v my name's noah debts are and you're joining us on the last show of the year and this is your first episode of red t v i'll tell you a little bit about rad it stands for rights and democracy essentially it's a people powered grassroots organization dedicated to making a long lasting change the idea is that we want to get involved on a personal level to advocate for the issues that matter to us tonight we're going to be doing a little bit of a retrospective about the past year rad is done a lot  been a lot going on over the course of this year so we're going to be joined tonight by james has one is the executive director and grant taylor who is a leader right here in burlington and the former host of south thank you both for joining us tonight just a little heads up we're going to be talking about a couple of things first the people's platform it's been a an ongoing process to develop basically what we as an organization really feel demonstrates the platform that we want to advocate for that's causes that's the way that we go about seeking making making sure that people are hearing and understanding what we stand for and advocating for them on a local level all the way up to a national level roles are going to be talking about the national assembly basically we got together in lebanon new hampshire and we'll be talking about that as well as finally our so james first we we just wanted to touch base about how how the year has gone for you i mean how you feel rad has has developed has changed and what we can expect going forward stronger across the state across both for money ensuring and going deeper into certain communities like burlington where more and more folks are getting involved not only to be part of the bigger fights and tents in lebanon you know we were able to see you know hundreds of folks from both states get together and really think about how to strategically build this movement together and twenty eight yes we actually want to go into that a little bit and talk about  talk about how that went just to kind of get your take on a first how do we go how many people showed up and ultimately how did it compare to previous well so this is the second one you know we got started in those the end of two thousand and fifteen and we didn't have our first membership assembly to the end of twenty six need so it's it we had it actually in the same place it was easy to see you know how we had grown we had you know over fifty more people so the first time we had a little bit over one hundred fifty people under you know somewhere between i or thirty or fifty people and then this year we had well over two hundred people so  clearly you know people you know more people who got it all those actually kind of a snowy sunday back in the tent so you know we felt pretty good about the level of participation both the quantity of folks that came out but also the quality i mean some really dedicated leaders came out from some places and and it's clear they were strong in some areas you know bennington vermont you know i it's it's definitely looking like you know we've made some big strides but more excitingly for me is i feel like we're really well positioned to grow takes steps forward and twenty  awesome yet and so looking ahead as we're going to get to be continuing on continuing to push for the people's platform which me talking about in just a second what kind of changes do you hope to see next year and how can somebody who's watching us who wants to get involved in it doesn't necessarily know how how can somebody get involved and what can they do majority in both the senate and the house of democrats over aggressives and this is a year where there's an opportunity to put forward the really you know dan says for working families you know they're talking very seriously about moving a minimum wage bill that would move the minimum wage closer to a little wage closer fifteen dollars an hour and that is you know the kind of thing it would have a tremendous impact on thousands of families throughout the state and really have a broad impact not only the people who are earning a minimum wage but you know tens of thousands of the wage earners right now would be able to see you know thousands of dollars more in their income and that is the kind of cossies we think is our whole economy can thrive or they're going to also talk about paid family and medical leave insurance for everybody which  racial justice coalitions recommendations around you know eliminating bias in the justice systems and there's a number of things that we think that just that you can put on the governor's desk to pass that would be pushing our state in the right direction and hope that this can be you know really you're a lot of progress in the first half of the year and then the second half of the year you know we look towards the twenty eight election and there's an enormous opportunity to  and if you're watching at home and you've heard some of the issues that maybe your interested in writing a mock racine continues to welcome and i hope that you will take an active part in making those issues a reality as we kind of go forward in the show by the way if you hear something and you want to talk with us talk a little bit about that if you can please feel free to call in the number is eight six two three nine six six we look forward to hearing from you at this point we're going to segue a little bit into talking about the the people's platform grant thank you so much for joining us tonight and yet if you want to talk a little bit about first the development of the people's platform and then just kind of your take on the process so far well when i heard about the burlington people's platform initially i was really psyched to have something that politicians that are going to be campaigning in the future can focus around incumbent politicians they have their own platforms and everything but this is something to to unite kind of approach a more progressive viewpoint around and so to see that focused by rights and i'm obviously on burlington was kind of like a breath of fresh air after a lot of big issues when we were kind of dealt with in the past year and we didn't necessarily have the focus and capacity like james was saying there's a lot of crazy things going on and we're working in two different states they this staff is very small for covering two different states so it's all on the volunteers you know after that the members to go out and get get a lot of stuff done so now they helped us to organize around the burlington people's platform which was awesome we had an initial meeting after some of the platform had been put together where the public was invited the burlington organizing team and beyond was invited to come and provide feedback were you at the initial meeting full yeah the follow up and so we had the initial meeting a lot of great things were brought up that we were not in the platform yet and so they were incorporated into different sections of the platform and that that actually that platform is available at read the tea dot org if you go if you go look around there i think you can find it pretty quickly  but yes a lot of things got out of the first meeting and then we were able to communicate with rad to add more things we had another meeting about a month i think it was a month later which you were and i mean you want to talk a little bit about that meeting that was pretty exciting a bigger meeting yeah i mean i think essentially it was at the follow up meeting there was just a lot more of discussion about ok here's kind of the basic blueprint for what we're going to be trying to accomplish where do we go from here how do we kind of take these individual facets of things that are important some of the issues that james mentioned earlier and how do we represent them in the platform in a way that first people can identify with and that gets people excited about ok this is what we believe in this is how we're going to go about making that happen but then also about how do we work together to kind of work through the language and make sure that it comes across as kind of a democratic approach because i know for you and for me but personally i think a lot of the importance of of developing something as a group is making sure it has that kind of small d democratic process involved if it's a bunch of people kind of alone off in a room that doesn't really feel like that kind of basically like the type of change that we're looking for the type of change that we're trying to advocate for on a local level so yeah if you want to talk a little bit about the about the process here and what made it so democratic very good for listeners the kind of well i thought it was great how it initially started with a plan and they had they had the outline but there was a lot of things that were brought up that maybe weren't focused on enough so even whole sections were added and they they took the feedback that was given by the people that showed up to the meetings and the people that sent them information electronically and they did change the platform a lot and they have  additional platform that is probably seven or eight pages long now that it's not really the platform that's probably on the website but you can find a link to it on the website and that that has many more of those ideas that were brought in by a lot of the different constituents that showed up to add input and that's what i thought you know how to be you know democratic it is also still evolving i think and it's not set in stone yet which also is another testament to it's it's kind of million delivery and our ability to help add to it if we need to and just kind of building off of that i mean what you what you said in terms of it being malleable it's really been interesting to see it develop first just from kind of that initial draft that it's really become kind of a living document that's been changing and kind of developing as it's gone forward so it's been cool to see it happen and it's really been cool to see how people have responded to that most recently in our endorsement process with the mayoral candidates which we'll get to in just a second james i don't know if there was anything you want to touch base about the people's platform but figured i'd open it up if you had any any comments there  environment climate different things you know the thing that it's exciting for us is an organization that really wants to have a range of impact is being able to not only push for these issues but to push for them during the electoral process so people that are running for office can be held accountable on the on this platform and then once they're elected no matter who's elected we push forward with these issues so we went as much as can be won so it's very exciting time in burlington  that not only you're talking about it but both of you have been part of that process thanks james so yeah it's been really interesting to see how the mayoral candidates have responded and i think this is as good a time as any to bring us to our last segment here all about the endorsement process once again if you're watching and you have comments or want to chime in on anything that we're talking about the number is eight six two three nine six six so if you haven't heard rights in so this process is really interesting to see grit and i were both kind of on the frontlines of seeing how this developed a basically how we got to the point of how rad as an organization ended up indorsin let's talk a little bit about about that the beginning of the process great if you want to talk about maybe how how rad what about kind of talking to the candidates and the process there yeah so this is the second time that i've been a part of the process a year ago we endorsed some slate of candidates for state level positions along with a candidate for governor as well in november and then so now this year we're headed looking forward to town meeting day in march in burlington and we're thinking about who are we going to support that's going to help us  to implement the burlington people's platform and so what we do initially is we send out a questionnaire to all of the candidates that might even want our endorsement so we sent out three questionnaires both of those candidate questionnaires comeback we invited both of those candidates to come in for a video interview so they would be interviewed by our leadership team in burlington and then we'd record we'd record those interviews and send that out to everybody the responses on the questionnaire and the interviews to recorded interviews and i thought that process leading up to who wanted the endorsement how to kind of vet that they really wanted the endorsement and then to do the interview with them in a committee but also have that shared then on a on a voting platform with over two hundred members of rights and democracy that live in burlington that was a really great way to kind of go through this process and i think it's the first time that we've done it that way and i think that was a really really you know great insofar as making a commitment to democracy right and participatory governance really and these questionnaires were pretty extensive there were a lot of kind of shorter answers targeted specifically towards elements of the people's platform but then also just the different issues some of which james mentioned kind of earlier in the program but it was all about how the candidate would basically stood on those issues and then how they might or might not work with rad kind of going forward to push advocacy in those specific areas and just try to make sure that basically that these candidates are reflecting the values of the organization as a whole so we we opened up the voting i think it was at the beginning of one today and we had had it open for a day and a half i  so everybody got email with a and id and a voting id and specific to their identity from a platform and in that e mail they had the answers to the questionnaires from both candidates and the link to the video on the you tube platform of the interviews and so we get we let everybody get all that information and take their time  looked through everything and then cast their vote and it was pretty interesting we had to design a ballot to make sure there was obviously a vote for each candidate but then we had to decide if we wanted to put a vote for neither candidate and another section to do a write in and so we ended up going with all four options to try to give people the most most real choice to voice their their opinion in this and not force them into two and there was a lot of discussion about that too but ultimately red came down on the side of well it's best to have as many options as possible so that people really feel like they're being heard and it kind of ties back to what we've been talking about along which is all about giving the power back to the people and having that small d democratic process so that people really feel like their voices are being heard let's say we have a caller coming in caller you are on air go to vet it first  here so it looks like at this point we'll just kind of segue back a sensually in talking about this process one of the other important components of it was about at the end after we had received the votes we kind of did a final wrap up basically looking at ok what even the end kareena had won by a percentage i don't remember the exact proposal about fifty people out of two hundred viewed the videos and checked out the information and voted and it was about i think it was thirty thirty three people that voted for corrina and something like seventeen for infinite and then i think two people maybe four i think it was two road in mira weinberger name which was just good to see that people use that section of the ballot and then and then nobody checked in either candidate so that was really neat to see the results come back as about a sixty three percent for corrina and then about thirty three percent for infinite and something very interesting that i noticed about that we all fell i think was that one third of the people basically that decided to vote chose infinite and that was really clearly representative of a key part of this political revolution that we're trying to push for and this progressive social change that's a part of our constituency that really voted for that person and so it shows that there's support for both candidates but clearly more support for corrina so that was really neat to see the results come back and see what people voted in and that twenty five percent of the people that we sent out the information to voted and that's that was pretty good i think for the amount of time that we had out there maybe if we had it out there for a little bit longer it might have been more participation i don't know yeah but i think ultimately it was really interesting to see this process go forward and really see just how we could go about giving people access to to be able to to have a say in this process and i think most importantly and it really interesting to see how this process develops going forward i thought this is my first time being a part of any kind of endorsement process and it seemed to work at least on an initial level just kind of based on the way that things played out but i think it'll also be interesting to see how it develops going forward in the future i think perhaps maybe a little bit more time kind of for people to vote would be good in the end we ultimately want as many people who want to have a say to be able to be heard and i think that's just one of those key parts of what rad is trying to do here  so yeah great any wrap up kind of thoughts about about the endorsement i thought it was an extremely tough choice for everybody to make but i in the end here and and he directly from kareena and we have seen her history she's been a school board member in burlington she was a city council member and burlington and she was also a state representative many years ago now but she's ready to come back and do some more good work so she has a track record of doing some good things for the environment and for social justice and that's something that was really good to see she was also a successful business owner actually i believe it's a woodworking school with like forty students or something in which that just shows the ability to start in lead and manage people which i  think that's a pretty important thing to have some experience with in the in the mayor's seat but at the same time i felt that internet was a really great candidate as well and he's got a lot of experience that could be extremely as well about really connecting to people in the community that are not often heard sometimes and i found i think most powerful about this process was that both candidates spoke to the need for kind of a movement rather than just somebody getting elected it's not really about the individual getting elected it's more about the process involved and basically getting people to agree on on a sequence of kind of values and the idea of like working together to get those things done so i thought it was really effective that both candidates spoke about that and i think regardless of of who wins it'll be really interesting to see if that movement is actually able to take root and to develop as we kind of as we go forward going into twenty eighteen there's a lot going on especially if you're in the burlington area recent coming up  march sixth i believe is going to be town voting day so essentially we'll be talking about not only electing the mare and as we mentioned korea driscoll won the rad indorsement but we're also going to be electing to various different city councillors all of those seats are going to be up for grabs  and so some of those races are going to be particularly interesting and particularly close so if you are interested in having a say a couple of months ago we had max tracey who is a city councilor for ward two on the program other city councillors have been here before as well and so it'll be really interesting to see how that shapes up and if you want to get involved please check out rad v t dot org or just search reisa democracy we are a couple places across the web so shouldn't be too hard to find us there but if you want to get involved please do we're always looking to work with people to try to make sure that the change that you want in the change they are looking for is actually an active so again please seek us out read the tea dot org and we'll see how that goes yeah yeah so thanks for watching everybody this is kind of the conclusion the completion of two full years of monthly programming by rights and democracy only to have been thwarted by a couple of elections labor day party two and a half years ago it's been it's been quite a change and it's been great to be a part of two so again like no i was saying you can check out the website you can give money if you want to if you think that's the easiest thing for you to do but for me it's been showing up in just donating my time and i think that that's extremely important that's the capacity that no one is here  and we really appreciate everybody that's that's volunteering and doing anything to help with events or canvas or phone bank or anything so yeah i mean come be a part of it come on red t v if you to come and be in the audience and stuff and yet there's a lot of ways to get involved if you want to run for office there's a movement politics training that we that we do basically getting candidates ready to run i took the training back in september and found it really interesting really helpful and it ultimately led me to win a race in november and so ultimately we are we're making change and if you want to be part of that change we look forward to work