Embrace Your Local

2020

has been a hell of a year we’re in the

middle

of a global pandemic a national

recession

and we’ve seen people from communities

all across the country

rise up against the long history of

racism

in america in fact i even read an

article about an invasion of killer

hornets that was supposed to come

this year and i’ll be honest when i read

that i was ready to throw in the towel

but fortunately i think the killer

hornets took one look at 2020

and they didn’t want anything to do with

it either because i haven’t seen them

flying around

god bless but of all these important

issues that have risen

there’s been some great conversations

and one of the main themes i’ve seen in

these conversations

is that these issues as much as they

might feel like they’re new

they’re not and in fact they’ve been

around

for a long time

some since the foundation of this

country and one of those issues i was

really passionate about

even before 2020 was the power of media

not just the power of media to inform us

i think we all intuitively understand

that

but really the power of media to shape

our own perceptions

of our ability to make change how media

shapes our own agency and our own

efficacy

and i think this is critically important

and i’d love to do an experiment to show

you why

so for everyone watching at home raise

your hand

if you watch the national news this

might be

npr cnn msnbc you name it

now i want you to keep your hand up if

when you watch

or read or engage in any form of

national content

you jump off your couch you are so

excited about the future of america and

you feel like you

can make a difference easily

my hand goes down and i suspect that

many of your hands went down

as well and this isn’t

new this isn’t groundbreaking the

american

psychological association even showed

that over 50 percent of americans

when they watch the news have

substantial worry

and anxiety furthermore subsequent

studies show that the more you actually

engage in the news the less you feel

like

you can make a difference and that is a

fundamental crisis

not just for our democracy but for our

communities

because we’re left now with two choices

you can either feel informed

but feel like you can’t make an impact

or you can decide

there’s no impact to be made why even

bother about being informed anyway

and then you’re not even familiar with

the challenges at hand

and i think a solution to this is we

need to stop focusing on national

and we need to focus and embrace local

what i mean by this is the the feedback

loop

at a local level of change is so much

more condensed

you can see a problem in your own

backyard you can get friends or an

organization to really tackle that

problem

and you can actually see change happen

and because you can see change happen

you believe in the possibility of it and

it builds your self-confidence and your

self-agency

now this is not a talk about how

national issues aren’t important

i think they’re critically important and

to some groups of people in america

they’re an existential threat

but i think local activism is a gateway

to national activism you get involved

locally

you learn the skill set and the mindset

to make change and then you can scale

that up

myself when i first tried to make a

difference

i tried to jump in right away at the

national level and i would write emails

and i would join groups and what i found

is a lot of resistance

a lot of no and i felt really

disempowered

and what i think the local model does is

it flips that script

it allows you to feel empowered and then

scale up

and so i wanted to test this theory does

local actually matter

and so me and a group of friends built a

local media company

called bridge the city and the idea was

to connect people

resources and ideas that inspired people

to action

locally and over the course of three

years

we’ve produced nearly 100 episodes we’ve

interviewed

close to 200 guests and i can report

that

at least in my mind the theory holds

true

local you can have a great impact

and you can make a difference in your

community

and the crux of my talk today is not to

talk about the podcast but to talk about

the framework

that if you’re feeling disempowered or

you’re feeling uninspired

about america about national news how

you can use this framework in your own

community

to make a difference and this framework

is three simple steps

the first step is to vote local

so maybe this is true for you but when i

was growing up whether it was a mix of

privilege

or ignorance or a unique cocktail of

both

i thought the only election that

mattered was the presidential election

and it was simple you walked into the

ballot box you

voted for the president you hand your

ballot in you left you saluted the flag

you did your civic duty and you’re good

to go for four years

that’s it and as i got a lot older and a

little wiser

i realized that there’s so much more to

it than that

and that elections don’t just happen

every four years they happen every

single year

sometimes multiple times per year

and these elections matter they’re your

older person

your school board your mayor even

in some localities they vote for their

coroner you’re literally voting over

your dead body and these aren’t low

stakes elections

as well because take the milwaukee

school board for example

they control a budget of over 1 billion

dollars

that’s more than the entire budget of

the city of milwaukee

but how many people do you think vote in

this election you might think it’s 60

percent like a national

presidential election 30 percent like a

midterm

it’s not in local elections sometimes

only

10 percent of voters are voting

and what this means is you have 10

percent of the population

controlling where over a billion dollars

in resources is deployed

right in your community so if you really

want to make an impact

yes vote nationally but unless you’re in

a handful of swing states and you want

to compete with a million other voters

if you vote locally that vote can

sometimes have a larger impact

these elections are decided by 10 5

sometimes even a single vote

the other thing about voting is it’s not

one step

it’s two you vote for your elected

officials

but then you also have to hold those

accountable who you voted for

and it’s here that local also has a

unique advantage

i’m sure many of you have had this

similar scenario

you see something your senator did and

you’re very disappointed in that

and so you go online you open up your

email and you type a beautiful

professional email that points out why

they were wrong

and their hypocrisy and what they should

have done instead and you even

threatened to not vote for them again

and you send it and you walk away and

you’re like i i did good

that was pretty persuasive i’m

definitely changed their minds

and then maybe five minutes later ding

you hear the sound of your inbox and now

you’re really confident wow i changed

their mind pretty quick this is awesome

and you open that email and what do you

see

dear kyle and odds are your name is

misspelled

thanks for your email i’ll take it into

consideration

best and that’s really hard to deal with

you spent all this time and it feels

like that outreach didn’t really matter

but at local it does because locally you

don’t need a billion dollars

or a hundred thousand people in your

organization elected officials are more

likely to listen to you

in fact when we interviewed the mayor he

said that it takes ten to 15 calls or

emails to really get something on his

radar

so again if you want to make an impact

make sure you’re voting

locally the second part of this

framework

is to spend locally now i know i just

said

that we vote every single year but now

i’m about to contradict myself

we’d actually vote every single day

and what i mean by that is whenever we

spend our money we’re voting with our

dollars

we often think of this in terms of

national companies

think coke versus pepsi if you like coke

you buy coke and you don’t buy pepsi

and at the end of the quarter at the end

of the year the companies tally up their

votes or their profits

and a few companies win and the rest

lose

but why don’t we think about this

locally

i think it’s because a lot of great

local organizations they’re just not

sexy they don’t have a million dollar

marketing budget that coke or pepsi has

but what you’ll find is typically the

unsexier of the organization

the more profoundly impactful their work

actually is

here in milwaukee it might be simple

names black leaders organizing

communities

and sound empowering neighborhoods or

my favorite friend of the park again

not sexy but critically important and

what i realized is

every month i would mindlessly spend

30 to 45 dollars supporting national

organizations

and companies where my money would leave

my community think netflix

hulu spotify i think i have disney plus

i think i forgot to cancel or something

and why

so i can watch tiger king now

entertainment is important

and you should still use all those

services

but my challenge to you is if you have

the extra income

to spend 30 to 45 dollars a month on

that

try to find that for your local

community as well and spend locally

and spend locally is not just about

money it’s about your talent

and your time a lot of these

organizations they run on volunteers

and in-kind services so if you don’t

have the funds

you have your time and your talent that

you can give to these organizations

to really make an impact in your local

and there’s two things you’ll realize

the first is that these organizations go

above and beyond

to stretch your dollar to maximize

impact

and the second thing is you’ll see money

being injected right back into your

community

and again you’ll see the change happen

and that

inspires you and allows you to take on

new challenges

that come your way the final part of

this framework

is to connect local and this is very

topical as

many of us are facing social isolation

right now

but let’s be real social isolation is

not a new phenomenon

in fact it’s probably increased tenfold

over the past five years

as all these new technologies and tools

come online

and we can connect with every corner of

the globe i know for me

counter-intuitively sometimes that makes

me feel more alone

than ever and so why i think this is is

we’ve used social media

as an outlet without really a goal

i would go on social media and i would

either tweet at john legend to drop some

new music

or i would just doom scroll and refresh

my feed and see all the negative news

and it just would make me anxious i

didn’t really have a purpose

what we realized with bridge to city is

you can actually

leverage social media online tools to

benefit local

amplify local voices connect with local

organizations

and find other people in your

neighborhood that care about the same

issues

that you do but connection is not

just digital it’s physical as well

and we’ve all felt kind of the rush and

the purpose you get

when you’re united with a group of

people for a common cause

just look at the thousands of protests

that went across america this year

people coming together with a clear

purpose

and it makes you think that change is

possible and so

i know this is called embrace local and

i didn’t want to call it find local

because i think everyone

has a local but for me i never embraced

it

i came to milwaukee from minnesota and

in minnesota

i just kind of went about my day when i

got to milwaukee

i learned the power of local through

americorps

it was through colleagues students

family friends organizations in

milwaukee

all striving with a common purpose that

i saw the power of community

and i saw the power of local

so my words of wisdom today is you don’t

need to feel

alone there is someone in your community

or in your neighborhood that cares about

the same issues that you do

and if you can connect with them you can

make a difference

now there’s a great proverb that says if

you want to go

fast go alone but if you want to go far

you go together so that’s the framework

it’s to vote local to spend local and to

connect local

and like bridge the city i want to leave

you all with an action step during this

talk

and it’s in each of those categories

vote local

identify a candidate that isn’t you know

a big name not a governor not a senator

but a local candidate

and really go canvas for them donate to

them inform yourself on that issue

and get your friends involved as well

for spend local

i want to challenge you figure out how

much you spend on monthly streaming

platforms

and see if you can match that in your

own community and finally connect local

if you’re passionate about an issue find

an event once a month on that issue

and go make an effort to connect with

other people

that care about that same issue and

you’ll be amazed

so the beautiful thing about local

is everyone has one so i encourage you

go find your local embrace your local

and you will make a difference thank you

you