send the message that what the aggressor is doing is not appreciated. Or I will call for help and I will video tape.” Whatever it is, be real about how you will intervene because in the abstract we’re all like, “I will do a flying kick and whisk the person.” We have heroic fantasies. But when the moment comes, what will you actually do? And think that through. And for people in the service and in police forces and other places where they may be called upon, I ask the question, “What will you do when the illegal order comes? What will you do when you are ordered to do something that you know to be both immoral and illegal?” You’ve got to rehearse that in your mind and not simply count on a sense of decency to kick in. Because what people do when they don’t rehearse in their mind is they freeze and they think back later and they think, “God. I wish I had.” Well, think about that now. How you will show up.

SARA: Thank you. That’s great. What will you do now? The last question that I like to end on, particularly given these current circumstances that we’re all fighting and finding ourselves in is, what is bringing you joy right now?

NADINE: Well, my people. My team at Equality Florida’s giving me great joy. The volunteers, the coalition partners, the way people are showing up. Especially because this is the moment where you find out really who’s with you and you see who falls away, gets quiet, distances themselves and thinks that there will be safety in creating distance – and there never, ever is. So that gives me joy. But the other thing is this, I love to go camping. I love ancestral skills. I’ve gotten to do two week-long, out in the forest, no running water, just primitive camping. I’ve got another trip scheduled that I think might bring me to your neck of the woods later in the year. And I love getting in touch with the ancient thrum of nature and just being no cell phones, no email, and life gets really simple. It’s water, food, shelter, a good fire. And that gives me a lot of joy.

SARA: I love it. That’s fantastic. Thank you for sharing that with us. And thank you for your time, your work, your passion, and really helping us untangle all that is swirling around us and think about how we can plug in in our very unique and specific ways to keep fighting and keep pushing back and keep creating solidarity and community with one another. I’m really grateful to you. Thanks.

NADINE: Well, I appreciate you inviting me and you’re making me think one thing that I’d like to leave you with, because I’m a bit of a nerd too, if I’m honest about what brings me joy. And I think in moments like this, it’s important for people to not allow all of these ways that they want to flood the zone, overwhelm us, leave us feeling small and intimidated and as though there’s no thing that any one of us can do that makes a difference. So for anyone who’s a fan of Star Wars, there’s a series called Andor. And at the end of the first season, one of the rebels writes this manifesto. And it’s short but it’s really powerful. And I turn to it a lot and so I’d just like to leave you with it.

SARA: Please.

NADINE: And it’s “There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy, remember this: freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And remember this, the imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks, authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that and know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance, will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this, try. May the force be with you.”

SARA: Brilliant. Thank you. Perfect way to end.

NADINE: Thank you.

SARA: Thanks so much for joining us here In the Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons offers an eLearning program called Parachute? This is an interactive learning platform where you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at mamadragons.org/parachute. Or find the link in the episode show notes under links.

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