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